You talk about the philosophers not having much to add in the third comic, and the scientist getting it right. Seems to me like the engineer’s/robot’s answer in the first two comics are importantly misguided/non-helpful though.
The more sophisticated version of the first question would be something about whether you ought to care about copies of yourself, how you’d feel about stepping into a destroy-then-reassemble teleporter, etc. I think the engineer’s answer suggests that he’d care about physical continuity when answering these questions, which I think is the wrong answer. (And philosophers have put in work here — see Parfit.)
In the second comic, the robot’s answer is fine as far as predictive accuracy goes. But I’d interpret the human’s question as a call for help in figuring out what they ought to do (or what their society ought to reward/punish, or something similar). I think there’s totally helpful things you can say to someone in that situation beyond the robot’s tautologies (even granting that there’s no objective truth about ethics).
You talk about the philosophers not having much to add in the third comic, and the scientist getting it right.
That’s not exactly the case. I’m trying to make a more nuanced point than “boo philosophy and hooray science”.
I’m saying that the applied answer is much deeper than it initially appears. But to discover this deepness you still need to go on the philosophical journey. Most people who dismiss philosophical questions don’t in fact understand the deepness of the “scientific answer” because they didn’t go on this journey.
Seems to me like the engineer’s/robot’s answer in the first two comics are importantly misguided/non-helpful though.
I think they are similarly helpful and deep, highlighting some blindspots in conventional discussions on the matter.
The more sophisticated version of the first question would be something about whether you ought to care about copies of yourself
That would be a different question, though. The question of value, not ontology.
The ontological question is about the way to solve some probability theoretic questions like anthropic trilemma. And the insight is that causality, the physical nature of the particular experiment matters quite a lot, not whether people have “similar atoms”. I’ll be writing about it in details at some point in my PTF102 sequence.
In the second comic, the robot’s answer is fine as far as predictive accuracy goes.
Robot answer’s highlight the way to reduce the concept of “shouldness”. How it’s a property of mind’s decision making algorithm and where you need to look to find an answer, which is one of the core insights of metaethics.
I’m saying that the applied answer is much deeper than it initially appears. But to discover this deepness you still need to go on the philosophical journey. Most people who dismiss philosophical questions don’t in fact understand the deepness of the “scientific answer” because they didn’t go on this journey.
I think this is true and it also took a long time for me to get to this, and it would’ve been useful to append this near the top of the OP. cf. the simple truth
In this essay I pose questions. If you see what seems like a really obvious answer, it’s probably the answer I intend. The obvious choice isn’t always the best choice, but sometimes, by golly, it is. I don’t stop looking as soon I find an obvious answer, but if I go on looking, and the obvious-seeming answer still seems obvious, I don’t feel guilty about keeping it.
I also thought the robot:s answer missed the point quite badly …because it reduced the ought all the way down to an is—or rather a bunch of isses.
If what one ought to do reduces to what one would do, there are potentially eight billion answers to what one ought to do. That works for a decision theory, because decision theory only needs to guide individual actions—but not for an ethical theory, because ethical theories need to identify bad people who need punishment, and no one is bad by their own values. Predictive accuracy is irrelevant to both, it’s a different ball game.
There’s a consistent theme in rationalist writing on ethics, where the idea that everyone has basically the same values , or “brain algorithms”, is just assumed … but it needs to be based on evidence as much as anything else. The Rationalist approach isn’t some deep insight, it is quite flawed
Reducing ethical normativity isn’t bad, but doing it in a way that leads to sweeping subjetivism is bad. If you accept subjectivism, you miss better answers.
In the first comic, the engineers answer is a also a plausible philosophical answer. The “philosopher” is assuming that identity has to be based on intrinsic properties, the “engineer” isnt. But there is actually no philosophical fact that identity should be intrinisc. In Bensinger’s When is a Mind Me he takes the “philosopher’s” perspective.
In the third comic, the philosopher is technically correct. You can’t achieve certainty from a finite.chain of observations, and you can only make a finite chain. Modern empiricists have admitted this giving up on certainty.
I also thought the robot:s answer missed the point quite badly …because it reduced the ought all the way down to an is—or rather a bunch of isses.
If you dismiss any reduction of ought to is, you are essentially dogmatically certain that Hume’s guillotine is true. Is it your stance?
If what one ought to do reduces to what one would do
Not to what one would. Your ethical module may not be directly connected to the behavioral one and so your decisions are based on other considerations, like desires unrelated to ethics. This doesn’t change the fact that what you ought to do is the output (or a certain generalization of multiple outputs) of the ethical module, which is a computation taking place in the real world, which can be observed.
there are potentially eight billion answers to what one ought to do.
Potentially but not actually. Once again, when you look, turns out individual ethical views of people are not *that* different. That said, there is still room for disagreement and how exactly we aggregate individual ethical preferences into morality is still up to debate. But this is the next question, with the somewhat similar direction for a solution.
There’s a consistent theme in rationalist writing on ethics, where the idea that everyone has basically the same values , or “brain algorithms”, is just assumed … but it needs to be based on evidence as much as anything else.
Not basically the same, but somewhat similar. And it’s not just assumed, it’s quite observable. Human ethical disagreements are mostly about edge cases. Like what is your objective claim here, that human values are not correlated at all?
Reducing ethical normativity isn’t bad, but doing it in a way that leads to sweeping subjetivism is bad. If you accept subjectivism, you miss better answers.
