Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Pigliucci's comment on Yudkowsky's and Dai's stance on morality and logic - Less Wrong

1 Post author: mapnoterritory 05 January 2013 08:05AM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 05 January 2013 11:41:54AM * 25 points [-]

it is not logic “all the way down,” it is anchored by certain contingent facts about humanity, bonoboness and so forth.

When we talk about morality, we are talking about those contingent facts, and once we've pinned down precisely what the consequences of those contingent facts are, we have picked out a logical object. We are not trying to explain why we picked this logical object and not some other logical object - that is anchored by contingent facts about humanity, evolutionary biology, etc. We are just trying to describe this logical object.

This point might be made more clearly by Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps. Why the pebblesorting people choose to sort pebbles one way and not another way is anchored by contingent facts about pebblesorting people, evolutionary biology, etc. But the algorithm that decides how the pebblesorting people sort pebbles is a logical object.

It doesn't matter where our morality comes from (except insofar as this helps us figure out what it is); wherever it came from, it's still the same morality.

Comment author: bryjnar 06 January 2013 02:00:24AM 8 points [-]

Mainstream philosophy translation: moral concepts rigidly designate certain natural properties. However, precisely which properties these are was originally fixed by certain contingent facts about the world we live in and human history.

Hence the whole "If the world had been different, then what is denoted by "morality" would have been different, but those actions would still be immoral (given what "morality" actually denotes)" thing.

This position is sometimes referred to as "sythetic ethical naturalism".

Comment author: Benito 05 January 2013 10:20:12PM 0 points [-]

This helped me a lot. Thanks.

Comment author: rasputin comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: Benito 05 January 2013 11:13:48PM * 0 points [-]

Your words have many connotations. 'Subjective' and 'relative' are often misunderstood at the best of times. If you could taboo these, we'd see where any real disagreement lay.

Also, I don't see any more disagreement here. 'Greatest good for the greatest number' is a calculation to be made. If that statement sums up all of ethics, then it is a logical fact, not a physical one. I can't shoot your fact to make it different. We can simply turn the criterion for 'good' into a computation, so that we input physical facts, and it comes out with advice on what to do next.

Even if this morality isn't grounded in the 'nature of the universe', if this is all that we care about, then the computation is still a logical thing(y). Even if evolution adapted us to desire this, if this statement is the summation of all ethical facts, then that wouldn't change the computation. Which computation we're interested in is a product of contingent facts, physical, evolutionary ones. This doesn't change the fact, that, when we compute the greatest 'good' for the greatest 'number', we're talking about a computation that's substrate neutral. And logical.

Comment author: rasputin 05 January 2013 11:44:38PM -2 points [-]

You're probably right about the subjective/relative thing. He admits that things like this are contextually based while being marxist enough to say that the context itself doesn't matter, only that the logic is able to work within it.

Ethics are inherently logical, not physical. Obviously you can't shoot it but you can disprove their value easily enough by attacking what they're contingent on. Not all logic is created equal, and don't bring evolution into it. You can just as easily say that this is the common belief imprinted onto us by society only because the masters society us to be more easy to rule. Considering many other things, this is probably the case.

Comment author: Benito 06 January 2013 12:31:50AM * -1 points [-]

I don't understand most of what you're saying.

You've said that according to [Qiaochu_Yuan] ethics is contextually based, although context itself doesn't matter.

In the last comment, you seemed to agree with the gist of the idea.

Ethics are inherently logical, not physical.

In your earlier comment, you said

But in this article I'm pretty sure he was addressing the commonly agreed upon 'most good for the most people' morality

The word 'but' sounded like a counter-argument. I don't see the counter argument. If you have found a problem with what Qiaochu_Yuan said, could you elucidate it please. Without referring to Marxism, or anything else political.

Comment author: rasputin 06 January 2013 07:50:13AM -1 points [-]

To clear everything up: The first in the op argues morality as logic because it isn't logic "all the way down". Yuan is saying that all the way down doesn't matter because it works within its own context and that, that is all that matters. Obviously this is wrong; creating a context just so you can work within it to prove your point is known as a strawman. The logic of the context is just as important as the logic it contains.

Comment author: Benito 06 January 2013 08:20:05AM -1 points [-]

....I don't see why. We can tell a story about how our desires came into being, through psychology and the like, but when we ask 'what do we do right now?' the calculation doesn't need to refer to those facts. It oughtn't - they aren't related to the moral calculation.

Comment author: rasputin 06 January 2013 11:31:57PM * -1 points [-]

The logic of the context is just as important as the logic it contains.

I don't see why.

The post on the importance of macro-optimization over micro basically explains it. Macro optimization creats the context for micro optimization.

Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Pigliucci's comment on Yudkowsky's and Dai's stance on morality and logic - Less Wrong

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