Submitted by Ma3Ke4Li3 t3_ynt30e in philosophy
I think science can be useful for studying what makes people happy/content and what causes the most harm/suffering. In that way, science can help direct your moral framework to actually achieve the greatest good. I agree science can't/shouldn't dictate what that framework is.
>I think science can be useful for studying what makes people happy/content and what causes the most harm/suffering. In that way, science can help direct your moral framework to actually achieve the greatest good.
No it can't, you've also fallen for the naturalistic fallacy. What science can help determine is the the greatest happiness/contentment and least harm/suffering, those are not the same as "good" (or bad, respectively).
Maybe I wasn't clear, but I meant to say exactly what you said.
Yeah morality is more complex than that, for instance you could eat a lot of food for pleasure, except it would bring harm/suffering later in the form of diabetes and bad knees. Generally there are short-term choices and long-term choices. Religions tend to make long-term choices.
No that's not the point. You're talking about practicalities, i.e. predicting the full consequences of an action. (Which only matters for consequentialist ethics anyway).
The fundamental problem is that you cannot simply equate suffering with bad and pleasure with good, it needs to be justified, and it is this justification that science can never provide.
I'd say it's more an is-ought-fallacy, rather than a naturalistic fallacy.
Those are the same.
No, there is a difference. In an is-ought fallacy, the first normative premise is missing, whereas in a naturalistic fallacy, this premise is present but has been transformed into a definition.
>"If it is right for you, it is right for everybody".
If it is right for the surgeon to cut a person open, it is right for everyone to cut a person open.
It is right for me to bathe my child. It is not right for you to bathe my child.
I think consent plays a part here
I don't think that's the way to interpret the claim. Rather, if it's right for the surgeon to operate on a person, it's right for everyone for that surgeon to operate. That is, everyone benefits (however indirectly) from a right action being taken from someone.
I'd rather not get brain surgery from a dental surgeon.
Hey I can’t be operated on because the surgeon is operating on other people
> Science can provide insight into the Fact clause here. Therefore, Science helps us determine the claim.
How many scientists can realize that there are at least two problems here: the meaning of the words "is" and "wrong"?
How many people might form incorrect beliefs (say, a simplistic and inaccurate model of the complexity/truth) as a consequence of science's (potential) mishandling of such discussions (due to not having the necessary background knowledge, and not being able to realize it as a consequence)?
I think Science is flawless here.
Scientists can be heroic but they can certainly be flawed. Even people with high cognitive abilities might be unaware of a whole discipline of thought and may be unaware of their lack of knowledge. They may hold values that they are utterly unaware may be doubtable. They might in some cases have personality issues. Their remarkable success in their own domain may explain their eminence despite their deficiencies. Public media often takes an "either expert or not-expert" attitude that is black and white where the reality is complex.
The value of Science itself is not in question here.
> I think Science is flawless here.
Can you expand on this a bit?
> The value of Science itself is not in question here.
I believe this to be incorrect, as I am questioning the value of science.
>I think Science is flawless here.Can you expand on this a bit?
Without detracting from soft science, I was referring to hard science here. Given its success, I think I need to turn the question back to you. Which part of scientific method do you see a flaw here. Again, I'm not referring to behavior of eminent scientists when speaking outside the strict confines of their field.
>The value of Science itself is not in question here.I believe this to be incorrect, as I am questioning the value of science.
Given that the subject of the thread is values in the normative sense, I think I need to reword that to the "effectiveness" or "truth-orientation in the instrumental sense" instead of "value"
> Given its success, I think I need to turn the question back to you.
No shifting of the burden of proof please.
> Again, I'm not referring to behavior of eminent scientists when speaking outside the strict confines of their field.
So, you disregard any evidence that does not support your beliefs?
> Given that the subject of the thread is values in the normative sense, I think I need to reword that to the "effectiveness" or "truth-orientation in the instrumental sense" instead of "value"
You are welcome to rework your beliefs and restate your claims in a more epistemically sound form if you'd like.
;)
>No shifting of the burden of proof please.
OK. I claim the success of the hard sciences and engineering are the proof of the scientific method.
>So, you disregard any evidence that does not support your beliefs?
Yes. I distinguished between the behavior of some Scientists and the scientific method. Do you believe that all the behavior of any Scientist counts in the evaluation of Science in its idealized form? I propose the "idealized form", while leaving some room for ambiguity, is sufficiently preached in many texts that it have meaningful reference.
> OK. I claim the success of the hard sciences and engineering are the proof of the scientific method.
No moving of the goalposts please.
The established point of contention is this:
>> I think Science is flawless here.
> Can you expand on this a bit?
