I wrote a series on normativity, starting at "The Meaning of Morality", where I outlined what is right as referring to being in accord with a particular moral standard, of which many possible standards (even mutually exclusive ones) could be used. For example, murder is wrong according to a few standards (utilitarianism, deontology, etc.) but could be right on some other standards (usually strange ones that no one actually uses, like one in which it is morally right to kill as many people as possible).

Moreover, no one particular standard, on my view, is "meta-ethically privileged". The actual standard someone picks from among the many possible ones are chosen by desires. However, you still remain in accord with or against a particular standard regardless of desires. For example, murder is wrong according to utilitarianism even if there are no utilitarians.

I was actually legitimately curious as to whether this view was considered moral realism or not. In three essays ("Will The Real Moral Realism Please Stand Up?", "Finlay and Joyce on Moral Discourse", and "Why Moral Realism is False and How We Can Still Have Moral Discourse Without It"; see also the follow up "You Can't Unify Rationality and Morality") I found out that there are a few different concepts of what moral realism is that come down to three different axes:

There's success theory, the part that I accept, which states that moral statements like "murder is wrong" do successfully refer to something real (in this case, a particular moral standard). There's unitary theory, which I reject, that states there is only one "true" moral standard rather than hundreds of possible ones. And then there's absolutism theory, which I reject, that states that the one true morality is rationally binding.

I don't know if Felicifia has any moral realists, but I have a few questions for people who accept moral realism, especially unitary theory or absolutism theory. These are "generally seeking understanding and opposing points of view" kind of questions, not stumper questions designed to disprove or anything. While I'm doing some more reading on the topic, if you're into moral realism, you could help me out by sharing your perspective.

Why is there only one particular morality?
This goes right to the core of unitary theory -- that there is only one true theory of morality. But I must admit I'm dumbfounded at how any one particular theory of morality could be "the one true one", except in so far as someone personally chooses that theory over others based on preferences and desires.

So why is there only one particular morality? And what is the one true theory of morality? What makes this theory the one true one rather than others? How do we know there is only one particular theory? What's inadequate about all the other candidates?

Where does morality come from?
This gets me a bit more background knowledge, but what is the ontology of morality? Some concepts of moral realism have an idea of a "moral realm", while others reject this as needlessly queer and spooky. But essentially, what is grounding morality? Are moral facts contingent; could morality have been different? Is it possible to make it different in the future?

Why should we care about (your) morality?
I see rationality as talking about what best satisfies your pre-existing desires. But it's entirely possible that morality isn't desirable by someone at all. While I hope that society is prepared to coerce them into moral behavior (either through social or legal force), I don't think that their immoral behavior is necessarily irrational. And on some accounts, morality is independent of desire but still has rational force.

How does morality get it's ability to be rationally binding? If the very definition of "rationality" includes being moral (as is sometimes the case), is that mere wordplay? Why should we accept this definition of rationality and not a different one?

I look forward to engaging in diologue with some moral realists. Same with moral anti-realists, I guess. After all, if moral realism is true, I want to know.

~

(Cross-posted on my blog and LessWrong.)

Yes. For reasons we simply don't understand, the pain-pleasure axis discloses the world's inbuilt metric of (dis)value. If you were the only sentient being who existed, then bliss would straightforwardly be valuable, and agony straightforwardly disvaluable. As it is, billions of subjects of experience exist; and we can't yet mind-meld. Hence conflicts of value. However, a Godlike superintelligence who could access all possible first-person perspectives could weigh them and act accordingly. Now we just need to build God-like superintelligence...

It's a sad fact about human nature, Elijah, that the mere mention of one's name can stir a response. I guess that's one reason why so many social primates get sucked into the walled garden of Facebook - when their time would be much better spent e.g. posting on Felicifia.

davidpearce wrote:Yes. For reasons we simply don't understand, the pain-pleasure axis discloses the world's inbuilt metric of (dis)value.

