torekp 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: torekp 16 December 2012 12:15:29AM *  6 points [-]

Mainstream status:

EY's position seems to be highly similar to Frank Jackson's analytic descriptivism, which holds that

Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit (1995). According to their view of “analytic moral functionalism,” moral properties are reducible to “whatever plays their role in mature folk morality.” Jackson’s (1998) refinement of this position—which he calls “analytic descriptivism”—elaborates that the “mature folk” properties to which moral properties are reducible will be “descriptive predicates”

Which is a position neither popular nor particularly unpopular, but simply one of many contenders, as the mainstream goes.

Comment author: BerryPick6 16 December 2012 12:29:36AM *  2 points [-]

This similarity has been noted and discussed before. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/fgz/empirical_claims_preference_claims_and_attitude/7u3s

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 December 2012 09:05:49PM 2 points [-]

I confirm (as I have previously) that Frank Jackson's work seems to me like the nearest known point in academic philosophy.