>> So, you disregard any evidence that does not support your beliefs?
> Yes.
Usually people don't admit such flaws in such a straightforward manner, thanks for your honesty.
> Do you believe that all the behavior of any Scientist counts in the evaluation of Science in its idealized form?
Not in its idealized form....that this is how so many scientific materialists like to represent science (as opposed to its true nature) is but one part of what makes me suspicious of it as an institution that holds so much power in out culture.
> I propose the "idealized form", while leaving some room for ambiguity, is sufficiently preached in many texts that it have meaningful reference.
Exactly.
I hate listening to interviews (as opposed to reading) and generally find science's attempts to be philosophy laughable, however I'm going to touch on this part which I presume is somewhat accurate in depicting the interview:
>"If you want to know if something is wrong, ask the people". - This just shows what their preference is. It does not entail anything beyond their preference.
Preference utilitarianism is a thing. Fwiw my intuition is that right and wrong are ultimately rooted in preferences, even if preference utilitarianism has issues. My point, though, is that identifying preferences is a helpful moral endeavor.
>My point, though, is that identifying preferences is a helpful moral endeavor.
Totally agree. Your Value statement is preference utilitarianism, which might be non-congnitive (no true or false can be assigned), science determines the Fact and what follows is the Moral Claim that we should satisfy that majority preference. Science is critical, but it did not determine the Value.
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How is this circular or at all like Shermer? I don't believe it can establish what is moral on its own, just that it can be a useful process if you otherwise establish that preferences are part of morality.
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> On what grounds are you establishing that preferences are representative of morality? Why, on the grounds that our preferences are often moral!
Completely off-base and made-up. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I believe our preferences are part of the basis of morality for a variety of reasons which are beyond the scope of a discussion of the original post. I'm not going to get roped into a discussion of irrelevant minutiae. My suggestion was that if preferences are part of the basis of morality, the process of uncovering preferences is essential to morality. This is undoubtedly a true syllogism.
>generally find science's attempts to be philosophy laughable
For someone interested in philosophy, these words are very poorly chosen. Science cannot do things and Shermer doesn't represent science. (I suspect most scientists accept Hume's distinction.)
When I say "science's attempts to be philosophy" I don't mean science per se but rather people like Shermer or NDT who think they can plow ahead with science solving everything. It's a common viewpoint in STEM even if it's not scientific.
> It's a common viewpoint in STEM even if it's not scientific.
I think we have an example of a philosopher being out of their depth in a scientific matter. This is an empirical claim and you better have evidence to substantiate it.
>This just shows what their preference is. It does not entail anything beyond their preference.
Hang on, I think this needs expansion. If, for instance, you asked a large group of people whether they were left handed, right handed, or ambidextrous, the result wouldn't just be dismissed as "That's their preference." We don't understand handedness, but we do know that there is some kind of biological imperative on humans which drives both preference for one hand over another and a ~90/10 ratio of right handedness to left handedness across all human populations.
Why can we automatically assume there is no analogous imperative for moral decisions?
There are objective measures of handedness, and lots of people love to claim ambidexterity when they do not possess it.
So there can be nothing of value to be gained, scientifically or otherwise, from subjectively asking people which hand they prefer? That strikes me as false.
We have a strong understanding, for instance, that because raising a child is an intensely resource-heavy endeavor for humans, cheating on a spouse is generally considered unethical. Thus asking people, "Do you think cheating on your spouse is unethical?" will result in responses that align with that understanding. Simply saying, "Well most people say they prefer that their spouses not cheat on them, but we can't assign any value to that finding because we can't determine whether that's true objectively," isn't accurate.
Maybe I'm not understanding the objection. I could sort of see it that assigning a particular meaning for why people answered a moral question in a certain way is itself unscientific - there are several possible explanation why a person could think killing another is morally wrong, for instance, and it would be difficult to say which of them is the scientific explanation for why humans believe killing to be wrong.
But to say that we cannot glean anything broader from asking people moral questions and finding which questions generate strong agreements among people seems incorrect.
> So there can be nothing of value to be gained, scientifically or otherwise, from subjectively asking people which hand they prefer? That strikes me as false.
Do you think if you determine what the majority of people believe about facts like, for example, whether humans are descended from monkeys, that tells you anything about the actual, factual question? If no, why do you think this question should be treated differently from questions about moral facts? If yes, what conclusion do you think we can draw from the fact of the majority belief about the fact of the matter at hand?
I don't necessarily think that the answer people give to a question is correlated with the factual answer to that question, but I do think there may be value in looking for those questions for which consistent answer profiles are given across human populations. In other words: killing is thought of as a taboo basically everywhere you go, which implies that there may be some scientific underpinning to that taboo. Eating pork or beef is thought of as very taboo to some, but very normal to others, implying that the taboo is less scientific than particular.
