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Peterdjones comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong
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Quite. It is a perfectly coherent possibility that the moral instincts given to us by evolution are broken in some way, so that studying morlaity form the evolutionary perspective does't resolve the "what is the right thing to do" question at all. The interesting thing here is that a lot of material on LW is dedicated to an exactly parallel with argument about ratioanlity: our rationality is broken and needs to be fixed. How can EY be so open to the one possibility and so oblivious to the other?
What do you mean by "broken", here?
About the same as when I said rationality is borken, according to EY.
Our rationality has an obvious standard to compare it to: the real world. If we consistently make the wrong predictions, it's easy to see something is wrong. What can you compare morality to but itself?
I suspect I'm missing something here.
Pre-supposing Moral Realism gives one a clear standard by which to judge whether one's actions are moral or immoral. A tendency to consistently make wrong predictions about whether an action is moral or immoral would mean that our moral compass is "broken."
Of course... Pre-supposing Moral Realism is silly, so there's that.
No, it doesn't. If your ethics conflicted with Morality, how on earth would you tell?
That would depend on exactly what kind of Moral Realism you espouse. If you're Kantian, you think reason will tell you whether your actions are "really" wrong or right. If you're a Divine Command Theist, you think God can tell you whether your actions are "really" wrong or right. If you're a Contractarian, you think the Social Contract can tell you whether your actions are "really" wrong or right...
And so on, and so forth.
As I've said, I think Moral Realism of this kind is silly, but if it happens to be true then what you think you "ought" to do and what you actually "ought" to do could be two different things.
Oh. Right. Yes. I'm an idiot.
Hmm.
Well, if they think they can prove it, any moral realists are welcome to post their reasoning here, and if they turn out to be right I can't see any objection to posting on the implications. That said, I suspect that many (all?) forms of moral realism come not from mistakes of fact but confusion, and have a good chance of being dissolved by the sequences.
Isn't EY a moral realist?
Let's define our terms. Moral realism is a conjunction of three claims:
This should be distinguished from moral non-naturalism (which asserts that the moral facts are somehow transcendent or abstract or nonphysical), moral universalism (which asserts that a single set of moral truths holds for everyone), and moral primitivism (which asserts that moral concepts are primitive, metaphysically basic, and/or conceptually irreducible).
Down to definitions. He no longer believes that there is some "higher good" beyond mere human ethics.
And more importantly: why the ** (excuse the language) would you care.
If what I truly desire upon reflection is objectively "evil", I want to believe that what I truly desire upon reflection is objectively "evil". And tautologically, I will still truly desire it.
Some folks have used the idea of "moral observations" to address this. Basically, if you see your neighbor's child light a dog on fire, and you say "I saw your child doing something wrong", you're making a coherent statement about your observation of reality. Our moral observations can be distorted / hallucinated just like other observations, but then that is only as much of a barrier to understanding moral reality as it is to understanding physical reality.
Oh, obviously. I was saying that it would be hard to observe morality except in the usual way; it has since been pointed out that most forms of moral realism come with such a method; praying, for example.
In the sense that pre-supposing anything is silly?
Okay.
Our de facto reasoing is wrong. Either it is not leading to wrong predictions, or it is not easy to see something is wrong.
In any case, the world is not the only standard rationality can be compared to. We can spot the incoherence of bad rationality by theoretical investigation.
And yet a paperclipper has perfectly coherent preferences. Without direct access to some source-of-morality that somehow supersedes mere human ethics, how can we judge our morality except by it's own standards? If you have such a source, it would make an excellent top-level post, of perhaps even a sequence.
But not coherent moral preferences. It doesn't care if its paperclipping infinges on other's preferences.
By coherence, and by its ability to actually be morality, which paperclipping isn't.
Could you taboo "morality" for me, please? I suspect we are talking at cross-purposes.
You think paperclipping is morality?
As I said, I suspect we are using different definitions of "morality"; could we proceed without using the term?
Why not?
So 'morality'='caring about other people's preferences'?
He has attempted to address this issue in the Meta-Ethics sequence, although I find his points on this specific matter very confusing and I was very disappointing with it compared to the other sequences.
This is a very good point. If we agree cognitive biases make our understanding of the world flawed, why should we assume that our moral intuitions aren't equally flawed? That assumption makes sense only if you actually equate morality with our moral intuitions. This isn't what I mean by the word "moral" at all—and as a matter of historical fact many behaviors I consider completely reprehensible were at one time or another widely considered to be perfectly acceptable.