Out of curiosity, is rejection of the Orthogonality thesis a common position in philosophy? (If you can make a guess at what percentage of philosophers reject it, that’d be cool.)
I seem to remember always finding it intuitively obvious, so it’s difficult for me to understand why someone would disagree with it (except for being a theist, maybe).
Someone with a hardcore ‘rationalist’ position (someone who thought all moral statements could be derived from first principles e.g. a Kantian) would probably reject it, but they’re basically extinct in the wild.
In the sense of moral rationalism. The fact that rationalist can be used to refer to rationality or rationalism is unfortunate, but IIRC (to busy to search for it) we’ve had a few debates about terminology and decided that we currently are using the least bad options.
To summarise a few centuries of Philosophy very briefly: A lng tie ago there were Rationalists who thought everything could be proven by pure reason, and Empiricists who depended on observation of the external world. Because Reason was often used in contrast to emotion (and because of the association with logic and mathematics) “Rational” evolved into a general word for reasonable or well argued. The modern rationalist movement is about thinking clearly and coming to correct conclusions, which can’t really be done by relying exclusively on pure reason. (Hence why moral rationalists in the original sense don’t really exist anymore)
Internalism is the belief that it is a necessary truth that, if A believes X to be wrong/right, A is at least partly motivated to avoid/promote/honour X. Externalism is usually considered to be the denial of internalism, so I don’t know what 35.5% of people are talking about. My guess is they meant “don’t know”.
Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal axes along which possible agents can freely vary. In other words,
more or less any level of intelligence could in principle be
combined with more or less any final goal.
It seems true—but pretty irrelevant. We mostly care about real world agents—not what could “in principle” be constructed. It’s a kind of weasel wording—no doubt intended to provoke concern about evil geniuses.
Out of curiosity, is rejection of the Orthogonality thesis a common position in philosophy? (If you can make a guess at what percentage of philosophers reject it, that’d be cool.)
I seem to remember always finding it intuitively obvious, so it’s difficult for me to understand why someone would disagree with it (except for being a theist, maybe).
Someone with a hardcore ‘rationalist’ position (someone who thought all moral statements could be derived from first principles e.g. a Kantian) would probably reject it, but they’re basically extinct in the wild.
In what sense is this a ‘rationalist’ position?
In the sense of moral rationalism. The fact that rationalist can be used to refer to rationality or rationalism is unfortunate, but IIRC (to busy to search for it) we’ve had a few debates about terminology and decided that we currently are using the least bad options.
Indeed. Its a problem of language evolution.
To summarise a few centuries of Philosophy very briefly: A lng tie ago there were Rationalists who thought everything could be proven by pure reason, and Empiricists who depended on observation of the external world. Because Reason was often used in contrast to emotion (and because of the association with logic and mathematics) “Rational” evolved into a general word for reasonable or well argued. The modern rationalist movement is about thinking clearly and coming to correct conclusions, which can’t really be done by relying exclusively on pure reason. (Hence why moral rationalists in the original sense don’t really exist anymore)
source
Internalism is the belief that it is a necessary truth that, if A believes X to be wrong/right, A is at least partly motivated to avoid/promote/honour X. Externalism is usually considered to be the denial of internalism, so I don’t know what 35.5% of people are talking about. My guess is they meant “don’t know”.
Typical mind fallacy, but with respect to the entirety of mindspace?
It seems true—but pretty irrelevant. We mostly care about real world agents—not what could “in principle” be constructed. It’s a kind of weasel wording—no doubt intended to provoke concern about evil geniuses.
Try chapter 7 of “Good and Real” by Gary Drescher.
David Pearce appears to be, judging by his posts here.