[xpe]

> Fundamentally everything is a binary when it comes to behaviour, you either take a risk or you don’t.

You can apply binary categorization if you want, but that’s not what’s happening with the human body acting in the universe. Human actions have many degrees of freedom.

As one example, consider a cop deciding on how to respond to a vehicle stop. There are conservatively dozens of ways in which his response might vary. Does he call in for backup? How does he characterize the situation? How does approach the vehicle? What does he say to the driver? Does he place a hand on his gun? Does he draw a weapon?

As another example, consider a manager breaking some bad news to her employee. The possibilities for the human interaction are vast.

Why is it important to you to frame human actions or risk-taking as binary? Is it necessary for your argument? I struggle to see how.

But I’m also struggling to make sense of the moral philosophy you are outlining.

[brutusborn]

Aren’t all those things binary? The cop either (calls/doesn’t call) for backup. He says x or doesn’t say x (and says y or doesn’t say y). The whole spectrum is just a superposition of binary decisions.

And my moral philosophy isn’t comprehensive or consistent, essentially I think there are some useful moral standards (eg golden rule) but when it comes to details I’m a relativist, we can choose what we want, there is no true right or wrong.

[xpe]

> And my moral philosophy isn’t comprehensive or consistent, essentially I think there are some useful moral standards (eg golden rule) but when it comes to details I’m a relativist, we can choose what we want, there is no true right or wrong.

Which kind of moral relativism? There is quite a big difference between the various flavors...

> Descriptive moral relativism holds only that people do, in fact, disagree fundamentally about what is moral, with no judgment being expressed on the desirability of this.

> Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong.

> Normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when large disagreements about morality exist.

> Said concepts of the different intellectual movements involve considerable nuance and aren't absolute descriptions.

Quotes from Wikipedia [1], even though I prefer the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [2] for more detailed explanations.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/#ForArg

[brutusborn]

I don’t see much practical difference between the different flavours. I think you can judge morals only from the perspective of within a moral system. Thus tolerating other moral systems or not is arbitrarily determined by the moral system you choose.

[xpe]

Your statements about moral relativism are still confusing to me. I can’t tell how your personal preferences, such as valuing the golden rule, interact with some of the relativistic concepts here.

You are technically correct that to apply a set of morals you have to use a set of morals. This tautological reasoning of course is obvious, but this reasoning does not get at the key parts of these different kinds of moral relativism.

Let’s take normative moral relativism. Do you accept this as a valid position? Is it consistent with your beliefs? Why?

…

Thanks for discussing. I think there are probably better forums for us to unpack these ideas. I think we disagree enough to make it interesting yet are clear and patient enough to make discussion possible. LMW if this subject area or another would be something that you would like to unpack further. I’m prototyping some unusual discussion UIs.

[brutusborn]

So I agree we should tolerate other systems where possible (since none are right or wrong). But our moral system might require us to NOT tolerate aspects of other systems. Therefore we can tolerate them up to a point. We don’t not tolerate them because they are objectively wrong, but because they are wrong from the POV of our own arbitrary moral system.

I’m interested in the discussion UI. For a while I’ve been thinking about how to turn discussions like this into knowledge graphs to make it easy for others to follow and contribute. If you’d like we could set up accounts on one of the philosophy forums to discuss this?

[xpe]

> Aren’t all those things binary? The cop either (calls/doesn’t call) for backup. He says x or doesn’t say x (and says y or doesn’t say y). The whole spectrum is just a superposition of binary decisions.

We can label these actions in many ways, such as analog or discrete.

To revisit my earlier question: Does it matter to your philosophy how we label them? Why?

[brutusborn]

I guess it doesn’t matter, but it is the simplest way to look at the situation and so most useful. I would say it’s the most accurate for your consequentialist approach: certain binary actions lead to certain binary consequences.

In this case the binary action is getting in the sub or not. The outcome is dying or not. There is no analogue aspect of either. You can’t half enter a submarine or half die.

Decomposing things down to a binary is fundamentally how things work. We can analyse things to death and add our own mental/idealistic layers of continuity (like probabilities of outcomes or degrees of truthiness of statements), but the decisions that come from the analysis are always binary.