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DanArmak comments on Rationality Quotes July 2012 - Less Wrong
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If I said "Murder is NOT wrong for humans, it is just a matter of personal choice" and you said "no you are wrong, murder is wrong for humans" I would conclude you are a moral realist, not a nihilist. I made a moral statement and you told me I was wrong. You seem to believe that that moral statement is either true or false no matter who says it, that "I think I'll murder Dan" is not just a subjective choice like "I think I'll read a Neil Gaiman book tonight" might be.
But you also characterize morality as a description of human actions. If I say "I notice that murder is said to be wrong by many people but is practiced by some non-trivial minority of humans, there fore, since I observe it is part of the human moral landscape, I will pick a kid at random in the mall and shoot him." and you say "no, you shouldn't" then you are probably a moral realist. You apparently think that the proposition I proposed has a truth or falseness to it that exists outside yourself, and you are expressing to me that this statement I made is false.
My moral nihilism which I have abandoned perhaps a week ago arose from my comparing the quality of moral facts and fact finding to the quality of scientific facts and fact finding. Science seemed developed through an objective process: you had to test the world to see if statements about the world were true or false. Whereas morality seemed to come entirely from intuitions and introspection. "you shouldn't kill random kids in the mall." "You should recycle." Blah blah blah where is even the test? In my case I was a nihilist in that I thought there was no sensible way to declare a moral statement to be a "fact" rather than a choice, but I was totally willing to kill reflecting my choices (i.e., kill someone who threatened me or my friends or my family). So I had what I thought was a de facto morality that I thought could not be justified as "fact" in the same way that engineering and physics textbooks could be justified.
Upon being reminded of "the problem of induction" I remembered that scientific facts are deduced from ASSUMPTIONS. We just do a pretty good job if aligning with reality is your standard. So the feature that any moral conclusions I was going to reach would necessarily be deduced from assumptions was not enough to relegate them to mere choices.
It could be that we are nowhere near as good at figuring out what the moral facts are as we are at figuring out what the scientific facts are. But 3000 years ago, we weren't very good at scientific facts either, and that presumably didn't stop them from being facts, we just didn't know much about them yet.
So maybe morality CAN'T be known as well as science, or maybe it can, we just haven't figure it out yet.
But to be a proper nihilist, you need to accept that murder is not wrong (it is not right either). Are you down with that?
This is a bad framing of the issue. Murder (for humans) is not, properly speaking, right or wrong. Saying that it is will do for casual conversation but let's make things precise. The term "murder" also presupposes wrong-ness, so I'll replace it with 'killing'.
Moral judgments (right/wrong) are descriptions given by people to actions. Killing may be wrong in my eyes, and separately in your eyes; it is not wrong or right in itself. This is true whether 'killing' stands here for a very specific case we are discussing, or whether we are making a generalization over some or all cases of actual or possible killing. (In the latter case, we will be implying some generalization such as 'most/all/typical/... cases of killing are wrong in X's eyes'.)
We can also generalize over the person doing the moral judgment. For instance, if most/all/typical/... people think a case of killing is morally wrong, I can simply say that "it is wrong" without making explicit who does or doesn't agree with this judgment. This, as I noted above, is what we typically do in conversation - and it's OK, but only as long as everyone understands and agrees on who is said to (dis)approve of the action in question!
Finally, all that I have said isn't necessarily incorrect even if you believe in objective moral truth. In that case you can view it as a definition of the words 'morally right/wrong'. We can talk about people's moral opinions even if there is a separate Objective Moral Truth that not all people agree with. We should just be clear when we're talking about truth, and when about opinions.
However, I believe there is no such thing as objective moral truth. This isn't just because there's no evidence for it (which is true); the very concept seems to me to be confused. You say:
Science starts with assumptions, and fundamental observations, that are about the objective world it describes. Morals start with assumptions and observations about human moral judgments. These judgments are the functions of human brains, which of course exist objectively. The morals you deduce from these assumptions are an objective fact - but they are a fact about human brains! That's what you deduced them from! They are not a fact about e.g. the action of killing in itself.
Imagine an alien that doesn't think killing kittens is morally wrong. It can do so without any compunctions. This is of course its subjective view. However, some humans think killing kittens is generally morally wrong, no matter who does it (as long as it's an intelligent being that makes choice about its actions).
