From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue Jan 12 1999 - 10:26:06 MST
Hal [hal@rain.org] wrote:
>I don't see how to ground this regress. It doesn't even seem to me that
>it makes sense to say that a particular ranking is objectively selected.
I agree with Hal; I think it's easy to find an optimal moral code once you
make some basic decisions as to what you regard as a good outcome, but you
can't say that one moral system is objectively better than another because
you have to make those initial subjective decisions.
For example, I think that taking a short-term loss to make a long-term gain
is better than taking a short-term gain for a long-term loss, which is one
reason why I think that libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism are much
better than authoritarian systems; limited government can't stop people
starving in the streets, but it can't lock you all up in concentration
camps either. But that doesn't mean that I'd be able to prove that
they're objectively better than socialism, unless the others also agree
with my underlying subjective choices.
Now, you can probably come up with a set of rational, subjective,
transhuman axioms which most of us would agree with and work out an
optimal moral system from that; but it still wouldn't be an *objectively*
optimal system because others have different axioms. They might be
irrational, but irrationality is their choice.
Mark
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