From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 01:45:14 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Eliezer writes
>
>
>>>Question: does my avowal that "It is MORALLY WRONG that x!"
>>>means only "I and most people disapprove of x" make me a
>>>moral relativist?
>>
>>I suspect that the weight you put on "only", in that sentence, is
>>asserting the nonexistence of *something*, but it's not quite clear what.
>>It's possible that the something you assert the nonexistence of makes
>>you a moral relativist.
>
> I should have left out the word "only" and should have
> written "mean" instead of "means".
I don't think that "It is MORALLY WRONG that x!" is equivalent with "I and
most people disapprove of x", but if I did, I would probably say something
like this:
"Starting from only "I and most people disapprove of x", I can construct a
description of "It is MORALLY WRONG that x!" which accounts for everything
that I and most people mean by MORALLY WRONG."
If you said that, I might *disagree* with you, but I don't think it would
automatically make you a moral relativist - your description might account
for the existence of the very same phenomena that it would make you a
moral relativist to deny.
Personally, I don't think the relation between "disapproval" and "MORALLY
WRONG" is such that "disapproval" is the simple phenomenon from which
"MORALLY WRONG" is constructed. But it would be interesting to see such
an attempted description.
A non-exhaustive list of some phenomena that I think would need to be
explained:
* The existence of perceived higher and lower quality in alternative
moralities;
* Widespread agreement about such quality in at least some cases;
* The ability of an individual to consider and agree with an argument for
a higher-quality alternative morality to the one currently possessed;
* The ability of humans to communicate such arguments among themselves;
* The use of the semantics of objectivity in moral argument.
The explanation can take more than one form; for example, you could
attempt to show that the phenomena above arise from subjective perceptions
that *do* have real referents, but that the referents are phenomena
constructed from "I approve of X" or "I disapprove of X". Or you might
show that the phenomena above arise from subjective perceptions that are
cognitive illusions existing for such-and-such a reason. One is
"explaining", the other is "explaining away". Explaining morality doesn't
make you a moral relativist. Explaining away morality probably would. Of
course, explaining away morality doesn't make you *wrong* unless the
explanation is *incorrect*. My own work attempts to explain morality,
rather than explain it away, so I tend to be highly skeptical of moral
relativism; but I could be wrong.
> Since your foregoing example, logic, and good word usage
> suggests that I am a moral relativist, I mainly wonder why
> most moral relativists seem to me to stand for nothing at
> all, and to have no strong preferences. They might approve
> of sati in India, and disapprove of exactly the same process
> ---incinerating a woman---elsewhere.
At the very least, it seems likely that you explain at least some of the
phenomena which central exemplars of the "moral relativist" category
attempt to explain away. In fact, it seems likely that among the
phenomena which moral relativists attempt to explain away are agreement
about disapproval, the existence of any self-consistent position from
which to communicate disapproval or take social action based on
disapproval, and perhaps even disapproval itself.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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