I think that RobbBB has already done a great job of responding to this, but I’d like to have a try at it too. I’d like to explore the math/morality analogy a bit more. I think I can make a better comparison.
Math is an enormous field of study. Even if we limited our concept of “math” to drawing graphs of mathematical functions, we would still have an enormous range of different kinds of functions: Hyperbolic, exponential, polynomial, all the trigonometric functions, etc. etc.
Instead of comparing math to morality, I think it’s more illustrative to compare math to the wider topic of “value-driven-behaviour”.
An intelligent creature could have all sorts of different values. Even within the realm of modern, western, democratic morality we still disagree about whether it is just and propper to execute murderers. We disagree about the extent to which a state is obligated to protect its citizens and provide a safety net. We disagree about the importance of honesty, of freedom vs. safety, freedom of speech vs. protection from hate speech.
If you look at the wider world, and at cultures through history, you’ll find a much wider range of moralities. People who thought it was not just permitted, but morally required that they enslave people, restrict the freedoms of their own families, and execute people for religious transgressions.
You might think that these are all better or worse approximations of the “one true morality”, and that a superintelligence could work out what that true morality is. But we don’t think so. We believe that these are different moralities. Fundamentally, these people have different values.
Then we can step further out, and look at the “insane” value systems that a person could hold. Perhaps we could believe that all people are so flawed that they must be killed. Or we could believe that no one should ever be allowed to die, and so we extend life indefinitely, even for people in agony. Or we might believe everyone should be lobotomised for our own safety.
And then there are the truly inhuman value systems: the paperclip maximisers, the prime pebble sorters, and the baby eaters. The idea is that a superintelligence could comprehend any and all of these. It would be able to optimise for any one of them, and foresee results and possible consequences for all of them. The question is: which one would it actually use?
A superintelligence might be able to understand all of human math and more besides, but we wouldn’t build one to simply “do all of maths”. We would build it with a particular goal and purpose in mind. For instance (to pick an arbitrary example) we might need it to create graphs of Hyperbolic functions. It’s a bad example, I know. But I hope it serves to help make the point.
Likewise, we would want the intelligence to adopt a specific set of values. Perhaps we would want them to be modern, western, democratic liberal values.
I wouldn’t expect a superintelligence to start generating Hyperbolic functions, despite the fact that it’s smart enough to do so. The AI would have no reason to start doing that particular task. It might be smart enough to work out that that’s what we want of course, but that doesn’t mean it’ll do it (unless we’ve already solved the problem of getting them to do “what humans want it to do”.) If we want Hyperbolic functions, we’ll have to program the machine with enough focus to make it do that.
Likewise, a computer could have any arbitrary utility function, any arbitrary set of values. We can’t make sure that a computer has the “right” values unless we know how to clearly define the values we want.
With Hyperbolic functions, it’s relatively easy to describe exactly, unambiguously, what we want. But morality is much harder to pin down.
An intelligent creature could have all sorts of different values. Even within the realm of modern, western, democratic morality we still disagree about whether it is just and proper to execute murderers. We disagree about the extent to which a state is obligated to protect its citizens and provide a safety net. We disagree about the importance of honesty, of freedom vs. safety, freedom of speech vs. protection from hate speech.
The range of possible values is only a problem if you hold to the theory that morality “is” values, without any further qualifications, then an AI is going to have trouble figuring out morality apriori. If you take the view that morality is a fairly uniform way of handling values, or a subset of values, then so long as then the AI can figure it out by taking prevailing values as input, as data.
(We will be arguing that:-
Ethics fulfils a role in society, and originated as a mutually beneficial way of regulating individual actions to minimise conflict, and solve coordination problems. (“Social Realism”).
No spooky or supernatural entities or properties are required to explain ethics (naturalism is true)
There is no universally correct system of ethics. (Strong moral realism is false)
Multiple ethical constructions are possible...
Our version of ethical objectivism needs to be distinguished from universalism as well as realism,
Ethical universalism is unikely...it is unlikely that different societies would have identical ethics under different circumstances. Reproductive technology must affect sexual ethics. The availability of different food sources in the environment must affect vegetarianism versus meat eating. However, a compromise position can allow object-level ethics to vary non-arbitrarily.
In other words, there is not an objective answer to questions of the form “should I do X”, but there is an answer to the question “As a member of a society with such-and-such prevailing conditions, should I do X”. In other words still, there is no universal (object level) ethics, but there there is an objective-enough ethics, which is relativised to societies and situations, by objective features of societies and situations...our meta ethics is a function from situations to object level ethics, and since both the functions and its parameters are objective, the output is objective.
By objectivism-without-realism, we mean that mutually isolated groups of agents would be able to converge onto the same object level ethics under the same circumstances, although this convergence doesn’t imply the pre-existence of some sort of moral object, as in standard realism. We take ethics to be a social arrangement, or cultural artefact which fulfils a certain role or purpose, characterised by the reduction of conflict, allocation of resources and coordination of behaviour. By objectivism-without-universalism we mean that groups of agents under different circumstances will come up with different ethics. In either case, the functional role of ethics, in combination with the constraints imposed by concrete situations, conspire to narrow down the range of workable solutions, and (sufficiently) ideal reasoners will therefore be able to re-discover them.
)
If you look at the wider world, and at cultures through history, you’ll find a much wider range of moralities. People who thought it was not just permitted, but morally required that they enslave people, restrict the freedoms of their own families, and execute people for religious transgressions.
I don’t have to believe those are equally valid. Descriptive relativism does not imply normative relativism. I would expect a sufficiently advanced AI, with access to data pertaining to the situation, to come up with the optimum morality for the situation—an answer that is objective but not universal. Where morality needs to vary because situational factors (societal wealth, reproductive technology, level of threat/security, etc). it would, but otherwise the AI would not deviate form the situational optimum to come up with reproductions of whatever suboptimal morality existed in the past.
You might think that these are all better or worse approximations of the “one true morality”, and that a superintelligence could work out what that true morality is. But we don’t think so. We believe that these are different moralities. Fundamentally, these people have different values.
Well, we believe that different moralities and different values are two different axes.
Likewise, we would want the intelligence to adopt a specific set of values. Perhaps we would want them to be modern, western, democratic liberal values.
My hypothesis is that an AI in a modern society would come out with that or something better. (For instance, egalitarianism isn’t some arbitrary pecadillo, it is a very general and highly rediscoverable meta-level principle that
makes it easier for people to co-operate).
Likewise, a computer could have any arbitrary utility function, any arbitrary set of values. We can’t make sure that a computer has the “right” values unless we know how to clearly define the values we want.
To perform the calculation, it needs to be able to research out values, which it can. It doesn’t need to share them, as I have noted several times.
And then there are the truly inhuman value systems: the paperclip maximisers, the prime pebble sorters, and the baby eaters. The idea is that a superintelligence could comprehend any and all of these. It would be able to optimise for any one of them, and foresee results and possible consequences for all of them. The question is: which one would it actually use?
You could build an AI that adopts random value,s and pursues them relentlessly, I suppose, but that is pretty much a case of deliberately building an unfriendly AI.
