Lumifer comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (558)
Tags: survey meta

Comments (558)

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

Comment author: Lumifer 27 January 2014 08:40:10PM *  2 points [-]

Roughly, when someone says X is good they mean that X is part of of a loosely defined set of things that make humans flourish, and by virtue of the psychological unity of mankind we can be reasonably confident that this is a more-or-less well-defined set and that if humans were perfectly informed and rational they would end up agreeing about which things are in it

Well, I can't speak for other people but when I say "X is good" I mean nothing of that sort. I am pretty sure the majority of people on this planet don't think of "good" this way either.

Then we can confidently say

Nope, you can say. If your "we" includes me then no, "we" can't say that.

Comment author: Alejandro1 27 January 2014 09:37:19PM 4 points [-]

By "Then we can confidently say" I just meant "Assuming we accept the above analysis of morality, then we can confidently say…". I am not sure I accept it myself; I proposed it as a way one could believe that normative questions have objective answers without straying as far form the general LW worldview as being a Roman Catholic.

By the way, the metaethical analysis I outlined does not require that people think consciously of something like CEV whenever they use the word "good". It is a proposed explication in the Carnapian sense of the folk concept of "good" in the same way that, say, VNM utility theory is an explication of "rational".

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit