[ExI] ethics vs intelligence

[Stefano Vaj]

On 12 September 2012 22:45, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> Mid level principles most moral systems agree on are nice, and they are
also interesting on their own: why are they so robustly sensible? I'm
involved in one research project that tries to figure out a new one, and I
suspect it might deep down be a matter of game theory and structural
stability: the game-theoretically right way of acting might not be strongly
affected if you perturb people's utility functions.

Here, as in many other areas, I am mostly concerned with diversity, so that
I am inclined to think that the true essence of an ethical system is what
makes it different from others, not what makes it (possibly) similar.

I am also wary of supposed similarities, especially when they are claimed
to be universal or sem-universal because I suspect many of them to be an
artifact (words and concepts that remain the same but start being denoted
by an altogether different semantic and context), and other to be mostly
formal in nature ("do the right thing", etc.).

But yes, similar moral prohibitions or obligations may derive from
different moral philosophies. I would not infer much from that other than
the fact that wings or eyes have been invented a number of times by
evolution, yet they are not logically "necessitated" in some sense nor they
necessarily represent the product of similar processes.

After all, as the space of viable organisms is much smaller than the space
of all theoretically possible organisms, but remain nevertheless
"infinite", the number of historical ethical systems is also smaller than
the space of conceivable ethical systems because the former remain subject
to ordinary Darwinian pressures, both on the systems as such and on their
followers.

Lastly, lest we haste to conclude that ethical system not being "objective"
and "rational" and "universal" are random, fully arbitrary, the product of
occasional whim, etc., I am persuaded that on Nietzsche's page we should
extend Ben Zaiboc's conclusion about the fact that "There can't be any such
thing as an objective moral code, and you can't derive a morality based on
something that you are not" into "There can't be any such thing as an
objective moral code, and you can't help deriving your moral from *what
that you are*".

The moral convictions of each of us are not "rationally compelled", but are
not arbitrary either: they simply reflect our personal deepest nature,
"what we really are", and we are not really free to choose them randomly
any more than we can be somebody else.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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