Diego Caleiro · 2016-02-11 · EA Forum
Telofy: Trying to figure out the direction of the inferential gap here. Let me try to explain, I don't promise to succeed.
Aggregative consequentialist utilitarianism holds that people in general should value most minds having the times of their lives, where "in general" here actually translated into a "should" operator. A moral operator. There's a distinction between me wanting X, and morality suggesting, requiring, or demanding X. Even if X is the same, different things can hold a relation to it.
At the moment I both hold a personal preference relation to you having a great time as I do a moral one. But if the moral one was dropped (as Williams makes me drop sevral of my moral reasons) I'd still have the personal one, and it supersedes the moral considerations that could arise otherwise.
Moral Uncertainty: To confess, that was my bad not disentangling uncertainty about my preferences that happen to be moral, my preferences that happen to coincide with preferences that are moral, and the preferences that morality would, say, require me to have. That was bad philosophy and on my part and I can see Lewis, Chalmers and Muelhauser blushing at my failure.
I meant uncertainty I have as an empirical subject in determining which of the reasons for argument I find are moral reasons or not, and within that which belong to which moral perspective. For instance I assign high credence that breaking a promise is bad from a Kantian standpoint, times a low credence that Kant was right about what is right. So not breaking a promise has a few votes in my parliament, but not nearly as many as giving a speech about EA at UC Berkeley has, because I'm confident that a virtuous person would do that, and I'm somewhat confident it is good from a utilitarian standpoint too, so lots of votes.
I disagree that optimally satifying your moral preferences equals doing what is moral. For one thing you are not aware of all moral preferences that, on reflection you would agree with, for another, you could bias your dedication intensity in a way that even though you are acting on moral preferences, the outcome is not what is moral all things considered. Furthermore It is not obvious to me that a human is compelled necessarily to have all moral preferences that are "given" to them. You can flat out reject 3 preferences, act on all others, and in virtue of your moral gap, you would not be doing what is moral, even though you are satisfying all preferences in your moral preference class.
Nino: I'm not sure where I stand on moral realism (leaning against but weakly). The non-moral realist part of me replies:
wouldn't {move the universe into a state I prefer} and {act morally} necessarily be the same because you could define your own moral values to match your preferences?
Definitely not the same. First of all to participate in the moral discussion, there is some element of intersubjectivity that kicks in, which outright excludes defining my moral values to a priori equate my preferences, they may a posteriori do so, but the part where they are moral values involves clashing them against something, be it someone else, a society, your future self, a state of pain, or, in the case of moral realism, the moral reality out there.
To argue that my moral values equate all my preferences would be equivalent to universal ethical preference egoism, the hilarious position which holds that the morally right thing to do is for everyone to satisfy my preferences, which would tile the universe with whiteboards, geniuses, ecstatic dance, cuddlepiles, orgasmium, freckles, and the feeling of water in your belly when bodysurfing a warm wave at 3pm, among other things. I don't see a problem with that, but I suppose you do, and that is why it is not moral.
If morality is intersubjective, there is discussion to be had. If it is fully subjective, you still need to determine in which way it is subjective, what a subject is, which operations transfer moral content between subjects if any, what legitimizes you telling me that my morality is subjective, and finally why call it morality at all if you are just talking about subjective preferences.
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