The question is what will you do in the meantime, while waiting for a properly decentralized authority? It could take a while...

Thank you!

The objectivity could be said to be in the deduction from subjective desires and preferences — Coben

Yes we allways have to start from something subjective no matter how you slice it.

And I don't even think it really works like that, simply deducing morality from desires or preferences in some kind straigtforward logical way. There's a lot more that goes into it.

From the time I've spend writing laws as a professional, I know it doesn't work like that. You can think in advance about how you want to formule a rule, state the goals you want to accomplish with it, and speculate about what you think will or won't work to accomplish those goals... but ultimately the real test is in how it plays out after it's implemented. And then you get feedback, some actual empirical evidence, to adjust the rules if necessary.... back and forth. It's a process.

So yeah, what philosophers have been trying to do in ethics over the ages, seems pure hubris to me, and doomed to fail.

Mind dependant or mind independent is how the distinction is typically used.

There is convergence in what people want. But what people want isn't morality yet. I think there are different ways moralities get created, but because people generally want the same things, there will be a lot of similarities usually. This was meant merely to counter the often made point about relativism... and how it leads to anything goes, if we can have no truth about the matter. It doesn't, because people agree about certain things.

To be clear, I specifically don't want to derive a universal set of moral tenents from consensus between moral traditions. I think that quest for universality or objectivity is precisely where it often went wrong in philosophy.

That god has been successfully ejected from morality, to say nothing of the fact that god never really figured in it as explained above, doesn't imply that there are no moral truths. You mentioned convergence of moral values and that, to me, indicates a measure of objectivity to moral truths. — TheMadFool

No it doesn't. Even if every person where to think exactly the same about morality that wouldn't make morality objective. It's an objective fact that all people think the same in that case, but it's still something people think... so it doesn't get anymore 'subjective' than that. Words have meanings.

Morality is something we create, like language is, we do not observe or find morality or language like we find objective facts about the world. And so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use terms like true or correct or whatever equivalent.

This may not seem like it is that important, but I think it matters. The language we use will inform the way we think and talk to eachother about morality. If people use descriptively inaccurate words to begin with, I don't think much progress can be made.

You get that I'm not talking about my literal right to say words to him, but about the morally compulsory force of those words, right? It feels like you're being intentionally obtuse here and not engaging honestly and charitably. — Pfhorrest

I was being intentionally obtuse, but there was a point to it... Words never have a compulsory force by themselves, right. Only if you manage to convince him, will the words have an effect on his behaviour. People can change their minds when presented with good arguments, but more typically there is some other force doing the convincing. In case of the law we have institutions that enforce the laws. For morality this is a bit more nebulous, but generally the enforcing will be done by social pressures... if you don't follow the mores of the group, you risk being excluded from the group, which, for the social beings we are, will often be enough to convince people to follow that morality.

This is an important point I think that maybe isn't allways appreciated enough. For morality to work, it needs to have some authority behind it... and like I alluded to in the OP, ultimately that authority comes from the group agreeing on certain moral rules. That may be tacit, by consensus, by majority or even imposed 'agreement' in case of tyrants... but the point is that you need something like that for it to actually be something more than mere words. Are there better and worse ways of going about this? I'd like to thinks so, but ultimately it doesn't matter much what I think... I may have the most solid arguments and empirical evidence for a certain moral rule, If I don't manage to convince people that they should follow it, than it remains only my idea of what morality should be.

So yeah by all means propose methods to adjudicate disagreement, that certainly is a way a philosopher can have valuable contribution to the proces. But I don't think there one 'correct' way, nor will that way, even if we were to assume there is a correct way, necessarily be accepted in practice because it's correct. And then we still need to keep on living together with whatever morals that got agreed on, even if we think the proces by which they came to be was a bad one.

I may have more to say later, haven't found the time yet to read all of your text...

