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KPier comments on Value evolution - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am confused.
You seem to be simultaneously arguing that 1) there's no objective way to define "better values", so we can't assert that our present values are any better than our past values, and 2) moral advances bring us farther from "equilibrium", so equilibrium isn't the right way to define better values.
But implicit in the second statement is the assumption that there are "better values", and "moral advances"!
Is the present more morally advanced than the past, or not? Were slavery and the end of masculinity (?) and the advent of Christianity moral advances or not? If so, and equilibrium doesn't explain why they were moral advances, why were they moral advances? If not, how are they evidence against "moral advances are movements closer to equilibrium"?
Why? How does being able to be farther from, or closer to, reflective equilibrium, assert something about the existence of better values?
My argument about equilibrium is simply that moral changes over time are not biased to bring a moral system closer to equilibrium. It is a separate argument from whether or not those changes are moral improvements. Those two arguments are separate.
(This is trivially true if you consider the starting point to be the null moral system with no morals. Organisms grow more complicated, and their morals grow more complicated with them. Extrapolating forward in time to superhumans is best imaginged by looking backwards in time to simpler organisms.)
That's not my assertion; it's yours. "Consider an even more significant moral advance", you wrote in your section about masculinity. Are you being facetious, or do you believe that was a moral advance? If it was, how do we know?
Could you explain what you mean by "reflective equilibrium", if it's not the standard definition?
It seems to me that these two arguments are also different:
Moral changes over time do not tend to bring a moral system closer to equilibrium.
and Moral changes over time ought not bring a moral system closer to equilibrium.
It seems to me that you are making a case for 1, but using it as an argument for 2. Am I still missing something?
I was confused about this, too. I would have understood better if there were either an explanation or a link to an explanation of "reflective equilibrium."
It's a philosophical term, not a LessWrong one, and I've usually seen it defined as something like "examining moral judgments about a particular issue by looking for their coherence with our beliefs about similar cases and our beliefs about a broader range of moral and factual issues.".
I'm not sure PhilGoetz is using it that way.
seems hopelessly far from the standard understanding of reflective equilibrium, which requires "subjecting the views we encounter to extensive criticism from alternative moral perspectives". No one does that in the Iliad. But I am still confused about PhilGoetz's point, so I may be missing something.