In a universe with aliens and kittens but no humans, would an alien killing kittens be morally right or wrong? My answer: this is a wrong question; a correct question about morality is e.g. "do humans think that xxx is wrong", and there is no morality without reference to some agents (human or otherwise) doing the moral judging. Your answer is, presumably, that it is as right or as wrong as it is in our universe. (Are moral truths like logical truths? Or contingent on physical law?)
You think there are objective moral facts. Are they logical facts, like mathematical truths? Or are they physical facts, contingent on physical law and our actual universe, out there to be discovered?
In the latter case at least you have to say what physical evidence causes you to believe they exist.
And what does it mean for an objective moral truth to exist? If it's a logical truth, and my morals are different, does that mean my behavior is irrational in some sense? If it's a physical truth, and my morals are different, does that mean I will make wrong predictions about physical facts I don't know yet?
If I gave you an oracle for logical truths, and an oracle for physical facts, could you in principle deduce all moral truths? How?
"Murder" presupposes "moral wrong", that's just what the word means. I certainly agree that "killing" - any particular instance of killing, as well as killing in general - is not in itself right or wrong; it is only right or wrong in the eyes of some people. Most people in any given society agree about most killings, which creates a consensus useful for many purposes, which all adds up to normality.
So you admit that there are two different kinds of objective facts. Given that there are two different kinds, why can't there be more?
These are two quite different things. We group them under one name, 'facts', but that is just a convention. That's why I wanted to find out which kind we were talking about.
Saying that "there might be a third kind" is misleading: it is a matter of definitions of words. You propose there might be some undiscoverd X. You also propose that if we discovered X, we would be willing to call it "a new kind of fact". But X itself is vastly more interesting than what words we might use.
Therefore please taboo "fact" and tell me, what is it you think there may be more of?
There's a reason we use the same word for both of them. They have a lot in common, for example being extremely objective in practice.
Certainly, they have a lot in common, as well as a lot of differences.
But this discussion doesn't seem profitable. We shouldn't be discussing the probability that "another kind of fact" exists. Either someone has a suggestion for a new kind of fact, which we can then evaluate, or else the subject is barren. The mere fact that "we've not ruled out that there might exist more things we would choose to apply the word 'fact' to" is very weak evidence. We've not ruled out china teacups in solar orbit, either, but we don't spend time discussing them.
So if I understand your meta-theory correctly, anyone living before the scientific method, or simple hasn't heard of it, should be a Cartesian skeptic.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. By "Cartesian skeptic" do you mean a Cartesian dualist who is skeptical of pure materialism? Or a Cartesian skeptic who does not wish to rely on his senses, who is skeptical of scientific inquiry into objective reality? Or something else?
Someone who doesn't believe his sense inputs necessarily reflect any reality.
That's not physical anti-realism, but it's a sort of skepticism about physical realism. However, nothing can "prove" physical realism correct if you don't already accept it.
If someone doesn't believe his sense inputs reflect something with independent existence, then any new information they receive via those very same sense inputs can't logically influence their belief. Learning about the scientific method would not matter. Living today or at Descartes' time or ten thousand years ago, there are still exactly the same reasons for being a physical realist: the world just seems that way, we act that way even if we proclaim we don't believe in it, we can't change or escape the world we perceive via our senses by wishing it, and we have a strong instinct not to die.
There could be more. It just turns out that there aren't.
Do you have any evidence for this besides not being able to think of a third meta-theory?
Do you have any evidence against it? Are you able to think of a third?
The zero-one-infinity hueristic.
Interesting point. But that's very weak evidence (because as I said the two known instances have significant differences). Also, this is a heuristic and produces many false positives.
At best it motivates me to remain open to arguments that there might be more kinds of 'truth', which I am. But the mere argument that there might be is not interesting, unless someone can provide an argument for a concrete example. Or even a suggestion of what a concrete example might be like.
You should study more history of ideas; once you see several examples of seemingly-unsolvable philosophical problems that were later solved by intellectual paradigm shifts, you become much less willing to believe that a particular problem is unsolvable simple because we currently don't have any idea how to solve it.
I don't believe a problem is unsolvable. I don't see a problem in the first place. I don't have any unsolved questions in my world model.
