This comment might seem somewhat tangential but my main point is that the problem you are trying to solve is unsolvable and we might be better off reframing the question/solution.
My views
(1) anti realism is true
Every train/stop is equally crazy/arbitrary.
(2) The EA community has a very nebulous relationship with meta-ethics
obligatory the community is not a monolith
I see lots of people who aren’t anti-realists, lots who are
Community has no political system, so logic/persuasion is often the only way to push many things forward (unless you control resources)
if anti-realism is true there is no logical way to pick a worldview
(if anti-realism is true) most of this discussion is just looping and/or trying to persuade other EAs. I say that as someone who likes to loop about this stuff.
most of the power is in the hands of the high status early joiners (we constantly reference Karnofsky or Macaskill as if they have some special insight on meta-ethics) and rich people who join the community (give money to whatever supports their worldview).
(3) I think the community should explicitly renounce its relationship with utilitarianism or any other ethical worldview.
Let subgroups pop up that explicitly state their worldview, and the political system they will use to try to get there. e.g. utilitarianism + democracy, welfarism + dictatorship, etc.
You can reflect upon your moral views and divy up your funds/time to the groups accordingly.
These groups will become the primary retro funders for impact markets, since their goals are clear, and they will have the institutions to decide how they measure impact.
and also just the main funders but I wanted to emphasize that this will have good synergy with higher tech philanthropy.
I feel that this is much more transparent, honest, and clear. This is personally important to me.
We can stop arguing about this sort of stuff and let the money talk.
‘if anti-realism is true there is no logical way to pick a worldview’
This seems like an obvious ‘crux’ here—I don’t think this is true? e.g., Simon Blackburn would insist that there are ‘logical’ ways to pick a worldview despite being committed to the view that value is just something we project onto the world, not something that is a property of the world in itself.
If it wasn’t clear I meant logical from first principles.
If you still disagree with the above statement I would definitely want to hear what your line of thinking is. I don’t know much about Blackburn or quasi-realism but I’ll check it out.
With the clarification that you specifically meant ‘from first principles’, I’m not sure how your point is supposed to be relevant. I agree that ‘there is no logical way to pick a worldview from first principles’, but just because you can’t rationally conclude something from first principles doesn’t mean you can’t rationally conclude it at all. There’s no way to get to science from first principles, but rational scientific argumentation still exists. Likewise, there might be no logical first-principles derivation of morality, but I can still apply logical reasoning to ethical questions to try to figure things out. So the idea that there’s no first-principles derivation of morality—which the anti-realist and the realist can both accept, by the way, there’s no connection here with anti-realism—is just irrelevant to your other points.
“but just because you can’t rationally conclude something from first principles doesn’t mean you can’t rationally conclude it at all”
The implication here is you are rationally concluding it using your own values as a starting point. I don’t think there is an easy way to adjucate disagreements when this is how we arrive at views. You are trying to talk about meta-ethics but this will turn into a political philosophy question.
“There’s no way to get to science from first principles, but rational scientific argumentation still exists.”
I have heard this argument multiple times and I still don’t get it. Science is a process that we can check the results of in real life, because it deals with real quantities. The fact that science doesn’t exist from first principles doesn’t mean we can use empirics to back up the validity of science in pushing forth our understanding of the world. We have seen time and time again that science does work for the purposes we want it to work for. Morality isn’t a physical quantity. We can’t use empiricism w/respect to morals. Hence we only have logic to lean on.
“which the anti-realist and the realist can both accept, by the way, there’s no connection here with anti-realism”
Sort of agree but not really. Here are the options as I see them.
Objective Morality doesn’t exist (anti-realism). This directly implies there is no first-principles derivation because if there was it would exist.
Objective Morality exists and we can prove it (maybe we can call this secular realism)
Objective Morality exists and we can’t prove it (potentially offensive but this basically sounds like religion or faith)
If you are saying you buy into bullet point 3 that’s fine but I would be upset if EA accepted this explicitly or implicitly.
I think you’ve run together several different positions about moral epistemology and meta-ethics. Your three bullet points definitely do not describe the whole range of positions here. For example: RM Hare was an anti-realist (the anti-realist par excellence, even) but believed in a first principles derivation of morality; you may have come across his position in the earlier works of his most famous student, Peter Singer. (Singer has since become a realist, under the influence of Derek Parfit). Likewise, you can have those who are as realist as realists can be, and who accept that we can know moral truths, but not that we can prove them. This seems to be what you’re denying in your comment—you think the only hope for moral epistemology is first-principles logic—but that’s a strong claim, and pretty much all meta-ethical naturalists have accounts of how we can know morality through some kind of natural understanding.
For myself, I’m a pretty strong anti-realist, but for reasons that have very little to do with traditional questions of moral epistemology; so I actually have a lot of sympathy with the accounts of moral epistemology given by many different metaethical naturalists, as well as by those who have straddled the realist/anti-realist line (e.g. constructivists, or Crispin Wright whatever name you want to give to his position), if their positions are suitably modified.
“For example: RM Hare was an anti-realist (the anti-realist par excellence, even) but believed in a first principles derivation of morality”
I’m confused. He thinks you can derive that morality doesn’t exist or he thinks you can derive something that doesn’t exist?
“This seems to be what you’re denying in your comment—you think the only hope for moral epistemology is first-principles logic—but that’s a strong claim, and pretty much all meta-ethical naturalists have accounts of how we can know morality through some kind of natural understanding.”
