Eliezer’s metaethics does not work for solving ethical dilemmas...
Nobody’s metaethics works for solving ethical dilemmas. That’s not the purpose of metaethics. Metaethics is about the status of moral claims, whether they’re objectively true, knowable, etc. But for actually figuring out what to do, you want normative / applied ethics.
To the best of my knowledge, Eliezer has never tried to give a complete account of his views on normative ethics. In fact, I suspect he doesn’t have a completely worked-out theory of normative ethics, since the point of Coherent Extrapolated Volition is it attempts to give you a way of programming ethics into an AI without having a complete theory of normative ethics.
While Eliezer calls himself a “consequentialist,” he often seems not to be a stereotypical consequentialist a la Peter Singer. The closest thing to a detailed account of his normative I’ve seen him give is here. Notably, he rejects the claim that “That virtuous actions always correspond to maximizing expected utility under some utility function.”
The answers to ethical dilemnas are factual questions (in case you see a problem here, I’m a moral error theorist about conventional morality). Metaethics represents the reason to believe that there are factual answers at all. Therefore no means of solving ethical dilemnas can work without metaethics, and any means that does work must be based on a metaethic.
In my post, I argue that Elizier’s metaethics cannot lead to a system of normative ethics that actually solves ethical dilemnas, as it falls apart whenever confronted by a scenario where philosophical reasoning and emotive conclusions contradict. The A example was intended to show this.
Elizier has minor exceptions to consequentialism, but is a consequentialist for most practical purposes. Hence:
“Where music is concerned, I care about the journey.
When lives are at stake, I shut up and multiply.”
However, the arguments he use in “The Moral Void” can be used against his own consequentialism whenever it is the case that an actor will feel much more guilty for acting in the consequentialist manner than against it because his basic metaethics involves humans being moral not because of an objective reason in the universe but because they want to be.
If the previous link didn’t convince you, I’d also recommend Can’t Unbirth A Child, as an example of Eliezer not fitting the stereotype of a consequentialist.
I may have to adjust on the question of whether Eliezer is in minor or major ways a non-Consequentialist, but it still isn’t relevant as my initial argument against him still applies.
Nobody’s metaethics works for solving ethical dilemmas. That’s not the purpose of metaethics. Metaethics is about the status of moral claims, whether they’re objectively true, knowable, etc. But for actually figuring out what to do, you want normative / applied ethics.
To the best of my knowledge, Eliezer has never tried to give a complete account of his views on normative ethics. In fact, I suspect he doesn’t have a completely worked-out theory of normative ethics, since the point of Coherent Extrapolated Volition is it attempts to give you a way of programming ethics into an AI without having a complete theory of normative ethics.
While Eliezer calls himself a “consequentialist,” he often seems not to be a stereotypical consequentialist a la Peter Singer. The closest thing to a detailed account of his normative I’ve seen him give is here. Notably, he rejects the claim that “That virtuous actions always correspond to maximizing expected utility under some utility function.”
The answers to ethical dilemnas are factual questions (in case you see a problem here, I’m a moral error theorist about conventional morality). Metaethics represents the reason to believe that there are factual answers at all. Therefore no means of solving ethical dilemnas can work without metaethics, and any means that does work must be based on a metaethic.
In my post, I argue that Elizier’s metaethics cannot lead to a system of normative ethics that actually solves ethical dilemnas, as it falls apart whenever confronted by a scenario where philosophical reasoning and emotive conclusions contradict. The A example was intended to show this.
Elizier has minor exceptions to consequentialism, but is a consequentialist for most practical purposes. Hence:
“Where music is concerned, I care about the journey.
When lives are at stake, I shut up and multiply.”
However, the arguments he use in “The Moral Void” can be used against his own consequentialism whenever it is the case that an actor will feel much more guilty for acting in the consequentialist manner than against it because his basic metaethics involves humans being moral not because of an objective reason in the universe but because they want to be.
If the previous link didn’t convince you, I’d also recommend Can’t Unbirth A Child, as an example of Eliezer not fitting the stereotype of a consequentialist.
I may have to adjust on the question of whether Eliezer is in minor or major ways a non-Consequentialist, but it still isn’t relevant as my initial argument against him still applies.