Caledonian2 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: Caledonian2 07 July 2008 12:07:00PM 0 points [-]

FYI, it's physics that is fundamental. Math is deeper than our theories of physics - it's deeper than all our theories, because it makes up the languages we use to create and express them - but physics itself is deeper than everything.

Similarly, if there are any moral givens, I would agree that they have to result in real empirical differences.

Correct.

Again, we could never *percieve* moral givens directly (since they are abstract)

Not correct - everything we perceive is equally abstract. There are different kinds of abstractions defined by their interrelationships in a hierarchy. A 'virtual' computer is just as abstract as the hardware it's running on, but the hardware is on a deeper level of the hierarchy. But that's moving towards another topic.

What properties make a claim about morality, as opposed to something else? What is the basic definition of 'morality'? Answering that question is the necessary first step to resolving the issue. It is remarkable how little anyone here cares about doing that.