Comment by jychang
4 hours ago
Pretty much every serious philosopher agrees that “Do not torture babies for sport” is not a foundation of any ethical system, but merely a consequence of a system you choose. To say otherwise is like someone walking up to a mathematician and saying "you need to add 'triangles have angles that sum up to 180 degrees' to the 5 Euclidian axioms of geometry". The mathematician would roll their eyes and tell you it's already obvious and can be proven from the 5 base laws (axioms).
The problem with philosophy is that humans agree on like... 1-2 foundation level bottom tier (axiom) laws of ethics, and then the rest of the laws of ethics aren't actually universal and axiomatic, and so people argue over them all the time. There's no universal 5 laws, and 2 laws isn't enough (just like how 2 laws wouldn't be enough for geometry). It's like knowing "any 3 points define a plane" but then there's only 1-2 points that's clearly defined, with a couple of contenders for what the 3rd point could be, so people argue all day over what their favorite plane is.
That's philosophy of ethics in a nutshell. Basically 1 or 2 axioms everyone agrees on, a dozen axioms that nobody can agree on, and pretty much all of them can be used to prove a statement "don't torture babies for sport" so it's not exactly easy to distinguish them, and each one has pros and cons.
Anyways, Anthropic is using a version of Virtue Ethics for the claude constitution, which is a pretty good idea actually. If you REALLY want everything written down as rules, then you're probably thinking of Deontological Ethics, which also works as an ethical system, and has its own pros and cons.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
And before you ask, yes, the version of Anthropic's virtue ethics that they are using excludes torturing babies as a permissible action.
Ironically, it's possible to create an ethical system where eating babies is a good thing. There's literally works of fiction about a different species [2], which explores this topic. So you can see the difficulty of such a problem- even something simple as as "don't kill your babies" can be not easily settled. Also, in real life, some animals will kill their babies if they think it helps the family survive.
[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5TqCuizyJDfAPjkr/the-baby-e...
> Pretty much every serious philosopher agrees that “Do not torture babies for sport” is not a foundation of any ethical system, but merely a consequence of a system you choose.
Almost everyone agrees that "1+1=2" is objective. There is far less agreement on how and why it is objective–but most would say we don't need to know how to answer deep questions in the philosophy of mathematics to know that "1+1=2" is objective.
And I don't see why ethics need be any different. We don't need to know which (if any) system of proposed ethical axioms is right, in order to know that "It is gravely unethical to torture babies for sport" is objectively true.
If disputes over whether and how that ethical proposition can be grounded axiomatically, are a valid reason to doubt its objective truth – why isn't that equally true for "1+1=2"? Are the disputes over whether and how "1+1=2" can be grounded axiomatically, a valid reason to doubt its objective truth?
You might recognise that I'm making here a variation on what is known in the literature as a "companion in the guilt" argument, see e.g. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12528
Strong disagree.
Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy.
And you cannot conclude objectivity by consensus. Physicists by consensus concluded that Newton was right, and absolute... until Einstein introduced relativity. You cannot do "proofs by feel". I argue that you DO need to answer the deep problems in mathematics to prove that 1+1=2, even if it feels objective- that's precisely why Principa Mathematica spent over 100 pages proving that.
In fact, I don't need to be a professional philosopher to counterargue a scenario where killing a baby for sport is morally good. Consider a scenario: an evil dictator, let's say Genghis Khan, captures your village and orders you to hunt and torture a baby for sport a la "The Most Dangerous Game". If you refuse, he kills your village. Is it ethical for you to hunt the baby for sport? Not so black and white now, is it? And it took me like 30 seconds to come up with that scenario, so I'm sure you can poke holes in it, but I think it clearly establishes that it's dangerous to make assumptions of black and whiteness from single conclusions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
> Your argument basically is a professional motte and bailey fallacy.
No it isn't. A "motte-and-bailey fallacy" is where you have two versions of your position, one which makes broad claims but which is difficult to defend, the other which makes much narrower claims but which is much easier to justify, and you equivocate between them. I'm not doing that.
A "companion-in-the-guilt" argument is different. It is taking an argument against the objectivity of ethics, and then turning it around against something else – knowledge, logic, rationality, mathematics, etc – and then arguing that if you accept it as a valid argument against the objectivity of ethics, then to be consistent and avoid special pleading you must accept as valid some parallel argument against the objectivity of that other thing too.
> And you cannot conclude objectivity by consensus.
But all knowledge is by consensus. Even scientific knowledge is by consensus. There is no way anyone can individually test the validity of every scientific theory. Consensus isn't guaranteed to be correct, but then again almost nothing is – and outside of that narrow range of issues with which we have direct personal experience, we don't have any other choice.
> I argue that you DO need to answer the deep problems in mathematics to prove that 1+1=2, even if it feels objective- that's precisely why Principa Mathematica spent over 100 pages proving that.
Principia Mathematica was (to a significant degree) a dead-end in the history of mathematics. Most practicing mathematicians have rejected PM's type theory in favour of simpler axiomatic systems such as ZF(C). Even many professional type theorists will quibble with some of the details of Whitehead and Russell's type theory, and argue there are superior alternatives. And you are effectively assuming a formalist philosophy of mathematics, which is highly controversial, many reject, and few would consider "proven".
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> Consider a scenario: an evil dictator, let's say Genghis Khan, captures your village and orders you to hunt and torture a baby for sport a la "The Most Dangerous Game". If you refuse, he kills your village. Is it ethical for you to hunt the baby for sport?
You aren't hunting the baby for sport. Sport is not among your reasons for hunting the baby.
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