omnizoid

Karma: 72

Two Dogmas of LessWrong

omnizoid15 Dec 2022 17:56 UTC

−4 points

155 comments69 min readLW link

omnizoid 15 Dec 2022 19:31 UTC
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in reply to: Ruby’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Could you link me to some of those posts. I wouldn’t agree with the heuristic ‘never disagree with experts’, but I’d generally—particularly in an area like philosophy—be wary of being super confident in a view that’s extremely controversial among the people that have most seriously studied it.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:43 UTC
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in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Thanks for the reply and kind words!
1. This was obviously not the extent of my argument for phenomenal conservatism.
2. What was wrong with the classification of anti-realists? If one is a realist they think that there are mind independent moral facts. Thus, to deny this, one needs to think either moral claims aren’t truth apt, they’re all false, or they depend on attitudes. I’ve read Eliezer’s stuff about morality, FWIW. If you want my ideological turing test of at least one version of anti-realism, here it is https://benthams.substack.com/p/sounding-like-an-anti-realist
3. Yes—though the predictions won’t settle it. Some things we’d predict of aliens is that they’d appreciate pleasure if they can experience it, that some of them would be utilitarians, and we’d also predict greater moral convergence over time. In particular, we’d expect a coherent formula to be able to characterize the moral views that are supported by the most reasons. I think if none of those things ended up being true, my credence in realism would decrease to around 60%.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:45 UTC
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in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I sense that there may have been a bit of a miscommunication. I don’t think that constructivism per se is crazy—I think it’s wrong, but it’s held by smart respectable people. It’s cultural relativism that’s held by no-one reasonable—the idea that, if society approves of vicious torture, it’s okay to torture people is crazy. This is one reason why there are virtually no contemporary defenders of cultural relativism. Also, I’m not so sure that I’m right—I’m 85% confident in moral realism and 70% confident in non-physicalism!

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:47 UTC
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in reply to: Tapatakt’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Reason can still allow us to discover the moral facts, even if the moral facts don’t cause something. If you have 13 cakes, you can’t divide them into two equal halves. The number 2 doesn’t cause this but it explains that feature of reality. See also the Enoch paper that I reference for more on this.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:48 UTC
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in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I agree with the orthogonality thesis, so no point disagreeing there. I’m not explaining the most widely held lesswrong beliefs—just a few that I strongly disagree with.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:49 UTC
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Utilitarianism is a normative ethical view, not a meta-ethical view. I’m a utilitarian and a realist. One can be a utilitarian and adopt any meta-ethical view.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 2:55 UTC
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in reply to: Lao Mein’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Re Bramble, there’s no reason one has to have the moral belief that pain is bad to organize coalitions trying to avoid pain, based merely on it being disliked.
Re physicalism—well, I think the analogy doesn’t go through for a few reasons. First, it’s not even clear what it means to imagine that 2+2=5 without changing the definitions of words. But also, if we just reflect on what consciousness is, it’s very clear that we could imagine every particle moving the same way but there not being consciousness. I agree you have to deny that if you’re a physicalist—that’s one good reason not to be a physicalist.
Re the challenge that no realist has addressed—Enoch addresses it in that article. He also says they haven’t addressed the challenge that way, but the responses they gave still apply—eg the Parfit response to evolutionary debunking.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 3:02 UTC
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in reply to: Dacyn’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
That sounds like anti-realism—probably some type of quasi realism.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 3:36 UTC
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in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
In order to carry out solomonoff induction, we presumably need mathematics. And it’s very tricky to develop a mathematical realism which doesn’t use an epistemology also permitting moral realism. (What counts as intuitionism is very fraught, but on some understandings, mathematical realism is most plausibly reliant on an “intuitionism”) - see Justin Clark-Doane’s excellent book Morality and Mathematics for a discussion of this.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:25 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I agree relativism doesn’t entail that—cultural relativism does, however. Cultural relativism holds that right means approved of by my culture. This applies to both appraiser and agent relativism—as long as someone thinks something is right just because it’s supported by society, it will have a similar reductio.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:26 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Yes! The claim is that if you use intuitions to justify one but reject intuitions to justify the other, that will be inconsistent.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:27 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I agree with this—one can think some claims aren’t truth apt, others false, others dependent on attitudes. The claim is that collectively these have to cover all moral claims.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:28 UTC
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in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Probably some type of relativism.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:29 UTC
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in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I didn’t want the post to be too long. I agree that not everyone on LessWrong agrees with this and exactly how prolific they are is an empirical matter that I have not investigated. However, my sense, having spent a lot of time around such people, is that they’re pretty common.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:30 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
You and I have talked about this a lot before, so no need to rehash it.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:31 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I think it’s the best argument for theism, though I would basically Moorean shift it because theism is so crazy. Also, there’s huge selection effects—studying POR makes people less religious.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:33 UTC
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in reply to: Lance Bush’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
1. I think this for pretty basic Auman’s agreement theorem reasons. While their methodology may be super wrong, so may be the methodology of LessWrongers.
2. I don’t know exactly, but I’d give it at least 10% odds even if it remained implausible sounding. I endorse utilitarianism, but peer disagreement dramatically reduces my confidence in it.
3. This was just a reference to Two Dogmas of Empiricism—one clearly need not be dogmatic to be an anti-realist—though I think there are lots of dogmatic anti-realists; as is no doubt also true of realism.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 14:35 UTC
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in reply to: Tapatakt’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
Metaphysical possibility denotes whether something could actually occur. It’s a bit broader than logical possibility. The distinctions are a bit tricky and I’d recommend googling it if you’re interested to hear more—there are lots of commentators, so I’m leaving my comments brief.
My thoughts about consciousness—in the physical sense—don’t provide evidence for it, but consciousness which I directly access does.
EM fields are physical, but the claim is that the psychophysical laws would be empirically investigatable and may govern EM fields on dualism.

omnizoid 16 Dec 2022 21:18 UTC
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Two Dogmas of LessWrong
I agree that if there would no conscious beings there would be no morality, because I think the only good things are pleasurable brain states. I think humans often want things because they’re good. I replied in more detail to the evolutionary debunking argument in the article.

omnizoid

Two Dog­mas of LessWrong

Two Dogmas of LessWrong