I certainly don't feel I've solved metaethics to my own satisfaction, but it's not obvious to me that I should give up on universalist meta-ethics because moral relativism or nihilism is the usual alternative and that has problems too right?
I think any system is going to have its problems. But similarly to governments we should try to go with the one(s) that have the least problems. Personally I think we can do better than systems that only work for a small subset of the possible problem space but that's up for debate.
Another perspective I like is to try to have decisions that are somewhat robust to moral uncertainty... my moral judgments are sorta my best guess using some combination of views... compared to many people I probably place more weight on both preference and hedonistic utilitarianism, my intrinsic discount rate of the value of experiences over time is very low but not zero, and I place some value on honesty, truth, knowledge, beauty, equality, etc., beyond that their benefits in terms of positive qualia or preference satisfaction...
I'm sure this is not fully coherent. And I do make some efforts to make myself my views more coherent overtime which is why it's great to engage with people like you in convos like this..
If there's one takeaway from this post that I'd like people to understand it might be this: framing matters a lot when trying to solve complex problems. This is related to why people say hindsight is 20/20. When you already have the right frame for a problem all of a sudden it seems a lot easier. This is also why it seems like sometimes breakthroughs 'come out of nowhere'. I would argue this usually happens because your mind was able to frame the problem properly.
So, back to the questions of moral uncertainty: The best way I can think of to make this easier is to try your best to think about moral questions through the 'best' frame. If you get into the wrong frame you might go down a path that would seem absurd to those in a different frame but totally logical and coherent to you (example: slavery is moral). And how might you get in the right frame? That's what my post is attempting to help solve.
I certainly don't feel I've solved metaethics to my own satisfaction, but it's not obvious to me that I should give up on universalist meta-ethics because moral relativism or nihilism is the usual alternative and that has problems too right?
I think any system is going to have its problems. But similarly to governments we should try to go with the one(s) that have the least problems. Personally I think we can do better than systems that only work for a small subset of the possible problem space but that's up for debate.
Another perspective I like is to try to have decisions that are somewhat robust to moral uncertainty... my moral judgments are sorta my best guess using some combination of views... compared to many people I probably place more weight on both preference and hedonistic utilitarianism, my intrinsic discount rate of the value of experiences over time is very low but not zero, and I place some value on honesty, truth, knowledge, beauty, equality, etc., beyond that their benefits in terms of positive qualia or preference satisfaction...
I'm sure this is not fully coherent. And I do make some efforts to make myself my views more coherent overtime which is why it's great to engage with people like you in convos like this..
If there's one takeaway from this post that I'd like people to understand it might be this: framing matters a lot when trying to solve complex problems. This is related to why people say hindsight is 20/20. When you already have the right frame for a problem all of a sudden it seems a lot easier. This is also why it seems like sometimes breakthroughs 'come out of nowhere'. I would argue this usually happens because your mind was able to frame the problem properly.
So, back to the questions of moral uncertainty: The best way I can think of to make this easier is to try your best to think about moral questions through the 'best' frame. If you get into the wrong frame you might go down a path that would seem absurd to those in a different frame but totally logical and coherent to you (example: slavery is moral). And how might you get in the right frame? That's what my post is attempting to help solve.