In the latter scenario, when there is wide variance in the answers across individuals and populations, I think this method is useless in trying to ascertain truth. Another example is one someone else pointed out, the perceived morality of gay marriage. That is very much something that varies across locale and time, which means just asking people whether it's moral cannot answer the question of the truth of its morality.
My thought was that it could be an interesting idea to understand where there are seeming convergences to moral questions in many populations and use those to delve for where there may be certain moral truths. But it sounds like the author would rather apply the method of asking people what they want for basically everything, and that doesn't seem robust at all.
> I don't necessarily think that the answer people give to a question is correlated with the factual answer to that question, but I do think there may be value in looking for those questions for which consistent answer profiles are given across human populations. In other words: killing is thought of as a taboo basically everywhere you go, which implies that there may be some scientific underpinning to that taboo. Eating pork or beef is thought of as very taboo to some, but very normal to others, implying that the taboo is less scientific than particular.
Majority opinion doesn't really seem to be relevant if you just look at history. What's the majority of people going to say about whether the sun orbits earth or indeed earth is flat, if you ask at various points in history? There is no easily visible correlation between the truth of an opinion and whether or not it's the majority opinion, nor the size of the majority holding it.
> We have a strong understanding, for instance, that because raising a child is an intensely resource-heavy endeavor for humans, cheating on a spouse is generally considered unethical.
But if that's the reason cheating is unethical, than it's not unethical to cheat when you have no kids (and no plans to have them).
That would just mean there's a biological imperative towards certain actions. An appeal to nature would not mean it is objectively moral.
Plus, these things change over time. Ask people what they think of gay marriage now versus fifty years ago. If the people truly determine what is moral, then it was morally wrong fifty years ago.
Hmm. And, to be fair to my hypothetical, it was once believed that left-handedness was evil, which is one of the reasons why the word "sinister" has negative connotations to this day.
So that's the error of this line of reasoning: not that there can be no scientific basis for shared human moral values, but that it is impossible to empirically separate those shared moral human values with a scientific underpinning from individual or societal norms, which are subject to change significantly over time.
The problem is that you have a presupposition what morality is, and try to fit scientific answers to that, which is the wrong way around. If we don't assume that, science can help with finding out what people consider moral, and find reasons why they think so. This will produce an empirical understanding on morality similar to what Shermer is talking about.
I would never argue that there *is* not anything beyond their preference. Only that it does not *entail* anything *beyond* their preference. Of course, if you put them in an fMRI, you could see the details that lead them to express their preference, but as far as I can see, that is besides the point.
Why can't morality be a useful concept if it turns out that its fundamental root is people's subjective preferences?
'Subjective' doesn't need to be a pejorative word. Experience matters, and experience is subjective.
It's possible that when people speak of morality, they are speaking of a coherent concept, that, whether they know it or not, turns out to be subjective preferences (or idealised preferences, which is the preferences someone would have if they had idealised conditions, like full relevant knowledge)
Like it literally is preferences, the way water is H2O. People didn't need to know water is H2O to be able to discuss water or do useful things with it.
Yeah, it doesn't solve the problem of how to aggregate opposing preferences. (I do wonder though how opposing idealised preferences could be, if that gets us anywhere.) But that doesn't mean it's not true. It could be possible that it is unsolvable.
You have some great points there.
If A is nothing other than B, then A does not add anything to B. If morality is a function of multiple other phenomena or even a complex or simple function of one phenomenon, then it does work.
This does not address the question of why I should be committed to the other's preference. If morality is just what I prefer for myself, it is tautologous that I prefer what I prefer. If morality is that I should advance your preferences, then that is itself a valid preference of mine or a value that needs justifying.
If your argument is that there are two concepts that we did not realize were, in fact, identical, then we should abandon one. Once there was the morning star and the evening star. Today we just call it Venus.
I have no problem with the subjective.
Water has macro properties that we are familiar with. H2O does not automatically conjure up those properties. If "water" were to slowly slip out of use, I don't think there would be much harm. "H2O" would carry the connotations of wet.
The problem is that people assume that morality does more than preference does. It attempts to point to obligations that your preference places on me. To deny that it does this extra work is a value statement. If you just withdraw assent due to lack of evidence, you are skeptical of morality despite accepting preference.
Your last point is the one that loses me the most sleep. If there is no moral realism over and above preference, then how do we prevent society descending into a game of chicken (as it seems to do every now and then on the international level). You could claim that there is personal utility to all sides to agree to the rules of a game. The rules of the game are justified only by the plausibility of all sides agreeing to them.
