LESSWRONG
LW

All of BrianPansky's Comments + Replies

Magical Categories
BrianPansky00

I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires.

Re-read what I said. That's not what I said.

First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable. You can't avoid that. Your question about conflict can't change that (thus it's a red herring).

As for your question: I already generally answered it in my previous post. Use Game theory. Find the actions that will actually be best for each agent. The best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desi... (read more)

Reply
0TheAncientGeek
It's not at all clear that morally good means desirable. The idea that the good is the desirable gets what force it has from the fact that "good" has a lot of nonmoral meanings. Good ice cream is desirable ice cream, but what's that got to do with ethics?
0g_pepper
Right. You said: Do you have an objective set of criteria for differentiating between true foundational desires and other types of desires? If not, I wonder if it is really useful to respond to an objection arising from the rather obvious fact that people often have conflicting desires by stating that you doubt that true foundational desires are ever in precise conflict. As CCC has already pointed out, no, it is not apparent that (morally) good and desirable are the same thing. I won’t spend more time on this point since CCC addressed it well. The issue that we are discussing is objective morals. Your equating goodness and desirability leads (in my example of the sadist) A to believe that hurting B is good, and B to believe that hurting B is not good. But moral realism holds that moral valuations are statements that are objectively true or false. So, conflicting desires is not a red herring, since conflicting desires leads (using your criterion) to subjective moral evaluations regarding the goodness of hurting B. Game theory on the other hand does appear to be a red herring – no application of game theory can change the fact that A and B differ regarding the desirability of hurting B. One additional problem with equating moral goodness with desirability is that it leads to moral outcomes that are in conflict with most people’s moral intuitions. For example, in my example of the sadist A desires to hurt B, but most people’s moral intuition would say that A hurting B just because A wants to hurt B would be immoral. Similarly, rape, murder, theft, etc., could be considered morally good by your criterion if any of those things satisfied a desire. While conflicting with moral intuition does not prove that your definition is wrong, it seems to me that it should at a minimum raise a red flag. And, I think that the burden is on you to explain why anyone should reject his/her moral intuition in favor of a moral criterion that would adjudge theft, rape and murder to be mo
1CCC
It does not. Wiktionary states that it means "Acting in the interest of good; ethical." (There are a few other definitions, but I'm pretty sure this is the right one here). Looking through the definitions of 'ethical', I find "Morally approvable, when referring to an action that affects others; good. " 'Morally' is defined as "In keeping of requirements of morality.", and 'morality' is "Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results. " Nowhere in there do I see anything about "desirable" - it seems to simplify down to "following a moral code". I therefore suspect that you're implicitly assuming a moral code which equates "desirable" with "good" - I don't think that this is the best choice of a moral code, but it is a moral code that I've seen arguments in favour of before. But, importantly, it's not the only moral code. Someone who follows a different moral code can easily find something that is good but not desirable; or desirable but not good.
Magical Categories
BrianPansky00

The murderer wants to murder the victim, the victim doesn't want to be murdered.

Murder isn't a foundational desire. It's only a means to some other end. And usually isn't even a good way to accomplish its ultimate end! It's risky, for one thing. So usually it's a false desire: if they knew the consequences of this murder compared to all other choices available, and they were correctly thinking about how to most certainly get what they really ultimately want, they'd almost always see a better choice.

(But even if it were foundational, not a means to ... (read more)

Reply
1TheAncientGeek
It can be instrumental or terminal, as can most other criminal impulses. You can't solve all ethical problems by keeping everyone in permanent simulation. That's no good. You can't arrive at workable ethics by putting different weightings on the same actions from different perspectives. X stealing money form Y is good for X and bad for Y, so why disregard Y's view? An act is either permitted or forbidden, punished or praised. You can't say it is permissible-for-X but forbidden-for-Y if it involves both of them. No, there's no uniform treatment of all predicates. Some are one-place, some are two-place. For instance, aesthetic choices can usually be fulfilled on a person-by-person basis. To be precise, you sometimes find solutions that leave everyone better off, and more often find solutions that leave the average person better off. Too vague. For someone who likes killing ot kill a lot of people is the best choice for them, but not the best ethical choice.
Magical Categories
BrianPansky00

But, what if two different people have two conflicting desires? How do we objectively find the ethical resolution to the conflict?

Basically: game theory.

In reality, I'm not sure there ever are precise conflicts of true foundational desires. Maybe it would help if you had some real example or something. But the best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desire.

Reply
0g_pepper
I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires. But, since you asked, here is an example: A is a sadist. A enjoys inflicting pain in others. A really wants to hurt B. B wishes not to be hurt by A. (For the sake of argument, lets suppose that no simulation technology is available that would allow A to hurt a virtual B, and that A can be reasonably confident that A will not be arrested and brought to trial for hurting B.) In this scenario, since A and B have conflicting desires, how does a system that defines objective goodness as that which will satisfy desires resolve the conflict?
Magical Categories
BrianPansky00

Missing the point. Ethics needs to sort good actors from bad--decisions about punishments and rewards depend on it.

(I'd say need to sort good choices from bad. Which includes the choice to punish or reward.) Discovering which choices are good and which are bad is a fact finding mission. Because:

  • 1) it's a fact whether a certain choice will successfully fulfill a certain desire or not

  • And 2) that's what "good" literally means: desirable.

So that's what any question of goodness will be about: what will satisfy desires.

PS are you th

... (read more)
Reply
2TheAncientGeek
Whose desires? The murderer wants to murder the victim, the victim doesn't want to be murdered. You have realism without objectivism. There is a realistic fact about people's preferences, but since the same act can increase one person's utility and reduce anothers, there is no unambiguous way to label an arbitrry outcome.
0g_pepper
But, what if two different people have two conflicting desires? How do we objectively find the ethical resolution to the conflict?
Magical Categories
BrianPansky-10

Even if it were true that under naturalism we could determine the outcome of various arrangements of particles, wouldn't we still be left with the question of which final outcome was the most morally preferable?

Yup.

But that's sort-of contained within "the positions of particles" (so long as all their other properties are included, such as temperature and chemical connections and so on...might need to include rays of light and non-particle stuff too!). The two are just different ways of describing the same thing. Just like every object arou... (read more)

Reply
1TheAncientGeek
That's an expression of ethical naturalism not a defence of ethcial naturalism. Missing the point. Ethics needs to sort good actors from bad--decisions about punishments and rewards depend on it. PS are you the same person as rkyeun? If not, to what extent are you on the same page?