What you need is a scenario where building an AI to want to understand, research, and eventually join in with huamn morality goes horribly wrong.
With Hyperbolic functions, it’s relatively easy to describe exactly, unambiguously, what we want. But morality is much harder to pin down.
In detail or in principle? Given what assumptions?
So… what you’re suggesting, in short, is that a sufficiently intelligent AI can work out the set of morals which are most optimal in a given human society. (There’s the question of whether it would converge on the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the society as a whole, or the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the individual).
But let’s say the AI works out an optimal set of morals for its current society. What’s to stop the AI from metaphorically shrugging and ignoring those morals in order to rather build more paperclips? Especially given that it does not share those values.
(There’s the question of whether it would converge on the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the society as a whole, or the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the individual).
Which individual? The might be some decision theory which promotes the interests of Joe Soap, against the interests of society, but there is no way i would call it morality.
But let’s say the AI works out an optimal set of morals for its current society. What’s to stop the AI from metaphorically shrugging and ignoring those morals in order to rather build more paperclips?
Its motivational system. We’re already assuming it’s motivated to make the deduction, we need to assume it’s motivated to implement. I am not bypassing the need for a goal driven AI to have appropriate goals, I am by passing the need for a detailed and accurate account of human ethics to be preprogrammed.
Especially given that it does not share those values.
I am not sayngn it necessarily does not. I am saying it does not necessarily.
Which individual? The might be some decision theory which promotes the interests of Joe Soap, against the interests of society, but there is no way i would call it morality.
Ah, I may have been unclear there.
To go into more detail, then; you appear to be suggesting that optimal morality can be approached as a society-wide optimisation problem; in the current situations, these moral strictures produce a more optimal society than those, and this optimisation problem can be solved with sufficient computational resources and information.
But now, let us consider an individual example. Let us say that I find a wallet full of money on the ground. There is no owner in sight. The optimal choice for the society as a whole is that I return the money to the original owner; the optimal choice for the individual making the decision is to keep the money and use it towards my aims, whatever those are. (I can be pretty sure that the man to whom I return the money will be putting it towards his aims, not mine, and if I’m sufficiently convinced that my aims are better for society than his then I can even rationalise this action).
By my current moral structures, I would have to return the money to its original owner. But I can easily see a superintelligent AI giving serious consideration to the possibility that it can do more good for the original owner with the money than the original owner could.
Its motivational system. We’re already assuming it’s motivated to make the deduction, we need to assume it’s motivated to implement.
This, right here, is the hard problem of Friendly AI. How do we make it motivated to implement? And, more importantly, how do we know that it is motivated to implement what we think it’s motivated to implement?
I am not bypassing the need for a goal driven AI to have appropriate goals, I am by passing the need for a detailed and accurate account of human ethics to be preprogrammed.
You’re suggesting that it can figure out the complicated day-to-day minutae and the difficult edge cases on its own, given a suitable algorithm for optimising morality.
My experience in software design suggests that that algorithm needs to be really, really good. And extremely thoroughly checked, from every possible angle, by a lot of people.
I’m not denying that such an algorithm potentially exists. I can just think of far, far too many ways for it to go very badly wrong.
I am not sayngn it necessarily does not. I am saying it does not necessarily.
...point taken. It may or may not share those values.
But then we must at least give serious consideration to the worst-case scenario.
No spooky or supernatural entities or properties are required to explain ethics (naturalism is true)
There is no universally correct system of ethics. (Strong moral realism is false)
I believe that iff naturalism is true then strong moral realism is as well. If naturalism is true then there are no additional facts needed to determine what is moral than the positions of particles and the outcomes of arranging those particles differently. Any meaningful question that can be asked of how to arrange those particles or rank certain arrangements compared to others must have an objective answer because under naturalism there are no other kinds and no incomplete information. For the question to remain unanswerable at that point would require supernatural intervention and divine command theory to be true. If you there can’t be an objective answer to morality, then FAI is literally impossible. Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved.
Instead I posit that the real morality is orders of magnitude more complicated, and finding it more difficult, than for real physics, real neurology, real social science, real economics, and can only be solved once these other fields are unified.
If we were uncertain about the morality of stabbing someone, we could hypothetically stab someone to see what happens. When the particles of the knife rearranges the particles of their heart into a form that harms them, we’ll know it isn’t moral. When a particular subset of people with extensive training use their knife to very carefully and precisely rearrange the particles of the heart to help people, we call those people doctors and pay them lots of money because they’re doing good. But without a shitload of facts about how to exactly stab someone in the heart to save their life, that moral option would be lost to you. And the real morality is a superset that includes that action along with all others.
If naturalism is true then there are no additional facts needed to determine what is moral than the positions of particles and the outcomes of arranging those particles differently. Any meaningful question that can be asked of how to arrange those particles or rank certain arrangements compared to others must have an objective answer because under naturalism there are no other kinds and no incomplete information.
Even if it were true that under naturalism we could determine the outcome of various arrangements of particles, wouldn’t we still be left with the question of which final outcome was the most morally preferable?
Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved.
But, you and I might have different moral preferences. How (under naturalism) do we objectively decide between your preferences and mine? And, Isn’t it also possible that neither your preferences nor my preferences are objectively moral?
Even if it were true that under naturalism we could determine the outcome of various arrangements of particles, wouldn’t we still be left with the question of which final outcome was the most morally preferable?
Yup.
But that’s sort-of contained within “the positions of particles” (so long as all their other properties are included, such as temperature and chemical connections and so on...might need to include rays of light and non-particle stuff too!). The two are just different ways of describing the same thing. Just like every object around you could be described either with their usual names, (“keyboard:, “desk”, etc) or with an elaborate molecule by molecule description. Plenty of other descriptions are possible too (like “rectangular black colored thing with a bunch of buttons with letters on it” describes my keyboard kinda).
How (under naturalism) do we objectively decide between your preferences and mine?
You don’t. True preferences (as opposed to mistaken preferences) aren’t something you get to decide. They are facts.
ut that’s sort-of contained within “the positions of particles” (so long as all their other properties are included, such as temperature and chemical connections and so on...might need to include rays of light and non-particle stuff too!). The two are just different ways of describing the same thing. Just like every object around you could be described either with their usual names, (“keyboard:, “desk”, etc) or with an elaborate molecule by molecule description. Plenty of other descriptions are possible too (like “rectangular black colored thing with a bunch of buttons with letters on it” describes my keyboard kinda).
That’s an expression of ethical naturalism not a defence of ethcial naturalism.
How (under naturalism) do we objectively decide between your preferences and mine?
You don’t. True preferences (as opposed to mistaken preferences) aren’t something you get to decide. They are facts.
Missing the point. Ethics needs to sort good actors from bad—decisions about punishments and rewards depend on it.
PS are you the same person as rkyeun? If not, to what extent are you on the same page?
Missing the point. Ethics needs to sort good actors from bad—decisions about punishments and rewards depend on it.
(I’d say need to sort good choices from bad. Which includes the choice to punish or reward.) Discovering which choices are good and which are bad is a fact finding mission. Because:
1) it’s a fact whether a certain choice will successfully fulfill a certain desire or not
And 2) that’s what “good” literally means: desirable.
