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Eugine_Nier comments on Rationality Quotes July 2012 - Less Wrong
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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.
The physical anti-realist doesn't see any problem in his world view either.