Month: January 2022

And for all this, nature is never spent… -- Gerard Manley Hopkins Summary: Infinite ethics (i.e., ethical theory that considers infinite worlds) is important – both in theory and in practice. Infinite ethics puts serious pressure on various otherwise-plausible ethical principles (including some that underlie common arguments for “longtermism”). We know, from impossibility results, that… Continue reading On infinite ethics →

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind And then you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind  -- Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne” Non-naturalist normative realism claims that there are objective normative facts that are irreducibly “over and above” facts about the natural… Continue reading The ignorance of normative realism bot →

This is the second in a pair of posts examining whether morality falls out of instrumental rationality, if you do the game theory right. David Gauthier thinks the answer is yes. I focus on his view as an example of a broader tendency, to which I expect many of my comments to generalize. In my… Continue reading Morality and constrained maximization, part 2 →