“You generally can’t determine any facts about morality by studying its psychology, genealogy and history in society, as those refer to how people act and moral philosophy refers to how they ought to act.”
Moral anti-realists think that questions about how people ought to act are fundamentally confused. For an anti-realist, the only legitimate questions about morality are empirical. What do societies believe about morality? Why do we believe these things (from a social and evolutionary perspective)? We can’t derive normative truth from these questions, but they can still be useful.
“An anti-realist can still have reasons to affirm a consistent view of morality”
Consistent is not the same as principled. Of course I believe in internal consistency. But principled morality is no more rational than unprincipled morality.
“I’m not aware of this being common. The LessWrong link doesn’t seem to be relevant to legitimate moral philosophy. Can you give some examples?”
Some EAs argue that killing animals for meat is the moral equivalent of murder. There are other examples outside EA: abortion is murder, taxation is theft. Ask tumblr what currently counts as rape… Just because some of these views aren’t taken seriously by moral philosophers doesn’t mean they aren’t influential and shouldn’t be engaged with.
“You can add more and more values to patch the holes and build a really complicated multivariate utility function which might end up producing normal outputs, but at this point I would question why you’re optimizing at all, when it looks like what you really want to do is use an intuitionist approach.”
Correct, I don’t think utility function approaches are any better than avoiding utility functions. However, people have many moral values, and under normal circumstances these may approximate utility functions.
“Yes, although most people, moral realists included, would affirm a fundamental difference between phenomenal consciousness and movements of simple systems.”
Consequentialism would require building a definition of consciousness into the utility function. Many definitions of consciousness, such as “complexity” or “integration”, would fall apart in extreme cases.
Moral anti-realists think that questions about how people ought to act are fundamentally confused. For an anti-realist, the only legitimate questions about morality are empirical.
Anti-realists deny that there is such thing as true moral claims, but they don’t think morality is fundamentally confused. There have been many anti-realist philosophers who have proposed some form of ethics: R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie, the existentialists, etc.
Consistent is not the same as principled. Of course I believe in internal consistency. But principled morality is no more rational than unprincipled morality.
What exactly do you mean by “principled” in this case?
Some EAs argue that killing animals for meat is the moral equivalent of murder. There are other examples outside EA: abortion is murder, taxation is theft.
I think many, hopefully most, of the people who say that have actual moral reasons for saying that. There is no fallacy in claiming a moral equivalency if you base it on actual reasons to believe that it is morally just as bad: it may in fact be the case that there is no significant moral difference between killing animals and killing people. Same goes for those who claim that abortion is murder, taxation is theft, etc. We should be challenged to think about whether, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is (and if not then why), because sometimes people’s beliefs are inconsistent, and because it very well may be the case that, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is. Of course, these kinds of arguments should be developed further rather than shortened into (fallacious) assertions. However, I don’t see this argument structure as central to the issue of counterintuitive moral conclusions.
Consequentialism would require building a definition of consciousness into the utility function. Many definitions of consciousness, such as “complexity” or “integration”, would fall apart in extreme cases.
I don’t think those are nearly good enough definitions of consciousness either. The consequentialist is usually concerned with sentience—whether there is “something that it’s like to be” a particular entity. If we decide that there is something that it’s like to be a simple system then we will value their experiences, although in this case it’s no longer so counterintuitive, because we can imagine what it’s like to be a simple system and we can empathize with them. While it’s difficult to find a formal definition for consciousness, and also very difficult to determine what sorts of physical substances and structures are responsible for consciousness, we do have a very clear idea in our heads of what it means to be conscious, and we can easily conceive of the difference between something that is conscious and something that is physically identical but not conscious (e.g. a p-zombie).
Moral anti-realists think that questions about how people ought to act are fundamentally confused. For an anti-realist, the only legitimate questions about morality are empirical. What do societies believe about morality? Why do we believe these things (from a social and evolutionary perspective)? We can’t derive normative truth from these questions, but they can still be useful.