> "If it is right for you, it is right for everybody". - While most people today would wholeheartedly agree, this maxim too is a value statement. It could be seen as a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, but, it is (arguably) an axiom rather than anything independently supported by either Reason or Science.
The basic equality of all moral agents is also quite important for most versions of consequentialism. But yes, it's not universal, Nietzsche is probably the currently most famous dissenter.
Here's an example of 'if it's right for you, it's right for everyone' failing.
In an industrialized society, near-unlimited access to water is frequently (and correctly) considered a human right.
In a nomadic society in a dry climate, it almost definitely should not be.
Morality is a negotiation between people and therefore society at large.
Science will eventually be able to tell us justification for the value clause. It will eventually tell us what parts of the brain function in what way to shape our values. It can already tell us what imbalances result in people holding extremely aberrant values and we can care for those people using drugs or psychotherapy. Furthermore there have been numerous studies done on people of different political values (conservative vs liberal) and we are already building a body of knowledge on how their brains function differently.
TLDR. I believe one day maybe not too far away we will be able to tell exactly why you have some value or another and even change it using drugs or surgery or whatnot.
I find your picture of the future very scary.
Even if you could explain every neuron involved in this value of fearing this future, I would still value it. To explain a value is not to justify it.
Why not though?
If I can prove that a certain flow of ions in a certain region of brain results in a certain belief why isn't that valuable?
It is valuable, but in a different sense. I would learn more given my subjective goal of learning more. But I already assumed that all my goals (whether you call them moral or not) are just configurations of ions, synaptic receptors etc. Nothing in the description has yet justified the value.
If all your goals are synaptic action then so are all your values.
I agree with that too. 100%
Does that tell you anything about whether I should hold these values?
Yes.
It says you may not have any choice but to hold those values and it may not be possible within the laws of physics not hold those values.
I hope you're still around. I wanted to continue our discussion.
I don't think I want to get into Free Will issues right now, unless that is important to you. May I ask you the following question.
Image the following two views:
A. There is nothing over and above the neural description of what it going on when you hold a value.
B. The neural description is all well and good. What matters is that it expresses a linguistic assertion of a value. That value can be justified by some means (disjunction of facts, reason-logic, some higher reality)
I think both you and I hold A. However, I acknowledge that there are people who believe B. My choice of A is a philosophical position about justification of assertions.
Is your position:
I don't believe in "some higher reality" so I don't agree with B.
I believe that what happens in B is merely an emergent phenomena. For example I have a laptop. I call it a laptop. I use the laptop. You understand what I mean when I talk about it. The laptop is a particular arrangement of atoms and an electrochemical reaction that happens in accordance with what's happening inside and outside of it and the laws of nature.
When people refer to consciousness (and values or whatever) they are merely talking about a particular arrangement of atoms undergoing a complex set of electrochemical reactions.
That's it.
I hope you don't mind these delays in my replies. I've been ruminating in the meantime.
My list for B was actually a disjunctive list (facts OR reason-logic OR higher being). So rejecting one of the list does not mean that B is wrong.
But it doesn't really matter. Let's pretend I only gave the "higher being" option and so you don't agree with B.
You seem to say that you accept that there are people who believe B but you believe in A. (Option 1 in the second set of questions).
Preferring A to B is a philosophical position, is it not?
(On the other hand, I may have misunderstood you. Are you arguing for B after all? Does the emergent phenomenon you are referring you actually justify the value? I continue to assume that you don't hold that, but I wanted to raise the possibility just in case.)
>Preferring A to B is a philosophical position, is it not?
I don't think so. I mean maybe the word "prefer" makes it a philosophical issue but the core issue is a scientific one. Many people "prefer" a flat earth theory but whether or not the earth is flat is a scientific question.
> Does the emergent phenomenon you are referring you actually justify the value?
It is a description of what value is or means. You have some value or another because some electrochemical reaction is taking place in your brain. That's what I believe. I don't think you have a "choice" in your values because "you" are just an emergent phenomena from from atoms interacting with each other.
Fair enough. Thank you so much for this little chat.
"Science cannot provide justification for the value clause". Why is this necessary? Isn't the justification simply that we want a better world as opposed from a worse one? And if you don't happen to agree then you're not really getting the whole concept of morality that we are all trying to understand. It's not deflationary of morality, it is what we mean when we say morality.
'Science can't justify Science, that doesn't make it unscientific.' Health can't justify we why want to feel better, but once we admit that we all want to feel better than we can have a Science of medicine. ' if someone comes along and says well I want to continually vomit and live in pain, he isn't offering an argument against the Science of medicine?
