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ArisKatsaris comments on Could evolution have selected for moral realism? - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 27 September 2012 04:25AM

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Comment author: ArisKatsaris 28 September 2012 12:08:54AM * 2 points [-]

moral anti-realism doesn't rest on a complicated argument

I've not studied the arguments of moral anti-realism, but if I had to make a guess it would be that moral anti-realism probably rests on how you can't extract "ought" statements from "is" statements.

But since "is" statements can be considered as functions operating on "ought" values (e.g. the is-statement "burning people causes them pain", would produce from an ought-statement "you oughtn't cause pain to people" the more specific ought-statement "you oughtn't burn people alive"), the possibility remains open that there can exist universal moral attractive fixed sets, deriving entirely from such "is" transformations, regardless of the opening person-specific or species-specific moral set, much like any starting shape that follows a specific set of transformations will become the Sierpinski triangle.

A possible example for a morally "real" position might e.g. be "You oughtn't decrease everyone's utility in the universe." or "You oughtn't do something which every person equipped with moral instinct in the universe, including yourself, judges you oughtn't do."

Baby-eaters and SuperHappies and Humans may not be in agreement about what is best, but all three of them could come up with some ideas about things which would be awful for all of them... I don't think that this need change, no matter how many species with moral instict one adds to the mix. So I "leaned" towards moral realism.

Of course, if all the above has nothing to do with what moral realism and moral anti-realism mean... oops.

Comment author: mwengler 03 October 2012 04:03:27PM -2 points [-]

the possibility remains open that there can exist universal moral attractive fixed sets, deriving entirely from such "is" transformations, regardless of the opening person-specific or species-specific moral set,

So you've got these attractive sets and maybe 90% or 99% or 99.9% or 99.99% of humans or humans plus some broader category of conscious/intelligent entities agree. What to do about the exceptions? Pretend they don't exist? Kill them because they are different and then pretend they never existed or couldn't exist? In my opinion, what you have as a fact is that 99.999% of humans agree X is wrong and .001% don't. The question of moral realism is not a factual one, it is a question of choice: do you CHOOSE to declare what 99.999% have an intuition towards as binding on the .001% that don't, or do you CHOOSE to believe that the facts are that the various intuitions have prevalences, some higher than others, some very high indeed, and that's all you actually KNOW.

I effectively feel bound by a lot of my moral intuitions, that is more or less a fact. As near as I can tell, my moral intuitions evolved as part of the social development of animals, then mammals, then primates, then homo. It is rational to assume that the mix of moral intuitions is fairly fine-tuned to optimize the social contribution to our species fitness, and it is more or less a condensation of facts to say that the social contribution to our fitness is larger than the social contribution to any other species on the planet to their fitness.

So I accept that human moral intuition is an organ like the brain or the islets of langerhans. I accept that a fair amount can be said about how the islets of langerhans function, and how the brain functions, when things are going well. Also, we know a lot about how the islets of langerhans and how the brain function when things are apparently not going so well, diseases one might say. I'd even go so far as to say I would prefer to live in a society dominated by people without diabetes and who are not sociopaths (people who seem to lack many common moral intuitions). I'd go so far as to say I would support policies including killing sociopaths and their minions, and including spending only a finite amount of resources on more expensive non-killing ways of dealing with sociopaths and diabetics.

But it is hard for me to accept that it is rational to fall in to the system instead of seeing it from outside. For me to conclude that my moral intuitions are objectively real like the charge on an electron of the electronic properties of doped silicon is projection, seems to me. It is identical to my concluding that one mammal is beautiful and sexy and another is dull, when it is really the triggering of an evolved sexual mechanism in me that paints the one mammal one way and the other the more boring way. If it is more accurate to understand that the fact that I am attracted to one mammal is not because she is objectively more beautiful than another, then it is more accurate to say that the fact that I have a moral intuition is not because I am plugged in to some moral fact of the universe, and not because of an evolved reaction I have. The fact that most men or many men find woman A beautiful and woman B to be blah doesn't mean that all men ought to find A beautiful and B blah, any more than the fact that many (modern) men feel slavery is wrong means they are not projecting their social construct into a realm of fact which could fruitfully be held to a higher standard.

Indeed, the fact that believing that our social constructs, our political truths, are REAL truths is clearly adaptive in the social species. Societies that encourage strong identifications with the values of the society are robust. Societies in which it is right to kill the apostates because they are wrong, evil, have a staying power. But my life as a scientist has consisted of my understanding that my wanting something to be true is not ANY evidence for its truth. I bring that to my American humanity. So even though I will support the killing of our enemies, I don't think that it is a FACT that it is right to kill the enemies of America any more than it is a FACT that it is right to kill the enemies of Islam.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 03 October 2012 05:10:20PM * 1 point [-]

So you've got these attractive sets and maybe 90% or 99% or 99.9% or 99.99% of humans or humans plus some broader category of conscious/intelligent entities agree. What to do about the exceptions? Pretend they don't exist?