You keep saying I should be more open to new ideas and unsure of my existing ideas. But you do not suggest any concrete new idea. You also do not point to the need for a new idea, such as an unsolved problem. You're not saying anything that isn't fully general and applicable to all of everyone's beliefs.
To make it unambiguous, let us consider the action "mwengler, a human, goes to a randomly chosen location, abducts the first child under 4' tall he sees there, then takes that child, and kills it with a chainsaw. When asked about it he says 'I've done things like this before, I do it because I like the way it makes me feel.' "
You say:
This is an assertion which is either true or false. You assert it as true. By my reading of the definition, this makes you a moral nihilist. This on my part is not an act of judgment, but rather of labeling in a way which is common enough among a community who thinks about stuff like this to have been spelled out rather clearly in a wikipedia article.
There are plenty of people who do believe there is an objective moral truth. So many that there is a label for it: moral realism. You can read about it in wikipedia and in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The concept may be "confused," but it may be less "confused" after you read what some real clear philosophy writers have to say about it.
By this I take it to mean you would like to define "it is wrong" and "it is right" to mean "most people think it is wrong" and "most people think it is right." I find a lot of problems with that definition.
First, as a physicist I recognize a world of difference between 1) "electrons repel each other" and 2) "most physicists think electrons repel each other." They are probably both true, but negating the first would have vast implications for all of electronics, while the second would represent a remarkable, and possibly disastrous, social phenomenon. So I'd love to keep the semantic distinction between what is and what people think is.
I guess my point about this would be, yes its natural to translate objective language into subjective rough equivalents if you think the subjectivity of morality is natural, inescapable, unavoidable. But you will misunderstand other people and be misunderstood by them if you do so and assume that they do so as well, because there are a lot of moral realists out there.
I'm curious how you interpret this situation in this light:
You think my joy-killing random children is wrong. I think it is right, or perhaps I merely think it is not wrong because I don't think anything is right or wrong. And I have decided that to live life fully I must have many unique and exciting experiences, especially those that define me as an individual that would set me apart from other men. As part of that program, I have traveled to Antarctica, scuba'd in caves in deep volcanic lakes. And killed the odd child. I find the experience somewhat distasteful, but also somewhat fascinating, and although I don't expect to want to kill children forever, I feel that I'll probably need to kill 2 or 3 more to get everything I want from the experience.
What do you do about me? Incarcerate me while telling me that I am being imprisoned for life not because I did or want to do something wrong but because "most people think I did something wrong?" Well I would ask you what YOU think. I do ask you what YOU think. Do you think I am wrong to kill these children? How much does it matter that I disagree with you? If it doesn't matter that I disagree with you, doesn't that mean that you think it is objectively wrong?
I think some confronting this might want to say there was something wrong with me if I liked killing children and didn't feel there was something wrong with it. In this case, you are essentially defining "humans" as, among other things, "people who think randomly killing children because it is fun" as wrong. You know have the problem of having to identify the disease process in me (and others) that leads me to this error. Perhaps "wrong" is objective in that it is part of a common genetic heritage we have evolved to live with each other? And that as with insulin or albinism or senility, there can be a genetic defect in some people? Then wrong would be some kind of disease, but it would still be objective.
But it would not be normative. (Read about normative in wikipedia and encyclopedia). Just because most humans genetically found killing children wrong, wouldn't tell me, with my genetic disease, that I "should" think that too. It merely tells me that I am different from most humans in this respect.
I don't know where it all ends. I do think there are powerful reasons to think morality is objective, just as there are powerful reasons to wonder if it isn't.
Correct. I want to point out what this is an assertion about: it is about the meaning of the word 'morals'. I.e. a definition, not a statement of logical or physical fact.
If you think that "there are objective morals" that is a different claim about the meaning of the word, but also (and much more importantly) a claim about the existence of something - and I'm asking you to define that something. Let's leave aside for now the issue of why you call this something "morals", let's taboo that word. Please describe this objectively existing something you are talking about.
I don't even know if this is evidence for or against them being right. There are plenty of people who are very wrong about lots of things that are not part of their everyday lives.
I have now read both articles. (You linked to Stanford twice, so I read the WP article "Moral Realism".)