I fail to see that problem. To say that Science can't bolster our moral claims is absurd. What else could?
Science is simply our attempt to understand the world. If you want to base your morality off of something else such a religious dogma or whim go for it but you will be inviting suffering, I garuntee it.
> Science cannot provide justification for the value clause". Why is this necessary? Isn't the justification simply that we want a better world as opposed from a worse one?
No. That is not the justification. That introduces the concept of "better" before it has been agreed upon.
The justification needs to explain how science, which provides a descriptive explanation of how morality evolved in human beings, entails a prescriptive statement of how humans ought to be. Morality is not simple stating truths, it's imperative. Something must appeal to action.
>No. That is not the justification. That introduces the concept of "better" before it has been agreed upon.
How would you agree on this outside of science?
Does pain not appeal to action? How is stating an imperative not stating a truth? We can't get ought statements without is statements. We can derive our ought statements inductively from our is statements and that'd all we need to act.
No one else is so confused about morality than a moral philosopher.
If you think it's that black and white you live in a oversimplified world
How can one 'live in a oversimplified world' ? What would an undersimplified world look like?
Your (descriptive) pain does nothing to spur action in me. Of course, my own pain spurs my own action, but I can find no prescriptive reason it should. In fact, the compelling reason to act on my own pain is involuntary. Morality is a question of who we are/how we act precisely when we are given a choice.
If pain in others doesn't spur action in you then we are not talking about the same thing. That is simply what I mean be morality.
You can't find a prescriptive reason why your own pain should spur action? How about because your a living organism and that's what living organisms happen to do.. and so far as I can see that that other person over there is as I am, viola we have morality.
To think that there is a distinction between what we choose, what happens to us is a fundamental flaw in western philosophy. We can move past it and loose nothing from morality.
I didn't say pain in others does not compel me to act. I said the mere description of pain in others does not compel me to act. I am only compelled to act when I decide that I should. Whether that is to placate the uncomfortable feeling of watching someone suffer or simply because I believe it is right, nothing intrinsic to the description itself prescribes a course of action.
But the 'should' act, is in relationship to the 'description' of pain is it not? What is your decision based on if not the description?
That's what I mean by saying all our ought statements can only derive from is statements. And to the degree that science and knowledge generally can tell us about is statements, it can tell us about ought statements.
I'm willing to accept that descriptive statements may be necessary in deciding moral action if you're willing to admit that descriptive statements are not sufficient for deciding moral action. I'm not even sure they are necessary but it's also secondary to the primary point of contention.
I could take that compromise. I want to agree that they are not sufficient, but I can't seem to think of any knowledge that isn't merely a description of reality. Even prescriptive statements are descriptive.
Neat line of inquiry tho.
>Your (descriptive) pain does nothing to spur action in me.
Then you would be a rarity among humans.
Most humans who observe outward obvious indications of suffering are often innately compelled to action. We call this "sympathy", and it even comes with rational justifications.
Is/Ought Divide has entered the chat.
Why, oh why is he still on this? It was terrible when he proposed it years ago and that hasn't changed. What is it about Philosophical Liberalism that gives people the Brain Worms?
Many moral questions are really questions about new situations, not new principles. For example, if you already believe you ought not eat pork, there's no violation of Hume's Guillotine in turning to DNA sequencing to determine whether there's pork in a dish.
I don't know if this is what this guy means, but it's not unreasonable to suggest that we already believe the moral principles that would let us answer most moral questions to our satisfaction, and we're just waiting for a thorough understanding of the facts.
> ...Philosophical Liberalism...
Huh? Shermer and this kind of scientism are hardly representative of liberalism. Where are you getting this generalization from?
Uhhh... Because he is a Philosophical Liberal? Has he suddenly abandoned Kant, Rawls, or more likely, Nozick? Is he somehow against Capitalism, of which Philosophical Liberalism is the defense?
No. He is not. He's a Transactionalist to the core - He's staunchly for these things. To the level of ranting against their opposite. His entire oeuvre is a defense of 'Individualism'.
You've misunderstood me. I'm not asking where you got the idea that Shermer is or calls himself a liberal from. I'm asking where you got the idea that he is representative of liberalism and I'm asking where you got this dismissive generalization of liberalism from. I mean that as a legitimate question; I've never seen anyone treat Shermer as a major liberal philosopher (emphasis here on "major"), so I'm genuinely wondering where someone could get that idea.
