User:Woozle/posts/others/What Would You Do Without Morality

Link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/rq/what_would_you_do_without_morality/

Point

EY asks how the reader's moral behavior would change if "you learned, suddenly and definitively, that nothing is moral and nothing is right; that everything is permissible and nothing is forbidden." "Suppose that, whatever you think is the basis of your moral philosophy, I convincingly tore it apart, and moreover showed you that nothing could fill its place."

Objection

Firstly: This is another example of my issue with thought experiments: they pose a question without context. Meaning doesn't occur in a vacuum; it requires context. In this particular case, the answer would depend on exactly how my moral philosophy was shown to be invalid -- which presupposes that every possible objection I could make has been answered. The answers to those objections would determine the new shape of reality, which would determine how I would respond to it.

Secondly, this almost seems to be presupposing that there is some greater morality outside of working towards whatever is best for "us", where "us" refers to whatever group the speaker sees as reflecting their own goals (in practicality, mostly long-term goals). I don't know that there is any such thing as "greater morality". (As far as my "us", my short answer is to say "civilization", which probably needs to be defined rather more precisely -- but I do know what it is and what it isn't.)

Possible insight: all morality exists to serve some goal, and you can't have an goal without a mind. (Any disagreement on this?) Ergo, there can't ever be a morality that exists outside of minds, and there wouldn't be any point in serving the morality of a mind that you couldn't communicate with.