I understand why the notions exist—I was trying to address the question of ‘what explainable-moral-intuitions should we keep as terminal values, and how do we tell them apart from those we shouldn’t’.
But your first sentence is taken very much to heart, sir.
Maybe I’m being silly here, in hindsight. Certain intuitive desires are reducible to others, and some, like ‘love/happiness/fun/etc.’ are probably not. It feels obvious that most people should immediately see that. Yes, they want a given ethical injunction to be obeyed, but not as a fundamental/terminal value.
Then again—there are Catholic moralists, including, I think, some Catholics I know personally, who firmly believe that (for example) stealing is wrong because stealing is wrong. Not for any other reason. Not because it brings harm to the person being stolen from. If you bring up exceptions—‘what about an orphan who will starve if they don’t steal that bread?’ they argue that this doesn’t count as stealing, not that it ‘proves that stealing isn’t really wrong.’ For them, every exception is simply to be included as another fundamental rule. At least, that’s the mindset, as far as I can tell. I saw the specific argument above being formulated for use against moral relativists, who were apparently out to destroy society by showing that different things were right for different people.
Even though this article is about AI, and even though we should not trust ourselves to understand when we should be excepted from an injunction—this seems like a belief that might eventually have some negative real-world consequences. See, potentially, ‘homosexuality is wrong because homosexuality is wrong’?
If I tried to tell any of these people about how ethical injunctions could be explained as heuristics for achieving higher terminal values—I can already feel myself being accused of shuffling things around, trying to convert goods into other incompatible goods in order to justify some sinister, contradictory worldview.
If I brought up reductionism, it seems almost trivial—while I’m simulating their mind—to point out that no one has ever provably applied reduction to morals.
So maybe let me rephrase: is there any way I could talk them out of it?
I guess some people are unable to deal with uncertainty, especially when it concerns important things (such as “I am not 100% sure whether doing A or doing B will make my soul burn forever in hell, but I have to make a decision now anyway”). The standard human way to deal with unpleasant information is to deny it. Catholic theologicians don’t have an option of denying hell, so the obvious solution is to deny uncertainty.
“There is a rule X, which is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.” “But here is this non-central situation where following the rule blindly seems bad.” ”There is this ad-hoc rule Y, which covers the special situation, so the whole system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.” “But here is another situation where...” ”There is another ad-hoc rule Z, which covers the other situation...” “But there is also...” ”There is yet another ad-hoc rule...”
You can play this game forever, adding epicycles upon epicycles, but the answer is always going to be that the system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good. It is also obvious how they are cheating to achieve that. Also, the starving orphan is probably not aware of all these theological rules and exceptions, so obviously the answer is designed to make the theologician feel happy about the unambiguity of the situation.
I don’t think you can actually talk people out of their emotional needs.
Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.
Then again—there are Catholic moralists, including, I think, some Catholics I know personally, who firmly believe that (for example) stealing is wrong because stealing is wrong. Not for any other reason.
This sounds like deontological ethics. It’s not by any means unique to Catholicism; it’s just the general idea that being good involves following a (presumably carefully chosen) list of rules.
Not all Catholics are deontologists; not all deontologists are Catholic. And, I may be misreading here, but I think your worry is more about deontology than Catholicism; that is, it’s more about people who follow a list of rules instead of trying consequentialism or virtue ethics or something else along those lines. Is this accurate?
I understand why the notions exist—I was trying to address the question of ‘what explainable-moral-intuitions should we keep as terminal values, and how do we tell them apart from those we shouldn’t’.
But your first sentence is taken very much to heart, sir.
Maybe I’m being silly here, in hindsight. Certain intuitive desires are reducible to others, and some, like ‘love/happiness/fun/etc.’ are probably not. It feels obvious that most people should immediately see that. Yes, they want a given ethical injunction to be obeyed, but not as a fundamental/terminal value.
Then again—there are Catholic moralists, including, I think, some Catholics I know personally, who firmly believe that (for example) stealing is wrong because stealing is wrong. Not for any other reason. Not because it brings harm to the person being stolen from. If you bring up exceptions—‘what about an orphan who will starve if they don’t steal that bread?’ they argue that this doesn’t count as stealing, not that it ‘proves that stealing isn’t really wrong.’ For them, every exception is simply to be included as another fundamental rule. At least, that’s the mindset, as far as I can tell. I saw the specific argument above being formulated for use against moral relativists, who were apparently out to destroy society by showing that different things were right for different people.
Even though this article is about AI, and even though we should not trust ourselves to understand when we should be excepted from an injunction—this seems like a belief that might eventually have some negative real-world consequences. See, potentially, ‘homosexuality is wrong because homosexuality is wrong’?
If I tried to tell any of these people about how ethical injunctions could be explained as heuristics for achieving higher terminal values—I can already feel myself being accused of shuffling things around, trying to convert goods into other incompatible goods in order to justify some sinister, contradictory worldview.
If I brought up reductionism, it seems almost trivial—while I’m simulating their mind—to point out that no one has ever provably applied reduction to morals.
So maybe let me rephrase: is there any way I could talk them out of it?
I guess some people are unable to deal with uncertainty, especially when it concerns important things (such as “I am not 100% sure whether doing A or doing B will make my soul burn forever in hell, but I have to make a decision now anyway”). The standard human way to deal with unpleasant information is to deny it. Catholic theologicians don’t have an option of denying hell, so the obvious solution is to deny uncertainty.
“There is a rule X, which is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.”
“But here is this non-central situation where following the rule blindly seems bad.”
”There is this ad-hoc rule Y, which covers the special situation, so the whole system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good.”
“But here is another situation where...”
”There is another ad-hoc rule Z, which covers the other situation...”
“But there is also...”
”There is yet another ad-hoc rule...”
You can play this game forever, adding epicycles upon epicycles, but the answer is always going to be that the system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good. It is also obvious how they are cheating to achieve that. Also, the starving orphan is probably not aware of all these theological rules and exceptions, so obviously the answer is designed to make the theologician feel happy about the unambiguity of the situation.
I don’t think you can actually talk people out of their emotional needs.
Here is a perfectly good rule: don’t do evil.
Now suppose someone comes to you and tells you that they will save one billion lives if you promise to do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability.
Suppose you decide that overall you will not be able to do enough evil to counteract saving one billion lives. Should you make the agreement and do evil for the rest of your life to the best of your ability?
If you do, your actions will have overall good effects. And if you do, you will be doing evil, or you will not be fulfilling your promise.
If you want to talk to people, you need to first understand what they are saying. And they saying that the question that is important to them is, “Is this action good or evil,” not “Are the results good or evil?” Those are two different questions, and there is nothing to prevent them from having different answers.
This sounds like deontological ethics. It’s not by any means unique to Catholicism; it’s just the general idea that being good involves following a (presumably carefully chosen) list of rules.
Not all Catholics are deontologists; not all deontologists are Catholic. And, I may be misreading here, but I think your worry is more about deontology than Catholicism; that is, it’s more about people who follow a list of rules instead of trying consequentialism or virtue ethics or something else along those lines. Is this accurate?