I go into this in much more depth in my essay On Politics, Governance, and the Institutes of Justice, which may be more on the level of abstraction you're concerned with, but rests ultimately on the building blocks you're contesting here. — Pfhorrest

I'll read it tomorrow, I have to get some sleep now.

The question at hand here is exactly what the correct such process is. — Pfhorrest

There is no 'correct' process. How would you determine if it's correct or not?

Where are the boundaries between these groups? If my neighbor in contemporary California keeps a slave, do I and the rest of the neighborhood have the right to tell him he's not allowed to do that? If a whole state wants to allow slavery, do the rest of the states have a right to tell it that it's not allowed to do that? If another country has one caste that holds another caste in slavery, are other countries allowed to come in and tell them they're not allowed to do that? Would that be a righteous liberation of an oppressed people or an unjust invasion of a sovereign state? — Pfhorrest

If freedom of speech is a right in California, then you have the right to tell them anything you want, barring the usual exceptions like inciting violence. You probably also have the right to critique the mores and laws of California... and to convince and seek support to change those laws if you don't agree with them. But there's no guarantee it will work. And if it doesn't work you can allways disregard the law or mores, at your own peril.

There are international conventions and treaties between nations to try to settle disputes like that. But yes, generally intra-group moral conventions don't apply between different nation states... that's why it often ends in war.

I think you might be misreading the phrase "meta-ethical moral relativism". It's not a meta level of "ethical moral relativism"; it's moral relativism, in the sense that applies in the field of meta-ethics, as distinct from normative ethics or descriptive ethics. The descriptive sense just says "people disagree". The meta-ethical sense says "there is no correct way to adjudicate those disagreements". The normative sense says "therefore we morally ought to tolerate differences of behavior".

It sounds like you are asserting the meta-ethical sense of it here, but...

Different communities have different morals, so it certainly seems to be an accurate description — ChatteringMonkey
...this just sounds like the descriptive sense, which doesn't have to entail the meta-ethical sense. — Pfhorrest

Individual people disagreeing is not the whole story though. People do disagree, all the time, but if they want to be part of a moral community they have to accept that the group can come to a different agreement about a particular matter. The way those disagreements get settled is the group coming to an agreement, by whatever process that is.

So yes, there is no meta-ethical sense in which those agreements can be adjudicated. But that doesn't entail the normative sense that we should tolerate differences in behaviour. People are bound by the conventions of their group... the social contract.

The relativism only applies to different groups coming to a different set of conventions, but that's not relativism in the sense that everybody can do as he pleases. That's why I used the term meta-ethical moral relativism. Maybe that's not how it is commonly used, but I hope you see what i'm trying to get at, and why it is not just anything goes relativism.

I say prescriptive claims about morality can be objectively "true or false" in a different sense, a non-descriptive sense (because they're not trying to describe at all), despite similar disagreements between people or communities about what is good or bad, because we can likewise verify that when a person of a certain kind stands in a certain context and experiences a certain phenomenon it seems good or bad to them, like it feels good or bad to them, it hurts or pleases them. And then say that morality is however it needs to be to feel good to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it feels to other people in other contexts etc) — Pfhorrest

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I don't think it would work all that well in practice. Do you see how many qualifiers you had to get in to make it work, i.e. 'a person of a certain kind', 'in a certain context', ' experiencing a certain phenomenon' etc... Who other than maybe a philosopher has the time and ability to work out an equation with that many variables while going about his day? Utilitarism and consequentialism have the same kind of issues...

So therefore i'd say, fluid dynamics, while far from perfect, is the way to go... because we are only human.

I don't think it really matters if the universe was created or not, not to us humans anyway...

It would only be relevant if that would also imply that that God not only created the universe, but that he also created some sort of moral code for us to follow.

And so, even if it would be likely that the universe was created, the likelihood that that creation also came with a moral code specific for us humans to follow seems much much... much smaller.

But yeah people will keep discussing this until the end of times, as if it makes a difference for the point they actually want to make.

That's still a hedonic criteron though, assuming by "harm" you mean something like "cause suffering".

