DonGeddis comments on Is Morality Given? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 July 2008 08:12AM

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

Comments (96)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: DonGeddis 06 July 2008 05:23:55PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer seems to suggest that the only possible choices are morality-as-preference or morality-as-given, e.g. with reasoning like this:

[...] the morality-as-preference viewpoint is a lot easier to shoehorn into a universe of quarks. But I still think the morality-as-given viewpoint has the advantage [...]

But really, evolutionary psychology, plus some kind of social contract for group mutual gain, seems to account for the vast bulk of what people consider to be "moral" actions, as well as the conflict between private individual desires vs. actions that are "right". (People who break moral taboos are viewed not much differently from traitors in wartime, who betray their team/side/cause.)

I don't understand this series. Eliezer is writing multiple posts about the problems with the metatheories of morality as either preferences or given. Sure, both those metatheories are wrong. Is that really so interesting? Why not start to tackle what morality actually is, rather than merely what it is not?