Sylvan wrote:

Re - Charlie, Wanda, and morality.....



So, Joshua David Greene wrote an interesting thesis on the subject of objective vs. subjective morality, somewhat eccentrically titled "The terrible, horrible, no good very bad truth about morality..... And what to do about it". If you have any interest in the subject I highly recommend it.



The basic premise of the paper is that when we speak about morality people actually tend to have 2 different opposing views of what the concept of morality means, which he labels morality1 and morality2.



Morality1 is basically a Kantian view of morality, where lying or some other immoral action is wrong simply because It. Is. Wrong. Immoral actions in this case are somewhat like universal constants.



Morality2 is a subjective view, where the morality of your actions are determined by both intention and consequence.



The thing about morality1 is that it is basically linguistic nonsense. Why is lying wrong? Because it is wrong. What makes it wrong? The "fact" that it is an immoral action. Immoral actions are by definition wrong.



You see the problem with the above statement? It is a circular definition. Linguistic nonsense. Something that can never, and will never, be adequately explained.



So, it is a lot more useful to think about morality along the lines of morality2. Why is lying wrong? Well... Maybe it isn't always wrong. Why did you lie? Were you lying for personal gain, or did you do it to protect another? That makes a big difference. If, for example, you lie to your friend who wants to give you money, saying that you have enough when you really don't, it is hard to make the argument that your actions were morally wrong.

Sounds like 2 is the actual algorithm and 1 is a pre-computed lookup table. Caching makes a lot of sense when particular special cases of a broader problem come up frequently and requires a quick response, or when hardware limitations are likely to introduce errors, or when running the full calculation every time would create a security flaw. "Lying is always wrong" is a lot less vulnerable to Turnamancy than "Lying is usually wrong, for the following reasons."