I'm not saying that anyone has an obligation to positively generate flourishing, pleasure, etc (for themselves or for others), but that when we are judging something as good or bad, we do so on the basis of making people feel good or bad. You may not be obligated to give someone a back rub, but it's still a nice thing to do, right? We'd judge that action positively, even though we don't think it would be morally wrong in a blameworthy way to not do it. Why would we judge it positively? Well, because it made someone feel good. And punching random people on the streets is definitely morally forbidden, but by what criteria are we judging it to be so wrong? Well, that it hurt someone, inflicted suffering, made them feel bad.

There's lots and lots of details about the particulars of a complete moral system that I go into lots of detail about later. Hedonism is just the basic criterion to use for, essentially, "measuring" goodness and badness. — Pfhorrest

Causing suffering is not the same as doing harm I'd say. And I wouldn't necessarily agree with feeling good or bad as the measure for morality. Harm in my view is more the flipside of flourishing, where one takes a larger picture into account, larger than mere good or bad feelings. But I think you agree with this...

In any case, this is really more a topic for the earlier thread Against Transcendentailism. This essay against nihilism isn't arguing specifically for a hedonic morality, just some morality that isn't relative to what people subjectively intend or desire. I only mention appetites, and thus hedonism, in this essay to be clear that I'm not arguing against a view of morality (or reality) that's independent of experiences (like sensations and appetites), which are not irreconcilably subjective the way thoughts (like beliefs and intentions) and feelings (like perceptions and desires) are, even though they are subjective still in a different way. — Pfhorrest

Agreed.

Also, I don't see how you don't see your view like that as a form of relativism, since it sounds like you think different moral communities can come to different moral conclusions and they're all right within their communities (and, presumably, there's no sense in which they can be right or wrong between communities), which is just straightforward moral relativism. — Pfhorrest

Sure, you can call it meta-ethical moral relativism if you want. That's not relativism on a non-meta level though, if you are part of one of those communities there's nothing relative about it. But isn't that what is actually going on? Different communities have different morals, so it certainly seems to be an accurate description. And furthermore I don't see how you can say one is wrong or right in some objective or universal sense, outside of their context. That is indeed the point where one has to bite the bullet. Absent any metaphysical foundation, there is no false or true to the matter. You can critique the moral system from within the system though, and try to change the tradition... but this is allways from a certain perspective, and not from some objective contextless point of view.

And more to the point of relativism. It seems to me, like I alluded to in the OP, that because one doesn't like the conclusion of relativism, one shouldn't accept the premisses that lead to relativism. But that's not a good argument, the premisses are true if the premisses are true.

And a last point about relativism, I don't understand why that conclusion should be so threatening in the first place. Different communities have different morals, yes, but because people on the whole want similar things, the differences generally needn't be that concerning.

This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian political structure. — The Codex Quarentis: A Note On Ethics

As to the point about method, I missed the part where you refer to political structures for morality instead of academic structures. I guess we mostly agree on this point then.

Also, while your fluid dynamics analogy seems alright to me and later essays will get more into the higher-level abstractions that are needed for practical use, I do wonder if perhaps you mean something different than I do by “hedonism”? Did you read the previous essay against transcendentalism where I explain what I don’t mean by that? It’s not egotism, or materialism, or rejecting more refined pleasures and the alleviation of more subtle pains through “spiritual” practices. It just means that the thing we ought to be concerned with when we’re caring for other people, as with ourselves, is that they’re flourishing rather than suffering. — Pfhorrest

You're right, I did think hedonic experience was something else, more along the lines of wants or desire-satisfaction... But then I would disagree for other reasons :-). Flourishing is not the goal of morality I think. Well not the goal of morality that seeks to prescribe how to act in relation to other people. Maybe it can be the cornerstone of virtue-ethics or some sort of personal ethos, but I don't consider that to be morality propper, because it's not concerned in the first place with how to treat other people. I think morality has the far less lofty goal of keeping people from seriously harming eachother. We don't need to and can't be all friends, right. And so, an imperative to actively help eachother to flourish seems a bit to much to ask right now, for the moment I'd be content with a morality that allows us to life together without harming eachother.

