I, however, also think that the creator believing X is true is some evidence that X is true, since the creator would reasonably have more power and knowledge, which makes me guess that they might be more likely than us to be right (hence the update toward their view).
This is only evidence for moral realism inasmuch as the creator has access to evidence about the true morality. If the creator went to you and said “here is why I know Kantianism is true” and then gave some evidence, then that evidence would be evidence.
Basically, if the creator has good justification for their belief, they should be able to give you that justification. If they can’t, then why does their belief mean anything?
I think this assumes that moral intuitions are entirely downstream of the design of the mind.
It is not clear to me that there’s a way to set up this experiment that doesn’t bake in the answer from the beginning.
If you design minds as idealized versions of already-existing minds (a la CEV), then they’ll be starting from the same moral intuitions. At least among extant human minds, moral intuitions don’t vary by all that much.
If you run natural selection on highly intelligent minds, they will inevitably converge on the belief that the true morality is to maximize how many descendants they have—because minds that hold that belief will, in the long run, out-compete minds that don’t. It does not follow that the true morality is to maximize how many descendants you have.
Basically, if the creator has good justification for their belief, they should be able to give you that justification. If they can’t, then why does their belief mean anything?
From a Bayesian perspective: if I hold credence P in X, and the creator says their credence is 100%, I update toward them because they are more reliable. Same way I’d move toward “vaccines work” if I were agnostic and learned that 90% of scientists believe they do (i.e. I don’t need to see each [or any] scientist’s reasoning/evidence to update toward their view). So the creator’s belief can be evidence via reliability.
I agree that if the creator believes X there’s some evidence for X somewhere; I just don’t think that evidence has to be revealed for me to update. (Note: Scientists have a track record and the creator doesn’t, but it’s not the track record itself that makes me update, it’s reliability; for scientists I get reliability via their track record, and for the creator it’s a medium-confidence assumption [less-defensible, I know])
Also, “if they can’t give you the justification” assumes silence = inability. A creator stating a belief without the reasoning/evidence doesn’t mean they can’t do so, just that they didn’t. Besides, maybe they can’t communicate; does that mean there is nothing to communicate? I don’t think so. Either way (or other ways I can’t think of, beyond choosing not to and not being able to communicate), I think learning about the creator’s belief warrants an update.
Also, it’s not just the intuitions themselves that could change, but the confidence in them. Our intuitions (esp. when taken to their logical conclusions) contradict each other a lot; however, when doing moral philosophy, we often prioritize the higher-confidence one (e.g., my intuition that harming someone with no benefit to any is bad, beats my intuition that murderers deserve punishment). Confidence seems to vary between people (anecdotally), so if we were to scale up cognitively, I imagine that the intuitions we think will win could change.
Re #2, humans are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers. One of the adaptations we execute is that we believe in and sometimes act in accordance with a notion of morality. It’s true that we are no longer in the EEA so further evolution could change or even eliminate our current notions of morality, but it doesn’t follow that it would change it so that we thought maximizing our inclusive genetic fitness was the true morality. After all, the first time evolution had a chance, it didn’t do that.
We’ve only known about evolution for two centuries, and the modern prosperous environment (compared to the ancestral environment), post-demographic-transition, is about equally new. This is the first time in evolutionary history that someone who wants to have a dozen children can pretty much just do that.
In the ancestral environment, the fittest humans weren’t the ones who wanted to have the most children, or who thought it was moral to maximize their genetic influence over the future. They were the ones who were good at making tools, or good at making friends with people who make the tools, etc. That’s different now. Over millions of generations of simulated evolution, I expect the gene pool to become overwhelmingly dominated by people who want to have a lot of kids.
In the EEA, anyone could have as much sex as they wanted provided they found a willing partner (and sometimes even if they couldn’t). It didn’t make it so that they thought morality was having as much sex as they could. Morality is more complicated than that. There are more variables to select on than just desire to have sex / children, and I suspect this will be true in future environments just as it was true in the EEA.
That said, I agree with your last statement that after sufficiently long most people will explicitly want to have a lot of kids. (Note that this isn’t a statement about morality though.)
