So moral realism proposes that there are sorts of moral formalisms whose truth values are observer independent, because their logic is consistent, but not agent-independent because moral formalisms are weighted subjectively based on the preferences of agents. Therefore we have a set of moral formalisms that are true facts about the world as they are endorsed by some agents but weighted differently by different agents.
If you could account for all moral formalisms and how they are weighted by how many agents, would this constitute some sort of universal utility function and its equilibrium equal a world-state that could be called right?
I'm afraid that I am still not being understood. Firstly, the concepts of universalism and moral realism still make sense even if agent preferences have absolutely no impact on morality. Secondly, the notion that 'moral formalisms' can be true or false makes me squirm with incomprehension. Third, the notion that true formalisms get weighted in some way by agents leads me to think that you fail to understand the terms "true" and "false".
Let me try a different example. Someone who claims that correct moral precepts derive their justif...
In You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, Eliezer tried to figured out why his audience didn't understand his meta-ethics sequence even after they had followed him through philosophy of language and quantum physics. Meta-ethics is my specialty, and I can't figure out what Eliezer's meta-ethical position is. And at least at this point, professionals like Robin Hanson and Toby Ord couldn't figure it out, either.
Part of the problem is that because Eliezer has gotten little value from professional philosophy, he writes about morality in a highly idiosyncratic way, using terms that would require reading hundreds of posts to understand. I might understand Eliezer's meta-ethics better if he would just cough up his positions on standard meta-ethical debates like cognitivism, motivation, the sources of normativity, moral epistemology, and so on. Nick Beckstead recently told me he thinks Eliezer's meta-ethical views are similar to those of Michael Smith, but I'm not seeing it.
If you think you can help me (and others) understand Eliezer's meta-ethical theory, please leave a comment!
Update: This comment by Richard Chappell made sense of Eliezer's meta-ethics for me.