Lakshmi comments on The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 August 2008 10:00PM

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Comment author: Lakshmi 15 August 2008 11:52:56AM 1 point [-]

To be fair (cough), your argument that '5 people means the pie should be divided into 5 equal parts' *assumes* several things...

1) Each person, by virtue of merely being there, is entitled to pie.

2) Each person, by virtue of merely being there, is entitled to *the same amount* of pie as every other person.

While this division of the pie may be preferable for the health of the collective psyche, it is still a completely arbitrary (cough) way to divide the pie. There are several other meaningful, rational, logical ways to divide the pie. (I believe I suggested one in a previous post.) Choosing to divide the pie into 5 equal parts simply asserts the premise 'existence = equal right' as the dominate principle by which to guide the division of the pie.

You have to remove all other considerations (including hunger, health, and any existing social relationships such as parent-child) in order to allow the 'existence = equal right' principle to be an acceptable way to divide the pie. This doesn't make that principle the 'bedrock' of morality. Quite the contrary. It says that this principle only dominates when all other factors are ignored.