So, next question—what are they disagreeing about, if we taboo “immoral”?
Or, to be a bit more suggestive—what is the difference between these two arguing cognitive entities, if we taboo away the argument? What kind of change to one entity would constitute the other side “winning the argumet?”
So, next question—what are they disagreeing about, if we taboo “immoral”?
Maybe they are not disagreeing about meaning of the words; they are just trying to influence how people behave.
Imagine that many people suddenly become interested in things being xyzzy. No one really knows what “xyzzy” means, or more precisely, you have thousand mutually contradictory explanations, some of them a bit more popular than the others. But for some reason people are enthusiastic about xyzzy things—for over 90% of them, xyzzy is an automatic applause light. Perhaps they rationalize that debating “xyzzy”, despite having no definition, must be xyzzy itself. It does not make sense at all.
Then some person says that reading LessWrong is very un-xyzzy, and some other person disagrees and says that reading LessWrong is actually very close to the real essence of xyzzy-ness. They argue by comparing LessWrong to other things, either popularly considered un-xyzzy, or popularly considered xyzzy; and then the other side counter-argues that xyzzy-ness or un-xyzzy-ness of X is not a good evidence for xyzzy-ness or un-xyzzy-ness of LessWrong, because LessWrong is not the same thing as X. Which side would you join? Assuming that you consider the whole concept of “xyzzy” meaningless, should you even try to join one of the sides?
Well, even assuming the whole thing is a nonsense, it is a nonsense with real-world consequences, if people care about that nonsense. If for 90% people being xyzzy is an automatic applause light, then successfully arguing that yes, LessWrong is xyzzy, means a huge increase in a number of readers. On he other hand, convincing people that LessWrong is un-xyzzy, means that many people will avoid this site. This may help or harm our instrumental goals.
I don’t think the entire morality debate is exactly like this; but it has this component. If it didn’t, we could just taboo “morality” and replace it with words like “harm-minimizing” and “religion-following”. But by doing so, each side would give up a word with positive connotations for both sides, and replace it with a word appealing only to its followers. That would be wasteful. If there is a word with positive connotations, you want to associate it with your cause, the precision of the debate be damned.
You want to argue that—to use the argument from the article—tolerating homosexuality is harm-minimizing and xyzzy; or that supressing homosexuality is religion-following and xyzzy. Because humans are not completely rational, and that “and xyzzy” part is really going to make them more likely to join one of the sides.
This (more specifically the last couple paragraphs) is exactly what I was getting at. I don’t know if it’s more intelligible to anyone else than what I wrote, but from this perspective it looks like you clicked.
The problem could come from a couple different places.
By immoral, they could mean that:
It feels wrong. That imagining a person engaging in immoral act causes an emotional aversion similar to the one experienced in response to brutal murder or unfair manipulation.
indulging in immoral behavior inherently causes problems and does damage to psychological wellbeing. That there’s a certain way to run the human machine and following certain vices are particularly suboptimal ways to do it.
Some kind of deontological rule that interacts with reality in subtle and abstract ways decrees the immorality of the relevant actions. i.e. that God forbids them, or that they don’t logically follow from a person’s nature, or a platonic form shuns them
Some confused combination of the above
If both parties agree that one of the above constitutes a useful and meaningful definition of “immoral”, and that the actions or circumstances in question fit that category, then there shouldn’t be a problem.
Alternately, the not-quite-so-confused combination that the above have causal relationships: in other words, that God has correctly informed us about which things have bad consequences; or that God will reward us (a good consequence) for obeying the deontological rules he set up; or that our moral sense (“it feels wrong”) is a flawed attempt (thus, in need of both correction and forgiveness) to model or follow God’s laws.
Fair enough. Although, one thing about theists I’ve only recently noticed is that they don’t always anthropomorphize God as much as we like to imagine they do. A lot of the time they just think of Him as a kind of abstract force that’s sort of analogous to a human mind, and maybe isn’t distinct from even our sense of morality.
So in order to think that way and still claim the moral high ground, they do necessarily have to be confused.
This isn’t quite what I was getting at. I was specifically covering the case where they’re not using a mutual definition of “immoral,” and on being made aware of that fact choose to argue the “correct” definition of the arbitrary label rather than acknowledging that it is arbitrary and their (expanded) points are quite compatible.
In this case (given the premise that the Christian agrees that homosexuality doesn’t harm anyone without their consent,) I would say they’re arguing over whether Utilitarianism or Divine Command Theory is the correct theory of moral foundations.