Also, like I said in the other thread, I'm a social contractarian, I don't think constructing a morality from basic values like individual hedonic experiences, or from whatever value really, is the way to go. This is where the fluid analogy is still relevant I think.

That sounds like the thing that the logical positivists claimed was necessary, basically creating the field of meta-ethics in the process. — Pfhorrest

I haven't really read much of the logical positivist, but weren't they saying that moral claims are meaningless, not just that truth doesn't apply to them. To me that's an entirely different thing, I don't think moral claims are meaningless, I think they have meaning in moral communities.

In short: Descriptive claims about what is true or real are to be judged by appeal to empirical experiences, things that seem true, with a whole bunch of important details on the procedure of which to appeal to and how and by whom, not just "whatever looks true to me right now".

Likewise, prescriptive claims about what is good or moral are to be judged by appeal to hedonic experiences, things that seem good, with all the same important details on the procedure of which to appeal to and how and by whom, not just "whatever feels good to me right now". — Pfhorrest

Ok, I think I understand you position better now having read that. I do disagree though. Basically I'm a social contractarian. I think morals originate in communities where dialogue, negotiation and agreements etc... are a vital part of how morals come to be. I don't think this proces can be replicated entirely from a research desk. The role of the philosopher IMO shouldn't be to devise morality like a scientists develops scientific theories... I think the philosopher can play an important role in the proces though, by facilitating and elucidating the dialogue in a community. But so his interventions in that view would necessarily be more topical, rather than systematic and academic.

Although an atheist, I don't think Alex Rosenberg is entirely up my ally, I think he's too reductionist.

I could understand that you don't ellaborate on the difference for brevity sake. But I think it's an important difference, as I try to get into my thread on secular morality, especially because of historical reasons…

Also I suspect that my views do differ quite a bit from yours on morality, because I don't think hedonic experiences necessarily play that large a part in the story. Well maybe they do at bottom, I'm not sure, but I certainly don't think morality is best described in terms of hedonic experiences… the social dimension is an important aspect that is missing it seems to me. Maybe it's a bit like talking about fluids in terms of individual moving particles, presumably you could do it if you have enough time and calculating capacity, but it's a lot better to talk about it in terms of fluid dynamics.

I think I understand what your views are from reading the text, but the reasons why you hold them aren't very clear to me. Or maybe it's more that I disagree with the reasons, while still ending with more or less the same conclusions. What confuses me the most I guess is the way you seem to argue for epistemic claims and moral claims in the exact same way.

I object to that on the grounds that if it is true, then by its nature it cannot be known to be true, because to know it to be true we would need some means of objectively evaluating claims about what is real and what is moral, so as to justifiably rule all such claims to be false; but the inability to make such objective evaluations is precisely what such a nihilistic position claims. In the absence of such a means of objective evaluation, it nevertheless remains an open possibility that nothing is real, or that nothing is moral, but we could only every assume such an opinion as baselessly as nihilism would hold every other opinion to be held. In the strictest sense, I agree that there might not be any reality or any morality, but all we could do in that case is to either baselessly assume that there is not, and stop there, simply giving up any hope of ever finding out if we were wrong in that baseless assumption; or, instead, we could baselessly assume that there is something real and something moral — as there certainly inevitably seems to be, for even if you are a solipsist and egotist, some things will still look true or false to you and feel good or bad to you — and then proceed with the long hard work of figuring out what seems most likely to be real and moral, by attending closely and thoroughly to those seemings, those experiences. — Codex

The problem I have with this is that you seem to gloss over the difference between feeling and perception. I don't think we can feel what is morally true in that same way as we can see if something is true.

