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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26360 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Again, thank you for such a comprehensive reply! I'll address some of your points here and will have to digest and sit on the rest, before considering a reply. You've given me some juicy things to think about.

A more salient difference might be that even if objective morality somehow exists, I do not see any way to measure it or even recognize it were it to appear before me, which seems to make it a bit moot. What would such a hypothetical mechanism even be like? What might someone, in possession of objective morality, use to convince me of it beyond the fact I find it compelling, which I also accept as a valid means of assessing subjective morality, and hence can't be the sole criterion by which I decide if it's objective or subjective!

I think we largely agree on this. Epistemologically, I think this question remains open and debatable. But I also think that moral facts are empirically discoverable in principle and analyzable.

... while I choose to treat a vivid qualia of a tiger coming for my ass as objective reality, that is not conclusive. Just to make it doubly clear, I think objective reality probably exists, at some level, ignoring things like observer-dependency in QM (I understand, possibly erroneously, that the wave function is objective and unique, while the observed solutions are subject/observer dependent, though in this case a photon or a helium atom count as observers). Even if it doesn't, I consider it useful. Similarly, you won't find me doing anything particularly unethical by public opinion in my normal life, because while I think it's a social fiction, I find it a useful one, while simultaneously not conflating that as making it true.

In other words, I cannot disprove solipsism. But I can and do choose to act as if it's not the case. And so I will, until someone can convince me it's possible to do otherwise.

Hmm. I wasn't anticipating the introduction of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM to come into this. At a first pass, my only contribution is to say that it's becoming fairly well agreed upon that the CI is bunk pseudoscience, most of which is only taught to undergraduates due to lingering path dependencies and historical happenstances that took place during the development of physics. Most people these days prefer the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which does fully preserve a completely mechanistic, material, objective view of the external world.

Certainly. But the standards are themselves subjective preferences, even if they're convergent because of upstream factors.

Here you're simply talking about the hypothetical imperative. But all categorical imperatives ultimately reduce back down to the hypothetical imperative, and deontology ultimately reduces down to consequentialism. This sits at the heart of the example I was trying to provide at the bottom half of my last statement.

The unpacking of the rest of your response I will have to think about!

Hmm, if I gave you the impression I endorse the Copenhagen Interpretation, that was in error. While I obviously lack the physics background to make a conclusive judgement (and even physicists disagree on how to interpret the implications of the maths they all agree on), I lean towards the MWI myself.

When I talk about observations, I am vaguely gesturing at the fact that an observer within a particular world only appreciates a single sample from the universal wave function.

Here you're simply talking about the hypothetical imperative. But all categorical imperatives ultimately reduce back down to the hypothetical imperative, and deontology ultimately reduces down to consequentialism. This sits at the heart of the example I was trying to provide at the bottom half of my last statement.

Mein gott, this is why I refuse to read traditional philosophical works, why use many words when few do? (Referring to the unnecessarily verbose and confusing way Kant went about saying that some goals/policies are simply downstream consequences of other goals and preferences). Even the naming scheme is awful, if you told someone there exists something called the hypothetical imperative (or the categorical one), you will just bamboozle them if they didn't already know what meant haha.

I do happen to agree with you, in that I, sincerely, if uncharitably, think that self-proclaimed Deontologists are Consequentialists in denial. Even the Categorical Imperatives are backed by what can be roughly described as rule utilitarianism, which may very well be the optimal strategy for a computationally-bounded utilitarian/consequentialist agent.

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