So that’s what any question of goodness will be about: what will satisfy desires.
PS are you the same person as rkyeun? If not, to what extent are you on the same page?
No I’m not rkyeun. As for being on the same page...well I’m definitely a moral realist. I don’t know about their first iff-then statement though. Seems to me that strong moral realism could still exist if supernaturalism were true. Also, talking in terms of molecules is ridiculously impractical and unnecessary. I only talked in those terms because I was replying to a reply to those terms :P
I’d say need to sort good choices from bad. Which includes the choice to punish or reward.) Discovering which choices are good and which are bad is a fact finding mission. Because:
1) it’s a fact whether a certain choice will successfully fulfill a certain desire or not
And 2) that’s what “good” literally means: desirable.
So that’s what any question of goodness will be about: what will satisfy desires.
Whose desires? The murderer wants to murder the victim, the victim doesn’t want to be murdered. You have realism without objectivism. There is a realistic fact about people’s preferences, but since the same act can increase one person’s utility and reduce anothers, there is no unambiguous way to label an arbitrry outcome.
The murderer wants to murder the victim, the victim doesn’t want to be murdered.
Murder isn’t a foundational desire. It’s only a means to some other end. And usually isn’t even a good way to accomplish its ultimate end! It’s risky, for one thing. So usually it’s a false desire: if they knew the consequences of this murder compared to all other choices available, and they were correctly thinking about how to most certainly get what they really ultimately want, they’d almost always see a better choice.
(But even if it were foundational, not a means to some other end, you could imagine some simulation of murder satisfying both the “murderer”’s need to do such a thing and everyone else’s need for safety. Even the “murderer” would have a better chance of satisfaction, because they would be far less likely to be killed or imprisoned prior to satisfaction.)
since the same act can increase one person’s utility and reduce anothers, there is no unambiguous way to label an arbitrry outcome.
Well first, in the most trivial way, you can unambiguously label an outcome as “good for X”. If it really is (it might not be, after all, the consequences of achieving or attempting murder might be more terrible for the would-be murderer than choosing not to attempt murder).
It works the same with (some? all?) other adjectives too. For example: soluble. Is sugar objectively soluble? Depends what you try to dissolve it in, and under what circumstances. It is objectively soluble in pure water at room temperature. It won’t dissolve in gasoline.
Second, in game theory you’ll find sometimes there are options that are best for everyone. But even when there isn’t, you can still determine which choices for the individuals maximize their chance of satisfaction and such. Objectively speaking, those will be the best choices they can make (again, that’s what it means for something to be a good choice). And morality is about making the best choices.
It can be instrumental or terminal, as can most other criminal impulses.
But even if it were foundational, not a means to some other end, you could imagine some simulation of murder satisfying both the “murderer”’s need to do such a thing and everyone else’s need for safety. Even the “murderer” would have a better chance of satisfaction, because they would be far less likely to be killed or imprisoned prior to satisfaction
You can’t solve all ethical problems by keeping everyone in permanent simulation.
Well first, in the most trivial way, you can unambiguously label an outcome as “good for X”. If it really is
That’s no good. You can’t arrive at workable ethics by putting different weightings on the same actions from different perspectives. X stealing money form Y is good for X and bad for Y, so why disregard Y’s view? An act is either permitted or forbidden, punished or praised. You can’t say it is permissible-for-X but forbidden-for-Y if it involves both of them.
It works the same with (some? all?) other adjectives too.
No, there’s no uniform treatment of all predicates. Some are one-place, some are two-place. For instance, aesthetic choices can usually be fulfilled on a person-by-person basis.
Second, in game theory you’ll find sometimes there are options that are best for everyone.
To be precise, you sometimes find solutions that leave everyone better off, and more often find solutions that leave the average person better off.
Objectively speaking, those will be the best choices they can make (again, that’s what it means for something to be a good choice). And morality is about making the best choices.
Too vague. For someone who likes killing ot kill a lot of people is the best choice for them, but not the best ethical choice.
Discovering which choices are good and which are bad is a fact finding mission… So that’s what any question of goodness will be about: what will satisfy desires.
But, what if two different people have two conflicting desires? How do we objectively find the ethical resolution to the conflict?
But, what if two different people have two conflicting desires? How do we objectively find the ethical resolution to the conflict?
Basically: game theory.
In reality, I’m not sure there ever are precise conflicts of true foundational desires. Maybe it would help if you had some real example or something. But the best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desire.
I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires. But, since you asked, here is an example:
A is a sadist. A enjoys inflicting pain in others. A really wants to hurt B. B wishes not to be hurt by A. (For the sake of argument, lets suppose that no simulation technology is available that would allow A to hurt a virtual B, and that A can be reasonably confident that A will not be arrested and brought to trial for hurting B.)
In this scenario, since A and B have conflicting desires, how does a system that defines objective goodness as that which will satisfy desires resolve the conflict?
I would be very surprised to find that a universe whose particles are arranged to maximize objective good would also contain unpaired sadists and masochists. You seem to be asking a question of the form, “But if we take all the evil out of the universe, what about evil?” And the answer is “Good riddance.” Pun intentional.
I would be very surprised to find that a universe whose particles are arranged to maximize objective good would also contain unpaired sadists and masochists.
The problem is that neither you nor BrianPansky has proposed a viable objective standard for goodness. BrianPansky said that good is that which satisfies desires, but proposed no objective method for mediating conflicting desires. And hereyou said “Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved” but proposed no way for resolving conflicts between different people’s ethical preferences. Even if satisfying desires were an otherwise reasonable standard for goodness, it is not an objective standard, since different people may have different desires. Similarly, different people may have different ethical preferences, so an individual’s ethical preference would not be an objective standard either, even if it were otherwise a reasonable standard.
You seem to be asking a question of the form, “But if we take all the evil out of the universe, what about evil?”
No, I am not asking that. I am pointing out that neither your standard nor BrianPansky’s standard is objective. Therefore neither can be used to determine what would constitute an objectively maximally good universe nor could either be used to take all evil out of the universe, nor even to objectively identify evil.
I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires.
Re-read what I said. That’s not what I said.
First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable. You can’t avoid that. Your question about conflict can’t change that (thus it’s a red herring).
As for your question: I already generally answered it in my previous post. Use Game theory. Find the actions that will actually be best for each agent. The best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desires.
I might finish a longer response to your specific example, but that takes time. For now, Richard Carrier’s Goal Theory Update probably covers a lot of that ground.
First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable.
It does not.
Wiktionary states that it means “Acting in the interest of good; ethical.” (There are a few other definitions, but I’m pretty sure this is the right one here). Looking through the definitions of ‘ethical’, I find “Morally approvable, when referring to an action that affects others; good. ” ‘Morally’ is defined as “In keeping of requirements of morality.”, and ‘morality’ is “Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results. ”
Nowhere in there do I see anything about “desirable”—it seems to simplify down to “following a moral code”. I therefore suspect that you’re implicitly assuming a moral code which equates “desirable” with “good”—I don’t think that this is the best choice of a moral code, but it is a moral code that I’ve seen arguments in favour of before.
