Is Morality a Valid Preference?

After reading this several times, I have to conclude that I don't understand what "comparable" means in this comment. Otherwise, I have no idea how one could thinking both that A and B aren't comparable and that A > B.

This is a good point, and I've pondered on this for a while.

Following your logic: we can observe that I'm not spending all my waking time caring about A (people dying somewhere for some reason). Therefore we can conclude that the death of those people is comparable to mundane things I choose to do instead - i.e. the mundane things are not infinitely less important than someone's death.

But this only holds if my decision to do the mundane things in preference to saving someone's life is rational.

I'm still wondering whether I do the mundane things by rationally deciding that they are more important than my contribution to saving someone's life could be, or by simply being irrational.

I am leaning towards the latter - which means that someone's death could still be infinitely worse to me than something mundane, except that this fact is not accounted for in my decision making because I am not fully rational no matter how hard I try.

As long as we can make a series of things, none of which is infinitely worse than the next, we can prove that nothing in the list is infinitely worse than any other.

This is true, but not relevant to the question of whether 50 years of torture is infinitely worse than a speck of dust in the eye.

Argh, I have accidentally reported your comment instead of replying. I did wonder why it asks me if I'm sure... Sorry.

It does indeed appear that the only rational approach is for them to be treated as comparable. I was merely trying to suggest a possible underlying basis for people consistently picking dust specks, regardless of the hugeness of the numbers involved.

I would like to hope not.

I would predict, based on human nature, that a if the 3^^^3 people were asked if they wanted to inflict a dust speck in each one of their eyes, in exchange for not torturing another individual for 50 years, they would probably vote for dust specks.

I would probably go for specks here. Many people, I predict, are going to get an emotional high out of thinking that their sacrifice will prevent someone from being tortured (while scope insensitivity prevents them from realizing just how small 1/3^^^3 is). If they actually receive a dust speck in the eye in a short enough time interval afterwards, I think that they would have a significant chance of taking it to mean that specks was chosen instead of torture (and thus they would get more of a high after being specked, if they knew why.)

If you polled people in such a way that they wouldn't get the high, then your answer should be the same as before. Scope insensitivity still kicks in, and people will vote without understanding how big 3^^^3 is (I don't understand it myself -- the description of 'a 1 followed by a string of zeroes as long as the Bible' is just so mind-numbingly big I know I can't comprehend it.)

Gotcha.

What.

he figures there is no morality, so he might as well maximize happiness.

he figures there is no morality, so he might as well enter a monastery.

he figures there is no morality, so he might as well maximize unhappiness.

he figures there is no morality, so he might as well put on a clown suit and moonwalk every day.

I'm going to say that the first statement doesn't really seem to make much more sense than the others.

If that's you particular moral judgement...

I mean, as you going for a "moral realist" position, where other people might have insight into the "true" morality?

Or is it that other people's moral intuition might bring up issues that you hadn't thought off, or illustrate the consequences of some of your own positions?

Or is it political: it would be better to have a more consensus view (for practical or moral reasons), even if we disagree with certain aspects of it?

If I take you correctly, you are pointing out that thought experiments, now abstract, can become actual through progress and chance of time, circumstance, technology, etc., and thus are useful in understanding morality.

If this is an unfair assessment, correct me!

I agree with you, but I also hold to my original claim, as I do not think that they contradict. I agree that the thought experiment can be a useful tool for talking about morality as a set of ideas and reactions out-of-time. However, I do not agree that the thought experiments I have read have convinced me of anything about morality in actual practice. This is for one reason alone: I am not convinced that the operation of human reason is the same in all cases, and in this particular, in the two cases of the theoretical and the physical/actual.

I am not convinced that if a fat man were actually standing there waiting to be shoved piteously onto the tracks that the human mind would necessarily function in the same way it does when sitting in a cafe and discussing the fate of said to-be switch-pusher.

If I were to stake the distinction between the actual and the theoretical on anything, it would be on the above point. What data have we on the reliability of these -- I think you must agree that, regardless of the hypothetical opinions of medieval scholar types, the Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario abstract for us now and here -- thought experiments to predict human behavior when, to retreat to the cliche, one is actually in the trenches?

