When I said I'm skeptical that Pluralistic Moral Reductionism is on the right track, I meant that I'm skeptical that it is correct when it take positions like:
But whatever our intended meaning of 'ought' is, the same reasoning applies. Either our intended meaning of 'ought' refers (eventually) to the world of math and physics (in which case the is-ought gap is bridged), or else it doesn't (in which case it fails to refer).
and
It suggests that there is no One True Theory of Morality. (We use moral terms in a variety of ways, and some of those ways refer to different sets of natural facts.)
and that we should proceed to try to solve metaethics on the basis of assuming these are correct. (Perhaps if you believe that these positions are correct, then many metaethical debates are dissolved in your mind, but that's not the case for me, and I think you're probably being too confident if you do consider those debates to be "dissolved".)
And thus, in the spirit of exploring multiple approaches simultaneously, I'm trying to make sure we all have a cursory understanding of the neuroscience of human values.
Ok, I certainly have no objection to that. Except this relatively minor nitpick: since most of the studies are based on non-sentient primates, and the post talked little about what is unique to human values (e.g., influence of culture and deliberative thinking) I think it would be more accurate to refer to it as the neuroscience of primate values.
...since most of the studies are based on non-sentient primates...
Just came across this, might be relevant / of interest: Similarities Between Macaque and Human Brains
Recently a friend of mine told me that he and a few others were debating how likely it is that I've 'solved metaethics.' Others on this site have gotten the impression that I'm claiming to have made a fundamental breakthrough that I'm currently keeping a secret, and that's what my metaethics sequence is leading up to. Alas, it isn't the case. The first post in my sequence began:
The part I consider 'solved' is the part discussed in Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory and Pluralistic Moral Reductionism. These posts represent an application of the lessons learned from Eliezer's free will sequence and his words sequence to the subject of metaethics.
I did this because Eliezer mostly skipped this step in his metaethics sequence, perhaps assuming that readers had already applied these lessons to metaethics to solve the easy problems of metaethics, so he could skip right to discussing the harder problems of metaethics. But I think this move was a source of confusion for many LWers, so I wanted to go back and work through the details of what it looks like to solve the easy parts of metaethics with lessons learned from Eliezer's sequences.
The next part of my metaethics sequence will be devoted to "bringing us all up to speed" on several lines of research that seem relevant to solving open problems in metaethics: the literature on how human values work (in brain and behavior), the literature on extracting preferences from what human brains actually do, and the literature on value extrapolation algorithms. For the most part, these literature sets haven't been discussed on Less Wrong despite their apparent relevance to metaethics, so I'm trying to share them with LW myself (e.g. A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation).
Technically, most of these posts will not be listed as being part of my metaethics sequence, but I will refer to them from posts that are technically part of my metaethics sequence, drawing lessons for metaethics from them.
After "bringing us all up to speed" on these topics and perhaps a couple others, I'll use my metaethics sequence to clarify the open problems in metaethics and suggest some places we can hack away at and perhaps make progress. Thus, my metaethics sequence aims to end with something like a Polymath Project set up for collaboratively solving metaethics problems.
I hope this clarifies my intentions for my metaethics sequence.