This is only evidence for moral realism inasmuch as the creator has access to evidence about the true morality. If the creator went to you and said “here is why I know Kantianism is true” and then gave some evidence, then that evidence would be evidence.
Basically, if the creator has good justification for their belief, they should be able to give you that justification. If they can’t, then why does their belief mean anything?
It is not clear to me that there’s a way to set up this experiment that doesn’t bake in the answer from the beginning.
If you design minds as idealized versions of already-existing minds (a la CEV), then they’ll be starting from the same moral intuitions. At least among extant human minds, moral intuitions don’t vary by all that much.
If you run natural selection on highly intelligent minds, they will inevitably converge on the belief that the true morality is to maximize how many descendants they have—because minds that hold that belief will, in the long run, out-compete minds that don’t. It does not follow that the true morality is to maximize how many descendants you have.
From a Bayesian perspective: if I hold credence P in X, and the creator says their credence is 100%, I update toward them because they are more reliable. Same way I’d move toward “vaccines work” if I were agnostic and learned that 90% of scientists believe they do (i.e. I don’t need to see each [or any] scientist’s reasoning/evidence to update toward their view). So the creator’s belief can be evidence via reliability.
I agree that if the creator believes X there’s some evidence for X somewhere; I just don’t think that evidence has to be revealed for me to update. (Note: Scientists have a track record and the creator doesn’t, but it’s not the track record itself that makes me update, it’s reliability; for scientists I get reliability via their track record, and for the creator it’s a medium-confidence assumption [less-defensible, I know])
Also, “if they can’t give you the justification” assumes silence = inability. A creator stating a belief without the reasoning/evidence doesn’t mean they can’t do so, just that they didn’t. Besides, maybe they can’t communicate; does that mean there is nothing to communicate? I don’t think so. Either way (or other ways I can’t think of, beyond choosing not to and not being able to communicate), I think learning about the creator’s belief warrants an update.
On 1, I’m not sure I understand why moral intuitions wouldn’t change in a CEV. Why would intutions not be partly downstream of cognitive capacity? (Also: this is probably cherry-picking (Googled the question), but people with higher cognitive (verabl) abilities seem to have weaker “purity”-based moral intutions.)
Also, it’s not just the intuitions themselves that could change, but the confidence in them. Our intuitions (esp. when taken to their logical conclusions) contradict each other a lot; however, when doing moral philosophy, we often prioritize the higher-confidence one (e.g., my intuition that harming someone with no benefit to any is bad, beats my intuition that murderers deserve punishment). Confidence seems to vary between people (anecdotally), so if we were to scale up cognitively, I imagine that the intuitions we think will win could change.
On 2, I agree. Didn’t think of this.
Re #2, humans are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers. One of the adaptations we execute is that we believe in and sometimes act in accordance with a notion of morality. It’s true that we are no longer in the EEA so further evolution could change or even eliminate our current notions of morality, but it doesn’t follow that it would change it so that we thought maximizing our inclusive genetic fitness was the true morality. After all, the first time evolution had a chance, it didn’t do that.
We’ve only known about evolution for two centuries, and the modern prosperous environment (compared to the ancestral environment), post-demographic-transition, is about equally new. This is the first time in evolutionary history that someone who wants to have a dozen children can pretty much just do that.
In the ancestral environment, the fittest humans weren’t the ones who wanted to have the most children, or who thought it was moral to maximize their genetic influence over the future. They were the ones who were good at making tools, or good at making friends with people who make the tools, etc. That’s different now. Over millions of generations of simulated evolution, I expect the gene pool to become overwhelmingly dominated by people who want to have a lot of kids.
In the EEA, anyone could have as much sex as they wanted provided they found a willing partner (and sometimes even if they couldn’t). It didn’t make it so that they thought morality was having as much sex as they could. Morality is more complicated than that. There are more variables to select on than just desire to have sex / children, and I suspect this will be true in future environments just as it was true in the EEA.
That said, I agree with your last statement that after sufficiently long most people will explicitly want to have a lot of kids. (Note that this isn’t a statement about morality though.)