Why think the world has an inbuilt metric of (dis)value? It's clear that pain-pleasure matters to people, but in what way does it "matter to the world"?

davidpearce wrote:However, a Godlike superintelligence who could access all possible first-person perspectives could weigh them and act accordingly. Now we just need to build God-like superintelligence...

I agree with that.

Peter, I think the pleasure-pain axis matters to the world because sentient beings are a feature of the world. The pleasure-pain axis discloses a part of its intrinsic nature - and that nature is radically at odds with our naive materialist intuitions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalis ... hysicalism

Elijah, let us consider, say, the first-person of experience of unbearable agony or uncontrollable panic. For the victim, at least, the disvaluable nature of the experience is not an open question (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument - being subjectively disvaluable is built into the very nature of unbearable agony or uncontrollable panic.

The antirealist will be unimpressed. "Sure", says the antirealist, unbearable agony or uncontrollable panic is disvaluable for you. But it's not disvaluable for me. Or at least, it's an open question whether I find your agony or panic disvaluable."

But this response just expresses our epistemological limitations, not some deep ontological truth. We don't have direct access to each other's first-person states. If the antirealist had first-person access to the victim's unbearable agony or uncontrollable panic - more intimate access than even a mirror-touch synaesthete - then their negative value would not be in doubt to him either.

"Maybe so", responds the antirealist. "But this counterfactual doesn't show that (dis)value is objective. Rather it's purely mind-dependent."

But at least if he's a naturalist, the (dis)value realist isn't claiming that (dis)value is mind-independent - any more than the realist about phenomenal colour need claim that colour is mind-independent. If we are Strawsonian physicalists, the first-person phenomenology of our mental states discloses intrinsic properties of the stuff of the world, the "fire" in the equations about whose nature physics is silent:
http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~seager/intnat.pdf
First-person states don't have some kind of second-rate ontological status.
In short, one can be a reductive physicalist and a (dis)value realist - on this story at any rate.

Elijah,I'm not proposing that our moral intuitions give us access to non-material abstract Platonic forms. Rather I'm arguing that agony is empirically disvaluable.

Update: I wrote "Why We Can't Use Common Human Needs to Create a Moral Realism" in response to the talk on LessWrong about psychological unity.

Thanks Peter! What has rationality to do with ethics? Well, a precondition of rational action is understanding the world. If we are scientifically literate, then we'll internalise Nagel's "view from nowhere" and adopt the God's-eye-view to which natural science aspires. This entails overcoming egocentric bias. We'll recognise that all first-person facts are ontologically on a par - and (ceteris paribus) act accordingly to satisfy the stronger preference over the weaker. So the ideal rational agent in our canonical normative decision theory will impartially choose the action with the highest expected utility. Of course, millions of years of selection pressure means that the weak preference is often more readily accessible. The egocentric illusion cuts deep: it's a hugely fitness-enhancing adaptation. But it's irrational to confuse an epistemological limitation with a deep metaphysical truth. At the risk of embracing the No-True-Scotsman fallacy, IMO a full-spectrum superintelligence will necessarily do the right thing.

For a more traditional egocentric (and anthropocentric) conception of rationality, perhaps see
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gu1/decision_theory_faq/

The state-dependence of memory -and our inability to access the first-person states of other subjects of experience - means that the disvaluable nature of agony may lseem an open question in the philosopher's study. In the grip of unbearable agony or uncontrollable panic, it's not an open question. Could agony merely _seem_ to be disvaluable? Well, in the realm of pure phenomenology, the distinction between appearance and reality collapses.

I hope you need never put your theory put to the test Elijah! But if someone takes their own life because they can't stand the pain - whether physical pain or psychological pain - this is prima facie evidence the states in question are empirically disvaluable, at least from the perspective of their victim.

