A rejection of certain types of robust realism about value, on which value is just a brute feature of the world “out there.”
Its a three horse race , not a two horse race. There isn’t just realism and subjectivism (individual level relativism), there’s group level ethics.
Its s fact that it exists, and what it exists to share behaviour...otherwise there would not be such behaviour shaping social phenomena as praise and blame, punishment and reward.
A related embrace of a kind of Humeanism about means and ends. The world can tell you the means to your ends, but it cannot tell you what ends to pursue — those must in some sense be there already, in your (idealized?) heart.
But society can tell you what not to do.
You have noticed that some subjects might have murdery values. So you can’t get any intuitively satisfactory ethics out of everyone doing what they value, since some people want to murder.
Your solution is
.. the “ideal” part of ideal subjectivism? But it’s not clear that would turn murdery people into non murdery people … and it’s voluntary anyway
..if they don’t value reflective equilibrium, they’re not going to do it.
An aspiration to maintain some kind of deep connection between what’s valuable, and what actually moves us to act (though note that this connection is not universalized — e.g., what’s valuable relative to you may not be motivating to others).
Why? If you want an entirely voluntary system of ethics, I suppose that is valuable.
There’s a sense in which ethical motivation always comes from what individuals value, but that doesn’t imply that motivation has to come from a subjective or solipsistic process. Group morality also has a solution: society punishes you, or threatens to, and that works on your subjective (but shared) desire not to be punished.
Theres probably a moral question about what values people should or would voluntarily pursue, once the problems of do-not-steal and do-not-kill have been solved. Making a voluntary , private, decision to achieve your own values.
But the thou-shalt-nots,the aspects of ethics that are basically public, basically obligatory, and basically about not putting negative value on other people, are more important. That’s built into the word “supererogatory”.
I agree that there are other meta-ethical options, including ones that focus more on groups, cultures, agents in general, and so on, rather than individual agents (an earlier draft had a brief reference to this). And I think it’s possible that some of these are in a better position to make sense of certain morality-related things, especially obligation-flavored ones, than the individually-focused subjectivism considered here (I gesture a little at something in this vicinity at the end of this post). I wanted a narrower focus in this post, though.
Now I’m trying to recall a reference. Was there a LW post in the last few years about treating society, rather than individuals, as the subject of value learning? Maybe also something about how non-western societies are less likely to put individual values as paramount?
Its a three horse race , not a two horse race. There isn’t just realism and subjectivism (individual level relativism), there’s group level ethics.
Its s fact that it exists, and what it exists to share behaviour...otherwise there would not be such behaviour shaping social phenomena as praise and blame, punishment and reward.
But society can tell you what not to do.
You have noticed that some subjects might have murdery values. So you can’t get any intuitively satisfactory ethics out of everyone doing what they value, since some people want to murder.
Your solution is .. the “ideal” part of ideal subjectivism? But it’s not clear that would turn murdery people into non murdery people … and it’s voluntary anyway ..if they don’t value reflective equilibrium, they’re not going to do it.
Why? If you want an entirely voluntary system of ethics, I suppose that is valuable.
There’s a sense in which ethical motivation always comes from what individuals value, but that doesn’t imply that motivation has to come from a subjective or solipsistic process. Group morality also has a solution: society punishes you, or threatens to, and that works on your subjective (but shared) desire not to be punished.
Theres probably a moral question about what values people should or would voluntarily pursue, once the problems of do-not-steal and do-not-kill have been solved. Making a voluntary , private, decision to achieve your own values.
But the thou-shalt-nots,the aspects of ethics that are basically public, basically obligatory, and basically about not putting negative value on other people, are more important. That’s built into the word “supererogatory”.
I agree that there are other meta-ethical options, including ones that focus more on groups, cultures, agents in general, and so on, rather than individual agents (an earlier draft had a brief reference to this). And I think it’s possible that some of these are in a better position to make sense of certain morality-related things, especially obligation-flavored ones, than the individually-focused subjectivism considered here (I gesture a little at something in this vicinity at the end of this post). I wanted a narrower focus in this post, though.
Ok. I’m glad you noticed, in the linked post, that utilitarianism doesn’t have a decent model of obligation.
Now I’m trying to recall a reference. Was there a LW post in the last few years about treating society, rather than individuals, as the subject of value learning? Maybe also something about how non-western societies are less likely to put individual values as paramount?
This one?
Yes!