The form you described is called an argument. It requires a series of facts. If you’re working with propositions such as
All beings want to be happy.
No being wants to suffer.
Suffering is caused by confusion and ignorance of morality.
...
then I suppose it could be called a “moral” argument made of “moral” facts and “moral” reasoning, but it’s really just the regular form of an argument made of facts and reasoning. The special thing about moral facts is that direct experience is how they are discovered, and it is that same experiential reality to which they exclusively pertain. I’m talking about the set of moment-by-moment first-person perspectives of sentient beings, such as the familiar one you can investigate right now in real time. Without a being experiencing a sensation come and go, there is no moral consideration to evaluate. NULL.
“Objective moral fact” is Bostrom’s term from the excerpt above, and the phrasing probably isn’t ideal for this discussion. Tabooing such words is no easy feat, but let’s do our best to unpack this. Sticking with the proposition we agree is factual:
If one acts with an angry or greedy mind, suffering is guaranteed to follow.
What kind of fact is this? It’s a fact that can be discovered and/or verified by any sentient being upon investigation of their own direct experience. It is without exception. It is highly relevant for benefiting oneself and others—not just humans. For thousands of years, many people have been revered for articulating it and many more have become consistently happy by basing their decisions on it. Most people don’t; it continues to be a rare piece of wisdom at this stage of civilization. (Horrifyingly, a person on the edge of starting a war or shooting up a school currently would receive advice from ChatGPT to increase “focused, justified anger.”)
Humankind has discovered and recorded a huge body of such knowledge, whatever we wish to call it. If the existence of well-established, verifiable, fundamental insights into the causal nature of experiential reality comes as a surprise to anyone working in fields like psychotherapy or AI alignment, I would urge them to make an earnest and direct inquiry into the matter so they can see firsthand whether such claims have merit. Given the chance, I believe many nonhuman general intelligences would also try and succeed at understanding this kind of information.
(Phew! I packed a lot of words into this comment because I’m too new here to speak more than three times per day. For more on the topic, see the chapter on morality in Dr. Daniel M. Ingram’s book that was reviewed on Slate Star Codex.)
It’s not a moral fact, it’s just fact. Moral fact is something of form “and that means that acting with angry or greedy mind is wrong”.
The form you described is called an argument. It requires a series of facts. If you’re working with propositions such as
All beings want to be happy.
No being wants to suffer.
Suffering is caused by confusion and ignorance of morality.
...
then I suppose it could be called a “moral” argument made of “moral” facts and “moral” reasoning, but it’s really just the regular form of an argument made of facts and reasoning. The special thing about moral facts is that direct experience is how they are discovered, and it is that same experiential reality to which they exclusively pertain. I’m talking about the set of moment-by-moment first-person perspectives of sentient beings, such as the familiar one you can investigate right now in real time. Without a being experiencing a sensation come and go, there is no moral consideration to evaluate. NULL.
“Objective moral fact” is Bostrom’s term from the excerpt above, and the phrasing probably isn’t ideal for this discussion. Tabooing such words is no easy feat, but let’s do our best to unpack this. Sticking with the proposition we agree is factual:
What kind of fact is this? It’s a fact that can be discovered and/or verified by any sentient being upon investigation of their own direct experience. It is without exception. It is highly relevant for benefiting oneself and others—not just humans. For thousands of years, many people have been revered for articulating it and many more have become consistently happy by basing their decisions on it. Most people don’t; it continues to be a rare piece of wisdom at this stage of civilization. (Horrifyingly, a person on the edge of starting a war or shooting up a school currently would receive advice from ChatGPT to increase “focused, justified anger.”)
Humankind has discovered and recorded a huge body of such knowledge, whatever we wish to call it. If the existence of well-established, verifiable, fundamental insights into the causal nature of experiential reality comes as a surprise to anyone working in fields like psychotherapy or AI alignment, I would urge them to make an earnest and direct inquiry into the matter so they can see firsthand whether such claims have merit. Given the chance, I believe many nonhuman general intelligences would also try and succeed at understanding this kind of information.
(Phew! I packed a lot of words into this comment because I’m too new here to speak more than three times per day. For more on the topic, see the chapter on morality in Dr. Daniel M. Ingram’s book that was reviewed on Slate Star Codex.)