From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 04 2000 - 09:26:59 MST
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> > Now consider the factual question of whether human's ancestral tribes are
> > more like bonobo or baboon tribes. You realize that this matters for human
> > ethics. ...
>
> How in heaven's name did you find out any of THAT? ... If I'm worried
> about whether you committed a wrong yesterday, then finding out the
> empirical fact that you mugged a few innocents will help settle the question.
This was just an example to introduce the notation.
Use the mugging fact instead if that suits you better.
> However, you have to do some
> ethical philosophy *before* facts like those become relevant.
> But you're far away from establishing questions like deontology vs. virtue
> theory, utilitarianism vs. egoism, welfarism vs. objective good, etc. none
> of which have the empirical component, and without whose resolution it
> seems unlikely that you'll know very much about ethics.
>
You keep restating claims like this as if they were obvious;
they aren't. This is the issue we are arguing about.
> Let's work with a particular S, namely, that deontology is a more accurate
> theory than virtue theory. How would I realize that an empirical
> component would settle this question? What sort of empirical facts would
> I want to know?
The empirical science of ethics is very young, so I can't tell you now what
sortsof empirical facts will turn out to be very relevant. But in some possible
states
of the universe you agree with S, and in others you disagree, and *anything*
that helps me exclude some of those possible states can inform me about whether
you will agree with S. If this isn't obvious to you, you haven't had a
sufficient
introduction to information theory (e.g., decision theory) for me to proceed.
> > Hopefully this has all been standard so far. Now we do the think you seem
> > to think is hard. There are these same sets A,B,C,D with the same prior and
> > the same relation to S, but we drop the bonobo/baboon interpretation of A,C
> > vs. B,D. Now A,C are the sets where I just tell you that you will now have
> > a 25% chance of agreeing with S, while B,D are the sets where I tell you its
> > a 33% chance. Upon hearing this you update your beliefs to be consistent
> > with the claim I just made. Ta da, I have fully taken into account the
> > effect of my statement on you.
>
> Excuse me? I had those priors for a reason (presumably) and having you
> tell me "Your priors will be the following" doesn't give me any reason, as
> such, for agreeing with you.
What I know is that the universe is in states A,C, or in B,D. Your reason
forlistening to me is the fact that you know that I know this. Your finding out
which thing I said is the clue you can use to obtain my information. If this
doesn't make sense to you, you just don't understand information theory.
Information is just clues that help you exclude possible states of the universe.
> > If you want to be clearer about verifiability, assume that the
> > identity of the atom was encoded in a light beam sent off to another
> > star, and the signal would return in ten years.
>
> This is a very different case, IMO. ...
> In THAT case, we could imagine that if you knew enough about
> cognitive science, you could analyze the current physical state of my
> brain to determine my current beliefs about which atom I'd chosen,
> determine the mass of that atom, and report it. All purely empirical.
> However, my [future] beliefs are *not* fully determinable based on the
> current state of my brain. My beliefs have been informed both by my
> own internal cogitations as well as things which happen TO me,
> things which you can't predict merely by looking at my brain. So this
> analogy *definitely* doesn't carry over in this case.
In my example, the brain does *not* remember which atom it picked;that info is
*only* encoded in that light signal. So the analogy is closer.
We will later be able to verify the atom mass by getting the light signal,
and we will later be able to verify your ethical opinions, after the
universe influences you.
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