But, importantly, it’s not the only moral code. Someone who follows a different moral code can easily find something that is good but not desirable; or desirable but not good.
First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable.
It’s not at all clear that morally good means desirable. The idea that the good is the desirable gets what force it has from the fact that “good” has a lot of nonmoral meanings. Good ice cream is desirable ice cream, but what’s that got to do with ethics?
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good. And if it would be bad to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally bad.
But when you say “good ice cream,” you aren’t talking about what it is good to do, so you aren’t talking about morality. Sometimes it is good to eat bad ice cream (e.g. you have been offered it in a situation where it would be rude to refuse), and then it is morally good to eat the bad ice cream, and sometimes it is bad to eat good ice cream (e.g. you have already eaten too much), and then it is morally bad to eat the good ice cream.
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
That’s a theory of what “morally” is adding to “good”. You need to defend it against alternatives, rather than stating it as if it were obvious.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good.
Are you sure? How many people agree with that? Do you have independent evidence , or are you just following through the consequences of your assumptions (ie arguing in circles)?
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do? It seems to me this is obviously what we are talking about. And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do. So if “morally good” is about what we should do, then “morally good” means something it is good to do.
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
What is wrong with saying it doesn’t matter at all?
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue
That’s pretty much changing the subject.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do?
And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do
I think it is about what we morally ought to do. If you are playing chess, you ought to move the bishop diagonally,
but that is again non-moral.
We morally-should do what is morally good, and hedonistically-should do what is hedonotsitcally-good, and so on. These can conflict, so they are not the same.
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”, but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
To reduce this to its fundamentals:
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
It’s changing the subject because you are switching from an isolated act to a pattern of behaviour.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”,
Such as?
but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
You are using good to mean morally good again.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
You can’t infer the non-existence of a distinction from the fact that it is not regularly marked in ordinary language.
“Jade is an ornamental rock. The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are composed of different silicate minerals:
Nephrite consists of a microcrystalline interlocking fibrous matrix of the calcium, magnesium-iron rich amphibole mineral series tremolite (calcium-magnesium)-ferroactinolite (calcium-magnesium-iron). The middle member of this series with an intermediate composition is called actinolite (the silky fibrous mineral form is one form of asbestos). The higher the iron content, the greener the colour.
Jadeite is a sodium- and aluminium-rich pyroxene. The precious form of jadeite jade is a microcrystalline interlocking growth of jadeite crystals.""
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
So you say. Actually, the idea that ethical claims can be cashed out as hypotheticals is quite contentious.
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
Back to the usual problem. What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something morally good, is true but vacuous. . What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good is debatable.
The point about the words is that it is easy to see from their origins that they are about hypothetical necessity. You NEED to do something. You MUST do it. You OUGHT to do it, that is you OWE it and you MUST pay your debt. All of that says that something has to happen, that is, that it is somehow necessary.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
I agree that some people disagree with this. They are not listening to themselves talk.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something. That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do? They would say we should do the thing that would be good to do, again precisely because it is necessary, and therefore we MUST do the supposedly morally bad thing, in order to be doing something good to do.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
You are assuming that the only thing that counts as necessity per se is physical necessity, ie there is no physical possiibity of doing otherwise. But moral necessity is more naturally cashed out as the claim that there is no permissable state of affairs in which the murdered can murder.
In less abstract terms, what we are saying is that morality does not work like a common-or-garden in-order-to-achieve-X-do-Y. because you cannot excuse yourself , or obtain permissibility, simply by stating that you have some end in mind other than being moral. Even without logical necessity, morality has social obligatoriness, and that needs to be explained, and a vanilla account in terms of hypotetical necessities in order to achieve arbtrary ends cannot do that.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something.
If the moral good were just a rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions, there would
be no need for morality as a behaviour-shaping factor in human society. Morality is not “do what thou wilt”.
That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
In some sense of “good”, but, as usual, an unqualified “good” does not give you plausible morality.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do?
It’s tautologous that we morally-should do what is morally-good.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
As I think I have stated previously, the root of this disagreement is that you believe, like Eliezer, that reality is indifferent in itself. I do not believe that.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good. Does the fact that we desire something, e.g. eating food instead of rocks, make it into something that makes us survive? Or rather, is the fact that it makes us survive the cause of the fact that we desire it? It is obvious from how evolution works that the latter is the case and not the former. So the fact that eating food is good is the cause of the fact that we desire it.
I said the basic moral question is whether it would be good to do something. You say that this is putting a “rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions.” This is only the case, according to your misunderstanding of the relationship between desire and good. Good things tend to make us desire them. But just because there is a tendency, does not mean it always works out. Things tend to fall, but they don’t fall if someone catches them. And similarly good things tend to make us desire them, but once in a while that fails to work out and someone desires something bad instead. So saying “do whatever is good to do,” is indeed morality, but it definitely does not mean “do whatever thou wilt.”
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do. I think I should do whatever would be good to do; and if that’s different from what you call moral, that’s too bad for you.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
I still don’t think you have made a good case for morality being hypothetical, since you haven’t made a case against the case against. And I still think you need to explain obligatoriness.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do.
Doens’t-care is made to care. If you don’t behave as though you care about morality, society will punish you.
However. it won’t punish you for failing to fulfil other shoulds.
I didn’t see any good case against morality being hypothetical, not even in that article.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that, and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
I did said I do not care about morally-should “as opposed” to what I should do. It could sometimes happen that I should not do something because people will punish me if I do it. In other words, I do care about what I should do, and that is determined by what would be good to do.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that,
From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good, and that their inevitable moral goodness is th result of inner psychological compulsion, not outer systems of reward and punishment, and that no systems of reward and punishment systems were ever necessary. All of that is clearly false.
and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
Unless there are non-moral gods, which there clearly are,since there are immoral and amoral acts committed to obtain them.
“From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good”
No, it does not, unless you assume that people are never mistaken about what would be good to do. I already said that people are sometimes mistaken about this, and think that it would be good to do something, when it would be bad to do it. In those cases they fail to do what is morally good.
I agree there are non-moral goods, e.g. things like pleasure and money and so on. That is because a moral good is “doing something good”, and pleasure and money are not doing anything. But people who commit immoral acts in order to obtain those goods, also believe that they are doing something good, but they are mistaken.
I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires.
Re-read what I said. That’s not what I said.
Right. You said:
In reality, I’m not sure there ever are precise conflicts of true foundational desires.
Do you have an objective set of criteria for differentiating between true foundational desires and other types of desires? If not, I wonder if it is really useful to respond to an objection arising from the rather obvious fact that people often have conflicting desires by stating that you doubt that true foundational desires are ever in precise conflict.
First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable.
As CCC has already pointed out, no, it is not apparent that (morally) good and desirable are the same thing. I won’t spend more time on this point since CCC addressed it well.
Your question about conflict can’t change that (thus it’s a red herring).