Not unrelatedly, none of the major liberal philosophers that I know of are tied to scientism or anything that seems fair to call "the Brain Worms", if anything major liberal philosophers and even libertarian philosophers (most relevantly and evidently, Nozick and Hayek) are opposed to scientism, so I'm also unsure where you got this impression from independently of Shermer and of other cultural commentators/pop philosophers who profess being "classical liberals".
Do his beliefs w/r/t Liberalism differ from the norm in any great respect?
He's a philosopher, and extremely bright, so his explication of those beliefs is definitely more nuanced than say, a layperson's, but the beliefs themselves do not depart from bog-standard Liberalism. His defenses of various subjects all come from an extremely (nay, extremist) brand of individualism, which is endemic to Liberalism as a whole.
Edit: Scientism isn't orthogonal to Liberalism. It's usually used (badly, imo) as a defense of it.
To be honest, I wouldn't even call Shermer a philosopher, other than maybe a "pop philosopher". He doesn't have a degree in philosophy or have any ties to any philosophy department and I've never seen his political views discussed by any philosophers. He's just not a significant political thinker in general, except for a popular audience, and so I wouldn't take anything he says to be indicative of liberalism as a serious area of thought. At minimum, if you're forming a negative opinion of liberalism because of him or other pop philosophers, including because of how they present the history of liberal thought, I'd encourage you to withhold judgement instead.
Now, I have no clue if Shermer's individualism looks anything like what any major liberal philosopher accepts. But one difference from serious liberalism that is relevant to this thread is his commitment to scientism. That's just incidentally part of his broader collection of views and not at all a part of liberalism itself (along with his atheism). In fact, I can't think of any liberal philosophers who defend scientism or defend any connection between liberalism and scientism (notably for such a modern topic as scientism, it would be nonsense to attribute scientism to Hayek, Nozick, or Rawls). This connection seems like an invention of non-philosophical, "pop" discourse about liberalism. Where are you getting the idea that scientism isn't an orthogonal question from liberalism?
Pop philosophers are definitely philosophers
Sure, we can use the word 'philosopher' that way if we like but then pointing out that Shermer is a philosopher doesn't say much about whether he's a good source for understanding liberalism or even whether he has nuanced views on the topic.
In any case, we should question a person's understanding of liberalism if most of their picture of it comes from writers, like Shermer, who had little to no expert guidance in learning about political philosophy (or had that only incidentally - I have no idea if Shermer took an undergrad course in political philosophy here or there while he was getting his psychology and history of science degrees).
Sure. That would also be the case for academic philosophers. If I want to know, for example, whether X is moral or immoral, an academic philosopher could lead me astray more than a pop philosopher or give me an unworkable solution. This is in relation to practical wisdom vs technical sophistication. People like pop philosophers because they are trying to gain practical wisdom that relates to their own lives and this is useful and probably more useful than the technical sophistication of someone within a given school or tradition that will probably clash with the technical sophistication of another academic in an opposite school/tradition.
Truth is a totally different question from representing a particular philosophical position in an accurate or nuanced way. It is indeed the case for academic philosophers that no one should take them as authorities on what is true about moral questions. Philosophical topics aren't the kinds of topic where it makes sense to treat anyone, academic or popular, as an authority on what is true or false. I'm just talking about treating someone as a good source for what a particular philosophical position even is or in this case for a careful, nuanced account of liberalism and its connections to other views (like scientism).
And if you didn't mean truth (or getting, say, moral, practical, and political questions right) but are just talking about appeal or acceptability to readers, then, absolutely, pop philosophers are much better than academic philosophers for that. Pop philosophers are usually better than academics at writing something that leads people who read it to feel like they have a better understanding about what is right and about how they should live. The same goes for pop science writers: someone who knows how to throw around the word 'quantum' in an engaging way that speaks to what readers want to hear are generally better at writing something that appeals to readers than an academic is (though, as with pop philosophy, some of these popular science writers are also experts who know what they're talking about).
I find this odd. Shermer is not being presented in such a way. He is giving his philosophical views about philosophical topics. No one is saying one should ask Shermer to give a doxographic account of liberalism. Rather Shermer is giving a philosophical account of his own views. This may be problematic(in the specific and the general) but the issue is elsewhere. He is not giving a doxographic course of philosophy.
I don't just mean appeal, I also mean correctness. The correctness of a philosophy is not about the history of philosophy or a doxographic account. That is not the discussion, such issues are only of interest for exams or such academic pursuits. The question "should I cheat on my husband?" and "what did Nietzsche mean by eternal return"? are two different kinds of questions. One is philosophical in its content and the other in its form. An academic philosopher will give you a very competent response to one and a very unwise response to the other.