This may have some connection to the often-experienced phenomenon when in conversation of casual nonchalance and liberalism about issues that do not affect the speaker and a sudden and contradictory conservatism about issues that do affect the speaker. This is a phenomenon I encounter very often as a college student. It is gratis to be easy-going about topics that never impact oneself, but when circumstances change and a price is paid, reason does not reliably produce similar conclusions. Perhaps this is not a fair objection however, as we could claim that such a person is being More Wrong.

If you can convince me of a reliable connection, you'll have convinced me of the larger point.

I think we may indeed be talking past each other, so I will try to state my case more cogently.

I am not denying that people do possess ideas about something named "morality". It would be absurd to claim otherwise, as we are here discussing such ideas.

I am denying that, even if I accept all of their assumptions, individuals who claim these ideas as more-than-subjective --- by that I think I mean that they claim their ideas able to be applied to a group rather than only to one man, the holder of the ideas --- can convince me that these ideas are not wholly subjective and individual-dependent.

If it is the case that morality is individual only, then that is an interesting conclusion and something to talk about, but it does seem, at least to a first approximation, that for a judgment to be considered moral, it must have some broader applicability among individuals, rather than concerning but one person. What can Justice be if it is among one man only? This seems a critical part of what is meant by "morality". It is in this latter, broad case, that moral philosophy appears null.

If you possess an idea of morality desire that I consider it to have some connection with the world and with all persons --- and surely I must require that it have such a connection, as moral claims attempt to dictate the interaction between people, and thus cannot be content to be contained in one mind alone --- at least enough of a connection that you can, through reasoned argument, convince me that your claims are both valid and sound, then surely your ideas must make reference to principles that I can discover individually to both exist and serve as predicates to your ideas. If you cannot elucidate these foundations, then how can I be brought to your view through reason? This was the intent of my original criticism, to ask why these foundations are so lousy and to beg that someone make them otherwise if moral claims are to be made.

I think that this is the crux of my objection. I cannot find moral claims that I can be brought to accept through reason alone, as even in the most impressive cases such claims are deeply infected by subjective assumptions that are incommunicable and --- dare I write it? --- irrational.

(This is to change the subject somewhat, but I find that the quality of an idea that allows it to be communicated is necessary to its being considered the result of reason and objective. I use that last word with 10,000 pounds of hesitation.)

However, and now I think that we are talking to each other directly, if, when you write of moral ideas, you refer only to those ideas that currently do exist, whether logically well-constructed or not, and you say that you are interested in studying these for their effects, then I am agreed.

I certainly agree that, whether I am convinced of its validity or use, morality does exist as a thing in the minds of men and thus as an influence on human life. But, I think that restricting ourselves to this case has gargantuan ramifications for the definition of "moral" and drastically cuts the domain of objects on which moral ideas can act. It seems this domain can include only those which involve human beings in some fashion. If morality is exclusively a consequence of the history of human evolution and particular to our biology -- and I do agree that it is -- then I feel that I am bound by it only as far as my own biology has imprinted this moral sense upon me. If it is just biological and not possible to derive through application of reason, then, if I desire to make of myself a creature of reason alone, what care have I for it, but as a curiosity of anthropology?

I suspect that we agree, but that I took a bottom-up approach to get there and left the conclusion implicit, if present at all. All apologies.

Avoided in this post has been struggle with the word "morality" itself. I suspect we could write reams on that. If you think it worthwhile, we should, as the debate may be swung on the ability or inability to pin-down this notion.

(Note: As for SIAI, I think imprinting upon an AI human notions of moral judgments would be hideously dangerous for two reasons: 1) Human beings seem capable in almost every situation of overthrowing such judgments. If said AI is bound in similar manner, then what matters it for controlling or predicting its behavior? 2) If said AI is to possess a notion of justice and of a being who has abdicated certain rights due to immoral conduct, what will its judgment be of the humanity that has taught it morals? Can it not glance, not at history, but simply at the current state of the world and find immediately and with disgust ample grounds for the conclusion that very many humans have surrendered any claim to the moral life? It would be a strange moral algorithm if an AI did not come to this conclusion. Perhaps that is rather the point, as morality even among humans is a strange and often-blind algorithm.)

        "I agree with your basic point that moral intuitions reflect psychological realities, and that attempts to derive moral truths without explicitly referring to those realities will inevitably turn out to implicitly embed them."

       "First, I can have moral intuitions about non-humans... for example, I can believe that it's wrong to club cute widdle baby seals. Second, it's not obvious that non-humans can't have moral intuitions."