I think calling it subjectivism is very misleading. The whole subjective/objective duality is quite horrible—I’ll be dedicating a post about it at some point. It’s social constructivism of morality. Which is rooted in our other knowledge about game theory and evolution.
In the first comic, the engineers answer is a also a plausible philosophical answer.
Yes, this is exactly my point. A lot of things, which are treated as “applied missing the point answers” are in fact legitimately philosophically potent. At the very least, we should be paying much more attention to them.
In the third comic, the philosopher is technically correct. You can’t achieve certainty from a finite.chain of observations, and you can only make a finite chain. Modern empiricists have admitted this giving up on certainty.
Therefore it’s not just “by looking” but “pretty much by looking”. I completely agree about the necessity to abandon the notion of certainty. If you want to give philosophers some credit for this—I agree. The irony of the joke stays the same. When the question is refined so that we removed the problematic notion of “certainty”, the naive answer turned out to be basically true.
You talk about the philosophers not having much to add in the third comic, and the scientist getting it right. Seems to me like the engineer’s/robot’s answer in the first two comics are importantly misguided/non-helpful though.
The more sophisticated version of the first question would be something about whether you ought to care about copies of yourself, how you’d feel about stepping into a destroy-then-reassemble teleporter, etc. I think the engineer’s answer suggests that he’d care about physical continuity when answering these questions, which I think is the wrong answer. (And philosophers have put in work here — see Parfit.)
In the second comic, the robot’s answer is fine as far as predictive accuracy goes. But I’d interpret the human’s question as a call for help in figuring out what they ought to do (or what their society ought to reward/punish, or something similar). I think there’s totally helpful things you can say to someone in that situation beyond the robot’s tautologies (even granting that there’s no objective truth about ethics).
That’s not exactly the case. I’m trying to make a more nuanced point than “boo philosophy and hooray science”.
I’m saying that the applied answer is much deeper than it initially appears. But to discover this deepness you still need to go on the philosophical journey. Most people who dismiss philosophical questions don’t in fact understand the deepness of the “scientific answer” because they didn’t go on this journey.
I think they are similarly helpful and deep, highlighting some blindspots in conventional discussions on the matter.
That would be a different question, though. The question of value, not ontology.
The ontological question is about the way to solve some probability theoretic questions like anthropic trilemma. And the insight is that causality, the physical nature of the particular experiment matters quite a lot, not whether people have “similar atoms”. I’ll be writing about it in details at some point in my PTF102 sequence.
Robot answer’s highlight the way to reduce the concept of “shouldness”. How it’s a property of mind’s decision making algorithm and where you need to look to find an answer, which is one of the core insights of metaethics.
I think this is true and it also took a long time for me to get to this, and it would’ve been useful to append this near the top of the OP. cf. the simple truth
I also thought the robot:s answer missed the point quite badly …because it reduced the ought all the way down to an is—or rather a bunch of isses.
If what one ought to do reduces to what one would do, there are potentially eight billion answers to what one ought to do. That works for a decision theory, because decision theory only needs to guide individual actions—but not for an ethical theory, because ethical theories need to identify bad people who need punishment, and no one is bad by their own values. Predictive accuracy is irrelevant to both, it’s a different ball game.
There’s a consistent theme in rationalist writing on ethics, where the idea that everyone has basically the same values , or “brain algorithms”, is just assumed … but it needs to be based on evidence as much as anything else. The Rationalist approach isn’t some deep insight, it is quite flawed
Reducing ethical normativity isn’t bad, but doing it in a way that leads to sweeping subjetivism is bad. If you accept subjectivism, you miss better answers.
In the first comic, the engineers answer is a also a plausible philosophical answer. The “philosopher” is assuming that identity has to be based on intrinsic properties, the “engineer” isnt. But there is actually no philosophical fact that identity should be intrinisc. In Bensinger’s When is a Mind Me he takes the “philosopher’s” perspective.
In the third comic, the philosopher is technically correct. You can’t achieve certainty from a finite.chain of observations, and you can only make a finite chain. Modern empiricists have admitted this giving up on certainty.
If you dismiss any reduction of ought to is, you are essentially dogmatically certain that Hume’s guillotine is true. Is it your stance?
Not to what one would. Your ethical module may not be directly connected to the behavioral one and so your decisions are based on other considerations, like desires unrelated to ethics. This doesn’t change the fact that what you ought to do is the output (or a certain generalization of multiple outputs) of the ethical module, which is a computation taking place in the real world, which can be observed.
Potentially but not actually. Once again, when you look, turns out individual ethical views of people are not *that* different. That said, there is still room for disagreement and how exactly we aggregate individual ethical preferences into morality is still up to debate. But this is the next question, with the somewhat similar direction for a solution.
Not basically the same, but somewhat similar. And it’s not just assumed, it’s quite observable. Human ethical disagreements are mostly about edge cases. Like what is your objective claim here, that human values are not correlated at all?
I think calling it subjectivism is very misleading. The whole subjective/objective duality is quite horrible—I’ll be dedicating a post about it at some point. It’s social constructivism of morality. Which is rooted in our other knowledge about game theory and evolution.
Yes, this is exactly my point. A lot of things, which are treated as “applied missing the point answers” are in fact legitimately philosophically potent. At the very least, we should be paying much more attention to them.
Therefore it’s not just “by looking” but “pretty much by looking”. I completely agree about the necessity to abandon the notion of certainty. If you want to give philosophers some credit for this—I agree. The irony of the joke stays the same. When the question is refined so that we removed the problematic notion of “certainty”, the naive answer turned out to be basically true.