But then morality does not have as its subject matter “Life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor, esteem, etc.”
Instead, it has primarily as its subject matter a list of ways to transform the universe into paperclips, cheesecake, needles, orgasmium, and only finally, a long way down the list, into eudaimonium.
I think this is not the subject matter that most people are talking about when they talk about morality. We should have a different name for this new subject, like “decision theory”.
I think this is not the subject matter that most people are talking about when they talk about morality.
True, as long as they’re talking about the stuff that is implied by their terminal values.
However, when they start talking about the stuff that is implied by other people’s (or aliens’, or AIs’) terminal values, the meaning they attach to the word ‘morality’ is a lot closer to the one I’m proposing. They might say things like, “Well, female genital mutilation is moral to Sudanese people. Um, I mean, errr, uh...”, and then they’re really confused. This confusion would vanish (or at least, would be more likely to vanish) if they were forced to say, “Well, female genital mutilation is Sudanese-moral but me-immoral.”
Ideally, to avoid all confusion we should get rid of the word morality completely, and have everyone speak in terms of goals and desires instead.
Agreed. If it happened that there were only a few different sets of terminal values in existence, then I would be OK with assigning different words to the pursuit of those different sets. One of those words could be ‘moral’. However, as is, the set of all terminal values represented by humans is too fractured and varied.
A large chunk of the list Eliezer provides in the above comment probably is nearly universal to humanity, but the entire list is not, and there are certainly many disputes on the relative ordering (especially as to what is on top).
But then morality does not have as its subject matter....
I think you can keep that definition: define morality and morality-human. However, at least in the metaethics sequence, it would have done a lot of good to distinguish between morality-Joe and morality-Jane even if you were eventually going to argue that the two were equivalent. Once you’re finished arguing that point, however, go on using the term “morality” the way you want to.
I only say this because of my own experience. I didn’t really understand the metaethics sequence when I first read it. I was also struggling with Hume at the time, and it was actually that struggle that led me to make the connection between what an agent “should” do and decision theory. Only later I realized that was exactly what you were doing, and I chalk part of it up to confusing terminology. If you dig through some of the original posts, I was (one of many?) confusing your arguments for classical utilitarianism.
On the other hand, I may not be representative. I’m used to thinking of agent’s utility functions through economics, so the leap to should-X/morality-X connected to X’s utility function was a small one, relatively speaking.
But then morality does not have as its subject matter “Life, consciousness, and activity; health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of all or certain kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and true opinions of various kinds, understanding, wisdom; beauty, harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience; morally good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love, friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils; harmony and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of achievement; self-expression; freedom; peace, security; adventure and novelty; and good reputation, honor, esteem, etc.”
Instead, it has primarily as its subject matter a list of ways to transform the universe into paperclips, cheesecake, needles, orgasmium, and only finally, a long way down the list, into eudaimonium.
I think this is not the subject matter that most people are talking about when they talk about morality. We should have a different name for this new subject, like “decision theory”.
True, as long as they’re talking about the stuff that is implied by their terminal values.
However, when they start talking about the stuff that is implied by other people’s (or aliens’, or AIs’) terminal values, the meaning they attach to the word ‘morality’ is a lot closer to the one I’m proposing. They might say things like, “Well, female genital mutilation is moral to Sudanese people. Um, I mean, errr, uh...”, and then they’re really confused. This confusion would vanish (or at least, would be more likely to vanish) if they were forced to say, “Well, female genital mutilation is Sudanese-moral but me-immoral.”
Ideally, to avoid all confusion we should get rid of the word morality completely, and have everyone speak in terms of goals and desires instead.
Agreed. If it happened that there were only a few different sets of terminal values in existence, then I would be OK with assigning different words to the pursuit of those different sets. One of those words could be ‘moral’. However, as is, the set of all terminal values represented by humans is too fractured and varied.
A large chunk of the list Eliezer provides in the above comment probably is nearly universal to humanity, but the entire list is not, and there are certainly many disputes on the relative ordering (especially as to what is on top).
I think you can keep that definition: define morality and morality-human. However, at least in the metaethics sequence, it would have done a lot of good to distinguish between morality-Joe and morality-Jane even if you were eventually going to argue that the two were equivalent. Once you’re finished arguing that point, however, go on using the term “morality” the way you want to.
I only say this because of my own experience. I didn’t really understand the metaethics sequence when I first read it. I was also struggling with Hume at the time, and it was actually that struggle that led me to make the connection between what an agent “should” do and decision theory. Only later I realized that was exactly what you were doing, and I chalk part of it up to confusing terminology. If you dig through some of the original posts, I was (one of many?) confusing your arguments for classical utilitarianism.
On the other hand, I may not be representative. I’m used to thinking of agent’s utility functions through economics, so the leap to should-X/morality-X connected to X’s utility function was a small one, relatively speaking.