       "If that is in fact your desire, then you haven't a care for it. Or, indeed, for much of anything else."

I agree vehemently with your comment.

Forgive me for being sloppy with my language. Given what I wrote, your objection is entirely reasonable.

The idea that I meant to express is that, while it seems safe to assume that virtually everyone who has ever lived long enough to become a thinking person has encountered some kind of moral question in his life, we cannot say that an appreciable percentage of these people has sat and carefully analyzed these questions.

Even if we restrict ourselves only to people alive today and living in the United States -- an enormous restriction considering the perhaps 100 billion people who have lived ever -- the population of thousands you point to is pathetically small. Certainly I agree that Socrates, Mill, Kant, & their Merry Band have approached the subject seriously, but beyond these we've but a paucity, which I think is truly surprising given the apparent universality of moral experience.

The comparison to studying thermodynamics or logic (perhaps not quite so with logic), is that while we can say that everyone is of course affected by thermodynamics, almost no one attempts to think about it. The effect of thermodynamics on a person's life is not impacted by that person's ignorance of thermodynamic laws. However, a huge number of people do attempt to think and talk about morality, and I am not convinced that this latter group does so rigorously or well, which does have a real and critical effect on what morality is in actual practice.

However, I hope you will notice that this is a minor point, and was not a premise to the larger objection I was putting forward.

Sorry for misunderstanding, then. But what's the point of the big number, if the claim is only about proportion?

Mm? If I have a strong inclination to do X, and a strong moral intuition that "X is wrong", and I suffer anguish because of the conflict, how do you conclude that the best result is that the moral intuition disappears... either in that particular case, or in general? I mean, I happen to agree with you about the particular case you mention, but I don't see how you reached it.

Good question; here's a formal answer:

We can, in the long run, keep the inclination and eliminate the intuition, keep the intuition and drop the inclination, or keep both. The utility of each is:

side with inclination: fun of (less pain of) indulging in inclination (what's intrinsic to the action itself, i.e. the pain of being tortured but not the discomfort we have that it's being inflicted), less effort needed for (and plus any second order effects of) eliminating the intuition side with the intuition: zero less effort needed for (and plus any second order effects of) eliminating the inclination status quo: fun of less pain of indulging in the inclination at the rates people will engage in given moral disapproval, less pain felt by those with the intuition

I think that this adequately explains 1) why the OP felt ambivalent about counting moral intuitions - even if they count in principle, you really should ignore them sometimes - and 2) why your and my intuitions agree in the homosexuality case: gay sex is fun and doesn't intrinsically harm anyone, homophobia brings little joy to even its holders, and it would take much less effort to eliminate homophobia than homosexuality.

This model grounds common moral intuitions like "if it doesn't harm anybody [implied: beyond the feelings of those who morally disapprove], why ban it?," that preferences that are inborn should take precedence over those that are inculcated, and so on. And it seems that even the other side in this debate is operating from this framework: hence their propensity to argue that homosexuality is not inborn, or that homophobia is, or that there would be very bad second-order effects of the disappearance of homophobia (you would marry your box turtle!)

It's worth noting, incidentally, that in addition to "eliminate the intuition" and "eliminate the inclination" there is the option of "eliminate the anguish." That is, I might reach a point where I want to do X, and I think X is wrong, and I experience conflict between those impulses, and I work out some optimal balance between those conflicting impulses, and I am not anguished by this in any way.

I don't really think this can work over the long term. An individual might be mistaken about how much moral anguish she'd experience over something, but in the long run, those moral intuitions that don't affect you emotionally aren't going to affect you behaviorally. (This is the reason real-life utilitarians don't Feed The Utility Monster unless they have an enabling peer group.)

I suspect I would. But not only does utility not add linearly, you can't just flip the sign, because positive and negative are calculated by different systems.

I don't think it's silly at all.

Personally, I experience more or less the same internal struggle with this question as with the other: I endorse the idea that what matters is total utility, but my moral intuitions aren't entirely aligned with that idea, so I keep wanting to choose the individual benefit (joy or non-torture) despite being unable to justify choosing it.

Also, as David Gerard says, it's a different function... that is, you can't derive an answer to one question from an answer to the other... but the numbers we're tossing around are so huge that the difference hardly matters.