The initial comment was that Shermer represents some kind of brain rot that's common in people who accept liberalism, one tied to also accepting scientism. How would that not imply that his views are a good source for what is involved in liberalism and its acceptance? But even without that, I'm not sure where you're coming from. I didn't say that Shermer doesn't give a doxography of liberalism and that's the problem; I said his views aren't representative of liberalism and aren't a good point from which to generalize about liberalism. Being representative of liberalism only requires giving an account of liberalism that is, like the person I replied to said, nuanced but also reflective of what liberalism actually involves. I don't see why you'd think I meant giving a doxography.
> When talking about humans, it's probably bad practice to generalize from what you think and what you want to everybody else.
That's why I initially said 'truth' (or getting moral matters right); I don't know why you replied as if I hadn't said that. I only added what I would say IF you just meant appeal to readers because even though you seemed to mean truth what you were describing looked a lot more like appeal or acceptability. What readers think "relates to their own lives" and is "useful" is a great sign of the appeal of that writing to the readers but doesn't tend to have much to do with truth/correctness. For example, if I'm dissatisfied with sex with my husband and care more about that satisfaction than his happiness, I'm probably not going to find someone's writings about why I shouldn't cheat on my husband terribly useful, no matter how rightly or wisely that case is made.
How are you ever going to get an ought statement without having is statements to underpin it?
No one really denies that is statements can be relevant or even necessary for moral evaluation, just that they aren’t sufficient.
What else could be used to inform an ought statement other than something which is ultimately a type of fact?
People disagree what/if moral facts are. But it seems pretty hard to argue they are no different from empirical facts (what was being called is statements).
People disagreeing on something doesn't get you to there being no facts about it though. This seems like a non-sequitur to me.
I'm not sure you've really addressed my question. Perhaps you could give an example?
You're not. That's not where the divide exists.
Is are facts.
Ought are decisions, or intentions if you like.
They are not the same thing at all.
Facts, naturally, may inform decisions, but they do not and cannot dictate them.
I'm not sure what an ought is in this context then. I thought an ought statement would be something like "you ought not drink sea water".
Could you give me a better example?
Sure!
Here's a fact:
It is raining.
SO
I ought to wear galoshes.
OR
I ought to take my shoes off and jump in puddles.
OR
Who cares? I'm not changing my routine.
One fact, three entirely opposing decisions. Facts may have bearing on decisions, they do not dictate them. In the first two cases, the fact informs two opposite decisions - keep your feet dry, go jump in puddles. In the third case, the fact exists, but holds no influence and in this way, is the opposite of the first two decisions.
I disagree, because whatever ought you go with is ultimately going to be determined by underlying facts of the matter.
For instance, your first example - if you decide that you ought to take your shoes off and go jumping in puddles, then that decision is going to be predicated on is statements.
I ought to go jumping in puddles because it is the case that I'd get more enjoyment out of that than the other options, and it is the case that I value my enjoyment more highly than anything else right now.
How could you ever get an ‘is’ statement without ‘ought’ statements to dictate what you accept as evidence?
I would use reason to determine what I accept as evidence.
As well you should; but, that just proves my point.
I thought your point was to show that I need an ought to inform the answer?
Yes.
Reason operates by the use of complex series of ‘ought’ statements—standards, biases, criteria, etc.—to discern what is acceptable; the appeal to reason itself rests on the claim that, in our selection of evidence (or just in general), we ought to be reasonable.
Oh that's interesting.
My response to that would be - yes, we ought to be reasonable because it is the case that we (or at least, I) value reason.
Good riposte; but, does that argument not depend on the claim that our actions ought to be consistent with our values?
There’s also a good discussion to be had there exploring the question of why you/we value reason (and whether we ought to do so), just as an aside.
Well, that's the question isn't it?
I don't think so. I think the question is the exact opposite.
Then what is the question?
The question that underpins the ought/is distinction is "how could you ever get an ought from an is?" Or more concretely, "you can't get an ought from an is."
Well, yeah. You said the question was the opposite, so I'm asking what that is.
The one in my previous comment.
I thought the dark horse atheist types lost their steam with Harris. Seems Shermer is still trying to form himself a legitimate career with the same level of amateur thinking.
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This is the same error that Sam Harris pursued in The Mora Landscape. It’s obviously a Roach Motel for slightly smart public intellectuals. But clearly science has no way to dispute the claims of someone who says “it is inherently good to make others suffer”.
Suffering is a tricky one to know where the lines are drawn. Being tough on someone so that they can learn and adapt can sometimes be thought of causing suffering. Debate is where we are able to make choices. But those debates at also timely and need to be reviewed from time to time.
I think we are at cross purposes.