So what I think would be clarifying, is to know if you think truth-value applies to moral claims. And if so, why? Of course that would lead you down the rabbithole of what truth is, but that probably can't be helped.

Sure it's a fragile superiority, born out of feeling inferior to a large part of the rest of society (and being treated as such). The place in the hierarchy right above a homeless isn't that high, right. This is where shame plays a role I think, not because the beggar causes them to feel ashamed, but because they are ashamed of their position in society. And abusing the beggar can give them a short relieve from that feeling of inferiority.

Why do you think abusing the homeless is born out of the homeless causing them to feel shame?

I think it something else altogether. It seems to me that it has to do with social hierarchies, and the idea that it is ok to vent frustrations (also born out of the same sort of abuse) onto those that are lower in the hierarchy, with the homeless being deemed the lowest.

Maybe, probably, this isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I think Nietzsche, if you can look past his elitism and self-mythologizing, is technically a very good philosopher. In fact he does exactly what you are getting at, shaving off the things that don't matter. That's what the (tuning)hammer was all about, to sound out idea's, so he could do away with the bad ones.

You decide on a measure (life-affirmation in Nietzsches case), evaluate different ideas by that measure, and discard the ones that don't stand the test. Seems to me you allready get this.

You are quoting the wrong person.

I don't know what's arbitrary about the timescales, you only live like a 100 years or so. It almost seems like the type of being you are shouldn't matter is what you are saying?

Why not something in between the fleeting moment and eternity? That seems to be the timescale that is relevant for us human beings anyway. There's no need to go to the extremes I don't think.

We have a capacity for language, which allows us to abstract from mere experience of moments and to think ahead in time. And this is where meaning comes in, we like some things more than others, and can figure out how to get more of what we like in the future... Living in the moment is disingenuous because you are giving up on a part that is essentially human. But this part can also be taken to far to eternity and beyond, which philosophers are prone to do. I'd say the space in between is where it's at.

The fault in your logic is that you didn't show why there can only be meaning if actions have impactfull consequences eternally, or on at least on some very long timescales.

If I have a headache, it seems meaningfull to me to try to reduce the pain i feel, even if the pain would go away without intervention eventually or even if i'm going to die ultimately anyway.

Why can't things be meaningfull if they are impermanent or temporal?

My original question was actually more on a “lower level,” as in less abstract. I am debating whether what we perceive on a sensory level is actually a reliable representation of reality or if it’s just completely made up by our minds. — Samuele

I think it's both a reliable representation of reality and mostly made up by our minds.

The directly imputed sensory data at any given time is clearly not all we 'perceive', we fill in a lot of blanks with our brain, memories etc... But I don't think that is a reason to suspect that reality is fundamentally different than what we perceive. What our senses give us is likely incomplete yes, but not necessarily totally different then reality. Blind people have one sense less, but they don't experience a totally different world. Assuming we would have a sixth or seventh sense, I seems more reasonable to assume that our picture of the reality would become more detailed rather then that it would be totally different.

It's irrelevant to it being good argumentation or to it being automatically rendered irrational as you put it.

As to being honest with youself regarding your motivations, I'd agree, I think it's better to be clear to yourself about what your motivations are so you don't end up going down a path that you don't really want.

Yes, dogmatism sounds better, and probably more recognisable as a concept than fideism. And yes, fideism has religious connotations, as it is tied to revelation essentially... whereas dogmatism doesn't have to be linked to religion necessarily I don't think. Dogmatism is also less specific it seems to me.

Do you think that gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a feasible undertaking? — even

No, we will never have an interest in say counting the number of straws in a random haystack. We need some motivation for gaining knowledge... and social validation is certainly often one of those I'd say.

If an arguer seeks intellectual validation in a rational discussion, aren't those efforts to argue automatically rendered irrational, because the desire for acceptance is an animalistic feature? — even

No, if "validation points" are given only for good argumentation, then it doesn't really matter where the motivation comes from... good argumentation is good argumentation. The underlying desire is less important than the criteria that are being used to grant satisfaction of the desire.

