army1987 comments on By Which It May Be Judged - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2012 04:26AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 12 December 2012 01:27:41PM *  1 point [-]

'Fairness' does not grammatically need an 'according to whom?' argument place

Grammatically, neither does “beautiful”. “Alice is beautiful” is a perfectly grammatical English sentence.

Comment author: RobbBB 12 December 2012 07:25:28PM 0 points [-]

Yes. Clearly I was being unclear. Just as saying "Eating broccoli is good" I think assumes a tacit answer to "Good for whom?" and/or "Good for what?", saying "Hamburgers are delicious" assumes a tacit "Delicious to whom?", even if the answer is "To everyone!". I have a hard time understanding what it means to visualize a possible world where everything is delicious and there are no organisms or sentients. I think of 'beauty' the same way, but perhaps not everyone does; and if some people think of 'fairness' as intrinsically -- because of the concept itself, and not just because of our metaphysical commitments or dialectical goals -- demanding an implicit argument place for a 'judge of fairness,' I'd like to hear more about why. Or is this just a metaphysical argument, not a conceptual one?