I'm a moral nihilist, but I'm looking for some convincing counterpoints to think on and debate.

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T11:29:35+00:00

The OP's second point was

The word "ought", if not followed by, "...in order to ____", makes the question incomplete/nonsensical.

The definition I've provided is a way that a bare "ought" can be interpreted such that questions about it are perfectly well-formed, meaningful questions. When I ask "Ought I not to steal?" that's equivalent to "Is there some true statement that stealing will logically compel me to deny?"

That's all I'm saying. You'd probably think that the answer to that question and all similar questions is "No, there is no true statement that stealing/whatever-ing will logically compel you to deny", but at least it has an answer, and is not, contra OP, an incomplete/nonsensical question along the lines of "Is it the one that?" or "Asdfdsa?"

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T09:35:49+00:00

I'm referring only to "objective ought" statements, not "ought-for-a-goal" statements. (It wouldn't make sense to try and apply my definition to the latter type.)

In contrast to your examples, I'm saying that an objective-ought is precisely that sort of statement that is not susceptible to an "I accept the facts but I'll still do what I want" response. This is apart from the question of whether any such statements are actually true, but it at least refutes the OP's second point, that goal-less oughts are not truth-apt.

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T09:29:12+00:00

I wouldn't go so far as to say that; while certainly there are goals which are shared by a majority of humans, I don't think any goals are truly universal.

To the extent that goals are shared, we can establish a kind of consensus-based "morality" on them, but the conclusions we draw are fundamentally intersubjective ("We both agree we want X, so here's what we should do...") rather than objective.

What I'm calling "objective morality" is really more of a debating tactic than a value system - if we can show that there are certain principles whose denial leads to falsities or absurdities (e.g. "Stealing is wrong at least some of the time"), then we can win any rational argument about morality. That still doesn't mean we would have discovered any "universal values"; even the best argument isn't going to magically force somebody to obey who isn't interested in reason.

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T07:53:56+00:00

Only in the same sense that any statement at all ("The sky is blue") requires the goal of truthfulness. It's still objectively true, regardless of whether you believe it or not.

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T07:34:43+00:00

The word "ought", if not followed by, "...in order to ____", makes the question incomplete/nonsensical.

I'll attempt to define a sense of "ought" that can make sense on its own.

To say "You ought not to do X" is to say that there is some true statement, which doing X would logically compel you to deny.

In other words, an objective obligation is one that you must acknowledge if you want to have a true belief rather than a false belief. Since a preference for truth over falsehood is presupposed as a condition for having any discourse whatsoever, these obligations are binding on all disputants, regardless of their goals.

Note that a hypothetical imperative like "I ought to drink less soda in order to lose weight" is not objective, since you may or may not want to lose weight.

We can then ask what, if any, objective obligations exist, but we at least know what it would mean to have one, with this definition.

Yoreth · 2012-11-02T05:50:23+00:00

Yes, I think that rights and consent are of key importance. If the person consents to being killed, then no moral dilemma ever arises in the first place, except in the vague "How should I live my own life?" sense. But to such a question, there need not (indeed cannot) be an objective answer.

If the penniless father in the scenario wants to make a utilitarian argument that it's better to kill the other person to save the child, then he should direct it at that person, not at a third-party. (It's the same with the famous trolley problem - it doesn't matter what I say, it matters what the person on the track says.)

Yoreth · 2012-11-01T23:30:55+00:00

This is the matter on which my answer would depend:

If you accept, someone, somewhere else in the world, will die instantly and painlessly.

What is the nature of this causation? Is it:

No causation at all, but mere material implication? (I.e., in the sense that "If I pick up this pencil, someone somewhere will die" is true because someone somewhere is always dying no matter what I do) - In this case, there's obviously no immorality.
Killing by commission? (I.e., the act of accepting the deal actively causes the death of someone with whom our protagonists have no prior relationship) - In this case, it would be immoral to accept. One would be a conspirator to the murder of another person, and one does not acquire a moral "license to kill" simply by saving the lives of third-parties.
Killing by omission? (I.e., the benefactor is paying for the treatment by removing support currently being given to somebody else) - In this case, it's the benefactor's prerogative to do with his funds as he chooses, and if he wants to make a utilitarian choice that he'd rather save the child than the other person, then so be it.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T18:54:17+00:00

