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thomblake comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong
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-- Tim Kreider
The interesting part is the phrase "which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays." If we can anticipate what the morality of the future would be, should we try to live by it now?
If we can afford it.
Moral progress proceeds from economic progress.
Morality is contextual.
If we have four people on a life boat and food for three, morality must provide a mechanism for deciding who gets the food. Suppose that decision is made, then Omega magically provides sufficient food for all - morality hasn't changed, only the decision that morality calls for.
Technological advancement has certainly caused moral change (consider society after introduction of the Pill). But having more resources does not, in itself, change what we think is right, only what we can actually achieve.
That's an interesting claim. Are you saying that true moral dilemmas (i.e. a situation where there is no right answer) are impossible? If so, how would you argue for that?
My view is that a more meaningful question than ‘is this choice good or bad’ is ‘is this choice better or worse than other choices I could make’.
Would you say that there are true practical dilemmas? Is there ever a situation where, knowing everything you could know about a decision, there isn't a better choice?
There are plenty of situations where two choices are equally good or equally bad. This is called "indifference", not "dilemma".
Those aren't the situations I'm talking about.
If I know there isn't a better choice, I just follow my decision. Duh. (Having to choose between losing $500 and losing $490 is equivalent to losing $500 and then having to choose between gaining nothing and gaining $10: yes, the loss will sadden me, but that had better have no effect on my decision, and if it does it's because of emotional hang-ups I'd rather not have. And replacing dollars with utilons wouldn't change much.)
So you're saying that there are no true moral dilemmas (no undecidable moral problems)?
Depends on what you mean by “undecidable”. There may be situations in which it's hard in practice to decide whether it's better to do A or to do B, sure, but in principle either A is better, B is better, or the choice doesn't matter.
So, for example, suppose a situation where a (true) moral system demands both A and B, yet in this situation A and B are incomposssible. Or it forbids both A and B, yet in this situation doing neither is impossible. Those examples have a pretty deontological air to them...could we come up with examples of such dilemmas within consequentialism?
That one thing a couple years ago qualifies.
But unless you get into self-referencing moral problems, no. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I suspect that you can find ones among decisions that affect your decision algorithm and decisions where your decision-making algorithm affects the possible outcomes. Probably like Newcomb's problem, only twistier.
(Warning: this may be basilisk territory.)
How are you defining morality? If we use a shorthand definition that morality is a system that guides proper human action, then any "true moral dilemmas" would be a critique of whatever moral system failed to provide an answer, not proof that "true moral dilemmas" existed.
We have to make some choice. If a moral system stops giving us any useful guidance when faced with sufficiently difficult problems, that simply indicates a problem with the moral system.
ETA: For example, if I have completely strict sense of ethics based upon deontology, I may feel an absolute prohibition on lying and an absolute prohibition on allowing humans to die. That would create an moral dilemma for that system in the classical case of Nazis seeking Jews that I'm hiding in my house. So I'd have to switch to a different ethical system. If I switched to a system of deontology with a value hierarchy, I could conclude that human life has a higher value than telling the truth to governmental authorities under the circumstances and then decide to lie, solving the dilemma.
I strongly suspect that all true moral dilemmas are artifacts of the limitations of distinct moral systems, not morality per se. Since I am skeptical of moral realism, that is all the more the case; if morality can't tell us how to act, it's literally useless. We have to have some process for deciding on our actions.
(Double-post, sorry)
I think they are impossible. Morality can say "no option is right" all it wants, but we still must pick an option, unless the universe segfaults and time freezes upon encountering a dilemma. Whichever decision procedure we use to make that choice (flip a coin?) can count as part of morality.
I take it for granted that faced with a dilemma we must do something, so long as doing nothing counts as doing something. But the question is whether or not there is always a morally right answer. In cases where there isn't, I suppose we can just pick randomly, but that doesn't mean we've therefore made the right moral decision.
Are we ever damned if we do, and damned if we don't?
When someone is in a situation like that, they lower their standard for "morally right" and try again. Functional societies avoid putting people in those situations because it's hard to raise that standard back to it's previous level.
Well, if all available options are indeed morally wrong, we can still try to see if any are less wrong than others.
Right, but choosing the lesser of two evils is simple enough. That's not the kind of dilemma I'm talking about. I'm asking whether or not there are wholly undecidable moral problems. Choosing between one evil and a lesser evil is no more difficult than choosing between an evil and a good.
But if you're saying that in any hypothetical choice, we could always find something significant and decisive, then this is good evidence for the impossibility of moral dilemmas.
It's hard to say, really.
Suppose we define a "moral dilemma for system X" as a situation in which, under system X, all possible actions are forbidden.
Consider the systems that say "Actions that maximize this (unbounded) utility function are permissible, all others are forbidden." Then the situation "Name a positive integer, and you get that much utility" is a moral dilemma for those systems; there is no utility maximizing action, so all actions are forbidden and the system cracks. It doesn't help much if we require the utility function to be bounded; it's still vulnerable to situations like "Name a real number less than 30, and you get that much utility" because there isn't a largest real number less than 30. The only way to get around this kind of attack by restricting the utility function is by requiring the range of the function to be a finite set. For example, if you're a C++ program, your utility might be represented by a 32 bit unsigned integer, so when asked "How much utility do you want" you just answer "2^32 - 1" and when asked "How much utility less than 30.5 do you want" you just answer "30".
(Ugh, that paragraph was a mess...)
That is an awesome example. I'm absolutely serious about stealing that from you (with your permission).
Do you think this presents a serious problem for utilitarian ethics? It seems like it should, though I guess this situation doesn't come up all that often.
