ArisKatsaris comments on Bad Concepts Repository - Less Wrong

20 Post author: moridinamael 27 June 2013 03:16AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (204)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 27 June 2013 02:43:42PM *  1 point [-]

Saying "you should x" (in the moral sense of the word) is just equivalent to saying "I would prefer you to x", but with bonus social pressure.

I really think this is a bad summarization of how moral injuctions act. People often feel a conflict for example between "I should X" and "I would prefer to not-X". If a parent has to choose between saving their own child, and a thousand other children, they may very well prefer to save their own child, but recognize that morality dictated they should have saved the thousand other children.

My own guess about the connection between morality and preferences is that morality is an unconscious estimation of our preferences about a situation, while trying to remove the bias of our personal stakes in it. (E.g. the parent recognizes that if their own child wasn't involved, if they were just hearing about the situation without personal stakes in it, they would prefer that a thousand children be saved rather that only one.)

If my guess is correct it would also explain why there's disagreement about whether morality is objective or subjective (morality is a personal preference, but it's also an attempt to remove personal biases - it's by itself an attempt to move from subjective preferences to objective preferences).

Comment author: [deleted] 28 June 2013 02:48:50AM -1 points [-]

That's a good theory.