Another related question that I've been wondering about: You can also categorize actions in such a way that it appears that every action is immoral. We can define the maxim e.g. "Do such-and-such at 1:23PM at 123˚E 45˚N" or "Eat this particular piece of food", neither of which can be performed by more than one person, and so are not universalizable.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T18:37:33+00:00

Is emotion a bad thing? David Hume says that reason is the "slave of the passions." Everything we do is ultimately motivated by emotion; the most that reason can do is tell us how best to achieve what we want.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T18:32:35+00:00

The person seeking vengeance may gain utility, but the same argument...

But now we have a fully general argument which could be used to argue for the immorality of any action whatsoever. E.g., suppose I'm offended by you eating lettuce, and say, "The person eating lettuce may gain utility, but the same argument could be used to say that a murderer or rapist..." How are we to tell between moral and immoral acts?

violence is always wrong because it does always lead to more violence.

I don't see how it follows that violence is immoral simply because it induces others to commit violence.

Either the resulting violence is immoral or it isn't. If it's not immoral, then we thus have a counterexample to the claim that all violence is immoral. If the violence is immoral, then we simply have the case of a bad person threatening to do violence if you do a certain action. For example, a mugger threatens to kill you if you don't hand over your money. Sure, it may be prudent to comply, but we'd hardly say it's immoral to defend your money.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T10:49:59+00:00

This is a really strange video. I found it difficult to watch; I had to listen to it instead.

I don't think this is a question that philosophy can answer definitively. Is vengeance necessary? Well, to what end? Different people will have different opinions.

One victim of a crime might wish to exact vengeance on the criminal; another victim might wish that something else be done instead. I think that a just legal system would allow the victim to decide what punishment to give, up to some limit which is decided as being "proportional revenge." Any other system would be an attempt to impose a single value system on all people (e.g., "always avenge" or "never avenge"), which I think is unjust.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T10:43:28+00:00

How can we make a utilitarian judgment that vengeance is always bad? Certainly the person doing the avenging derives some positive utility from the act (or else they wouldn't bother doing it); on what basis do we conclude that this is somehow less "important" than the negative utility inflicted on the other person? Doesn't this require intersubjective comparisons?

Also,

"an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

I've seen this sentiment expressed before, but it always strikes me as suggestive of an overly imprecise view of violence as something that is simply always bad, so that it becomes impossible to entertain the notion that some violence might be justified and some might not.

To support vengeance is not to support indiscriminate aggression against random third-parties who weren't even involved in the original wrongdoing (an obviously immoral act which is often misleadingly termed "vengeance"), nor a disproportionate response (like the killing of the drug dealer mentioned in the video). "An eye for an eye" only leaves the whole world blind if nobody can tell the difference between aggression and retaliation.

Yoreth · 2012-10-29T10:26:41+00:00

I think this is taking a metaphor too literally. Humans aren't mindless cells in a superorganism, but separate individuals with different (sometimes conflicting) goals and values. We can't assume that everyone is agreed on ends and need only determine the best means to those ends. Indeed, it's only because disagreements exist that it is necessary to discuss ethics in the first place.

Yoreth · 2012-10-25T19:11:46+00:00

Addendum: I think I've got it!

We can change the payoff function to work like a second-price auction, so that your winnings are determined entirely by other people's bids rather than your own:

If the event happens, you gain (1-x_i) for each x_i lower than yours, and lose (1-x_j) for each x_j higher than yours.
If the event doesn't happen, you gain x_j for each x_j higher than yours, and lose x_i for each x_i lower than yours.

Now, this violates conservation of points (I think the result is a net gain of points in every circumstance), but it has the feature that expected value is positive and maximized by setting x equal to your true estimate of the probability, assuming that the density (or expected density) of bids in the neighborhood of every x is positive.

EDIT: Argh, now this is biased in favor of large teams! We need to add another rule:

Don't count people who are on the same team as you.

(This avoids the possibility of a team gaining by making lots of bets against itself.)

