Our Values are (roughly) the yumminess or yearning we feel when imagining something.
Goodness is (roughly) whatever stuff the memes say one should value.
I do not think this matches my usage of the words “Human Values” or (especially) “Goodness” (nor of the usage of the rare intelligent people whose ethical judgement I trust). The concept of yumminess/yearning is relevant; the concept of popular assertions of what one oughts to yearn for is relevant. But I object to both of these rough definitions on the grounds that they miss many central aspects.
Concretely: consider a heroin addict, in a memetic environment that strongly disapproves of heroin usage. Because of their addiction, by far the greatest yumminess they feel when imagining things is more heroin (and things which may have brought their past-self feelings of yumminess no longer have that feeling, because it cannot compete). In your framework, getting more heroin is part of their Values, but not part of their culture’s Goodness.
So far so good — but now compare to your example of a gay man in a memetic environment that strongly disapproves of gay romance and sex. As far as I can tell, your analytic framework treats these cases exactly identically: it’s a conflict between Values and Goodness, maybe with the man repeatedly tying himself up in knots to try and fail to crush his Values in the name of Goodness. But I claim this is wrong: an accurate account of Values and Goodness should be able to distinguish these two scenarios. (Lest you think I’m letting my own biases slip in: replace “gay romance and sex” with one of the sexual fetishes I personally disapprove of and think should be socially stigmatized. The distinction I’m getting at here is different.)
I challenge you to articulate the relevant difference between those two scenarios in your analytical framework. I claim any framework which can’t is flinching away from a hard part of describing the type signatures and natures of Values and Goodness. This is the sense in which I meant that your rough definitions miss central concepts.
(Unless you assert that the two cases aren’t different, in which case we might just have a more object-level disagreement, as opposed to you being wrong about your word usage.)
As for what central concepts your framework is missing — this deserves a longer response, but in lieu of that I will briefly gesture at one concept. There is the curious but well-known phenomenon whereby there is a difference between what a human wants (in the sense of revealed preference) and what he or she wants to want (in a particular complicated sense I’m only gesturing at). As you understand well, a man can have false beliefs about what he wants. For the same reason, he can have false beliefs about what he wants-to-want. (In particular, verbal description of what one wants-to-want are not identical to what one actually wants-to-want.)
I claim the self-hating socially-stigmatized heroin-addict has correct beliefs about what he wants-to-want, whereas the self-hating socially-stigmatized sexual-deviant has false beliefs thereof. This distinction is not one of yumminess-upon-imagining (each feels yummy upon imagining using heroin and having deviant sex), and it is not one of memetic pressure (each’s behavior is disapproved of by society, and by me personally). But the distinction is central to understanding Human Values and Goodness.
I would strongly agree with this critique, the characterization of goodness as memetics is severely under theorized, memeticity is a superficial aspect and there is a deeper structure worth considering.
I do not think this matches my usage of the words “Human Values” or (especially) “Goodness” (nor of the usage of the rare intelligent people whose ethical judgement I trust). The concept of yumminess/yearning is relevant; the concept of popular assertions of what one oughts to yearn for is relevant. But I object to both of these rough definitions on the grounds that they miss many central aspects.
Concretely: consider a heroin addict, in a memetic environment that strongly disapproves of heroin usage. Because of their addiction, by far the greatest yumminess they feel when imagining things is more heroin (and things which may have brought their past-self feelings of yumminess no longer have that feeling, because it cannot compete). In your framework, getting more heroin is part of their Values, but not part of their culture’s Goodness.
So far so good — but now compare to your example of a gay man in a memetic environment that strongly disapproves of gay romance and sex. As far as I can tell, your analytic framework treats these cases exactly identically: it’s a conflict between Values and Goodness, maybe with the man repeatedly tying himself up in knots to try and fail to crush his Values in the name of Goodness. But I claim this is wrong: an accurate account of Values and Goodness should be able to distinguish these two scenarios. (Lest you think I’m letting my own biases slip in: replace “gay romance and sex” with one of the sexual fetishes I personally disapprove of and think should be socially stigmatized. The distinction I’m getting at here is different.)
I challenge you to articulate the relevant difference between those two scenarios in your analytical framework. I claim any framework which can’t is flinching away from a hard part of describing the type signatures and natures of Values and Goodness. This is the sense in which I meant that your rough definitions miss central concepts.
(Unless you assert that the two cases aren’t different, in which case we might just have a more object-level disagreement, as opposed to you being wrong about your word usage.)
As for what central concepts your framework is missing — this deserves a longer response, but in lieu of that I will briefly gesture at one concept. There is the curious but well-known phenomenon whereby there is a difference between what a human wants (in the sense of revealed preference) and what he or she wants to want (in a particular complicated sense I’m only gesturing at). As you understand well, a man can have false beliefs about what he wants. For the same reason, he can have false beliefs about what he wants-to-want. (In particular, verbal description of what one wants-to-want are not identical to what one actually wants-to-want.)
I claim the self-hating socially-stigmatized heroin-addict has correct beliefs about what he wants-to-want, whereas the self-hating socially-stigmatized sexual-deviant has false beliefs thereof. This distinction is not one of yumminess-upon-imagining (each feels yummy upon imagining using heroin and having deviant sex), and it is not one of memetic pressure (each’s behavior is disapproved of by society, and by me personally). But the distinction is central to understanding Human Values and Goodness.
I would strongly agree with this critique, the characterization of goodness as memetics is severely under theorized, memeticity is a superficial aspect and there is a deeper structure worth considering.