Caledonian2 comments on No License To Be Human - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2008 11:18PM

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

Comments (45)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Caledonian2 22 August 2008 06:17:54PM 0 points [-]

Well, you might choose to care about a moral code you have arbitrarily chosen.

1) I don't think it's possible to choose in such a way - what I care about is not directly controllable by my conscious awareness. It is sometimes possible for me to set up circumstances so that my emotional responses are slowly directed in one way instead of another, but it's slow and chancey.

2) I assert that caring about arbitrarily-chosen stances is wrong.

I wouldn't describe my position as 'Platonic', but there is a limited degree of similarity. If there are no objective moral realities which we can attempt, however crudely and imperfectly, to model in our understanding, I assert that caring about moral stances is incorrect. That isn't what caring is for - self-referntially being concerned about our positions and inclinations is pointless if it makes no difference what position we choose.