A conditionally activated predisposition to take one's own life may or may not increase the inclusive fitness of one's genes. Suicidal despair or excruciating agony is certainly aversive. And If a subject claims he is being punished by God (or whatever), then one can reject the construction he places on his experiences. But I'm not inclined to challenge the phenomenology of the experience itself. Suicidal despair or excruciating agony has a normative aspect that seems conceptually primitive. However, we don't have any account of how first-person experience can exist at all consistent with the ontology of scientific materialism. In our current state of ignorance at least, if someone denies they have any experiences at all that seem (dis)valuable, then maybe their phenomenology of experience is different from mine. But I assume I'm broadly typical.

David, have you seen my argument in this thread?

It's not very refined yet, but while I don't disagree with the meat of what you're saying, I want to argue that expressing it in terms of 'fundamental value' is ultimately going to be obfuscatory.

Arepo, can we realistically hope to carry off such a project? Yes, naturalising normative concepts is a challenge. In practice, normative concepts seem conceptually indispensable. Even to suggest we should dispense with their use presupposes their existence. If my hand is in the fire, simply to say that the experience if aversive without alluding to the felt normative aspect that compels me to withdraw my hand seems to be omitting something essential to the experience. Indeed my own moral epistemology rests on this seemingly self-intimating sense of (dis)value generalised. Science discloses that there is nothing special or ontologically privileged about _me_. So insofar as it's disvaluable for me to be in agony, then it's disvaluable for anyone, anywhere. So I try and act accordingly.

davidpearce wrote:Science discloses that there is nothing special or ontologically privileged about _me_. So insofar as it's disvaluable for me to be in agony, then it's disvaluable for anyone, anywhere. So I try and act accordingly.

I'm confused about this step. Science might say there's nothing special or privileged about me, but I think there's something special and privileged about me -- I am me and not anyone else. So, when discussing about what I value; what is valuable about me; I care about me more than any other particular person (but not all that much more). I also don't expect anyone else to value me more then themselves.

peterhurford wrote:I am me and not anyone else.

True, but it's worth remembering the hidden complexity in the reference. There is no formal definition which configurations of quarks and leptons are you and which ones aren't. In a property bundle view of personal identity, even a pig or a chicken is just a really bad copy of you. Or think of hypothetical transformations that gradually turn you into something very different, like a chimp or a robot.

Even on a biological level, all neurons in your brain are directly descended from a single ancestor cell common to all other eukaryotic cells in existence, including all other brain cells.

Hedonic Treader wrote:

peterhurford wrote:I am me and not anyone else.

True, but it's worth remembering the hidden complexity in the reference. There is no formal definition which configurations of quarks and leptons are you and which ones aren't. In a property bundle view of personal identity, even a pig or a chicken is just a really bad copy of you.

I don't know that much about philosophy of identity, but I don't think I need to formally define myself as a particular quark-lepton configuration in order to have a distinct, personal identity. I don't disagree with anything you said, but I don't think what you said undermines my point.

~

Elijah wrote:Unless you're claiming that because mental state S is known a priori to be bad, roughly analogous states S must be bad, whether they belong to you or others. That is a correct line of reasoning.

How is it a correct line of reasoning? There is definitely a highly relevant difference even if the mental state S is bad -- it's not taking place in me, it's taking place in another. "S in me" is "bad for me" and "S in you" is "bad for you" certainly, but I don't think that is enough to deductively or inductively establish that "S in you" is "bad for me" and "S in me" is "bad for you".

~

Elijah wrote:I agree with Peter. this line of reasoning is fallacious because it presupposes an objective moral principle, i.e., one should treat people equally.

Surprisingly enough, I actually do like the equality route as a justification for utilitarianism. I consider myself utilitarian because it best satisfies my fundamental moral intuition that everyone should be treated equally.