Wikipedia doesn't give a single argument for moral realism, it just says that if we accept it, that makes it convenient to reason about morals. Which is not evidence.
The Stanford article lists many arguments against realism, but no arguments for it. It seems to conclude that because realism arises from "common sense and initial appearances" [I disagree strongly] and because they identify problems with some alternatives, realism should not be dismissed. Yet they identify no problems with my approach; and even if they did find problems with all known other approaches, as long as there is no problem to be found with the rejection of realism in itself, then there is no valid reason to accept realism.
To sum up: moral realism claims truth-properties for moral statements, but it also claims they cannot be evaluated for truth on the basis of any observations of the physical objective universe. That reduces it to the statement "our common sense tells us so, you can't prove us wrong, we don't have to prove ourselves right". Not very great philosophy.
No I don't want to define it so. It can and does mean different things in different contexts. Whenever there is doubt we should make it explicit what we mean.
Whether I understand moral realists is a separate issue. First I would like to understand moral realism itself. Please taboo "something is right" and tell me what your claim of objective moral truths or moral realism means.
I don't like incarceration itself, but it might be the best alternative available. Regardless of what I do with you, it would be because "most people (including me) think you did something wrong", not because "it is somehow objectively wrong".
Yes I do.
It matters for some purposes. For instance, if there were reliable ways to check and modify a person's actual moral feelings, I would want to impose on you modifications that would make you view killing children as immoral. I would prefer that to incarcerating you.
Another possible difference is in the severity of punishment, if any. One goal of punishment is deterring other potential criminals (and your own potential recidivism). People who don't have moral feelings stopping them from killing children, might need more punishment (ceteris paribus) to achieve the same deterrence. So it might make sense to punish you more severly, to influence people like you who don't share the social morals being enforced to follow them anyway out of self-interest.
Also, your lack of these moral feeling makes you likely to kill children again in the future (as you noted yourself), so I would want to incarcerate you for longer so as to protect children from you for longer.
As I said, it does matter. But suppose it didn't matter: suppose I sentenced you without regard to your moral feelings. That wouldn't mean I thought your behavior was "objectively wrong". It would simply mean I was sentencing according to the moral beliefs of myself (and, by stipulation, most people). I see nothing wrong in doing so. To refrain from doing so would be to refrain from acting according to my moral beliefs.
"There is something wrong with you" is yet another different, confusing, usage of the word 'wrong' in this discussion :-) Tabooing 'wrong' it means simply: you are unusual in this regard. Which is true by stipulation of our scenario - as you said, "most people think you did something wrong". Anything else ("who is human?") is arguing about the definitions of words and is not interesting or relevant.
So tell me what they are already!
I got lost in all the comments and accidentally replied to you in a reply to myself. That comment is here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dei/rationality_quotes_july_2012/6z6h?context=3
This is ultimately the case for all statements.
I fail to see the relevance. Humans convince each other of many things all the time. If we couldn't, we wouldn't be here on this site! There are minds "out there" in mind-space whom we couldn't convince, but that doesn't mean there are such human minds, because humans are quite similar to one another.
Are you seriously suggesting humanity is divided into moral realists and anti-realists, and no realist can possibly explain to me or convince me of their position and even talking about it is pointless?
Yes, and those things include moral statements.
No, because most if not all humans who call themselves moral non-realists are actually moral realists who believe themselves to be moral non-realists.
Exactly. So I'm asking to be convinced - I'm asking for the evidence that convinced others to be moral realists. So far no such evidence has been given.
Why do you think so? Where do I act as if I believed in moral realism? I am not aware of such.
This is similar to the way people who claim to be physical non-realists still manage to avoid walking out of high story windows. If someone punched you or stole your stuff, I strongly suspect you'd object in moral terms.
To me, this is a point in favor of anti-realism. I hardly react at all when strangers get punched and worse (as we speak, probably). Tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Of course I would, and that doesn't make me a moral realist. I would say: by the morals that I feel, and most other people also feel and agree on, the person who assaulted me acted immorally. Nothing to do with objective moral rules: just rules that I and most other people feel to be moral and agree on.
More importantly, if some people in my place would appeal to "objective/factual morals", that is not in itself evidence for the existence of such objective morals. Since when I ask them (you) how they perceive these objective morals, how they even know them to exist, I receive so far no answer.