What does agreement have to do with anything? Anyway such moral attractive sets either include an injuction of what to do with people that disagree with them or they don't. And even if they do have such moral injuctions, it still doesn't mean that my preferences would necessarily be to follow said injuctions.

People aren't physically forced to follow their moral intuitions now, and they aren't physically forced to follow a universal moral attractive set either.

The question of moral realism is not a factual one

That's what a non moral-realist would say, definitely.

do you CHOOSE to declare what 99.999% have an intuition towards as binding on the .001% that don't

What does 'declaring' have to do with anything? For all I know this moral attractive set would contain an injuction against people declaring it true or binding. Or it might contain an injuction in favour of such declarations of course.

I don't think you understood the concepts I was trying to communicate. I suggest you tone down on the outrage.

Comment author: mwengler 04 October 2012 06:33:49PM -1 points [-]

Moral realism is NOT the idea that you can derive moral imperatives from a mixture of moral imperatives and other non-moral assumptions. Moral realism is NOT the idea that if you study humans you can describe "conventional morality," make extensive lists of things that humans tend, sometimes overwhelmingly, to consider wrong.

Moral realism IS the idea that there are things that are actually wrong.

If you are a moral realist, and you provide a mechanism for listing some moral truths, then you pretty much by definition are wrong, immoral, if you do not align your action with those moral truths.

An empirical determination of what are the moral rules of many societies, or most societies, or the moral rules that all societies so far have had in common is NOT an instantiation of a moral realist theory, UNLESS you assert that the rules you are learning about are real, that it is in fact immoral or evil to break them. If you meant something wildly different by "moral attractive sets" than what is incorporated by the idea of where people tend to come down on morality, then please elucidate, otherwise I think for the most part i am working pretty consistently with the attractive set idea in saying these things.

If you think you can be a "moral realist" without agreeing that it is immoral to break or not follow a moral truth, then we are just talking past each other and we might as well stop.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 04 October 2012 07:07:52PM 1 point [-]

Moral realism IS the idea that there are things that are actually wrong.

Okay, yes. I agree with that statement.

If you are a moral realist, and you provide a mechanism for listing some moral truths, then you pretty much by definition are wrong, immoral, if you do not align your action with those moral truths.

Well, I guess we can indeed define an "immoral" person as someone who does morally wrong things; though a more useful definition would probably be to define an immoral person as someone who does them more so than average. So?

If you think you can be a "moral realist" without agreeing that it is immoral to break or not follow a moral truth

It's reasonable to define an action as "immoral" if it breaks or doesn't follow a moral truth.

But how in the word are you connecting these definitions to all your earlier implications about pretending dissenters don't exist, or killing them and then pretending they never existed in the first place?

Fine, lots of people do immoral things. Lots of people are immoral. How does this "is" statement by itself, indicate anything about whether we ought ignore said people, execute them, or hug and kiss them? It doesn't say anything about how we should treat immoral people, or how we should respond to the immoral actions of others.

I'm the moral realist here, but it's you who seem to be deriving specific "ought" statements from my "is" statements.

Comment author: mwengler comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 05 October 2012 11:08:22AM * 1 point [-]

I think the only meaning of moral realism can be that those things which I conclude are morally real can be enforced on others,

A moral statement M might perhaps say: "I ought do X." Agreeing perfectly in the moral universal validity and reality and absolute truth of M still doesn't take you one step closer to "I ought force others to do X.", nor even to "I am allowed to force others to do X.".

Real-life examples might be better:
Surely you can understand that a person might both believe "I oughtn't do drugs" and also "The government oughtn't force me not to do drugs."?
And likewise "I ought give money to charity" is a different proposition than "I ought force others to give money to charity"?

That's just from the libertarian perspective, but even the christian perspective says things like "Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you." it doesn't say "Force others not to curse you, force others not to hurt you". (Christendom largely abandoned that of course once it achieved political power, but that's a different issue...) The pure-pacifist response to violence is likewise pacifism. It isn't "Force pacifism on others".

There's a long history of moral realism that knows how to distinguish between "I ought X" and "I ought force X on others"

"Because the essence of something being immoral is you ARE supposed to do something about it, I would maintain"

The essense of something being immoral is that one oughtn't do it. Just that.

EDIT TO ADD: Heh, just thinking a bit further about it. Let me mathematize what you said a bit. You're effectively thinking of an inference rule which is as follows.

R1: For any statement M(n):"You ought X" present in the morally-real set, the statement M(n+1):"You ought force others to X" is also in the morally real set.

Such a inference rule (which I do not personally accept) would have horrifying repercussions, because of it's infinitely extending capacity. For example by starting with a supposed morally real statement:
M(1): You ought visit your own mother in the hospital.
it'd then go a bit like this.
M(2): You ought force others to visit their mothers in the hospital.
M(3). You ought force others to in turn force others to visit their mothers in the hospital.
...and then...
M(10). You ought establish a vast bureaurcracy of forcing others to establish other bureaucracies in charge of forcing people to visit their mothers in the hospital.
...or even
M(100). Genocide on those who don't believe in vast bureaucracy-establishing bureaucracies!

