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torekp comments on Less Wrong views on morality? - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: hankx7787 05 July 2012 05:04PM

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Comment author: torekp 11 July 2012 11:24:23PM 2 points [-]

I am using 'objective' and 'subjective' in the common sense way of 'mind-independent' or 'mind-dependent' and explained in what specific way I'm doing that (that is, the proper basis of terminal values, and thus the rational basis for moral judgments, are hard-wired facts of reality that exist prior to, and independent of, the rest of our knowledge and cognition - and that the proper basis of terminal values is not something that is invented later, as a product of, and dependent on, later acquired/invented knowledge and chains of cognition).

For what it's worth, not only is your usage a common one, I think it is consistent with the way some philosophers have discussed meta-ethics. Also, I particularly like the narrow way you construct 'mind-dependent'. It seems to me that the facts that I am capable of reason, that I understand English, and that I am not blind are all "objective" in common sense speak, even though they are, in the broadest possible sense of the phrase, mind-dependent. This illustrates the need for care about what kind of mind-dependence makes for subjectivity.