Similarly, you can think about the normative theory stuff you encounter in philosophy departments as attempts by relatively intelligent people to theorize about their own moral intuitions-- like extremely crude attempts at coherent extrapolated volition.
That's sort of like saying the internal combustion engine is an extremely crude attempt at a perpetual motion machine. Is there anything concrete published on CEV? Is there any evidence this is a well-defined/possible problem? Is there anything except a name?
Without evidence, the default on "grand theories" should be "you are a crank and don't know what you are talking about."
My comment said absolutely zero about the extent to which I think CEV is possible.
That's sort of like saying the internal combustion engine is an extremely crude attempt at a perpetual motion machine.
I don't think this analogy get's the levels of analysis of these two things right or accurately conveys my position on them. When I said normative theory was a extremely crude attempt at coherent extrapolated volition I was definitely not saying that all moral philosophy until now was a footnote to Eliezer Yudkowsky, or anything like that. I was not compa...
Hi everyone,
If this has been covered before, I apologize for the clutter and ask to be redirected to the appropriate article or post.
I am increasingly confused about normative theories. I've read both Eliezer's and Luke's meta ethics sequences as well as some of nyan's posts, but I felt even more confused afterwards. Further, I happen to be a philosophy student right now, and I'm worried that the ideas presented in my ethics classes are misguided and "conceptually corrupt" that is, the focus seems to be on defining terms over and over again, as opposed to taking account of real effects of moral ideas in the actual world.
I am looking for two things: first, a guide as to which reductionist moral theories approximate what LW rationalists tend to think are correct. Second, how can I go about my ethics courses without going insane?
Sorry if this seems overly aggressive, I am perhaps wrongfully frustrated right now.
Jeremy