Requesting clarification- On the Metaethics

Carinthium

Requesting clarification- On the Metaethics — LessWrong

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Possible consequentialist response: our instincts are inconsistent: i.e., our instinctive preferences are intransitive, not subject to independence of irrelevant alternatives, and pretty much don't obey any "nice" property you might ask for. So trying to ground one's ethics entirely in moral instinct is doomed to failure.

There's a good analogy here to behavioral economics vs. utility maximization theory. For much the same reason that people who accept gambles based on their intuitions become money pumps (see: the entire field of behavioral economics), people who do ethics entirely based on moral intuitions become "morality pumps". If you want to not be a morality pump, you essentially have to choose some situations in which you go against your moral instincts. Just as behavioral economics is a good descriptive theory but a poor normative theory of choice under uncertainty, deontology is a good descriptive theory of human moral instincts, but a poor normative theory.

Cf. Joshua Greene's research in moral psychology and the cognitive differences between "characteristically deontologist" and "characteristically consequentialist" judgments. Previously discussed on Less Wrong here.

lmm13y00

For much the same reason that people who accept gambles based on their intuitions become money pumps (see: the entire field of behavioral economics), people who do ethics entirely based on moral intuitions become "morality pumps".

I think this thought is worth pursuing in more concrete detail. If I prefer certainly saving 400 people to .8 chance of saving 500 people, and prefer .2 chance of killing 500 people to certainly killing 100 people, what crazy things can a competing agent get me to endorse? Can you get me to something that would be obviously wrong even deontologically, in the same way that losing all my money is obviously bad even behavioral-economically?

0Carinthium13y

Consequentialist judgements are based on emotion in a certain sense just as much as deontological judgements- both come from an emotive desire to do what is "right" (for a broad definition of "right") which cannot be objectively justified using a universially compelling argument. It is true that they come from different areas of the brain, but to call consequentialist judgements "inherently rational" or similiar is a misnomer- from a philosophical perspective both are in the same metaphorical boat as both are based on ultimately unjustifiable premises objectively (see Hume Is/Ought). Assuming a deontological system is based on the premise "These are human instincts, so we create a series of rules to reflect them", then there is no delusion and hence no rationalisation. It is instead a logical extension, they would argue, of rules similiar to those Elizier made for being moral in the first place. Elizier's metaethics, as I think best summed up in "The Moral Void" is that people have a desire to do what is Right, which is reason enough for moraltiy. This argument cannot be used as an argument for violating moral instincts without creating a contradiction.

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