Peter, i think it's a generic feature of first-person states - the illusion of perspective that makes _this_ here-and-now appear ontologically special. But why should this epistemological limitation - a limitation we all share - have meta-ethical antirealist implications? Other here-and-nows aren't somehow less real or less important than this one simply because I can't directly access them here and now. Insofar as we aspire to be ideal rational agents, we should impartially weigh the interests of all other subjects of experience within our forward light-cone; and act accordingly.

-accidental double post-

Why is there only one particular morality?

This goes right to the core of unitary theory -- that there is only one true theory of morality. But I must admit I'm dumbfounded at how any one particular theory of morality could be "the one true one", except in so far as someone personally chooses that theory over others based on preferences and desires.

So why is there only one particular morality? And what is the one true theory of morality? What makes this theory the one true one rather than others? How do we know there is only one particular theory? What's inadequate about all the other candidates?

I believe hedonism as a meta-ethical theory of value is objectively true, that happiness and suffering have objective intrinsic value, because this claim is corroborated by my direct experience of pleasure and pain. I think that every conflicting meta-ethical position fails because they're supported by theoretical logic, common sense, intuition, faith or anything other than direct experience, I don't think I can push this point any further if it's not accepted at face value that one's own conscious experience is the only thing that one has absolute proof of and that any claim or denial about the intrinsic value of pleasure and pain must be based on the actual experience of these emotional states (someone on here once pointed out that common sense, intuition and faith are experiences,I don't think an experience can tell us about anything other than itself). For a being who was incapable of pleasure and pain and had no memory of ever having experienced either, I think the correct position to maintain would be weak agnosticism regarding the existence of intrinsic value and, by extension, objective morality. I don't think my position can be logically defended or refuted, there's nothing about moral realism or moral nihilism that necessarily violates classical logic.

Where does morality come from?

This gets me a bit more background knowledge, but what is the ontology of morality? Some concepts of moral realism have an idea of a "moral realm", while others reject this as needlessly queer and spooky. But essentially, what is grounding morality? Are moral facts contingent; could morality have been different? Is it possible to make it different in the future?

The basis of moral judgments is value, what's worth doing or avoiding, what would be good or bad. Objective morality requires intrinsic value. I don't think there is a theoretically possible universe where what I call 'pain' isn't bad by it's very nature and worth minimizing, regardless of whether or not it's considered as such.

Why should we care about (your) morality?

I see rationality as talking about what best satisfies your pre-existing desires. But it's entirely possible that morality isn't desirable by someone at all. While I hope that society is prepared to coerce them into moral behavior (either through social or legal force), I don't think that their immoral behavior is necessarily irrational. And on some accounts, morality is independent of desire but still has rational force. How does morality get it's ability to be rationally binding? If the very definition of "rationality" includes being moral (as is sometimes the case), is that mere wordplay? Why should we accept this definition of rationality and not a different one?

I don't think maximizing the ratio of happiness to suffering in the world is 'rational', only desirable (worth desiring, even if it isn't actually desired). It's completely arbitrary and inconsistent to make a distinction between the value of one person's basic experience of pleasure or pain and anyone else's, especially considering the problem of personal identity, but even being morally consistent isn't 'rational'. I don't think there is any non-emotional argument you could give someone as to why they should care about being moral or rational (by anyone's standard).

Ubuntu wrote:I believe hedonism as a meta-ethical theory of value is objectively true, that happiness and suffering have objective intrinsic value, because this claim is corroborated by my direct experience of pleasure and pain.

davidpearce wrote:Other here-and-nows aren't somehow less real or less important than this one simply because I can't directly access them here and now. Insofar as we aspire to be ideal rational agents, we should impartially weigh the interests of all other subjects of experience within our forward light-cone; and act accordingly.

Let's say we accept this, assume that pleasure and pain intensities are finite cardinal values that can somehow be measured or approximated (i.e. hedons are real and we can have non-arbitrary epistemic access to them), and we are truly impartial (God's Eye View). Let's also say we bite all bullets and are somehow capable of quenching all competing moral emotions about justice, identitiy, loyalty and so on.

