= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
JonatasMueller comments on Questions for Moral Realists - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (110)
Hi Stuart,
Indeed, wanting and liking do not always correspond, also from a neurological perspective. Wanting involves planning and planning often involves error. We often want things mistakenly, be it by evolutionary selected reasons, cultural reasons, or just bad planning. Liking is what matters, because it can be immediately and directly determined to be good, with the highest certainty. This is an empirical confirmation of its value, while wanting is like an empty promise.
We have good and bad feelings associated with some evolutionarily or culturally determined things. Theoretically, the result of good and bad feelings could be associated with any inputs. The inputs don't matter, nor does wanting necessarily matter, nor innate intuitions of morality. The only thing that has direct value, which is empirically confirmed, is good and bad feelings.
Well noticed. That comment was not well elaborated and is not a complete explanation. It is also necessary for that point you mentioned to consider the philosophy of personal identities, which is a point that I examine in my more complete essay on Less Wrong, and also in my essay Universal Identity.
I have a small essay written on ethics, but it's a detailed topic, and my article may be too concise, assuming much previous reading on the subject. It is here. I propose that we instead focus on questions as they come up.
That is your opinion. Others believe wanting is fundamental and rational, that can be checked and explained and shared - while liking is a misleading emotional response (that probably shows much less consistency, too).
How would you resolve the difference? They say something is more important, you say something else is. Neither of your disagree about the facts of the world, just about what is important and what isn't. What can you point to that makes this into a logical disagreement?
One argument is that from empiricism or verification. Wanting can be and often is wrong. Simple examples can show this, but I assume that they won't be needed because you understand. Liking can be misleading in terms of motivation or in terms of the external object which is liked, but it cannot be misleading or wrong in itself, in that it is a good feeling. For instance, a person could like to use cocaine, and this might be misleading in terms of being a wrong motivation, that in the long-term would prove destructive and dislikeable. However, immediately, in terms of the sensation of liking itself, and all else being equal, then it is certainly good, and this is directly verifiable by consciousness.
Taking this into account, some would argue for wanting values X, Y, or Z, but not values A, B, or C. This is another matter. I'm arguing that good and bad feelings are the direct values that have validity and should be wanted. Other valid values are those that are instrumentally reducible to these, which are very many, and most of what we do.
"Wanting can be misleading in terms of the long term or in terms of the internal emotional state with which it is connected, but it cannot be misleading or wrong in itself, in that it is a clear preference."
Indeed, but what separates wanting and liking is that preferences can be wrong, they require no empirical basis, while liking in itself cannot be wrong, and it has an empirical basis.
When rightfully wanting something, that something gets a justification. Liking, understood as good feelings, is a justification, while another is avoiding bad feelings, and this can be causally extended to include instrumental actions that will cause this in indirect ways.
Then how can wanting be wrong? They're there, they're conscious preferences (you can introspect and get them, just as liking), and they have as much empirical basis as liking.
And wanting can be seen as more fundamental - they are your preferences, and inform your actions (along with your world model), whereas using liking to take action involve having a (potentially flawed) mental model of what will increase your good experiences and diminish bad ones.
The game can be continued endlessly - what you're saying is that your moral system revolves around liking, and that the arguments that this should be so are convincing to you. But you can't convince wanters with the same argument - their convictions are different, and neither set of arguments are "logical". It becomes a taste-based debate.
Sorry, I thought you already understood why wanting can be wrong.
Example 1: imagine a person named Eliezer walks to an ice cream stand, and picks a new flavor X. Eliezer wants to try the flavor X of ice cream. Eliezer buys it and eats it. The taste is awful and Eliezer vomits it. Eliezer concludes that wanting can be wrong and that it is different from liking in this sense.
Example 2: imagine Eliezer watched a movie in which some homophobic gangsters go about killing homosexuals. Eliezer gets inspired and wants to kill homosexuals too, so he picks a knife and finds a nice looking young man and prepares to torture and kill him. Eliezer looks at the muscular body of the young man, and starts to feel homosexual urges and desires, and instead he makes love with the homosexual young man. Eliezer concludes that he wanted something wrong and that he had been a bigot and homosexual all along, liking men, but not wanting to kill them.
I understand why those examples are wrong. Because I have certain beliefs (broadly, but not universally, shared). But I don't see how any of those beliefs can be logically deduced.
Quite a lot follows from "positive conscious experiences are intrinsically valuable", but that axiom won't be accepted unless you already partially agree with it anyway.
I don't think that someone can disagree with it (good conscious feelings are intrinsically good; bad conscious feelings are intrinsically bad), because it would be akin to disagreeing that, for instance, the color green feels greenish. Do you disagree with it?
Can you elaborate? I don't understand... Many valid wants or beliefs can be ultimately reduced as to good and bad feelings, in the present or future, for oneself or for others, as instrumental values, such as peace, learning, curiosity, love, security, longevity, health, science...
I do disagree with it! :-) Here is what I agree with:
I'll also agree that preferences often (but not always) track the positive or negative conscious experiences of that human. That human impressions of good and bad sometimes (but not always) track positive or negative conscious experiences of humans in general, at least approximately.
But I don't see any grounds for saying "positive conscious experiences are intrinsically (or logically) good". That seems to be putting in far to many extra connotations, and moving far beyond the facts we know.