(For example, the meta-concept of morality, as opposed to a concrete set of moral beliefs such as Eliezer!morality or humanity!morality.)
But there isn’t a meta-concept of morality. If you try to abstract one, you just end up with something like “that which motivates”, which is empty unless you specify which specific minds can be motivated by it, and then you’re back where you started.
There are several different uses of morality, each which result from different meta-concepts. An Aristotelean, for example, would talk about morality as fitting a human’s purpose (as would a Christian), for example. Everybody uses the same word for several fundamentally different concepts, some of which have no or little basis in fact.
Different humans have somewhat different morals. I can still talk about “morals” in general, because they are a special kind of motivations in humans. Talking about morals in minds in general indeed makes little sense.
Talking about morals in minds in general indeed makes little sense.
To whom? AFAICS, if you have minds living in a community, and they can interact in ways that caus negative and positive utility to each other, then you the problem that morality solves...and that is a ery general set of conditions.
I think what Dan means is that different kinds of minds in different kinds of community might need quite different solutions to the problem of interacting effectively, which might lead to quite different notions of morality, and that if that’s true then you shouldn’t expect any single notion of morality to be universally applicable.
But there isn’t a meta-concept of morality. If you try to abstract one, you just end up with something like “that which motivates”, which is empty unless you specify which specific minds can be motivated by it, and then you’re back where you started.
There are several different uses of morality, each which result from different meta-concepts. An Aristotelean, for example, would talk about morality as fitting a human’s purpose (as would a Christian), for example. Everybody uses the same word for several fundamentally different concepts, some of which have no or little basis in fact.
Literally true in isolation, but so completely irrelevant to this thread, I can only describe this comment as a lie.
Different humans have somewhat different morals. I can still talk about “morals” in general, because they are a special kind of motivations in humans. Talking about morals in minds in general indeed makes little sense.
To whom? AFAICS, if you have minds living in a community, and they can interact in ways that caus negative and positive utility to each other, then you the problem that morality solves...and that is a ery general set of conditions.
I think what Dan means is that different kinds of minds in different kinds of community might need quite different solutions to the problem of interacting effectively, which might lead to quite different notions of morality, and that if that’s true then you shouldn’t expect any single notion of morality to be universally applicable.
Or they might not. It isn’t at all obvious.
I came up with the meta-concept “behaving with positive regard to the preferences of others”. Does that suffer from those problems?