ECL
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ECL has not written any posts yet.
ECL has not written any posts yet.
Mr. Yudkowsky, Why throughout all of your posts do you continue to speak of altruistic action as good or praiseworthy? Evolutionary psychology disproves ethical cognitivism (the position that moral or value propositions such as "X is right" or "One ought to do X" admit of truth or falsehood) as much as it disproves religion. Just as there's no invisible dragon in my garage, there's also no such as thing as a value or a moral obligation. To be sure, the implausibility of ethical cognitivism doesn't give you reason to turn into a selfish, raging nihilist. At the same time, it doesn't give you any reason NOT to. So, I ask, why do you still speak of altruistic actions as somehow better than selfish actions? I submit that this is a bias affecting your own ethical thinking and that its source is either cultural habituation or an innate disposition.
Mr. Yudkowsky, It is the fact that purported moral facts add nothing to a description of a state of affairs and have no explanatory or predictive power that they are not facts at all. Statements of moral proposition such as "X-actions are wrong" or "One ought to do X-actions" are rather simply expressions of preferences or pro attitudes for X actions. If one has these preferences, then, those preference combined with a belief that a particular action A is an X-action gives you a reason to perform action A. However, if an agent does not have a pro attitude for X-actions, then the belief that A is an X-action does not give... (read more)