Many commenters seem to be reading this post as implying something like slavery and violence being good or at least morally okay. Which is weird, since I didn’t get that impression—especially since the poster explicitly says they don’t support slavery and even quotes someone saying that a defense of slavery was an “idiotic” explanation.
I don’t read the post as making any claim about what is ultimately right or wrong. Rather, I read it as a caution similar to the common points of “how sure are you that you would have made the morally correct choice if you had been born as someone benefiting from slavery back when it was a thing” combined with “the values that we endorse are strongly shaped by self-interest and motivated cognition”; both the kinds of sentiments that were made many times in the Sequences as well as the original Overcoming Bias blog.
Many commenters seem to be reading this post as implying something like slavery and violence being good or at least morally okay… I read it as a caution similar to the common points of “how sure are you that you would have made the morally correct choice if you had been born as someone benefiting from slavery back when it was a thing” combined with “the values that we endorse are strongly shaped by self-interest and motivated cognition”
I don’t agree with your characterization of the post’s claims. The title is synonymous with “morality is arbitrary virtue-signaling,” and it promotes a cynical attitude toward moral argument in general. There is nothing wrong with having a cynical attitude, provided it’s useful and/or correct. Is there reason to believe such cynicism is in fact useful or correct? The post doesn’t promote moral cynicism by considering more sincere moral perspectives, falsifying them, and then promoting a cynical approach as a better alternative. It promotes cynicism by painting an evocative series of images that encourage us to cast ourselves as George Washington (rather than as one of his 150 slaves) or as a powerful Bronze-age warrior (rather than as one of the women he just raped and murdered in his latest town-sacking), and thereby take a cynical stance toward our own modern-day morality because it’s just an arbitrary material fact that we were born as ourselves rather than as slaveholders and city-sackers.
I do think that characterizing morality as a way of promoting attitudes that lead to net better outcomes for their subscribers (despite short-term temptations) is a pretty good one. And it would therefore be true that morality is governed by materiality. But materiality is anything but arbitrary and self-congratulatory. It’s as objective as the ratio of slaves-to-Washingtons and peasants-to-knights. If morality is about living well within our material conditions, then morality is mainly objective, asking questions like “given my resources and abilities, what is the best-in-expectation way for me to live in modern society?” There are other questions one could ask that might lead to different answers and actions, such as “what’s the best way to improve the state of the world for my grandchildren?” How we prioritize these questions is probably more subjective. But the answers to the questions is in theory mostly objective.
From this point of view, the idea that we’d have been pro-slavery had we been born into a slaveowning family should no more disturb us than the idea that we’d have been flat-Earthers if born in a place and time when the Earth was widely considered to be flat.
Kaj_Sotala’s interpretation of my post is absolutely correct.
It promotes cynicism by painting an evocative series of images that encourage us to cast ourselves as George Washington (rather than as one of his 150 slaves) or as a powerful Bronze-age warrior (rather than as one of the women he just raped and murdered in his latest town-sacking), and thereby take a cynical stance toward our own modern-day morality because it’s just an arbitrary material fact that we were born as ourselves rather than as slaveholders and city-sackers.
There’s an obvious reason I did not encourage anyone to view themselves as the victims; my assumption is that no one needs any convincing to agree being raped and murdered is awful. The second reason I did not focus on that perspective is because my argument was about how memeplexes achieve dominance, which means that the opinions of the historically oppressed is by definition irrelevant.
I understand your point is that material circumstances control the moral ideas prevalent in a culture, and that these cultural ideals in turn control individual beliefs and actions. Our morality and that of our ancestors is therefore determined largely by material circumstances.
Alongside this deterministic framework, you are arguing for a Dawkins selfis meme-based explanation for which cultural ideas survive and flourish. Specifically, you are arguing that historical material circumstances favored the survival of a pro-slavery, pro-war morality, while modern circumstances favor survival of an anti-slavery, minimal- or anti-war morality. Which view we hold is an accident of birth, and knowing this, we should treat our moral views with some skepticism and cynicism. Under this relativist perspective, being pro-slavery isactually an equally valid moral stance as being anti-slavery.
I think your post could have benefitted by an explicit consideration of whether or not there are objective moral truths that we can uncover. It’s certainly scary in some sense if an accident of birth can cause us to miss out on objective moral truth. Missionaries used to travel the globe to tell poor benighted tribes about Jesus and solve this exact problem. I’m an atheist, so I think they screwed up figuring out “objective morality.” But I remain sympathetic to the idea that there are objective moral truths to be discovered. So what’s scary isn’t necessary that there is no morality and all things are relative. It may be that there is morality and we’re screwing it up!
