Gavin comments on Three kinds of moral uncertainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 30 December 2012 10:43AM

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Comment author: Gavin 30 December 2012 06:51:26PM *  2 points [-]

Is your purpose to describe the underlying moral issue or what different issues feel like?

For instance:

  • I feel morally certain but in reality would change my view if strong evidence were presented.
  • I feel morally certain and won't change my mind.
  • I feel descriptive uncertainty, and if I just read the right moral formulation I would agree that it described me perfectly
  • I feel descriptive uncertainty, but actually have a deep internal conflict
  • I feel deep internal conflict, and am right about it
  • I feel deep internal conflict, but more epistemic information would resolve the issue

I think the issue may be that you're trying to categorize "how it feels now" with "my underlying morality, to which I have limited access" in the same system. Maybe two sets of categories are needed? For instance, the top level system can experience descriptive uncertainty, but the underlying reality cannot.

ETA: Here's my attempt at extending the categories to cover both conscious feelings and the underlying reality.

Conscious moral states:

  • Moral certainty -- I feel like I know the answer with no serious reservations
  • Basic moral uncertainty -- I feel like I don't know how to tackle the problem at all
  • Descriptive moral uncertainty -- I feel like I know this, but can't come up with a good description
  • Epistemic moral uncertainty -- I feel like I need more information to figure it out
  • Conflicted moral uncertainty -- I feel like there are two values competing

Subconscious (real? territory?) moral states:

  • Moral certainty -- I have a clear algorithm for this problem
  • Basic moral uncertainty -- I just don't have an answer at all
  • Conflicted moral uncertainty -- I have two or more systems which give different answers
  • Epistemic moral uncertainty -- I need more information to give a confident answer
Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 31 December 2012 07:46:32AM 1 point [-]

Interesting. Your extended categorization seems like it could very possibly be useful - I'll have to think about it some more.