= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_Nesov comments on Bioconservative and biomoderate singularitarian positions - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (36)
That's preference, what you can mention, or at least use. The morality of which one can be mistaken runs deeper, and at least partially can be revealed by the right moral arguments: after hearing such arguments, you change your preference, either establishing it where there was none or reversing it. After the change, you see your previous position as having been mistaken, and it's much less plausible to encounter another argument that would move your conclusion back. If I have the right model of a person, I can assert that he is morally mistaken in this sense.
Note that this notion of moral mistake doesn't require there to be an argument that would actually convince that person in a reasonable time, or for there to be no argument that would launch the person down a moral death spiral that would obliterate one's humane morality. Updating preferences on considering new arguments, or on new experience, are tools intended to show the shape of the concept that I'm trying to communicate.
I'm not talking about breaking one's head with a hammer, there are many subtle arguments that you'd recognize as enlightening, propagating preference from where it's obvious to situations that you never connected to that preference, or evoking emotional response where you didn't expect one. As I said, there obviously are changes that can't be considered positive, or that are just arbitrary reversals, but there are also changes that you can intellectually recognize as improvements.
For some examples of judgments about changes being positive or negative, take a look at Which Parts Are "Me"?. You can look forward to changes in yourself, including the changes in your emotional reactions in response to specific situations, that figure into your preference. When you are aware of such preferred changes, but they are still not implemented, that's akrasia.
Now there are changes that only become apparent when you consider an external argument. Of course, it is you who considers the argument and decides what conclusion to draw from it, but the argument can come from elsewhere. For analogy, you may be easily able to check a solution to an equation, while unable to find it yourself.
The necessity for external moral arguments comes from you not being logically omniscient, their purpose is not in changing your preference directly.