From that point of view, cynical skepticism toward one’s own moral view doesn’t seem to me the proper attitude. Neither does being scared of how materiality shapes one’s morality: historically, you were much more likely to have been born a slave than a slaver. While it would have been terrible to be a slave, from a moral perspective, you’re relatively safe from accidentally having been born into a pro-slavery worldview.
As an alternative to cynicism and fear, I prefer sincere curiosity about how to think about morality and a healthy appreciation for how materiality and culture shapes our worldview.
Thank you for your reply, you accurately summarized my argument.
Regarding “objective” morality, I honestly would have no idea where to start, especially as an atheist. I was hoping my post would prompt some responses pushing back on this particular point. I’m not opposed towards working to discover what this “objective” morality would be, but given my argument above there should be significant caution that we’re not just slumbering into yet another self-congratulatory narrative. Along that same line, nothing I wrote above should imply that I lack curiosity, hopefully I established quite the opposite.
I think that if there is an objective morality, then you can use your concern about self-congratulatory narratives as a starting point. What moral view is leading you to think there’s any problem at all with enjoying a self-congratulatory narrative? Once you’ve identified it, you can figure out what other moral positions it might imply.
What moral view is leading you to think there’s any problem at all with enjoying a self-congratulatory narrative?
It’s not any specific moral view that causes me concern, but rather how the entire edifice is organized. There’s likely no end to the specific moral principles I can cite which hit me on a visceral level which I, purportedly, feel very strongly about. This includes the revulsion against slavery, which in my case partly extends even to consensual labor arrangements that have a significant imbalance of power (this is most prominent for the hospitality industry in poor countries serving a much richer clientele).
But when I contemplate how genetically identical I am to people from just a few hundred years ago, and when I see what those people felt strongly about, it’s reasonable for this to generate some pause on my end. Because what it demonstrates to me is that even the core visceral disgust I reflexively feel can’t be trusted. Nevertheless, I still rely heavily on this disgust reflex but it’s with the understanding that I’m engaging in fiction but have no better alternative.
Regarding “objective” morality, I honestly would have no idea where to start, especially as an atheist
It helps to separate the epistemic version of moral realism .. that there are mind independently true true moral propositions… from the ontological version …that there are moral facts or properties.
It also helps to notice that “objective” doesn’t have to equate to “universal”. There might be an objective answer to “what is the objectively correct morality for this particular set of circumstances’.
Many commenters seem to be reading this post as implying something like slavery and violence being good or at least morally okay. Which is weird, since I didn’t get that impression—especially since the poster explicitly says they don’t support slavery and even quotes someone saying that a defense of slavery was an “idiotic” explanation.
I don’t read the post as making any claim about what is ultimately right or wrong. Rather, I read it as a caution similar to the common points of “how sure are you that you would have made the morally correct choice if you had been born as someone benefiting from slavery back when it was a thing” combined with “the values that we endorse are strongly shaped by self-interest and motivated cognition”; both the kinds of sentiments that were made many times in the Sequences as well as the original Overcoming Bias blog.
I don’t agree with your characterization of the post’s claims. The title is synonymous with “morality is arbitrary virtue-signaling,” and it promotes a cynical attitude toward moral argument in general. There is nothing wrong with having a cynical attitude, provided it’s useful and/or correct. Is there reason to believe such cynicism is in fact useful or correct? The post doesn’t promote moral cynicism by considering more sincere moral perspectives, falsifying them, and then promoting a cynical approach as a better alternative. It promotes cynicism by painting an evocative series of images that encourage us to cast ourselves as George Washington (rather than as one of his 150 slaves) or as a powerful Bronze-age warrior (rather than as one of the women he just raped and murdered in his latest town-sacking), and thereby take a cynical stance toward our own modern-day morality because it’s just an arbitrary material fact that we were born as ourselves rather than as slaveholders and city-sackers.
I do think that characterizing morality as a way of promoting attitudes that lead to net better outcomes for their subscribers (despite short-term temptations) is a pretty good one. And it would therefore be true that morality is governed by materiality. But materiality is anything but arbitrary and self-congratulatory. It’s as objective as the ratio of slaves-to-Washingtons and peasants-to-knights. If morality is about living well within our material conditions, then morality is mainly objective, asking questions like “given my resources and abilities, what is the best-in-expectation way for me to live in modern society?” There are other questions one could ask that might lead to different answers and actions, such as “what’s the best way to improve the state of the world for my grandchildren?” How we prioritize these questions is probably more subjective. But the answers to the questions is in theory mostly objective.