Why then should the output be negative utilitarianism rather than classical hedonistic utilitarianism?

Negative utilitarians may act to maximise happiness; and insofar as thought that not maximising happiness is a source of distress to others, then other things being equal they are presumably obliged to do so. Perhaps the congruence runs deeper. For the classical utilitarian would seem obliged to lay plans for launching a utilitronium shockwave. Other things being equal, the negative utilitarian should agree: a utilitronium shockwave would be an effective way to wipe out suffering. However, unlike the classical utilitarian, the negative utilitarian isn't obliged to lay plans for launching a utilitronium shockwave if instead we opt to phase out suffering by less apocalyptic means. In practice, working for life based on gradients of intelligent bliss strikes me as a more promising option for negative, classical and preference utilitarians alike. Most people find the thought of being converted into utilitronium upsetting - and utilitarians aren't supposed to promote distress.

David, you successfully point out practical considerations and overlaps between negative and classical utilitarianism. This is a very eloquent evasion of the question.

Fundamentally speaking, why would a hedonistic/moral realist's "God's Eye View" prioritize the prevention of unpleasantness over the creation of pleasantness in cases where the intensities and quantities themselves don't demand it?

My hypothesis is that the parts of your psychology that led you to identify as a negative rather than a classical utilitarian are not primarily motivated by, and maybe not even fully compatible with, the intellectualized impartiality of here-and-now perspectives.

Hedonic treader, as a statement of psychological fact, negative utilitarians are almost always depressives and (rate) positive utilitarians are euphorically (hypo)manic. [I've only ever met one!] So is classical utilitarianism the objective, "balanced" view if we adopt a scientific view-from-nowhere ? Maybe; but despite the intuitive symmetry of pleasure and pain, a fundamental insight of NU is that no one is harmed by not existing. This "no harm" perspective is, I think, wholly consistent with taking a God's-eye-view. Intuitively, yes, pressing a hypothetical cosmic button that (painlessly) ended the lives of existing subjects of experience would entail causing them harm, not least by depriving them of future pleasurable experiences. And indeed there are excellent (indirect) utilitarian reasons for upholding in law the principle of the sanctity of life in humans and nonhunan animals alike. But if none of us woke up tomorrow, the idea that in consequence we'd be harmed rests, I think, on an untenable conception of enduring personal identity over time - the convenient fiction of an enduring metaphysical ego.

davidpearce wrote:Maybe; but despite the intuitive symmetry of pleasure and pain, a fundamental insight of NU is that no one is harmed by not existing. This "no harm" perspective is, I think, wholly consistent with taking a God's-eye-view.

That is plausible, but it assumes that harm, rather than hedonistic (dis)value should be the moral realist's focus. It is logically unclear why this should be more morally "real" than a benefit perspective.

But if none of us woke up tomorrow, the idea that in consequence we'd be harmed rests, I think, on an untenable conception of enduring personal identity over time - the convenient fiction of an enduring metaphysical ego.

Yes, but this mixes personal identity into the consideration. We could take it to an abstract non-personal level and say replacing positive perspectives with neutral ones (including nonconscious arrangements of matter) harms them. Correspondingly, the prevention of suffering can be framed as a benefit: If I supply painkillers to someone in pain, I can be seen as benefitting them, even if I have no social or legal obligations to be active in this way.

And negative utilitarianism cannot withdraw to the intuitive "do no harm" principle that distinguishes between action and omission any more than classical utilitarianism; NU prescribes actively attacking and torturing a few individuals if this prevents a greater number of individuals from experiencing more total suffering.

Elijah wrote:
I think that your emotions push you toward moral realism in addition to NU. Imagine the problem like this: If God asked you to tell him whether objective moral values exist, and you would be sentenced to eternal damnation if you gave a wrong answer, what would you say?

