Let me have another go at this, since I’ve now rewritten the is-ought section of ‘Pluralistic Moral Reductionism’ (PMR).
This time around, I was more clear that of course it’s true that, as you say:
we can make statements about what should be done and what should not be done that cannot be reduced, by definition, to statements about the physical world
We can make reducible ‘ought’ statements. We can make irreducible ‘ought’ statements. We can exhibit non-cognitive (non-asserting) verbal behaviors employing the sound ‘ought’.
For the purposes of the PMR post, I’m interested to investigate frameworks that allow us to determine whether a certain subset of ‘ought’ statements are true or false.
Thus, in the context of PMR, non-asserting verbal behaviors employing ‘ought’ sounds are simply a different subject matter. They do not belong to the subset of ‘ought’ statements I am investigating for that particular post. (I discussed this in the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism section.) At the same time, clearly such statements can be useful. For example, you can use them to affect others’ behavior. You can affect others’ behavior and attitudes with non-asserting verbal behaviors, such as when you say “female circumcisions” with a gasp and a frown.
Also in the context of PMR, some ‘ought’ statements can quickly be tossed in the ‘false’ bin, because the speaker uses ‘ought’ language assertively to refer to things that clearly don’t exist, like divine commands.
In the context of PMR, other ‘ought’ statements can be tossed into the ‘false’ bin if you are a physicalist, because the speaker uses ‘ought’ language assertively to refer to things that don’t fit within a physicalist ontology, like non-natural moral properties. If you’re not a physicalist, then our debate about such ‘ought’ statements can shift to a debate about physicalism vs. non-physicalism.
Will, you seem to be saying that ‘ought’ has only one meaning, or one definition. You also seem to be saying that this one meaning of ‘ought’ (or ‘should’) is captured by what we ‘actually want’ in the CEV sense. Is that right so far?
If so, I’m still not clear on your arguments for this conclusion. Your writing here has a very high ratio of unstated premises to stated premises. My own writing does that all the time for communication efficiency, in the hopes that my unstated premises are shared or else successfully inferred. But many times I find that the unstated premises didn’t make it into the other’s mind, and thus my enthymeme is unclear to it. And when I care enough about my argument being clear to certain people, I take the time to draw my unstated premises into the light and state them explicitly.
Since I’m having trouble guessing at the unstated premises in your arguments for singularism about the meaning of ‘should’ or ‘ought’, I’ll request that you state them explicitly. Would you please state your most central argument for this singularism, without unstated premises?
Will, you seem to be saying that ‘ought’ has only one meaning, or one definition. … If so, I’m still not clear on your arguments for this conclusion.
What are your alternatives (at this level of detail)? If I could be using two different definitions, ought1 and ought2, then I expect there are distinguishing arguments that form a decision problem about which of the two I should’ve been using, which in turn determines which of these definitions is the one.
Well, suppose that sometimes, depending on context cues, I use “ought” to mean “paperclip-maximizing”, “prime-pile-maximizing”, and “actually-ought”.
There’s nothing wrong about the first two definitions, they’re totally reasonable definitions a word might have, they just shouldn’t be confused with the third definition, which specifies correct actions.
Well, I am saying that there is a meaning of “ought” that is hugely different in meaning from the other senses.
PMR identifies a sort of cluster of different meanings of the word “ought”. I am saying, hey, over here, there’s this one, singular meaning.
This meaning is special because it has a sense but no referent. It doesn’t refer to any property of the physical world, or obviously, of any property of any non-physical world. It just means.
So in this perspective what I “want” is really a red herring. I want to do lots of things that I oughtn’t do.
What matters is my beliefs about what is right and wrong.
Now, by necessity, I believe that my EV is the best possible approximation of what is right. Because, If I knew of a better approximation, I would incorporate it into my beliefs, and if I didn’t know of it, my volition must not have been extrapolated far enough.
But this is not a definition of what is right. To do so would be circular.
If I believe that my EV is very close to humanity’s CEV, then I believe that humanity’s CEV is almost the best approximation as to what is right. I do, so I do.
So, to start reasoning, I need assumptions. My assumptions would look like:
{these moral intuitions} are fundamentally accurate
or
All my moral intuitions are fundamentally accurate
or something else, just as the assumptions I use to generate physical beliefs would consist of my intuitions about the proper techniques for induction (Bayesianism, Occam’s Razor, and so on.)
There doesn’t have to be any Book O’ Right sitting around for me to engage in this reasoning, I can just, you know, do it.
(It is very ironic that I first developed this edifice because I was bothered by unstated moral assumptions.)
I’m confused by your way of presenting your arguments and conclusion. On my end this comment looks like a list of unconnected thoughts, with no segues between them. Does somebody else think they know what Will is saying, such that they can explain it to me?
No, I have very little idea about what Will is talking about, and strongly suspect that he doesn’t either (I only have a vague idea of what I’m talking about as well, recent discussion uses relatively recent ideas). His intuitions seem to be pointing roughly in the direction I believe much more aligned with reality than your pluralistic moral “everyone call a rigid designator” reductionism though (waiting for that emphatic metaethics post for a possible correction in understanding your position), so I can understand why there would be grounds for an argument.
Let me have another go at this, since I’ve now rewritten the is-ought section of ‘Pluralistic Moral Reductionism’ (PMR).
