Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself
- Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
In that same wikipedia article, follow the link to Moral Nihilism to learn
If morality is not objective, than moral propositions do not have true-or-falseness about them, and all the discussions about morality are vapid.
What Chang means is he gets to make it up as he goes along because 1) it is not wrong to make it up as he goes along because in nihilism, nothing is "wrong," and 2) there isn't a "right" either.
Its possible a slightly warm-and-fuzzier Chang would choose Moral Relativism which is Moral Nihilism's more conventional 2nd cousin. But Nihilism makes for a much better story, it is stark and even the word sounds ominous.
It seems very obvious and uncontroversial to me that morality is not objective. (Yay typical mind fallacy!) Morality is, or arises from, a description of human actions, judgements and thoughts. Aliens who behaved completely differently should be said to have different morals.
It's not clear to me why someone would even think to argue for objective (=universally correct and unique) morals unless motivated by reli... (read more)