Yep, this sure is a real thing that happens :D
So, next question—what are they disagreeing about, if we taboo “immoral”?
Or, to be a bit more suggestive—what is the difference between these two arguing cognitive entities, if we taboo away the argument? What kind of change to one entity would constitute the other side “winning the argumet?”
Maybe they are not disagreeing about meaning of the words; they are just trying to influence how people behave.
Imagine that many people suddenly become interested in things being xyzzy. No one really knows what “xyzzy” means, or more precisely, you have thousand mutually contradictory explanations, some of them a bit more popular than the others. But for some reason people are enthusiastic about xyzzy things—for over 90% of them, xyzzy is an automatic applause light. Perhaps they rationalize that debating “xyzzy”, despite having no definition, must be xyzzy itself. It does not make sense at all.
Then some person says that reading LessWrong is very un-xyzzy, and some other person disagrees and says that reading LessWrong is actually very close to the real essence of xyzzy-ness. They argue by comparing LessWrong to other things, either popularly considered un-xyzzy, or popularly considered xyzzy; and then the other side counter-argues that xyzzy-ness or un-xyzzy-ness of X is not a good evidence for xyzzy-ness or un-xyzzy-ness of LessWrong, because LessWrong is not the same thing as X. Which side would you join? Assuming that you consider the whole concept of “xyzzy” meaningless, should you even try to join one of the sides?
Well, even assuming the whole thing is a nonsense, it is a nonsense with real-world consequences, if people care about that nonsense. If for 90% people being xyzzy is an automatic applause light, then successfully arguing that yes, LessWrong is xyzzy, means a huge increase in a number of readers. On he other hand, convincing people that LessWrong is un-xyzzy, means that many people will avoid this site. This may help or harm our instrumental goals.
I don’t think the entire morality debate is exactly like this; but it has this component. If it didn’t, we could just taboo “morality” and replace it with words like “harm-minimizing” and “religion-following”. But by doing so, each side would give up a word with positive connotations for both sides, and replace it with a word appealing only to its followers. That would be wasteful. If there is a word with positive connotations, you want to associate it with your cause, the precision of the debate be damned.
You want to argue that—to use the argument from the article—tolerating homosexuality is harm-minimizing and xyzzy; or that supressing homosexuality is religion-following and xyzzy. Because humans are not completely rational, and that “and xyzzy” part is really going to make them more likely to join one of the sides.
This (more specifically the last couple paragraphs) is exactly what I was getting at. I don’t know if it’s more intelligible to anyone else than what I wrote, but from this perspective it looks like you clicked.
The problem could come from a couple different places.
By immoral, they could mean that:
It feels wrong. That imagining a person engaging in immoral act causes an emotional aversion similar to the one experienced in response to brutal murder or unfair manipulation.
indulging in immoral behavior inherently causes problems and does damage to psychological wellbeing. That there’s a certain way to run the human machine and following certain vices are particularly suboptimal ways to do it.
Some kind of deontological rule that interacts with reality in subtle and abstract ways decrees the immorality of the relevant actions. i.e. that God forbids them, or that they don’t logically follow from a person’s nature, or a platonic form shuns them
Some confused combination of the above
If both parties agree that one of the above constitutes a useful and meaningful definition of “immoral”, and that the actions or circumstances in question fit that category, then there shouldn’t be a problem.
Alternately, the not-quite-so-confused combination that the above have causal relationships: in other words, that God has correctly informed us about which things have bad consequences; or that God will reward us (a good consequence) for obeying the deontological rules he set up; or that our moral sense (“it feels wrong”) is a flawed attempt (thus, in need of both correction and forgiveness) to model or follow God’s laws.
Fair enough. Although, one thing about theists I’ve only recently noticed is that they don’t always anthropomorphize God as much as we like to imagine they do. A lot of the time they just think of Him as a kind of abstract force that’s sort of analogous to a human mind, and maybe isn’t distinct from even our sense of morality.
So in order to think that way and still claim the moral high ground, they do necessarily have to be confused.
This isn’t quite what I was getting at. I was specifically covering the case where they’re not using a mutual definition of “immoral,” and on being made aware of that fact choose to argue the “correct” definition of the arbitrary label rather than acknowledging that it is arbitrary and their (expanded) points are quite compatible.
In this case (given the premise that the Christian agrees that homosexuality doesn’t harm anyone without their consent,) I would say they’re arguing over whether Utilitarianism or Divine Command Theory is the correct theory of moral foundations.