ETA: Here's a thought on a reply. Given restrictions like time and knowledge of the names of large numbers, isn't there in fact a largest number you can name? Something like Graham's number won't work (way too small) because you can always add one to it. But trans-finite numbers aren't made larger by adding one. And likewise with the largest real number under thirty, maybe you can use a function to specify the number? Or if not, just say '29.999....' and just say nine as many times as you can before the time runs out (or until you calculate that the utility benefit reaches equilibrium with the costs of saying 'nine' over and over for a long time).
I would make the more limited claim that the existence of irreconcilable moral conflicts is evidence for moral anti-realism.
In short, if you have a decision process (aka moral system) that can't resolve a particular problem that is strictly within its scope, you don't really have a moral system.
Which makes figuring out what we mean by moral change / moral progress incredibly difficult.
This seems to be to be a rephrasing and clarifying of your original claim, which I read as saying something like 'no true moral theory can allow moral conflicts'. But it's not yet an argument for this claim.
I'm suddenly concerned that we're arguing over a definition. It's very possible to construct a decision procedure that tells one how to decide some, but not all moral questions. It might be that this is the best a moral decision procedure can do. Is it clearer to avoid using the label "moral system" for such a decision procedure?
This is a distraction from my main point, which was that asserting our morality changes when our economic resources change is an atypical way of using the label "morality."
No, but if I understand what you've said, a true moral theory can allow for moral conflict, just because there are moral questions it cannot decide (the fact that you called them 'moral questions' leads me to think you think that these questions are moral ones even if a true moral theory can't decide them).
You're certainly right, this isn't relevant to your main point. I was just interested in what I took to be the claim that moral conflicts (i.e. moral problems that are undecidable in a true moral theory) are impossible:
This is a distraction from you main point in at least one other sense: this claim is orthogonal to the claim that morality is not relative to economic conditions.
Yes, you correct that this was not an argument, simply my attempt to gesture at what I meant by the label "morality." The general issue is that human societies are not rigorous about the use of the label morality. I like my usage because I think it is neutral and specific in meta-ethical disputes like the one we are having. For example, moral realists must determine whether they think "incomplete" moral systems can exist.
But beyond that, I should bow out, because I'm an anti-realist and this debate is between schools of moral realists.
Rephrasing the original question: if we can anticipate the guiding principles underlying the morality of the future, ought we apply those principles to our current circumstances to make decisions, supposing they are different?
Though you seem to be implicitly assuming that the guiding principles don't change, merely the decisions, and those changed decisions are due to the closest implementable approximation of our guiding principles varying over time based on economic change. (Did I understand that right?)
Pretty much. Though it feels totally different from the inside. Athens could not have thrived without slave labor, and so you find folks arguing that slavery is moral, not just necessary. Since you can't say "Action A is immoral but economically necessary, so we shall A" you instead say "Action A is moral, here are some great arguments to that effect!"
And when we have enough money, we can even invent new things to be upset about, like vegetable rights.
(nods) Got it.
On your view, is there any attempt at internal coherence?
For example, given an X such that X is equally practical (economically) in an Athenian and post-Athenian economy, and where both Athenians and moderns would agree that X is more "consistent with" slavery than non-slavery, would you expect Athenians to endorse X and moderns to reject it, or would you expect other (non-economic) factors, perhaps random noise, to predominate? (Or some third option?)
Or is such an X incoherent in the first place?
Can you give a more concrete example? I don't understand your question.
I can't think of a concrete example that doesn't introduce derailing specifics.
Let me try a different question that gets at something similar: do you think that all choices a society makes that it describes as "moral" are economic choices in the sense you describe here, or just that some of them are?
Edit: whoops! got TimS and thomblake confused. Um. Unfortunately, that changes nothing of consequence: I still can't think of a concrete example that doesn't derail. But my followup question is not actually directed to Tim. Or, rather, ought not have been.
Probably a good counterexample would be the right for certain groups to work any job they're qualified for, for example women or people with disabilities. Generally, those changes were profitable and would have been at any time society accepted it.
I don't understand the position you are arguing and I really want to. Either illusion of transparency or I'm an idiot. And TheOtherDave appears to understand you. :(
I'm not really arguing for a position - the grandparent was a counterexample to the general principle I had proposed upthread, since the change was both good and an immediate economic benefit, and it took a very long time to be adopted.
(nods) Yup, that's one example I was considering, but discarded as too potentially noisy.
But, OK, now that we're here... if we can agree for the sake of comity that giving women the civil right to work any job would have been economically practical for Athenians, and that they nevertheless didn't do so, presumably due to some other non-economic factors... I guess my question is, would you find it inconsistent, in that case, to find Athenians arguing that doing so would be immoral?
I don't think so. I'm pretty sure lots of things can stand in the way of moral progress.
What is progress with respect to either? Could you possibly mean that moral states - the moral conditions of a society - follow from the economic state - the condition and system of economy. I do find it hard to see a clear, unbiased definition of moral or economic progress.
Moral progress is a trend or change for the better in the morality of members of a society. For example, when the United States went from widespread acceptance of slavery to widespread rejection of slavery, that was moral progress on most views of morality.
Economic progress is a trend or change that results in increased wealth for a society.
In general, widespread acceptance of a moral principle, like our views on slavery, animal rights, vegetable rights, and universal minimum income, only comes after we can afford it.
I think he's trying to say that having resources is a prerequisite to spending them on moral things like universal pay, so we need to pursue wealth if we want to pursue morality. Technically, economic progress is more of a prerequisite to moral progress than a sufficient cause though, as economic progress can also result in bad moral outcomes depending on what we do with our wealth.