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Eugine_Nier comments on No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science - Less Wrong
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Congratulations, we've run into the fact that repeatedly asking to define terms results in an infinite regress.
When you said that "moral" is "that which one should do" you simply failed to delve into a more fundamental level that would describe what the terms 'moral' and 'should' both refer to.
My own view, for example, is that our moral sense and our perception of what one 'should' do are an attempted calculation of what our preferences would be about people's behaviour if we had no personal stakes on the matter -- imagining ourselves unbiased and uninvolved.
Assuming the above definition is true (in the sense that it accurately describes what's going on in our brains when we feel things like moral approval or moral disapproval about a behaviour), it's not circular at all.
One can only fail to do what one is trying to do. If what one is trying to do is refute a putative definition of "morality" one doesn't need a full reduction. AFIACT, that was in fact the context -- someone was saying that Clippy could validly define "morality" as making paperpclips.
I like that idea too -- although It isn't new. Also, it is a theory, not a definition.
Does physics shave to describe what we think the behaviour of objects is, or can we improve on that?
That is not a definition of morality, that is a theory of morality. (It's one of the better theories of morality I've seen, but not a definition). To see that that is not a definition consider that it appears to be a non-trivial statement in the way that a simple statement of definition shouldn't be.
I'm not quite sure what is the distinction you're making. I'm a programmer -- if I define a function public int calculateMoralityOf(Behaviour b), what exactly is the definition of that function if not its contents?
Would a definition of "morality" be something like "An attribute assigned to behaviors depending on how much they trigger a person's sense of moral approval/support or disapproval/outrage", much like I could define beauty to mean "An attribute assigned to things that trigger a person's sense of aesthetics"?
There are perhaps a lot of programmers on this site, which might explain why the habit of associating definitions with exhaustive specifications (which seems odd to those of us who (also) have a philosophy background) is so prevalent.
But it is not uniformly valid even in computing: Consider the difference between the definition of a "sort function" and the many ways of implementing sorting.
That's a good example you bring -- the same function F:X->Y can be specified in different ways, but it's still the same function if the same X leads to the same Y.
But even so, didn't what I offer in regards morality come closer to a "definition", than an "implementation"? I didn't talk about how the different parts of the brain interact to produce the result (I wouldn't know): I didn't talk about the implementation of the function; only about what it is that our moral sense attempts to calculate.
The original point was:
People offer differing theories of the same X, that is X defined in the same way. That is the essence of a disagreement. If they are not talking about the same X, they are not disagreeing, they are talking past each other.
There might be reasons to think that, in individual cases, people who appear to be disagreeiing are in fact talking past each other, But that is a point that needs to be argued for specific cases.
To claim that anything someone says about X is part of a definition of X , has the implication that in all cases, automatically, without regard to the individual details, there are no real diagreementss about any X but only different definitions. That is surely wrong, for all that it is popular with some on LW
That would be a theory. If falls heavily on the side of subjetivism/non-cognitivism, which many disagree with.
People aren't perfectly self-aware. They don't often know how to define precisely what it is that they mean. They "know it when they see it" instead.
Accepting the split between "definition" and "theory" I suppose the definition of "sound" would be something like "that which triggers our sense of hearing", and a theory of sound would be "sound is the perception of air vibrations"?
In which case I don't know how it could be that a definition of morality could be different than "that which triggers our moral sense" -- in analogy to the definition of sound. In which case I accept that my described opinion (that what triggers our moral sense is a calculation of "what our preferences would be about people's behaviour if we had no personal stakes on the matter") is merely a theory of morality.
I don't see how that relates to my point.
You can easily look up definitions that don't work that way, eg: "Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong)."
You said that "people offer differing theories of the same X, that is X defined in the same way". I'm saying that people disagree on how to define concepts they instinctively feel -- such as the concept of morality. So the X isn't "defined in the same way".
Yeah well, when I'm talking about definition I mean something that helps us logically pinpoint or atleast circumscribe a thing. Circular definitions like jumping from "morality" to "good" or to "what one should do" don't really work for me, since they can quite easily be defined the opposite way.
To properly define something one ought use terms more fundamental than the thing defined.
Unless you eventually switch to an extensional definition.