Heh, I can see why treating R1 as an axiom you find horror in the concept of morally real statements -- you resolve the problem by thinking the morally real set is empty, so that no further such statements can be added. I just don't accept R1 as an axiom at all.

Comment author: mwengler comment score below threshold [+] (7 children)

Comment author: mwengler 05 October 2012 02:33:48PM -3 points [-]

I think you put your hand solidly on the dull end of the stick here. Lets consider some other moral examples whos violation does come up in real life.

1) I ought not steal candy from Walmart, but its OK if you do.
2) I ought not steal the entire $500,000 retirement from someone by defrauding them, but its OK if you want to.
3) I ought not pick a child at random, capture them, hold them prisoner in my house, torture them for my sexual gratification, including a final burst where I dismember them thus killing them painfully and somewhat slowly much to my delight, but its your choice if you want to.
4) Out of consideration, I won't dump toxic wastes over my neighbors stream, but that's just me.

My point is, the class of "victimless crime" types of morality is a tiny subset surrounded by moral hypotheses that directly speak to harms and costs accruing to others. Even libertarians who are against police (relatively extreme) are not against private body guards. These libertarians try to claim that their bodyguards would not be ordered to do anything "wrong" because 1) morality is real and 2) libertarians can figure out what the rules are with sufficient reliabillity and accuracy to be trusted to have their might unilaterally make right.

So that's my point about the philosophical basis of moral realism. Does that mean I would NOT enforce rules against dismembering children or stealing? Absolutely not. What it means is I wouldn't kid myself that the system I supported was the truth and that people that disagreed with me were evil. I would instead examine the rules I was developing in light of what kind of society they would produce. MOST conventional morality survives that test, evolution fine tuned our morality to work pretty economically for smart talkative primates who hunted and gathered in bands of less than a few hundred each.

But the rest of my point about morality not being "real", not being objectively true independent of the state of the species, is that I wouldn't have a fetish about the rightness of some moral conclusion I had reached. I would recognize that 1) we have more resources to spend on morality now than than what with being 100s of times richer than those hunter gatherers, 2) we have a significantly different environment to optimize upon, with the landscape of pervasive and inexpensive information and material items a rather new feature that moral intuitions didn't get to evolve upon.

My point is that morality is an engineering optimization, largely carried out by evolution, but absolutely under significant control of the neocortexes of our species. The moral realists I think will not do as good a job of making up moral systems because they fundamentally miss the point that the thing is plastic and there is in most cases no one "right" answer.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 05 October 2012 02:47:01PM * 1 point [-]

This is getting a bit tiresome.

That I rejected the previously implied inference rule

R1: For any X where "I ought X" it also follows "I ought force others to X",

doesn't mean at all that I have to add a different inference rule

R2: For any X where "I ought X" it also follows "...but it's okay if you don't X."

To be perfectly clear to you: I'm rejecting both R1 and R2 as axioms. I've never stated them as axioms of moral realism, nor have I implied them to be such, nor do I believe that any theory of moral realism requires either of them.

I'm getting a bit tired of refuting implications you keep reading in my comments but which I never made. I suggest you stop reading more into my comment than what I actually write.

Comment author: mwengler comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: mwengler 05 October 2012 03:23:12PM -3 points [-]

If you're tired, you're tired.

Truth isn't about making up axioms and throwing away the ones which are inconvenient to your argument. Rather I propose a program of looking at the world and trying to model it.

How successful do you think a sentient species that has evolved rules that allow it to thrive in significant cooperation but which has not thought to enforce those rules? How common is such a hands-off approach in the successful human societies which surround us in time and space? It is not deductively true that if you believe in morality as real that you will have some truths about enforcing morality on those around you, one way or another. Just as it is not deductively true that all electrons have the same charge or that all healthy humans are conscious and sentient or that shoddily made airplanes tend to crash. But what is the point of a map of the territory that leaves out the mountains surrounding the village for the sake of argument?

It seems to me that your moral realism is trivial. You don't think of morality, it seems to me, as anything other than just another label. Like some things are french others are not,, some are pointillist others are not, and some are moral others are not. Morality like so many other things MEANS something. This meaning has implications for human behavior and human choices.

If you're tired you're tired, but if you care to, let me ask you this. What is the difference between morality being real and morality being a "real label," just a hashtag we attach to statements that use certain words? The difference to me is that if it is just a hashtag, then I don't ought to enforce on myself or others that moral truths, whereas if it is something real, then the statement "people ought not allow innocent children to be kidnapped and tortured" means exactly what it says, we are obliged to do something about it.

Whether you are done or not, thank you for this exchange. I had not been aware that my belief that morality being real meant it ought to be enforced in some way, now I am aware. In my opinion,a moral realism that does not contain some true statements along those lines is an incomplete one at best, or an insincere or vapid one at worst. But at least I leanred not to assume that others talking about morality have this same opinion until I check.

Cheers, Mike

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