Peterdjones comments on 'Is' and 'Ought' and Rationality - Less Wrong

2 Post author: BobTheBob 05 July 2011 03:53AM

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Comment author: BobTheBob 06 July 2011 01:48:58AM 0 points [-]

Rational-ought beliefs and actions are the ones optimal for achieving your goals. Goals and optimallity can be explained in scientific language. Rational-ought is not moral-ought. Moral-ought is harder to explain because it about the goals an agent should have,not the ones they happen to have.

I'm sincerely not sure about the rational-ought/moral-ought distinction - I haven't thought enough about it. But anyway, I think moral-ought is a red herring, here. As far as I can see, the claims made in the post apply to rational-oughts. That was certainly the intention. In other posts on LW about fallacies and the details of rational thinking, it's a commonplace to use quite normative language in connection with rationality. Indeed, a primary goal is to help people to think and behave more rationally, because this is seen for each of us to be a good. 'One ought not to procrastinate', 'One ought to compensate for one's biases', etc..

Try somehow to shoehorn normative facts into a naturalistic world-view, at the possible peril of the coherence of that world-view.

Easily done with non-moral norms such as rationality.

Would love to see the details... :-)

Not if you think of purpose as a metaphysical fundamental. Easily, if a purpose is just a particular idea in the mind. If I intend to but a lawnmower, and I write "buy lawnmower" on a piece of paper, there is nothing mysterious about the note, or about the state of mind that preceded it.

I'm not sure I get this. The intention behind drawing the initial distinction between is/ought problems was to make clear the focus is not on, as it were, the mind of the beholder. The question is a less specific variant of the question as to how any mere physical being comes to have intentions (e.g., to buy a lawnmower) in the first place.

That you want to do something does not mean you ought to do it in the categorial, unconditional sense of moral-ought.

I agree, but I think it does mean you ought to in a qualified sense. Your merely being in a physical or computational state, however, by itself doesn't, or so the thought goes.

Comment author: Peterdjones 07 July 2011 07:23:08PM *  1 point [-]

Would love to see the details... :-)

It's been sketched out several times already, by various people.

1.You have a set of goals (aposteriori "is") 2. You have a set of strategies for achieving goals with varying levels of efficiency (aposteriori "is") 3. Being rational is applying rationality to achieve goals optimally (analytical "is"), ie if you are want to be rational, you ought to optimise your UF.

Of course that isnt pure empiricism (what is?) because 3 is a sort of conceptual analysis of "oughtness". I am not bothered about that for a number of reasons: I am not commited to the insolubility of the is/ought gap, nor to the non existence of objective ethics.

I'm not sure I get this. The intention behind drawing the initial distinction between is/ought problems was to make clear the focus is not on, as it were, the mind of the beholder. The question is a less specific variant of the question as to how any mere physical being comes to have intentions (e.g., to buy a lawnmower) in the first place.

I don't see why the etiology of intentions should pose any more of a problem than the representation of intentions. You can build robots that seek out light sources. "seek light sources" is represented in its programming. It came from the progammer. Where's the problem?

I agree, but I think it does mean you ought to in a qualified sense.

But the qualified sense is easily explained as goal+strategy. You rational-ought to adopt strategies to achieve your goals.

Your merely being in a physical or computational state, however, by itself doesn't, or so the thought goes

Concrete facts about my goals and siituation, and abstract facts about which strategies achieve which goals are allt hat is needed to establish truths about rational-ought. What is unnaturalistic about that? The abstract facts about how strageties may be unnaturualisable in a sense, but it is a rather unimpactive sense. Abstract reasoning in general isn't (at least usefully) reducible to atoms, but that doesnt mean it is "about" some non physical realm. In a sense it isn't about anything, It just operates on its own level.

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