The issue that we are discussing is objective morals. Your equating goodness and desirability leads (in my example of the sadist) A to believe that hurting B is good, and B to believe that hurting B is not good. But moral realism holds that moral valuations are statements that are objectively true or false. So, conflicting desires is not a red herring, since conflicting desires leads (using your criterion) to subjective moral evaluations regarding the goodness of hurting B. Game theory on the other hand does appear to be a red herring – no application of game theory can change the fact that A and B differ regarding the desirability of hurting B.
One additional problem with equating moral goodness with desirability is that it leads to moral outcomes that are in conflict with most people’s moral intuitions. For example, in my example of the sadist A desires to hurt B, but most people’s moral intuition would say that A hurting B just because A wants to hurt B would be immoral. Similarly, rape, murder, theft, etc., could be considered morally good by your criterion if any of those things satisfied a desire. While conflicting with moral intuition does not prove that your definition is wrong, it seems to me that it should at a minimum raise a red flag. And, I think that the burden is on you to explain why anyone should reject his/her moral intuition in favor of a moral criterion that would adjudge theft, rape and murder to be morally good if they satisfy a true desire.
I believe that iff naturalism is true then strong moral realism is as well. If naturalism is true then there are no additional facts needed to determine what is moral than the positions of particles and the outcomes of arranging those particles differently. Any meaningful question that can be asked of how to arrange those particles or rank certain arrangements compared to others must have an objective answer because under naturalism there are no other kinds and no incomplete information. For the question to remain unanswerable at that point would require supernatural intervention and divine command theory to be true.
You need to refute non-cognitivism, as well as asserting naturalism.
Naturalism says that all questions that have answer have naturalistic answers, which means that if there are answers to ethical questions, they are naturalistic answers. But there is no guarantee that ethical questions mean anything, that they have answers.
For the question to remain unanswerable at that point would require supernatural intervention and divine command theory to be true.
No, only non-cogntivism, the idea that ethical questions just don’t make sense, like “how many beans make yellow?”.
. If you there can’t be an objective answer to morality, then FAI is literally impossible.
Not unless the “F” is standing for something weird. Absent objective morality, you can possibly solve the control problem, ie achieving safety by just making the AI do what you want; and absent objective morality, you can possibly achieve AI safety by instilling a suitable set of arbitrary values. Neither is easy, but you said “impossible”.
Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved.
That’s not an argument for cognitivism. When I entertain the thought “how many beans make yellow?”, that’s an arrangement of particles.
Instead I posit that the real morality is orders of magnitude more complicated, and finding it more difficult, than for real physics, real neurology, real social science, real economics, and can only be solved once these other fields are unified.
Do you have an argument for that proposal? Because I am arguing for something much simpler, that morality only needs to be grounded at the human level, so reductionism is neither denied nor employed.
If we were uncertain about the morality of stabbing someone, we could hypothetically stab someone to see what happens. When the particles of the knife rearranges the particles of their heart into a form that harms them, we’ll know it isn’t moral. When a particular subset of people with extensive training use their knife to very carefully and precisely rearrange the particles of the heart to help people, we call those people doctors and pay them lots of money because they’re doing good. But without a shitload of facts about how to exactly stab someone in the heart to save their life, that moral option would be lost to you. And the real morality is a superset that includes that action along with all others.
It’s hard to see what point you are making there. The social and evaluative aspects do make a difference to the raw physics, and so much that the raw physics counts for very little. yet previously you were insisting that a reduction to fundamental particles was what underpinned the objectivity of morality.
I think that RobbBB has already done a great job of responding to this, but I’d like to have a try at it too. I’d like to explore the math/morality analogy a bit more. I think I can make a better comparison.
Math is an enormous field of study. Even if we limited our concept of “math” to drawing graphs of mathematical functions, we would still have an enormous range of different kinds of functions: Hyperbolic, exponential, polynomial, all the trigonometric functions, etc. etc.
Instead of comparing math to morality, I think it’s more illustrative to compare math to the wider topic of “value-driven-behaviour”.
An intelligent creature could have all sorts of different values. Even within the realm of modern, western, democratic morality we still disagree about whether it is just and propper to execute murderers. We disagree about the extent to which a state is obligated to protect its citizens and provide a safety net. We disagree about the importance of honesty, of freedom vs. safety, freedom of speech vs. protection from hate speech.
If you look at the wider world, and at cultures through history, you’ll find a much wider range of moralities. People who thought it was not just permitted, but morally required that they enslave people, restrict the freedoms of their own families, and execute people for religious transgressions.
You might think that these are all better or worse approximations of the “one true morality”, and that a superintelligence could work out what that true morality is. But we don’t think so. We believe that these are different moralities. Fundamentally, these people have different values.
Then we can step further out, and look at the “insane” value systems that a person could hold. Perhaps we could believe that all people are so flawed that they must be killed. Or we could believe that no one should ever be allowed to die, and so we extend life indefinitely, even for people in agony. Or we might believe everyone should be lobotomised for our own safety.
And then there are the truly inhuman value systems: the paperclip maximisers, the prime pebble sorters, and the baby eaters. The idea is that a superintelligence could comprehend any and all of these. It would be able to optimise for any one of them, and foresee results and possible consequences for all of them. The question is: which one would it actually use?
A superintelligence might be able to understand all of human math and more besides, but we wouldn’t build one to simply “do all of maths”. We would build it with a particular goal and purpose in mind. For instance (to pick an arbitrary example) we might need it to create graphs of Hyperbolic functions. It’s a bad example, I know. But I hope it serves to help make the point.
Likewise, we would want the intelligence to adopt a specific set of values. Perhaps we would want them to be modern, western, democratic liberal values.
I wouldn’t expect a superintelligence to start generating Hyperbolic functions, despite the fact that it’s smart enough to do so. The AI would have no reason to start doing that particular task. It might be smart enough to work out that that’s what we want of course, but that doesn’t mean it’ll do it (unless we’ve already solved the problem of getting them to do “what humans want it to do”.) If we want Hyperbolic functions, we’ll have to program the machine with enough focus to make it do that.
Likewise, a computer could have any arbitrary utility function, any arbitrary set of values. We can’t make sure that a computer has the “right” values unless we know how to clearly define the values we want.
With Hyperbolic functions, it’s relatively easy to describe exactly, unambiguously, what we want. But morality is much harder to pin down.
The range of possible values is only a problem if you hold to the theory that morality “is” values, without any further qualifications, then an AI is going to have trouble figuring out morality apriori. If you take the view that morality is a fairly uniform way of handling values, or a subset of values, then so long as then the AI can figure it out by taking prevailing values as input, as data.
(We will be arguing that:-
Ethics fulfils a role in society, and originated as a mutually beneficial way of regulating individual actions to minimise conflict, and solve coordination problems. (“Social Realism”).
No spooky or supernatural entities or properties are required to explain ethics (naturalism is true)
There is no universally correct system of ethics. (Strong moral realism is false)
Multiple ethical constructions are possible...
Our version of ethical objectivism needs to be distinguished from universalism as well as realism,
Ethical universalism is unikely...it is unlikely that different societies would have identical ethics under different circumstances. Reproductive technology must affect sexual ethics. The availability of different food sources in the environment must affect vegetarianism versus meat eating. However, a compromise position can allow object-level ethics to vary non-arbitrarily.