Hey Pfhorrest,

I'll make some comments to your closing statements about fideism. I didn't read it all because I don't have the time right now, so excuse me if I bring up points you allready argued somewhere else.

"And my reason for claiming that fideism is wrong is as follows. If we pick our initial opinions for no solid reason, we are in a sense picking our opinions at random (at least inasmuch as "random" can mean "for no reason" and not just "by no cause"). As I have said, I think that that much is fine, and as I will argue in my later essay Against Cynicism, even unavoidable. But we then have a very good chance of those initial opinions randomly being wrong. If we go on to hold those random opinions that we just happened into for no solid reason to be above question, which is the defining characteristic of fideism as I have elaborated it here, then we will never change away from those wrong opinions, and will remain wrong forever. Only by rejecting fideism, and remaining always open to the possibility that there may be reasons to reject our current opinions, do we open up the possibility of our opinions becoming more correct over time. So if we ever want to have more than a random chance of our opinions being right, we must always acknowledge that there is a chance that our opinions are wrong."

Not picking their opinions for no solid reason is not necessarily the same as random I'd say. Usually their opinions will be based on traditions. And the thing about traditions is that ideas are formed over generations, by a process that is somewhat dialectical I'd say. Not through perfect reason for sure, but there is some societal dialogue going on anyways. Of course nobody can really justify these beliefs, because nobody really knows anymore how they exactly came to be. But the point is that the fact that you cannot give a justification for your belief, doesn't necessarily mean that their isn't some reasoning behind that belief.

Another way to argue more or less the same point I think, is through the insights gained from recent machine learning research. Machine learning AI learns things by attuning their 'switches' to data that it is being fed and end up refining its 'beliefs' (or things on which it bases its decisions) along the way... but generally it will not be able to tell you why it has come to those conclusions. It cannot give you a justification, but you will still loose the game of Chess or Go. It seems the human brain operates in a similar way, it gets tuned by data, and we form beliefs along the way that we can't necessarily justify with reason and words.

The point is, I think, that not justified doesn't necessarily mean random.

The other point I would want to make, but would likely lead us to far, is that you probably need to establish more why we should put that much faith in reason. This is an old discussion, but I kindof agree with sceptics/cynics etc... that generally a lot of things need to be assumed before we can make headway with this method. To skip to my conclusion, what I would say is that in some ways reason is a crude tool and needs to be handled with a lot of care and time to get some decent results out of it. Not all people are equally talented on this front, nor do all people have enough time to invest in it. So it might very well be that, as a practical matter, relying on intuitions, faith and appeal to authority works better for them.

Yes, it does.

I'm trying to figure out why it's not the same in my mind...

I guess that a government that has limited legislative power, a small government, could have very strict laws on the few subjects they are allowed to regulate. So small government doesn't necessarily mean permissive across the board, but it certainly does for the things they are not allowed to regulate, as no regulation is permissive naturally.

Yeah, I certainly think it can't hurt, and may just eliminate a little of the disagreement. At least clarify the options. One of the big problems I think is that people can try to support their policies with an excessive coverage of objectives (by which I mean claim their preferred policy meets 'everyone's' aims). If we had greater clarity about methods it would at least cut down on this type of deception. Very few things are panaceas and most sacrifice some objective for another, yet if you read any political manifesto you'd think they'd found the door to Valhalla. — Isaac

I agree with everything you said here, though I do wonder how much difference it would make ultimately. Apparently voting for political parties, is much less about what the individual policies are of the political parties on certain issues, but more akin to supporting and identifying with a certain sports team. You choose a side, and usually stick to that side no matter what policies they propose, because its your side. So there's that.

I'm not even sure we can get there, but I agree it's probably true. Technically, the disasters of excessive state control could have been caused by any number of comorbid features. Those states were hardly tried out during easy times globally. Likewise with no states at all, one would have to look at context to check it wasn't external factors which caused the problems. I don't think we really have a large enough sample size.

