[ExI] Morality function, self-correcting moral systems?

[Stefano Vaj]

On 17 December 2011 14:47, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Sure. But it is a reasonable philosophical claim, rather than a scientific
> one (as he is claiming). See
> http://blog.practicalethics.**ox.ac.uk/2010/10/sam-harris-**
> the-naturalistic-fallacy-and-**the-slipperiness-of-well-**being/<http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2010/10/sam-harris-the-naturalistic-fallacy-and-the-slipperiness-of-well-being/>
> http://blog.practicalethics.**ox.ac.uk/2011/11/sam-harris-**
> is-wrong-about-science-and-**morality/<http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/11/sam-harris-is-wrong-about-science-and-morality/>
> for some griping from my office-mates about his claim. Note that several
> of us agree that well-being (whatever it is) is worth optimising, either
> because it is good itself or because it helps us achieve the good. But it
> is tricky to make a proper justification for it, let alone define it well.
>

Yes. A sentence there resumes my view on the matter:
<That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous
“is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating*
to sell books. Shame on him.>>

The proceedings seem however typical enough of pop "ethical debate",
something to which nobody can really escape today.

You do not take an openly formal or tautological ethical predicate ("A
moral person is one who does the right thing"), but rather a semi-formal
one ("well-being"), where the content is vague enough that most of your
audience is comfortable in defining it in the terms of its very diverse
moral intuitions (say, "the well-being of the world require the
extermination of the heretics", so, yes, as a fundamentalist Mr. X is still
happy with that), so that the naturalistic fallacy is not perceived, or the
target is willing to accept the predicate as an axiom anyway.

Then you introduce more or less subreptiously a content-rich definition of
the term employed, and try to cry contradiction on those who refuse to draw
the conclusions that you claim derive from their acceptance of the "first
principle" discussed.

Does it mean that ethical (aesthetical, political) discussions are
pointless? Certainly not.

Firstly, because unless the other party is 100% consistent in opting for a
radically incompatible value system, there is usually at least *some*
territory you have in commeon where you can show that what she says lead to
consequences, or derives from premises, that are unacceptable for *her* -
or at least for the public hearing the discussion. :-)

Secondly, because even when this is not not the case, an ethich
(aesthetical, political) discussion still makes sense in clarifying ever
more what the differences between two views really are, and helps each
party to think what it already things "to the end", "to the bottom", "up to
its ultimate consequences", and to increase personal and reciprocal
awareness of all that. Which makes, if anything, for a higher awareness in
one's fundamental choices.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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