Consciousness and qualia are the only things Iām 100% certain exist. Hereās the key insight: when you fully describe any conscious state, you must include objective propertiesāits spatial extent, colors, sounds, and crucially, how much suffering or happiness it contains.
This isnāt a matter of opinion. Suffering in a conscious experience is as objectively real as the color red in that same experience. Itās a fundamental feature of reality, not something that becomes bad because someone judges it to be bad.
The personal identity argument:
Derek Parfitās work on personal identity strengthens this view. If there are no robust, continuous āpersonsā in the traditional senseāif weāre more like streams of consciousness than persistent selvesāthen subjective preferences become philosophically problematic. Whose preferences? What grounds them?
But conscious experiences of suffering and joy remain objectively real features of the universe, independent of any āpersonā having preferences about them.
Why this supports objective morality:
Among contemporary intellectuals, Sam Harris articulates this position best in āThe Moral Landscape.ā Consciousness creates objective facts about well-being. Some conscious states are objectively better or worse than others, based on the suffering or flourishing they contain.
Philosophical honesty:
I remain somewhat nihilistic because ultimate justification hits bedrockāwe canāt justify foundational assumptions infinitely. But for practical purposes, consciousness grounds the only objective moral facts we need.
(My rough credences: 99% nihilism about most moral claims, 0.9% hedonistic realism, 0.09% other anti-realism, 0.01% non-hedonistic realism)
90% agree
The consciousness argument:
Consciousness and qualia are the only things Iām 100% certain exist. Hereās the key insight: when you fully describe any conscious state, you must include objective propertiesāits spatial extent, colors, sounds, and crucially, how much suffering or happiness it contains.
This isnāt a matter of opinion. Suffering in a conscious experience is as objectively real as the color red in that same experience. Itās a fundamental feature of reality, not something that becomes bad because someone judges it to be bad.
The personal identity argument:
Derek Parfitās work on personal identity strengthens this view. If there are no robust, continuous āpersonsā in the traditional senseāif weāre more like streams of consciousness than persistent selvesāthen subjective preferences become philosophically problematic. Whose preferences? What grounds them?
But conscious experiences of suffering and joy remain objectively real features of the universe, independent of any āpersonā having preferences about them.
Why this supports objective morality:
Among contemporary intellectuals, Sam Harris articulates this position best in āThe Moral Landscape.ā Consciousness creates objective facts about well-being. Some conscious states are objectively better or worse than others, based on the suffering or flourishing they contain.
Philosophical honesty:
I remain somewhat nihilistic because ultimate justification hits bedrockāwe canāt justify foundational assumptions infinitely. But for practical purposes, consciousness grounds the only objective moral facts we need.
(My rough credences: 99% nihilism about most moral claims, 0.9% hedonistic realism, 0.09% other anti-realism, 0.01% non-hedonistic realism)