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Lumifer comments on Superintelligence 24: Morality models and "do what I mean" - Less Wrong
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"There is objective morality" basically means that morality is part of physics and just like there are natural laws of, say, gravity or electromagnetism, there are natural laws of morals because the world just works that way. Consult e.g. Christian theology for details.
Think of a system where, for example, a yogin can learn to levitate (which is a physical phenomenon) given that he diligently practices and leads a moral life. If he diligently practices but does not lead a moral life, he doesn't get to levitate. In such a system morality would be objective.
Note that this comment is not saying that objective morality exists, it just attempts to explain what the concept means.
Ok, I understand it in that context, as there are actual consequences. Of course, this also makes the answer trivial: Of course it's relevant, it gives you advantages you wouldn't otherwise have. Though even in the sense you've described, I'm not sure whether the word 'morality' really seems applicable. If torturing people let us levitate, would we call that 'objective morality'?
EDIT: To be clear, my intent isn't to nitpick. I'm simply saying that patterns of behavior being encoded, detected and rewarded by the laws of physics doesn't obviously seem to equate those patterns with 'morality' in any sense of the word that I'm familiar with.
Sure, see e.g. good Christians burning witches.
Hm. I'll acknowledge that's consistent (though I maintain that calling that 'morality' is fairly arbitrary), but I have to question whether that's a charitable interpretation of what modern believers in objective morality actually believe.
If you actually believe that burning a witch has some chance of saving her soul from eternal burning in hell (or even only provide a sufficient incentive for others to not agree to pacts with Satan and so surrender their soul to eternal punishment), wouldn't you be morally obligated to do it?
I mean the sufficiency of the definition given. Consider a universe which absolutely, positively, was not created by any sort of 'god', the laws of physics of which happen to be wired such that torturing people lets you levitate, regardless of whether the practitioner believes he has any sort of moral justification for the act. This universe's physics are wired this way not because of some designer deity's idea of morality, but simply by chance. I do not believe that most believers in objective morality would consider torturing people to be objectively good in this universe.
I don't think it needs to be in physics. It could be independent of and more general than physics, like math.
Yes, "physics" was probably unnecessarily too specific here. It's more "this is how the world actually works".
No. "There is an objective morality" means that moral claims have truth values that don't depend on the mental content of the person making them, That is epistemic, and has nothing to .do with what, if anything, grounds them ontological. (I haven't answered the question empirically, because I don't think that's useful)
Ethical objectivism can be grounded out in realism, either physical or metaphysical, but doesn't have to be. Examples of objectivism without realism include utilitarianism, which only requires existing preferences, not some additional laws or properties. Other examples include ethics based on contracts, game theory, etc. These are somewhat analogous to things like economics, in that there are better and worse answers to problems, but they don't get their truth values from straightforward correspondence to some territory,