This time around, I was more clear that of course it’s true that, as you say:
We can make reducible ‘ought’ statements. We can make irreducible ‘ought’ statements. We can exhibit non-cognitive (non-asserting) verbal behaviors employing the sound ‘ought’.
For the purposes of the PMR post, I’m interested to investigate frameworks that allow us to determine whether a certain subset of ‘ought’ statements are true or false.
Thus, in the context of PMR, non-asserting verbal behaviors employing ‘ought’ sounds are simply a different subject matter. They do not belong to the subset of ‘ought’ statements I am investigating for that particular post. (I discussed this in the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism section.) At the same time, clearly such statements can be useful. For example, you can use them to affect others’ behavior. You can affect others’ behavior and attitudes with non-asserting verbal behaviors, such as when you say “female circumcisions” with a gasp and a frown.
Also in the context of PMR, some ‘ought’ statements can quickly be tossed in the ‘false’ bin, because the speaker uses ‘ought’ language assertively to refer to things that clearly don’t exist, like divine commands.
In the context of PMR, other ‘ought’ statements can be tossed into the ‘false’ bin if you are a physicalist, because the speaker uses ‘ought’ language assertively to refer to things that don’t fit within a physicalist ontology, like non-natural moral properties. If you’re not a physicalist, then our debate about such ‘ought’ statements can shift to a debate about physicalism vs. non-physicalism.
Will, you seem to be saying that ‘ought’ has only one meaning, or one definition. You also seem to be saying that this one meaning of ‘ought’ (or ‘should’) is captured by what we ‘actually want’ in the CEV sense. Is that right so far?
If so, I’m still not clear on your arguments for this conclusion. Your writing here has a very high ratio of unstated premises to stated premises. My own writing does that all the time for communication efficiency, in the hopes that my unstated premises are shared or else successfully inferred. But many times I find that the unstated premises didn’t make it into the other’s mind, and thus my enthymeme is unclear to it. And when I care enough about my argument being clear to certain people, I take the time to draw my unstated premises into the light and state them explicitly.
Since I’m having trouble guessing at the unstated premises in your arguments for singularism about the meaning of ‘should’ or ‘ought’, I’ll request that you state them explicitly. Would you please state your most central argument for this singularism, without unstated premises?
What are your alternatives (at this level of detail)? If I could be using two different definitions, ought1 and ought2, then I expect there are distinguishing arguments that form a decision problem about which of the two I should’ve been using, which in turn determines which of these definitions is the one.
Well there are cases when I should be using two different words.
For instance, if morality is only one component of the correct decision procedure, then MoralOught and CorrectOught are two different things.
But you’re not talking about those types of cases, right?
Don’t understand what you said. Probably not.
Well, suppose that sometimes, depending on context cues, I use “ought” to mean “paperclip-maximizing”, “prime-pile-maximizing”, and “actually-ought”.
There’s nothing wrong about the first two definitions, they’re totally reasonable definitions a word might have, they just shouldn’t be confused with the third definition, which specifies correct actions.
Well, I am saying that there is a meaning of “ought” that is hugely different in meaning from the other senses.
PMR identifies a sort of cluster of different meanings of the word “ought”. I am saying, hey, over here, there’s this one, singular meaning.
This meaning is special because it has a sense but no referent. It doesn’t refer to any property of the physical world, or obviously, of any property of any non-physical world. It just means.
[Not CEV, will explain later with time.]
Okay. I look forward to it.
So in this perspective what I “want” is really a red herring. I want to do lots of things that I oughtn’t do.
What matters is my beliefs about what is right and wrong.
Now, by necessity, I believe that my EV is the best possible approximation of what is right. Because, If I knew of a better approximation, I would incorporate it into my beliefs, and if I didn’t know of it, my volition must not have been extrapolated far enough.
But this is not a definition of what is right. To do so would be circular.
If I believe that my EV is very close to humanity’s CEV, then I believe that humanity’s CEV is almost the best approximation as to what is right. I do, so I do.
So, to start reasoning, I need assumptions. My assumptions would look like:
or
or something else, just as the assumptions I use to generate physical beliefs would consist of my intuitions about the proper techniques for induction (Bayesianism, Occam’s Razor, and so on.)
There doesn’t have to be any Book O’ Right sitting around for me to engage in this reasoning, I can just, you know, do it.
(It is very ironic that I first developed this edifice because I was bothered by unstated moral assumptions.)
I’m confused by your way of presenting your arguments and conclusion. On my end this comment looks like a list of unconnected thoughts, with no segues between them. Does somebody else think they know what Will is saying, such that they can explain it to me?
I drew some boundaries between largely-though-not-totally unconnected thoughts.
Does everything within those boundaries look connected to you?
I think Vladimir Nesov agrees with me on this.
Thanks, but it’s still not clear to me. Nesov, do you want to take a shot and arguing for Will’s position, especially if you agree with it?
No, I have very little idea about what Will is talking about, and strongly suspect that he doesn’t either (I only have a vague idea of what I’m talking about as well, recent discussion uses relatively recent ideas). His intuitions seem to be pointing roughly in the direction I believe much more aligned with reality than your pluralistic moral “everyone call a rigid designator” reductionism though (waiting for that emphatic metaethics post for a possible correction in understanding your position), so I can understand why there would be grounds for an argument.