That being said, we've got to decide one way or another and I agree the failures we've seen at either extreme are good enough evidence to be going on with, in the absence of any better. — Isaac

Yeah sure, and the world changes. Maybe with big data and AI, total governement controle would be more feasible now...

On the plus side, the sample-size can only get bigger :-).

agree, in general, but we need also to agree on objectives as no empirical data can tell us what our objectives 'should' be. I fear that, in this, we will end up with so much disagreement as to render any objective data about how to achieve these objectives useless.

Hence I defer to the idea of battling it out politically. — Isaac

I'm kind of sceptical that this will turn out to be a fruitfull avenue, as so much of battling it out politically ends up being about securing votes, so ultimately about the perception of doing something rather than actually doing that something.

But I think we agree, ultimately people will have different values and objectives, that is typically not something you can figure out scientifically. But so much of the political ideas on how to implement those values and objectives are empirically verifiable, and little effort has gone into figuring those things out. Maybe if we could at least get clear on those, some of the disagreement would go away.

To add something very vague to that... We kind of know that total control like in the communist states of old doesn't work, right? And we kind of also know by now that no government at all, or far-reaching deregulation in some sectors, also tends to lead to disasters... so empirically some amount of regulation seems to work better than no regulation or complete regulation.

Yes, psychology, sociology and ultimately political sciences are still in their infancies, particularly because they are such politicized issues... but also because it simply is very complex.

But there are no doubt a ton of empirically verifiable insights to be gained from these sciences, like regarding the optimal sizes of organisations, or regarding which things are best decided on what level of government etc etc...

It's tough, because of the whole climate surrounding these issues, but I think i should be possible to come to some empirically grounded conclusions.

Here's one example of a difference in restrictions, in communist Russia the economy was owned and steered by the government for a large part. In the US and Western-Europa we've allways had some kind of restrictions on government power in that domain, like freedom of trade, commerce and entrepreneurship.

Rights for citizens, are restrictions on the powers of government.

Totally unrestricted probably not, but surely there are differences in how much governments are restricted. That is what the discussion is or should be about it seems to me, the degree of restrictions.

The extreme end example of a small government would be something like Nozick's night watchman state. The thing that defines it, is not the brute amount of laws or finances, but the fact that its powers to govern (to issue laws) is restricted severely.

I notice that “simpler/fewer laws” is leading in the poll, and I want to ask the people who picked that a question to make sure they understand it right: would you say that a government with a single rule, “obey all commands from the monarch”, is a “small” government? Because that’s very few and very simple laws; it’s just not a very permissive law. — Pfhorrest

Sure, no that is not small goverment. What i would say is the most important aspect of the idea of small government, is not the amount of laws or complexity necessarily, nor any other poll-options for that matter, but the notion that the power of government to issue laws is restricted to certain clearly defined domains. Typically one would assume this would lead to less laws, but it doesn't have to.

About moral stuff in the broad sense... as in what is living a good life. So morality not necessarily only about how to behave in relation to other people.

I choose other because I specifically wanted to add the linguistic stuff, because that is how philosophy tries to answer the question, by examining and understanding language.

I voted inequality because in concert with new technologies it threatens to deny large parts of the population a meaningful existence.

EDIT: And I will add that this is an answer to the specific question of what problem is in most need of adressing. Climate change needs to be adressed too for instance, but I don't think it is that pressing... because the really bad effects will only start to happen in a couple of decades. And I don't think we have any idea what the world and technology will be like in a couple of decades. Solutions to climate change could be a walk in the park then, whereas now we could spend billions and not even put a dent into the problem.

If technology will explode like it think it will, then I think inequality will cause a giant crisis long before climate causes anyway near the same damage.

Another justification is (and I've could've gone with corruption here too for that reason) that we can only adress problems if we have enough agency, as a species. Things that threathen that agency, also threaten the solution of other big problems.