Whatever emotional biases you assume someone has in adopting whatever meta-ethical position they hold has nothing to do with whether or not their position is correct. The validity of an idea falls or stands on it's own. People should also be careful in assuming that everyone else secretly shares their common sense intuitions deep down inside.

Let's say we accept this, assume that pleasure and pain intensities are finite cardinal values that can somehow be measured or approximated (i.e. hedons are real and we can have non-arbitrary epistemic access to them)

Do you not believe that pleasure and pain can be measured in terms of intensity and duration (maybe not precisely, in practice, although measuring inter-subjectively observable brain activity that corresponds with emotional states might eventually be possible, and I'm sure not everyone feels the same amount of pain or pleasure for the same length of time when they stub their toe, win the lottery, lose someone they care about, fall in love etc., but I mean that emotional states differ quantitatively) ?

Why then should the output be negative utilitarianism rather than classical hedonistic utilitarianism?

I don't know if you meant to quote me but I believe that happiness is just as much worth promoting as suffering is minimizing. I agree with David Pearce's position on the problem of personal identity and that if anyone's suffering is worth minimizing then everyone's suffering is equally worth minimizing since it's the same basic phenomenon. Anyone else's pain is just as real as my own, even if I have no direct access to it. I have no access to the pain of 'my' future self either. I think that point should be judged separately from his denying that happiness and suffering are symmetrical in value, which I respectfully disagree with.

Elijah, in answer to your question, if God were to threaten eternal damnation for not endorsing his well known views on moral realism, I'd be happy to take His word for it. He could probably establish priority too. Back in the world of secular rationalism, recall I'm not arguing that (dis)value is mind-independent, any more than phenomenal colour is mind-independent. They are still objective, spatio-temporally distributed features of the natural universe. Rather I think the properties of our minds partly disclose the intrinsic nature of the stuff of the world that the equations of physics formally describe, i.e. I'm (tentatively, provisionally) both a monistic idealist and reductive physicalist (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalis ... hysicalism).

Emotional bias? Certainly. But anyone who isn't disturbed by agony or suicidal despair hasn't understood it.

Hedonic treader, yes our conception of personal (non-)identity will certainly colour our ethics. The existence of some sort of enduring metaphysical ego is central to our conceptual scheme. But imagine if instead of, say, Fred (1942 - 2023), we have a fine-grained conception of personal identity (F1, F2, F3, etc) with F1 being the birth of a baby and F100,000, when F!'s successor and namesake breathes his last. Giving a painkiller to migraine-racked F30,000 helps his immediate successors, who would otherwise be pain-racked. But the painkiller doesn't benefit F30,000. Conversely, the nonexistence of F100,001 doesn't harm F100,000. Pre-reflectively, as you suggest, if we replace a happy state with a hedonically neural state, we have harmed someone, or at least created harm. But someone who is in a hedonically neural state is not sad, disappointed or otherwise in a disvaluable state. Neither is his happy namesake and predecessor. By all means, let's create blissful, empirically valuable states indefinitely. As you know, I advocate creating the maximum cosmological abundance of superhappy minds. But unlike states of suffering, there is no self-intimating urgency to insentience or hedonic zero that cries out for their abolition.

Ubuntu, yes, I agree. Questions about metaethical anti-realism - or whether to favour classical or negative utilitarianism - need to be kept separate from the question of whether an ideal rational agent takes account only of preferences/hedonic states to which he has direct access - or instead impartially weighs all possible first-person perspectives. Thus one can be a meta-ethical antirealist and still claim that, other things being equal, it is _irrational_ to give greater weight to weak preferences (etc) over stronger preferences simply in virtue of asymmetries of epistemic access. If we fall victim to the egocentric illusion, we mistake our epistemological limitations for some deep truth about the world.

davidpearce wrote:But the painkiller doesn't benefit F30,000. Conversely, the nonexistence of F100,001 doesn't harm F100,000.

