Thinking is an art and people who do it well have far less psychological pain that others. For example, take the following two statements;
"Capitalism will destroy us all"The first statement is a factual assertion, that is, it is an assertion in the category of positive information. The second statement is a normative statement, or value statement. Alternately it might be rephrased as the positive statement "capitalism is treated as the best thing ever by humans."
"Capitalism is the best thing ever."
The above two examples are just examples, and not important. The important thing is that the above two statements are not actually contradictions. It is possible for capitalism to both be the best thing ever and to be destroying us. In fact, only the best thing ever could destroy us because humans would fight against obvious danger. Only something that was so good we could never give it up could destroy us.
The reader may be tempted to concentrate on the issue of capitalism, and I apologize for distracting you with that, but this is not about capitalism. It is about category errors and cognition.
Inevitably people think badly because they respond to one category with another category of assertion. Someone will say something like;
"X is a fact"and another person will say;
"X is immoral/evil/racist"What is going here is that a person is responding to information in one category: "potentially factual statements," with another category, "moral statements or objections."
The same happens in reverse;
"Y is evil"
"Yeah, but factually it is economically efficient."People are always tripping past each other with category errors. Simply put;
FACTUAL INFORMATION SHOULD BE REFUTED WITH FACTUAL CLAIMS AND MORAL ASSERTIONS SHOULD BE REFUTED WITH MORAL CLAIMS, AND THE TWO SHOULD NEVER CROSS.
Doing this one thing (keeping the factual separate from the moral) will alleviate almost all the psychological tension in your life surrounding politics.
People think badly because they cannot stop their knee-jerk reactions from interfering with their judgement. They cannot stop their knee-jerk reactions because they refuse to separate factual and moral information. Morality is the end of logic. The minute you say "ought" "should" or "must" you have already stopped thinking.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this just a corollary of Hume's is-ought gap (which Land rejected)? I mean when Billy says "Capitalism is good," it is shorthand for "on balance, Capitalism is the economic system most conducive to our terminal values," ie what he believes humans should be striving for. (Basically Aristotle's "final purpose" or ultimate function of a person). Yes you are correct in that responding to a fact with a moral statement is a category error ("is" vs "should"), but that doesn't imply that this constitutes the "end of logic."
That is, unless Hume is right, and subjective emotions determine morals, in which case it clearly does. But if he IS right, then the orthogonality thesis is also necessarily right since there is no natural upward progression of desires as intelligence increases, and Land is therefore wrong about the Paperclipper AI.
Isn't this just a corollary of Hume's "is-ought" gap? When Billy says "Capitalism is the best system," it's shorthand for "Capitalism is the system most conducive to the achievement of my terminal values." Yes responding to a fact with a "should" is a category error, but unless Hume is correct, and morals are derived purely from subjective emotions, there is no reason why the latter statement is illogical or even unwarranted.
ReplyDeleteAnd if Hume IS correct, then the orthogonality thesis must also be correct because there is no no natural progression of desires to follow as intelligence increases. And therefore Land's refutation of the Paperclipper AI is dead wrong.
Cogent and concise. Will bookmark and use when I find people falling into this error. Very nice article.
ReplyDeleteOne of mine in a somewhat similar vein: https://righteousruminations.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-difference-in-values.html