= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
dxu comments on Discussion of Slate Star Codex: "Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice" - 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)
The problem with Robertson's thought experiment, I feel, isn't that it's extreme or visceral, but rather that it is strawmanning an overwhelming majority of atheists. (Scott actually coined a term for this sort of thing: weak man.)
Most atheists I know don't in fact believe that God is the only possible source of morality; in fact, many of them hold that even if God existed, they would still evaluate each of His commandments on their own merits before deciding to obey. The mere fact that you don't believe in God doesn't make you a moral nihilist all of a sudden. Robertson's thought experiment relies upon the implicit assumption that atheism implies moral nihilism, making it okay to rape and murder, which is frankly a very old argument that has been refuted a great many times, both on and off the Internet.
Can we differentiate between "Atheists ought logically to be moral nihilists" and "If you are an atheist, you are necessarily a moral nihilist" ? I take you to mean the second of these, which is indeed plainly false.
The first of these statements is not obviously false. It is (epistemically) possible that there are no good non-religious grounds for moral realism (which is not to say that there are good religious grounds for it either). That said, I do wonder if Robertson actually believes it. If he ceased to believe in God, would he really start behaving "immorally" whenever it turned out to be in his self-interest?
I agree, but so far as I can see the strongest arguments against moral realism actually work just as well if there is a god as if there isn't -- unless you cheat by defining your god in a way that presupposes moral realism. That's a common move, of course, and I'm sure it's not generally intended as any kind of cheating, but none of that makes the argument "I have defined 'God' in a way that presupposes moral realism. It turns out that there aren't good non-theistic arguments for moral realism, but if you define 'God' my way then it's easy to deduce moral realism from his existence. Since we all know that moral realism is correct, this is evidence for God." a good argument.
Nitpick: Scott didn't coin "weak man", he mentioned it because the term appeared in the fallacy/bias literature. Previous to that on Scott's blog, I coined the term "flesh man"; later someone proposed "tin man". I don't know why Scott didn't use my term :( , or "tin man", either of which is much better.
A flesh/tin man is an argument/position that a real person actually holds, but where this real person has been selected to represent the worst of whatever side/camp you want to tar with the brush of foolishness or nastiness.