I agree.

davidpearce wrote:Pre-reflectively, as you suggest, if we replace a happy state with a hedonically neural state, we have harmed someone, or at least created harm. But someone who is in a hedonically neural state is not sad, disappointed or otherwise in a disvaluable state. Neither is his happy namesake and predecessor.

Sure, but this enters the realm of circular logic. Why is the absense of disvaluable states more relevant in the "view from nowhere" than the presence of valuable states, no matter what quantity or intensity? Unpleasantness is just negative pleasantness, and vice versa - incorrect?

davidpearce wrote:But unlike states of suffering, there is no self-intimating urgency to insentience or hedonic zero that cries out for their abolition.

Urgency is not sufficient to make the case either. I sometimes have hedonic states below zero that aren't accompanied by a sense of urgency, e.g. mild headaches. They are annoying, but not urgent. On the positive side, people sometimes report desires as urgent, even if they are not solely needed to alleviate negative states. Why does the movie franchise fan wait 6 hours in the cold to be among the first to see a movie? Because they would otherwise suffer? Maybe, but that explanation would not be very parsimonious. Obviously they just feel a sense of urgency to see the movie because they desire it. They also usually don't express a sincere meta-wish not to have the desire either, i.e. it is not just a negative compulsion.

As speculation, I would add that hypothetically, there could be forms of pleasure so intense that they equal agony in intensity, and you and I just haven't experienced them yet. It is conceivable that a person in such a state would express it as extremely urgent to maintain the state.

Emotional bias? Certainly. But anyone who isn't disturbed by agony or suicidal despair hasn't understood it.

I agree. I don't think it's possible to reason, even objectively and impartially, without emotional influence, and I remember reading of some study that supported this. I think emotions can tell us about emotions.

As speculation, I would add that hypothetically, there could be forms of pleasure so intense that they equal agony in intensity, and you and I just haven't experienced them yet. It is conceivable that a person in such a state would express it as extremely urgent to maintain the state.

I agree.

Hedonic Treader, as an advocate of superhuman bliss, I won't pretend I feel comfortable defending a killjoyish-sounding negative utilitarianism. But unlike agony, pure bliss has no urgency, or desire for change, or fear it may be lost. Yes, if mu opioidergic positive hedonic tone is harnessed to dopaminergic desire, then a sense of urgency can certainly be induced. Indeed, activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system is associated with a highly motivated sense of things-to-be-done and anticipated reward. But "liking" and "wanting" are doubly dissociable - even though, thanks to millions of years of selection pressure, they are intimately linked in our minds.

Apologies, I hadn't meant to suggest that adopting a notional God's-eye-view by itself disqualifies classical utilitarianism in favour of native utilitarianism. Rather, if one is a negative utilitarian, then all sorts of pleasurable self-regarding actions that might otherwise be both rational and ethically permitted are neither if we take into account the interests / preferences of other introspectively inaccessible subjects of experience. (I'm not quite sure how the question of the view-from-nowhere arose here. I recall recently discussing its ramifications after my blood pressure rose briefly while reading section 6 on burger-picking Jane on Luke Muehlhauser's otherwise admirable Decision Theory FAQ ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/gu1/decision_theory_faq/ ). Of course, if one is a classical utilitarian, then all sorts of actions currently regarded as rational for an idealised rational agent are nothing of the kind if we aspire to a God's-eye-view too.)

Elijah, deferring to superior epistemic authority is essential to the whole enterprise of knowledge. If God exists (a secret He has hitherto kept well hidden), then if He asked me about moral realism on pain of eternal damnation, I'd again say yes. The existence of damnation would confound my secular scientific rationalism.

However - to keep things more realistic - if you're asking whether I think I could be mistaken about moral realism then yes. Perhaps it's worth distinguishing here between axiological realism and ethical realism. I'm confident that first-person states of e.g. unbearable agony and despair are disvaluable. What (if anything) follows from this disvaluable nature is problematic.