TGGP5
10
18
TGGP5 has not written any posts yet.
TGGP5 has not written any posts yet.
I don't know if you will respond here, joe, but it has been requested that our earlier conversation relocate.
joe, my own moral preferences are the ones I like. The ones other people hold that diverge from mine, I dislike. I recognize that there is no sense in which I can claim that mine are true and theirs are not, as they can make the same exact claim without any way to settle it. It is similar to my preferences in movies or music. As an emotivist I believe the word "good" just indicates subjective approval, "evil" or "bad" the opposite. I don't think society will adopt my views and haven't given much thought to what would happen in that hypothetical. My behavior has not really changed much, but I am also a product of my surroundings, which would not be the same in that hypothetical. Perhaps "It is best not to speak of atheism, lest the servants steal the silverware", but I don't think they will start stealing (marginally more) conditioned on my beliefs, so I have no reason not to hold them.
conchis, I am a he (although I would not mind being referred to as "it"), and I am an emotivist, which means I do not believe normative statements have any truth value (according to Nick Bostrom this makes me a psychopath, nihilist and philistine, although the last of those was true even when I was religious). Because of this I make no attempts to hold more "correct" moral beliefs, seeing as how none are in any way "correct". When I was a believer I had some fear of the afterlife, but still being a rather apathetic/lazy individual as well as prudish by nature (which might have not been the case had I been raised differently, though I can't say for sure) I am not inclined to enjoy my freedom to "sin" without consequence.
While I oppose the use of torture, I am skeptical of those who claim it is ineffective. By the accounts I've read it was very effective when used by the French in Algeria and numerous dictatorships against internal threats.
Is atheism incompatible with a belief in morality? For me it was, but I appear to be unrepresentative of atheists. I still have pretty much the same attitudes that I did when I was puritanically religious, but now I recognize there is nothing "true" or "correct" about them that others should be swayed by and that they are merely my personal preferences.
Since they aren't part of the web of cause-and-effect (so they might be epiphenomenal), are norms impossible to be irrational about?
I don't think it's inevitable that having emotion causes irrationality, but I think there is a tendency for it to cloud your mind and restraining yourself is a good idea. Maybe after calmly examining things you can say to yourself "This appears to be an optimum situation in which to freak out".
Robin writes: do you think your comments have a better than random chance of being true? That's tough to answer. It can be hard to distinguish the things I've stated with those who claim to disagree with me. Eliezer agrees that there is no "moral stuff", but states that he has a different reaction (while I also deny having the reaction he denies). So what would it mean for my ideas to be false? It would mean that normative claims have some truth values, which in my interpretation means that Universe A where normative claim X is true must be detectably different from Universe B where normative claim X is false. If someone... (read 615 more words →)
Robin, I don't think there is anything valuable to say in the fields of theology and astrology either, but if this blog were to have discussions on those topics I expect I would still enjoy reading them and making the same sorts of comments I am making here.
I would be interested to know in what ways you think the field of ethics has progressed and what things of value have been discovered.
Why do I not put much stock in theology and astrology? Because they have never produced anything useful. If astrologers were regularly winning the lottery based on the numbers they knew to be lucky, I wouldn't really care how idiotic their methods seem, because ignoring their ideas would result in worse outcomes for me. Physicists are able to make correct predictions and invent neat stuff, so even though quantum mechanics and relativity don't make complete sense to me I believe them and conclude that they do not have "fundamental methodological problems". What will happen if I ignore ethicists? I might do something "bad" (although there is no evidence people who take study... (read more)
Yes, Bob, Bayes does trump Popper. Eliezer has explained that pretty well already. However, I don't see how that saves ethics. There is no disconfirming evidence, and as a result no confirming evidence. There is no utility in knowing ethics, as far as I know, as it will not enable me to make better predictions or do neat things like sending a rocket to the moon. So I ask you, what makes ethics different from theology or astrology so that I should care what experts in it say?
joe, "utter chaos and destruction leading to the downfall of the human race" is not a contradiction. I assert that it cannot be objectively known that this outcome is "bad". Some of the more extreme environmentalists would assert it is a good thing, and some alien species might think of it in the same manner as we might think of eradicating smallpox. Furthermore, as I do not think morality is objective, I do not feel my beliefs need to be universalizable. My belief in a certain nature of morality is not going to cause the rest of humanity to share that belief, discussing what would happen if everyone shared it would be... (read more)