That is not true in the slightest. If I reject that social action can be placed within a scheme of values which has absolute standing, I suffer from no inconsistency from non-absolutist forms of valuation. Thucydides, Vico, Machiavelli, Marx, Nietzsche, Williams and Foucault were neither moral realists nor refrained from evaluative judgement. But then evaluative thought is an inescapable part of human life. How do you suppose that one would fail to perform it?
“You generally can’t determine any facts about morality by studying its psychology, genealogy and history in society, as those refer to how people act and moral philosophy refers to how they ought to act.”
Moral anti-realists think that questions about how people ought to act are fundamentally confused. For an anti-realist, the only legitimate questions about morality are empirical. What do societies believe about morality? Why do we believe these things (from a social and evolutionary perspective)? We can’t derive normative truth from these questions, but they can still be useful.
“An anti-realist can still have reasons to affirm a consistent view of morality”
Consistent is not the same as principled. Of course I believe in internal consistency. But principled morality is no more rational than unprincipled morality.
“I’m not aware of this being common. The LessWrong link doesn’t seem to be relevant to legitimate moral philosophy. Can you give some examples?”
Some EAs argue that killing animals for meat is the moral equivalent of murder. There are other examples outside EA: abortion is murder, taxation is theft. Ask tumblr what currently counts as rape… Just because some of these views aren’t taken seriously by moral philosophers doesn’t mean they aren’t influential and shouldn’t be engaged with.
“You can add more and more values to patch the holes and build a really complicated multivariate utility function which might end up producing normal outputs, but at this point I would question why you’re optimizing at all, when it looks like what you really want to do is use an intuitionist approach.”
Correct, I don’t think utility function approaches are any better than avoiding utility functions. However, people have many moral values, and under normal circumstances these may approximate utility functions.
“Yes, although most people, moral realists included, would affirm a fundamental difference between phenomenal consciousness and movements of simple systems.”
Consequentialism would require building a definition of consciousness into the utility function. Many definitions of consciousness, such as “complexity” or “integration”, would fall apart in extreme cases.
Anti-realists deny that there is such thing as true moral claims, but they don’t think morality is fundamentally confused. There have been many anti-realist philosophers who have proposed some form of ethics: R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie, the existentialists, etc.
What exactly do you mean by “principled” in this case?
I think many, hopefully most, of the people who say that have actual moral reasons for saying that. There is no fallacy in claiming a moral equivalency if you base it on actual reasons to believe that it is morally just as bad: it may in fact be the case that there is no significant moral difference between killing animals and killing people. Same goes for those who claim that abortion is murder, taxation is theft, etc. We should be challenged to think about whether, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is (and if not then why), because sometimes people’s beliefs are inconsistent, and because it very well may be the case that, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is. Of course, these kinds of arguments should be developed further rather than shortened into (fallacious) assertions. However, I don’t see this argument structure as central to the issue of counterintuitive moral conclusions.
I don’t think those are nearly good enough definitions of consciousness either. The consequentialist is usually concerned with sentience—whether there is “something that it’s like to be” a particular entity. If we decide that there is something that it’s like to be a simple system then we will value their experiences, although in this case it’s no longer so counterintuitive, because we can imagine what it’s like to be a simple system and we can empathize with them. While it’s difficult to find a formal definition for consciousness, and also very difficult to determine what sorts of physical substances and structures are responsible for consciousness, we do have a very clear idea in our heads of what it means to be conscious, and we can easily conceive of the difference between something that is conscious and something that is physically identical but not conscious (e.g. a p-zombie).
That is not true in the slightest. If I reject that social action can be placed within a scheme of values which has absolute standing, I suffer from no inconsistency from non-absolutist forms of valuation. Thucydides, Vico, Machiavelli, Marx, Nietzsche, Williams and Foucault were neither moral realists nor refrained from evaluative judgement. But then evaluative thought is an inescapable part of human life. How do you suppose that one would fail to perform it?