In other words, there is not an objective answer to questions of the form “should I do X”, but there is an answer to the question “As a member of a society with such-and-such prevailing conditions, should I do X”. In other words still, there is no universal (object level) ethics, but there there is an objective-enough ethics, which is relativised to societies and situations, by objective features of societies and situations...our meta ethics is a function from situations to object level ethics, and since both the functions and its parameters are objective, the output is objective.
By objectivism-without-realism, we mean that mutually isolated groups of agents would be able to converge onto the same object level ethics under the same circumstances, although this convergence doesn’t imply the pre-existence of some sort of moral object, as in standard realism. We take ethics to be a social arrangement, or cultural artefact which fulfils a certain role or purpose, characterised by the reduction of conflict, allocation of resources and coordination of behaviour. By objectivism-without-universalism we mean that groups of agents under different circumstances will come up with different ethics. In either case, the functional role of ethics, in combination with the constraints imposed by concrete situations, conspire to narrow down the range of workable solutions, and (sufficiently) ideal reasoners will therefore be able to re-discover them.
)
I don’t have to believe those are equally valid. Descriptive relativism does not imply normative relativism. I would expect a sufficiently advanced AI, with access to data pertaining to the situation, to come up with the optimum morality for the situation—an answer that is objective but not universal. Where morality needs to vary because situational factors (societal wealth, reproductive technology, level of threat/security, etc). it would, but otherwise the AI would not deviate form the situational optimum to come up with reproductions of whatever suboptimal morality existed in the past.
Well, we believe that different moralities and different values are two different axes.
My hypothesis is that an AI in a modern society would come out with that or something better. (For instance, egalitarianism isn’t some arbitrary pecadillo, it is a very general and highly rediscoverable meta-level principle that makes it easier for people to co-operate).
To perform the calculation, it needs to be able to research out values, which it can. It doesn’t need to share them, as I have noted several times.
You could build an AI that adopts random value,s and pursues them relentlessly, I suppose, but that is pretty much a case of deliberately building an unfriendly AI.
What you need is a scenario where building an AI to want to understand, research, and eventually join in with huamn morality goes horribly wrong.
In detail or in principle? Given what assumptions?
So… what you’re suggesting, in short, is that a sufficiently intelligent AI can work out the set of morals which are most optimal in a given human society. (There’s the question of whether it would converge on the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the society as a whole, or the most optimal set of morals for the long-term benefit of the individual).
But let’s say the AI works out an optimal set of morals for its current society. What’s to stop the AI from metaphorically shrugging and ignoring those morals in order to rather build more paperclips? Especially given that it does not share those values.
Which individual? The might be some decision theory which promotes the interests of Joe Soap, against the interests of society, but there is no way i would call it morality.
Its motivational system. We’re already assuming it’s motivated to make the deduction, we need to assume it’s motivated to implement. I am not bypassing the need for a goal driven AI to have appropriate goals, I am by passing the need for a detailed and accurate account of human ethics to be preprogrammed.
I am not sayngn it necessarily does not. I am saying it does not necessarily.
Ah, I may have been unclear there.
To go into more detail, then; you appear to be suggesting that optimal morality can be approached as a society-wide optimisation problem; in the current situations, these moral strictures produce a more optimal society than those, and this optimisation problem can be solved with sufficient computational resources and information.
But now, let us consider an individual example. Let us say that I find a wallet full of money on the ground. There is no owner in sight. The optimal choice for the society as a whole is that I return the money to the original owner; the optimal choice for the individual making the decision is to keep the money and use it towards my aims, whatever those are. (I can be pretty sure that the man to whom I return the money will be putting it towards his aims, not mine, and if I’m sufficiently convinced that my aims are better for society than his then I can even rationalise this action).
By my current moral structures, I would have to return the money to its original owner. But I can easily see a superintelligent AI giving serious consideration to the possibility that it can do more good for the original owner with the money than the original owner could.
This, right here, is the hard problem of Friendly AI. How do we make it motivated to implement? And, more importantly, how do we know that it is motivated to implement what we think it’s motivated to implement?
You’re suggesting that it can figure out the complicated day-to-day minutae and the difficult edge cases on its own, given a suitable algorithm for optimising morality.
My experience in software design suggests that that algorithm needs to be really, really good. And extremely thoroughly checked, from every possible angle, by a lot of people.
I’m not denying that such an algorithm potentially exists. I can just think of far, far too many ways for it to go very badly wrong.
...point taken. It may or may not share those values.
But then we must at least give serious consideration to the worst-case scenario.
I believe that iff naturalism is true then strong moral realism is as well. If naturalism is true then there are no additional facts needed to determine what is moral than the positions of particles and the outcomes of arranging those particles differently. Any meaningful question that can be asked of how to arrange those particles or rank certain arrangements compared to others must have an objective answer because under naturalism there are no other kinds and no incomplete information. For the question to remain unanswerable at that point would require supernatural intervention and divine command theory to be true. If you there can’t be an objective answer to morality, then FAI is literally impossible. Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved. Instead I posit that the real morality is orders of magnitude more complicated, and finding it more difficult, than for real physics, real neurology, real social science, real economics, and can only be solved once these other fields are unified. If we were uncertain about the morality of stabbing someone, we could hypothetically stab someone to see what happens. When the particles of the knife rearranges the particles of their heart into a form that harms them, we’ll know it isn’t moral. When a particular subset of people with extensive training use their knife to very carefully and precisely rearrange the particles of the heart to help people, we call those people doctors and pay them lots of money because they’re doing good. But without a shitload of facts about how to exactly stab someone in the heart to save their life, that moral option would be lost to you. And the real morality is a superset that includes that action along with all others.
Even if it were true that under naturalism we could determine the outcome of various arrangements of particles, wouldn’t we still be left with the question of which final outcome was the most morally preferable?
But, you and I might have different moral preferences. How (under naturalism) do we objectively decide between your preferences and mine? And, Isn’t it also possible that neither your preferences nor my preferences are objectively moral?
Yup.
But that’s sort-of contained within “the positions of particles” (so long as all their other properties are included, such as temperature and chemical connections and so on...might need to include rays of light and non-particle stuff too!). The two are just different ways of describing the same thing. Just like every object around you could be described either with their usual names, (“keyboard:, “desk”, etc) or with an elaborate molecule by molecule description. Plenty of other descriptions are possible too (like “rectangular black colored thing with a bunch of buttons with letters on it” describes my keyboard kinda).
You don’t. True preferences (as opposed to mistaken preferences) aren’t something you get to decide. They are facts.
That’s an expression of ethical naturalism not a defence of ethcial naturalism.
Missing the point. Ethics needs to sort good actors from bad—decisions about punishments and rewards depend on it.
PS are you the same person as rkyeun? If not, to what extent are you on the same page?
(I’d say need to sort good choices from bad. Which includes the choice to punish or reward.) Discovering which choices are good and which are bad is a fact finding mission. Because:
1) it’s a fact whether a certain choice will successfully fulfill a certain desire or not
And 2) that’s what “good” literally means: desirable.