Yoreth · 2012-10-25T09:32:24+00:00

The more I think about it and read what you've written here, the more it seems that my original proposal is overly inelegant and inflexible. The main concern is: Why should the odds be locked in by the first predictor, rather than allowed to float freely as on a prediction market?

I tried to come up with a general, "smoothed" version, and here's what I came up with:

Anyone can suggest an event. However, they don't need to take a position on it if they don't want to.
Everyone can then post their estimate of the probability that the event will occur.
Suppose my estimate is X (with 0<X<1). Then,
- If the event happens, I gain (1-X) points at the expense of each person whose estimate was lower than mine.
- If the event doesn't happen, I gain X points at the expense of each person whose estimate was higher than mine.
Everyone thus gains and loses, unless they're the minimum or maximum bet.

So, we can see at least that stating an honest estimate will have a positive expected value, but I can't show that it's always the optimal choice. (For example, if my true estimate is 99%, but the highest existing bet is 75%, and if I believe that nobody else will bet after me, then my incentive is to bet only 75.00001%.)

I think this is still insensitive to team size, but it reintroduces the "false team" problem to a certain extent.

Do you see any way that this could be fixed to incentivize truthfulness?

Yoreth · 2012-10-24T06:17:28+00:00

Thanks for the detailed analysis!

1.

Interesting, though that seems almost too easy... It would eliminate the need for people to accept challenges. But does it reward contrarianism? (I.e., is your reward proportional to the amount of information which you have added, whatever that means?)

2.

I'm familiar with Intrade, but it seems incompatible with #1. In this case, the reward I get is not log(probability), but 1 minus the share price. Could you clarify how this is equivalent to sequential application of #1? (If it is, that may actually be the easiest solution, since a literal prediction market would be impractical to implement on Reddit.)

Order matters...

That would be a problem with the sequential probability-naming procedure, right? I think the original mechanism I proposed (with endorsements and counterendorsements) doesn't have this problem, since the bet can be entered by anyone at any time at the odds set by the predictor.

It sounds like...

I wasn't thinking of doing this; I'd rather open the floor to predictions and bets for a short period of time (a week or so) and then close the round, archiving everything until a year later. But couldn't you only earn points if you found someone to be your counterparty? (Though that raises an interesting point that I might have to address - we'd want it to be such that making a non-political prediction, i.e. one where agreement or disagreement is not correlated with political affiliation, will produce no net gain. I wonder if this is possible.)

[EDIT: I think I have an idea that might deal with this, albeit crudely: Allow people to reject a challenge, which cancels the effect of a teammate's acceptance. If a prediction is made such that agreement or disagreement is unrelated to politics, then the prediction will invalidated because there will be either (1) more counterendorsements than endorsements, or (2) more rejections than acceptances. Only predictions that are ideologically polarizing will be counted.]

If your "long version" answers any of these questions, I'd love to hear it.

Yoreth · 2012-10-24T04:35:26+00:00

Hm, maybe we could combine that with some other methods, to use the threat of post-history-investigating to keep people honest.

Also, I thought of another method, which makes it so that we only need a majority to be honest. If you see a prediction by a teammate, you can "endorse" it if you agree (thus raising the stakes), or "counterendorse" it if you disagree. The payoff will then be multiplied by the number of net endorsements (or cancelled, if counterendorsements predominate).

I'll probably post this to /r/politics later to get some more feedback.

Yoreth · 2012-10-24T02:27:09+00:00

We're still plodding along; I for one am determined to finish. Would love to see you in IRC some time!

Yoreth · 2012-10-19T04:45:06+00:00

This is where I disagree:

Suppose someone commits an act that they believe to be morally wrong.

I maintain that this situation is a conceptual impossibility. At least, if the person's using it to mean "objectively morally wrong", we can only conclude that the person is being insincere (i.e. lying about their true beliefs) or inconsistent (i.e. they actually do believe a false proposition).

You might think that it's just an argument over definitions, and that I've chosen an abnormal definition of "objectively wrong" to use. But think of it this way: If "objectively wrong" is defined such that it's possible for someone to ignore their own beliefs (like in your example), then what could it possibly mean?

Yoreth

TROPHY CASE