Less Wrong views on morality?

hankx7787

Do you believe in an objective morality capable of being scientifically investigated (a la Sam Harris *or others*), or are you a moral nihilist/relativist? There seems to be some division on this point. I would have thought Less Wrong to be well in the former camp.

Edit: There seems to be some confusion - when I say "an objective morality capable of being scientifically investigated (a la Sam Harris *or others*)" - I do NOT mean something like a "one true, universal, metaphysical morality for all mind-designs" like the Socratic/Platonic Form of Good or any such nonsense. I just mean something in reality that's mind-independent - in the sense that it is hard-wired, e.g. by evolution, and thus independent/prior to any later knowledge or cognitive content - and thus can be investigated scientifically. It is a definite "is" from which we can make true "ought" statements relative to that "is". See drethelin's comment and my analysis of Clippy.

In which case, you will be making a point - not that there are different facts, but that there are different languages. Of course, language is an invention - and there is no natural law that dictates the definition of the word "astronomy".

It is merely a convention that we have adopted a language in which the term "astronomy" does not cover chemical facts. But we could have selected a different language - and there is no law of nature dictating that we could not.

And, yet, these facts about language - these facts about the ways we define our terms - does not cause science to fall to its knees either.

So, what are you talking about? Are you talking about morality, or are you talking about "morality"?

I think the fact that astronomy means astronomy and not chemistry among rational conversationalists is as significant as the fact that the chess piece that looks sort of like a horse is the one rational chess players use as the knight.

I don't think there is anything particularly significant in almost all labels, they're positive use is that you can manipulate concepts and report on your results to others using them.

1Jack14y

I suppose that is true... but surely that doesn't render the word meaningless? In the actual world where words mean the things they mean and not other things that they could have meant in a world with different linguistic convention "astronomy" still means something like "the study of celestial bodies", right? Surely people asking for astronomical facts about airplanes, as if they were celestial bodies is a sign of confusion and ought to be gently corrected, no? [...] Where in the world did you get the notion that I wanted science on its knees or that I thought it was? I'm as kinky as the next guy but I quite like science where it is. I'm completely bamboozled by this rhetoric. Do you take me for someone who believes God is required for morality or some other such nonsense? If so let me be clear: moral judgments are neither natural nor supernatura objectivel facts. They are the projection of an individuals preferences and emotions that people mistake for externally existing things, much as people mistake cuteness as an intrinsic property of babies when in fact it is simply the projection of our affinity for babies that makes them appear cute-to-us. That does not mean that there are not facts about moral judgments or that science is not on strong and worthy grounds when gathering such facts. [...] My chief concern in my initial comment to which you replied was getting everyone straight on what the meta-ethical terminology means. People enjoy freelancing with the meanings of words like "objective", "subjective", and "relative" and it creates a terrible mess when talking about metaethics because no one know what anyone else is talking about. I didn't have any kind of straightforward factual disagreement with the original commenter, bracketing the fact that I was quite sure what their position was and if they in fact thought they had succeeded in solve a two-thousand old debate by discovering and objective foundation for morality when they had in fact just rediscove

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Less Wrong views on morality?

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Less Wrong views on morality?

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