So that’s what any question of goodness will be about: what will satisfy desires.
No I’m not rkyeun. As for being on the same page...well I’m definitely a moral realist. I don’t know about their first iff-then statement though. Seems to me that strong moral realism could still exist if supernaturalism were true. Also, talking in terms of molecules is ridiculously impractical and unnecessary. I only talked in those terms because I was replying to a reply to those terms :P
Whose desires? The murderer wants to murder the victim, the victim doesn’t want to be murdered. You have realism without objectivism. There is a realistic fact about people’s preferences, but since the same act can increase one person’s utility and reduce anothers, there is no unambiguous way to label an arbitrry outcome.
Murder isn’t a foundational desire. It’s only a means to some other end. And usually isn’t even a good way to accomplish its ultimate end! It’s risky, for one thing. So usually it’s a false desire: if they knew the consequences of this murder compared to all other choices available, and they were correctly thinking about how to most certainly get what they really ultimately want, they’d almost always see a better choice.
(But even if it were foundational, not a means to some other end, you could imagine some simulation of murder satisfying both the “murderer”’s need to do such a thing and everyone else’s need for safety. Even the “murderer” would have a better chance of satisfaction, because they would be far less likely to be killed or imprisoned prior to satisfaction.)
Well first, in the most trivial way, you can unambiguously label an outcome as “good for X”. If it really is (it might not be, after all, the consequences of achieving or attempting murder might be more terrible for the would-be murderer than choosing not to attempt murder).
It works the same with (some? all?) other adjectives too. For example: soluble. Is sugar objectively soluble? Depends what you try to dissolve it in, and under what circumstances. It is objectively soluble in pure water at room temperature. It won’t dissolve in gasoline.
Second, in game theory you’ll find sometimes there are options that are best for everyone. But even when there isn’t, you can still determine which choices for the individuals maximize their chance of satisfaction and such. Objectively speaking, those will be the best choices they can make (again, that’s what it means for something to be a good choice). And morality is about making the best choices.
It can be instrumental or terminal, as can most other criminal impulses.
You can’t solve all ethical problems by keeping everyone in permanent simulation.
That’s no good. You can’t arrive at workable ethics by putting different weightings on the same actions from different perspectives. X stealing money form Y is good for X and bad for Y, so why disregard Y’s view? An act is either permitted or forbidden, punished or praised. You can’t say it is permissible-for-X but forbidden-for-Y if it involves both of them.
No, there’s no uniform treatment of all predicates. Some are one-place, some are two-place. For instance, aesthetic choices can usually be fulfilled on a person-by-person basis.
To be precise, you sometimes find solutions that leave everyone better off, and more often find solutions that leave the average person better off.
Too vague. For someone who likes killing ot kill a lot of people is the best choice for them, but not the best ethical choice.
But, what if two different people have two conflicting desires? How do we objectively find the ethical resolution to the conflict?
Basically: game theory.
In reality, I’m not sure there ever are precise conflicts of true foundational desires. Maybe it would help if you had some real example or something. But the best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desire.
I was surprised to hear that you doubt that there are ever conflicts in desires. But, since you asked, here is an example:
A is a sadist. A enjoys inflicting pain in others. A really wants to hurt B. B wishes not to be hurt by A. (For the sake of argument, lets suppose that no simulation technology is available that would allow A to hurt a virtual B, and that A can be reasonably confident that A will not be arrested and brought to trial for hurting B.)
In this scenario, since A and B have conflicting desires, how does a system that defines objective goodness as that which will satisfy desires resolve the conflict?
I would be very surprised to find that a universe whose particles are arranged to maximize objective good would also contain unpaired sadists and masochists. You seem to be asking a question of the form, “But if we take all the evil out of the universe, what about evil?” And the answer is “Good riddance.” Pun intentional.
The problem is that neither you nor BrianPansky has proposed a viable objective standard for goodness. BrianPansky said that good is that which satisfies desires, but proposed no objective method for mediating conflicting desires. And here you said “Do remember that your thoughts and preference on ethics are themselves an arrangement of particles to be solved” but proposed no way for resolving conflicts between different people’s ethical preferences. Even if satisfying desires were an otherwise reasonable standard for goodness, it is not an objective standard, since different people may have different desires. Similarly, different people may have different ethical preferences, so an individual’s ethical preference would not be an objective standard either, even if it were otherwise a reasonable standard.
No, I am not asking that. I am pointing out that neither your standard nor BrianPansky’s standard is objective. Therefore neither can be used to determine what would constitute an objectively maximally good universe nor could either be used to take all evil out of the universe, nor even to objectively identify evil.
Re-read what I said. That’s not what I said.
First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable. You can’t avoid that. Your question about conflict can’t change that (thus it’s a red herring).
As for your question: I already generally answered it in my previous post. Use Game theory. Find the actions that will actually be best for each agent. The best choice for each party will always be the one that maximizes their chances of satisfying their true desires.
I might finish a longer response to your specific example, but that takes time. For now, Richard Carrier’s Goal Theory Update probably covers a lot of that ground.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.ca/2011/10/goal-theory-update.html
It does not.
Wiktionary states that it means “Acting in the interest of good; ethical.” (There are a few other definitions, but I’m pretty sure this is the right one here). Looking through the definitions of ‘ethical’, I find “Morally approvable, when referring to an action that affects others; good. ” ‘Morally’ is defined as “In keeping of requirements of morality.”, and ‘morality’ is “Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results. ”
Nowhere in there do I see anything about “desirable”—it seems to simplify down to “following a moral code”. I therefore suspect that you’re implicitly assuming a moral code which equates “desirable” with “good”—I don’t think that this is the best choice of a moral code, but it is a moral code that I’ve seen arguments in favour of before.
But, importantly, it’s not the only moral code. Someone who follows a different moral code can easily find something that is good but not desirable; or desirable but not good.
It’s not at all clear that morally good means desirable. The idea that the good is the desirable gets what force it has from the fact that “good” has a lot of nonmoral meanings. Good ice cream is desirable ice cream, but what’s that got to do with ethics?
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good. And if it would be bad to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally bad.
But when you say “good ice cream,” you aren’t talking about what it is good to do, so you aren’t talking about morality. Sometimes it is good to eat bad ice cream (e.g. you have been offered it in a situation where it would be rude to refuse), and then it is morally good to eat the bad ice cream, and sometimes it is bad to eat good ice cream (e.g. you have already eaten too much), and then it is morally bad to eat the good ice cream.
That’s a theory of what “morally” is adding to “good”. You need to defend it against alternatives, rather than stating it as if it were obvious.
Are you sure? How many people agree with that? Do you have independent evidence , or are you just following through the consequences of your assumptions (ie arguing in circles)?
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do? It seems to me this is obviously what we are talking about. And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do. So if “morally good” is about what we should do, then “morally good” means something it is good to do.
What is wrong with saying it doesn’t matter at all?
That’s pretty much changing the subject.
I think it is about what we morally ought to do. If you are playing chess, you ought to move the bishop diagonally, but that is again non-moral.