I mean it depends on what you mean by moral epistemology. If you just mean a decision tree that I might like to use for deciding my morals I think it exists. If you mean a decision tree that I Should follow then I disagree.
This comment might seem somewhat tangential but my main point is that the problem you are trying to solve is unsolvable and we might be better off reframing the question/solution.
My views
(1) anti realism is true
Every train/stop is equally crazy/arbitrary.
(2) The EA community has a very nebulous relationship with meta-ethics
obligatory the community is not a monolith
I see lots of people who aren’t anti-realists, lots who are
Community has no political system, so logic/persuasion is often the only way to push many things forward (unless you control resources)
if anti-realism is true there is no logical way to pick a worldview
(if anti-realism is true) most of this discussion is just looping and/or trying to persuade other EAs. I say that as someone who likes to loop about this stuff.
most of the power is in the hands of the high status early joiners (we constantly reference Karnofsky or Macaskill as if they have some special insight on meta-ethics) and rich people who join the community (give money to whatever supports their worldview).
(3) I think the community should explicitly renounce its relationship with utilitarianism or any other ethical worldview.
Let subgroups pop up that explicitly state their worldview, and the political system they will use to try to get there. e.g. utilitarianism + democracy, welfarism + dictatorship, etc.
You can reflect upon your moral views and divy up your funds/time to the groups accordingly.
These groups will become the primary retro funders for impact markets, since their goals are clear, and they will have the institutions to decide how they measure impact.
and also just the main funders but I wanted to emphasize that this will have good synergy with higher tech philanthropy.
I feel that this is much more transparent, honest, and clear. This is personally important to me.
We can stop arguing about this sort of stuff and let the money talk.
EA as a “public forum”, not an agent with power
‘if anti-realism is true there is no logical way to pick a worldview’
This seems like an obvious ‘crux’ here—I don’t think this is true? e.g., Simon Blackburn would insist that there are ‘logical’ ways to pick a worldview despite being committed to the view that value is just something we project onto the world, not something that is a property of the world in itself.
If it wasn’t clear I meant logical from first principles.
If you still disagree with the above statement I would definitely want to hear what your line of thinking is. I don’t know much about Blackburn or quasi-realism but I’ll check it out.
With the clarification that you specifically meant ‘from first principles’, I’m not sure how your point is supposed to be relevant. I agree that ‘there is no logical way to pick a worldview from first principles’, but just because you can’t rationally conclude something from first principles doesn’t mean you can’t rationally conclude it at all. There’s no way to get to science from first principles, but rational scientific argumentation still exists. Likewise, there might be no logical first-principles derivation of morality, but I can still apply logical reasoning to ethical questions to try to figure things out. So the idea that there’s no first-principles derivation of morality—which the anti-realist and the realist can both accept, by the way, there’s no connection here with anti-realism—is just irrelevant to your other points.
The implication here is you are rationally concluding it using your own values as a starting point. I don’t think there is an easy way to adjucate disagreements when this is how we arrive at views. You are trying to talk about meta-ethics but this will turn into a political philosophy question.
I have heard this argument multiple times and I still don’t get it. Science is a process that we can check the results of in real life, because it deals with real quantities. The fact that science doesn’t exist from first principles doesn’t mean we can use empirics to back up the validity of science in pushing forth our understanding of the world. We have seen time and time again that science does work for the purposes we want it to work for. Morality isn’t a physical quantity. We can’t use empiricism w/respect to morals. Hence we only have logic to lean on.
Sort of agree but not really. Here are the options as I see them.
Objective Morality doesn’t exist (anti-realism). This directly implies there is no first-principles derivation because if there was it would exist.
Objective Morality exists and we can prove it (maybe we can call this secular realism)
Objective Morality exists and we can’t prove it (potentially offensive but this basically sounds like religion or faith)
If you are saying you buy into bullet point 3 that’s fine but I would be upset if EA accepted this explicitly or implicitly.
I think you’ve run together several different positions about moral epistemology and meta-ethics. Your three bullet points definitely do not describe the whole range of positions here. For example: RM Hare was an anti-realist (the anti-realist par excellence, even) but believed in a first principles derivation of morality; you may have come across his position in the earlier works of his most famous student, Peter Singer. (Singer has since become a realist, under the influence of Derek Parfit). Likewise, you can have those who are as realist as realists can be, and who accept that we can know moral truths, but not that we can prove them. This seems to be what you’re denying in your comment—you think the only hope for moral epistemology is first-principles logic—but that’s a strong claim, and pretty much all meta-ethical naturalists have accounts of how we can know morality through some kind of natural understanding.
For myself, I’m a pretty strong anti-realist, but for reasons that have very little to do with traditional questions of moral epistemology; so I actually have a lot of sympathy with the accounts of moral epistemology given by many different metaethical naturalists, as well as by those who have straddled the realist/anti-realist line (e.g. constructivists, or Crispin Wright whatever name you want to give to his position), if their positions are suitably modified.
I’m confused. He thinks you can derive that morality doesn’t exist or he thinks you can derive something that doesn’t exist?
I mean it depends on what you mean by moral epistemology. If you just mean a decision tree that I might like to use for deciding my morals I think it exists. If you mean a decision tree that I Should follow then I disagree.