From this point of view, the idea that we’d have been pro-slavery had we been born into a slaveowning family should no more disturb us than the idea that we’d have been flat-Earthers if born in a place and time when the Earth was widely considered to be flat.
Kaj_Sotala’s interpretation of my post is absolutely correct.
There’s an obvious reason I did not encourage anyone to view themselves as the victims; my assumption is that no one needs any convincing to agree being raped and murdered is awful. The second reason I did not focus on that perspective is because my argument was about how memeplexes achieve dominance, which means that the opinions of the historically oppressed is by definition irrelevant.
I understand your point is that material circumstances control the moral ideas prevalent in a culture, and that these cultural ideals in turn control individual beliefs and actions. Our morality and that of our ancestors is therefore determined largely by material circumstances.
Alongside this deterministic framework, you are arguing for a Dawkins selfis meme-based explanation for which cultural ideas survive and flourish. Specifically, you are arguing that historical material circumstances favored the survival of a pro-slavery, pro-war morality, while modern circumstances favor survival of an anti-slavery, minimal- or anti-war morality. Which view we hold is an accident of birth, and knowing this, we should treat our moral views with some skepticism and cynicism. Under this relativist perspective, being pro-slavery is actually an equally valid moral stance as being anti-slavery.
I think your post could have benefitted by an explicit consideration of whether or not there are objective moral truths that we can uncover. It’s certainly scary in some sense if an accident of birth can cause us to miss out on objective moral truth. Missionaries used to travel the globe to tell poor benighted tribes about Jesus and solve this exact problem. I’m an atheist, so I think they screwed up figuring out “objective morality.” But I remain sympathetic to the idea that there are objective moral truths to be discovered. So what’s scary isn’t necessary that there is no morality and all things are relative. It may be that there is morality and we’re screwing it up!
From that point of view, cynical skepticism toward one’s own moral view doesn’t seem to me the proper attitude. Neither does being scared of how materiality shapes one’s morality: historically, you were much more likely to have been born a slave than a slaver. While it would have been terrible to be a slave, from a moral perspective, you’re relatively safe from accidentally having been born into a pro-slavery worldview.
As an alternative to cynicism and fear, I prefer sincere curiosity about how to think about morality and a healthy appreciation for how materiality and culture shapes our worldview.
Thank you for your reply, you accurately summarized my argument.
Regarding “objective” morality, I honestly would have no idea where to start, especially as an atheist. I was hoping my post would prompt some responses pushing back on this particular point. I’m not opposed towards working to discover what this “objective” morality would be, but given my argument above there should be significant caution that we’re not just slumbering into yet another self-congratulatory narrative. Along that same line, nothing I wrote above should imply that I lack curiosity, hopefully I established quite the opposite.
I think that if there is an objective morality, then you can use your concern about self-congratulatory narratives as a starting point. What moral view is leading you to think there’s any problem at all with enjoying a self-congratulatory narrative? Once you’ve identified it, you can figure out what other moral positions it might imply.
It doesn’t have to be a moral objection. It’s circular argumentation, so it already goes against epistemic norms.
It’s not any specific moral view that causes me concern, but rather how the entire edifice is organized. There’s likely no end to the specific moral principles I can cite which hit me on a visceral level which I, purportedly, feel very strongly about. This includes the revulsion against slavery, which in my case partly extends even to consensual labor arrangements that have a significant imbalance of power (this is most prominent for the hospitality industry in poor countries serving a much richer clientele).
But when I contemplate how genetically identical I am to people from just a few hundred years ago, and when I see what those people felt strongly about, it’s reasonable for this to generate some pause on my end. Because what it demonstrates to me is that even the core visceral disgust I reflexively feel can’t be trusted. Nevertheless, I still rely heavily on this disgust reflex but it’s with the understanding that I’m engaging in fiction but have no better alternative.
It helps to separate the epistemic version of moral realism .. that there are mind independently true true moral propositions… from the ontological version …that there are moral facts or properties.
It also helps to notice that “objective” doesn’t have to equate to “universal”. There might be an objective answer to “what is the objectively correct morality for this particular set of circumstances’.