We morally-should do what is morally good, and hedonistically-should do what is hedonotsitcally-good, and so on. These can conflict, so they are not the same.
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”, but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
To reduce this to its fundamentals:
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
It’s changing the subject because you are switching from an isolated act to a pattern of behaviour.
Such as?
You are using good to mean morally good again.
You can’t infer the non-existence of a distinction from the fact that it is not regularly marked in ordinary language.
“Jade is an ornamental rock. The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are composed of different silicate minerals:
So you say. Actually, the idea that ethical claims can be cashed out as hypotheticals is quite contentious.
Back to the usual problem. What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something morally good, is true but vacuous. . What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good is debatable.
The point about the words is that it is easy to see from their origins that they are about hypothetical necessity. You NEED to do something. You MUST do it. You OUGHT to do it, that is you OWE it and you MUST pay your debt. All of that says that something has to happen, that is, that it is somehow necessary.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
I agree that some people disagree with this. They are not listening to themselves talk.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something. That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do? They would say we should do the thing that would be good to do, again precisely because it is necessary, and therefore we MUST do the supposedly morally bad thing, in order to be doing something good to do.
You are assuming that the only thing that counts as necessity per se is physical necessity, ie there is no physical possiibity of doing otherwise. But moral necessity is more naturally cashed out as the claim that there is no permissable state of affairs in which the murdered can murder.
http://www.hsu.edu/academicforum/2000-2001/2000-1AFThe%20Logic%20of%20Morality.pdf
In less abstract terms, what we are saying is that morality does not work like a common-or-garden in-order-to-achieve-X-do-Y. because you cannot excuse yourself , or obtain permissibility, simply by stating that you have some end in mind other than being moral. Even without logical necessity, morality has social obligatoriness, and that needs to be explained, and a vanilla account in terms of hypotetical necessities in order to achieve arbtrary ends cannot do that.
If the moral good were just a rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions, there would be no need for morality as a behaviour-shaping factor in human society. Morality is not “do what thou wilt”.
In some sense of “good”, but, as usual, an unqualified “good” does not give you plausible morality.
It’s tautologous that we morally-should do what is morally-good.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
As I think I have stated previously, the root of this disagreement is that you believe, like Eliezer, that reality is indifferent in itself. I do not believe that.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good. Does the fact that we desire something, e.g. eating food instead of rocks, make it into something that makes us survive? Or rather, is the fact that it makes us survive the cause of the fact that we desire it? It is obvious from how evolution works that the latter is the case and not the former. So the fact that eating food is good is the cause of the fact that we desire it.
I said the basic moral question is whether it would be good to do something. You say that this is putting a “rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions.” This is only the case, according to your misunderstanding of the relationship between desire and good. Good things tend to make us desire them. But just because there is a tendency, does not mean it always works out. Things tend to fall, but they don’t fall if someone catches them. And similarly good things tend to make us desire them, but once in a while that fails to work out and someone desires something bad instead. So saying “do whatever is good to do,” is indeed morality, but it definitely does not mean “do whatever thou wilt.”
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do. I think I should do whatever would be good to do; and if that’s different from what you call moral, that’s too bad for you.
I still don’t think you have made a good case for morality being hypothetical, since you haven’t made a case against the case against. And I still think you need to explain obligatoriness.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
Doens’t-care is made to care. If you don’t behave as though you care about morality, society will punish you. However. it won’t punish you for failing to fulfil other shoulds.
I didn’t see any good case against morality being hypothetical, not even in that article.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that, and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
I did said I do not care about morally-should “as opposed” to what I should do. It could sometimes happen that I should not do something because people will punish me if I do it. In other words, I do care about what I should do, and that is determined by what would be good to do.
From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good, and that their inevitable moral goodness is th result of inner psychological compulsion, not outer systems of reward and punishment, and that no systems of reward and punishment systems were ever necessary. All of that is clearly false.
Unless there are non-moral gods, which there clearly are,since there are immoral and amoral acts committed to obtain them.
“From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good”
No, it does not, unless you assume that people are never mistaken about what would be good to do. I already said that people are sometimes mistaken about this, and think that it would be good to do something, when it would be bad to do it. In those cases they fail to do what is morally good.
I agree there are non-moral goods, e.g. things like pleasure and money and so on. That is because a moral good is “doing something good”, and pleasure and money are not doing anything. But people who commit immoral acts in order to obtain those goods, also believe that they are doing something good, but they are mistaken.
Right. You said:
Do you have an objective set of criteria for differentiating between true foundational desires and other types of desires? If not, I wonder if it is really useful to respond to an objection arising from the rather obvious fact that people often have conflicting desires by stating that you doubt that true foundational desires are ever in precise conflict.
As CCC has already pointed out, no, it is not apparent that (morally) good and desirable are the same thing. I won’t spend more time on this point since CCC addressed it well.
The issue that we are discussing is objective morals. Your equating goodness and desirability leads (in my example of the sadist) A to believe that hurting B is good, and B to believe that hurting B is not good. But moral realism holds that moral valuations are statements that are objectively true or false. So, conflicting desires is not a red herring, since conflicting desires leads (using your criterion) to subjective moral evaluations regarding the goodness of hurting B. Game theory on the other hand does appear to be a red herring – no application of game theory can change the fact that A and B differ regarding the desirability of hurting B.
One additional problem with equating moral goodness with desirability is that it leads to moral outcomes that are in conflict with most people’s moral intuitions. For example, in my example of the sadist A desires to hurt B, but most people’s moral intuition would say that A hurting B just because A wants to hurt B would be immoral. Similarly, rape, murder, theft, etc., could be considered morally good by your criterion if any of those things satisfied a desire. While conflicting with moral intuition does not prove that your definition is wrong, it seems to me that it should at a minimum raise a red flag. And, I think that the burden is on you to explain why anyone should reject his/her moral intuition in favor of a moral criterion that would adjudge theft, rape and murder to be morally good if they satisfy a true desire.
You need to refute non-cognitivism, as well as asserting naturalism.
Naturalism says that all questions that have answer have naturalistic answers, which means that if there are answers to ethical questions, they are naturalistic answers. But there is no guarantee that ethical questions mean anything, that they have answers.
No, only non-cogntivism, the idea that ethical questions just don’t make sense, like “how many beans make yellow?”.
Not unless the “F” is standing for something weird. Absent objective morality, you can possibly solve the control problem, ie achieving safety by just making the AI do what you want; and absent objective morality, you can possibly achieve AI safety by instilling a suitable set of arbitrary values. Neither is easy, but you said “impossible”.
That’s not an argument for cognitivism. When I entertain the thought “how many beans make yellow?”, that’s an arrangement of particles.
Do you have an argument for that proposal? Because I am arguing for something much simpler, that morality only needs to be grounded at the human level, so reductionism is neither denied nor employed.
It’s hard to see what point you are making there. The social and evaluative aspects do make a difference to the raw physics, and so much that the raw physics counts for very little. yet previously you were insisting that a reduction to fundamental particles was what underpinned the objectivity of morality.