JohnD comments on John Danaher on 'The Superintelligent Will' - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lukeprog 03 April 2012 03:08AM

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Comment author: Lapsed_Lurker 03 April 2012 12:00:32PM 2 points [-]

I am not sure what 'accurate moral beliefs' means. By analogy with 'accurate scientific beliefs', it seems as if Mr Danaher is saying there are true morals out there in reality, which I had not thought to be the case, so I am probably confused. Can anyone clarify my understanding with a brief explanation of what he means?

Comment author: JohnD 04 April 2012 10:20:49AM 3 points [-]

Well, I suppose I had in mind the fact that any cognitivist metaethics holds that moral propositions have truth values, i.e. are capable of being true or false. And if cognitivism is correct, then it would be possible for one's moral beliefs to be more or less accurate (i.e. to be more or less representative of the actual truth values of sets of moral propositions).

While moral cognitivism is most at home with moral realism - the view that moral facts are observer-indepedent - it is also compatible with some versions of anti-realism, such as the constructivist views I occasionally endorse.

The majority of moral philosophers (a biased sample) are cognitivists, as are most non-moral philosophers that I speak to (pure anecdotal evidence). If one is not a moral cognitivist, then the discussion on my blog post will of course be unpersuasive. But in that case, one might incline towards moral nihilism, which could, as I pointed out, provide some support for the orthogonality thesis.