<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
On 2015-10-02 17:12, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAO+xQEYi4TsoHr66Lsy3MA6m2PSN_fR6YzQNcZBrco02WGz37A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">Anders says above that we have
discovered universal timeless principles. I'd like to know
what they are and who proposed them, because that's chutzpah
of the highest order. Oh boy - let's discuss that one.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Here is one: a thing is identical to itself. (1)<br>
Here is another one: "All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights." (2)<br>
Here is a third one: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you
can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
(3)<br>
<br>
(1) was first explicitely mentioned by Plato (in Theaetetus). I
think you also agree with it - things that are not identical to
themselves are unlikely to even be called "things", and without the
principle very little thinking makes sense. <br>
<br>
I am not sure whether it is chutzpah of the highest order or a very
humble observation.<br>
<br>
(2) is from the UN declaration of universal human rights. This
sentence needs *enormous* amounts of unpacking - "free", "equal",
"dignity", "rights"... these words can (and are) used in very
different ways. Yet I think it makes sense to say that according to
a big chunk of Western philosophy this sentence is a true sentence
(in the sense that ethical propositions are true), that it is
universal (the truth is not contingent on when and where you are,
although the applications may change), and we know historically that
we have not known this principle forever. Now *why* it is true
quickly branches out into different answers depending on what
metaethical positions you hold, not to mention the big topic of what
kind of truth moral truth actually is (if anything). The funny thing
is that the universal part is way less contentious, because of the
widely accepted (and rarely stated) metaethical principle that if it
is moral to P in situation X, then the location in time and space
where X happens does not matter (One day I will finish my paper on
how relativity theory undermines certain egalitarian theories
because of this).<br>
<br>
Chutzpah of the highest order? Totally. So is the UN.<br>
<br>
(3) is Immanuel Kant, and he argued that any rational moral agent
could through pure reason reach this principle. It is in many ways
like (1) almost a consistency requirement of moral will (not
action, since he doesn't actually care about the consequences - we
cannot fully control those, but we can control what we decide to
do). There is a fair bit of unpacking of the wording, but unlike the
UN case he defines his terms fairly carefully in the preceeding
text. His principle is, if he is right, *the* supreme principle of
morality. <br>
<br>
Chuzpah auf höchstem Niveau? Total! <br>
<br>
Note that (1) is more or less an axiom: there is no argument for why
it is true, because there is little point in even trying. (3) is
intended to be like a theorem in geometry: from some axioms and the
laws of logic, we end up with the categorical imperative. It is just
as audacious or normal as the Pythagorean theorem. (2) is a kind of
compromise between different ethical systems: the Kantians would
defend it based on their system, while consequentialists could make
a rule utilitarian argument for why it is true, and contractualists
would say it is true because the UN declares it. They agree on the
mid-level meaning, but not on the other's derivations. It is thick,
messy and political, yet also represents fairly well what most
educated people would conclude (of course, they would then show off
by disagreeing loudly with each other about details, obscuring the
actual agreement). <br>
<br>
<br>
Do people who think about these things actually believe in universal
principles? One fun source is David Bourget and David J. Chalmers'
survey of professional philosphers<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP">http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://philpapers.org/surveys/">http://philpapers.org/surveys/</a> <br>
56.4% of the respondents were moral realists (there are moral facts
and moral values, and that these are objective and independent of
our views), 65.7% were moral cognitivists (ethical sentences can be
true or false); these were correlated to 0.562. 25.9% were
deontologists, which means that they would hold somewhat Kant-like
views that some actions are always or never right (some of the rest
of course also believe in principles, but the survey cannot tell us
anything more). 71.1% thought there was a priori knowledge (things
we know by virtue of being thinking beings rather than experience).<br>
<br>
<br>
[ Do I believe in timeless principles? Kind of. There are statements
in physics that are invariant of translations, rotations, Lorenz
boosts and other transformations, and of course math remains math.
Whether physics and math are "out there" or just in minds is hard to
tell (I lean towards that at least physics is out there in some
form), but clearly any minds that know some subset of correct,
invariant physics and math can derive other correct conclusions from
it. And other minds with the same information can make the same
derivations and reach the same conclusions - no matter when or
where. So there are knowable principles in these domains every
sufficiently informed and smart mind would know. Things get iffy
with values, since they might be far more linked to the entities
experiencing them, but clearly we can do analyse game theory and
make statements like "If agent A is trying to optimize X, agent B
optimizes Y, and X and Y do not interact, then they can get more of
X and Y by cooperating". So I think we can get pretty close to
universal principles in this framework, even if it turns out that
they merely reside inside minds knowing about the outside world. ]<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
</body>
</html>