Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Six Plausible Meta-Ethical Alternatives - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Wei_Dai 06 August 2014 12:04AM

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

Comments (36)

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

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 August 2014 05:40:11PM *  2 points [-]

Just to check, you mean

(A) For all I, there exists some M such that I should observe M

and not

(B) There exists some set of moral facts M, such that for each intelligence I, I should observe M

right?

Eliezer uses "should" in an idiosyncratic way, which he thought (and maybe still thinks) would prevent a particular kind of confusion.

On this usage of "should", Eliezer would probably* endorse something very close to (B). However, the "should" is with respect to the moral values towards which human CEV points (in the actual world, not in some counterfactual or future world in which the human CEV is different). These values make up the M that is asserted to exist in (B). And, as far as M is concerned, it would probably be best if all intelligent agents observed M.


* I'm hedging a little bit because maybe, under some perverse circumstances, it would be moral for an agent to be unmoved by moral facts. To give a fictional example, apparently God was in such a circumstance when he hardened the heart of Pharaoh.