If an alien says “making others suffer, just for its own sake, is morally good” there is no scientific disproof of that. I’m not saying “maybe suffering can lead to better things”, I’m saying the idea that causing unalloyed suffering for no reason is “bad” is at best an axiom not amenable to proof.
> But clearly science has no way to dispute the claims of someone who says “it is inherently good to make others suffer”.
The crux there is that the claim is already non-scientific to begin with. "Good" or "bad" are meaningless terms without context. Good/bad for what and for whom? What might be bad for the slave, might be good for the owner.
You can very much do science on morality, but you can't do it in generic unspecific good or bad terms. That not only doesn't work, it completely overlooks that morality is group behavior, not some overarching absolute value system. What's good for some, is bad for others. And how people treat group members will be completely different to how they treat strangers.
So you would disagree with the original article?
Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad, after which it follows neatly that we can make epistemological claims about morality using scientific evidence, because we can make objective claims about the misery of conscious creatures and its causes. If that's not a ground level assumption able to be taken as obvious, prima facia, I don't know what could possibly compel anyone to make a claim about, and I mean this literally, any detail about their conscious experience with more than 0% confidence. All hard sciences rely on assumptions, for example that a shared, observable physical reality exists. Without that claim there is no basis for pooled scientific knowledge, but it is self-evident despite the counter-claim being nonfalsifiable. Much like we assume, from the nature of our own consciousness, that reality exists and can be observed, we can assume that the maximum conscious misery, as evident through the nature of our own consciousness, is objectively bad.
> Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad
Ah see here’s your misconception. The actual moral truth is that the worst possible misery for everyone is good.
In answer to you saying “the counter claim is unfalsifiable”: both claims are unfalsifiable. There is no scientific truth about morality, only extrapolation from unfounded axioms.
I'm laughing at the idea of you playing devil's advocate in a state of maximum suffering and still sticking to the line that's it's a good thing. Your argument has the same character of solipsism - you're going to have to make the right assumption about the existence of consciousness in other people to engage with reality in a meaningful way, but I can't disprove you of thinking you're the only locus of consciousness in the universe.
I’m laughing at the idea that you think your earth human bullshit has anything to do with absolute truth.
Is/ought is relevant because, sure, morality as described as a human phenomenon aims at protecting certain evolved desires, but science can't prescribe morality. It can't tell us whether or not we should have those desires.
There is no such thing as a provable moral axiom. That's why they're called axioms.
What counts as a moral axiom?
Very basic value judgments. I'd say one would be that there is such a thing as good or bad.
Does anyone take Michael Shermer serious as a philosopher? He defines himself as a skeptic probably because he is still recovering from leaving evangelicalism. I’d guess his whole purpose of arguing that morality can be determined by science to me is still just a reaction to his Xevangelic identity. I’m not even saying I disagree with him but wearing an identity too strongly doesn’t seem to help one’s epistemology.
On r/skeptic, a lot of skeptics consider him more of a reflexive contrarian than an actual skeptic, citing his disbelief in climate change long after the evidence was in.
Very interesting…
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Yes - the opposite of false is not necessarily truth.
I have drifted away from rationality communities as in many cases they just hold another dogmatic set of beliefs.
They seem to barricade themselves in these systems preventing them from synthesizing.
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Ethics starts from that ethical judgments become conflicted, not from alleged ”ethical agnosticism”.
For example we don’t ponder whether theft is wrong somehow in general but how to solve situations where people have different ideas of theft.
In many cases some people would say that theft is morally correct. Like stealing food during a famine from the exploitative nobles exporting said food for profit like during the Irish famine.
So then you have to argue the morality of nobility. The same for the morality of any "governing" body in a society. No easy answers outside of subjectivity.
I have tried to read that first sentence over and over again and it's just not working...
It just means that we are not to ponder whether there is a ready ethical code somewhere in historical texts, in nature or religious texts that wait for our discovery. Ethics are constructed as a social contract although Kant is sometimes seen as a proponent of moral realism, that there is ready moral principle for all and you just need to *understand it correctly*, which leads to circularism and fideism.
It just means that philosophy is aporematic, that is, it starts from the discovery of a conflict and attempts to resolve that conflict, not from bibliophilic motives for example. Specific fields of study, like that of theology, can be a mere hobby, but philosophy can not be a hobby I think.
Interesting. I think I can grasp this concept on a rudimentary level. I still think the first sentence was worded super weirdly though 💀
Shermer got his ass handed to him by Pgluicci on a video i watched way back. The guy isn't that great at philosophy tbh
Shermer is a Trumper. No surprise.
It's revealing that Shermer and others on one hand say that science (as opposed to philosophy) can prescribe human values, and on the other don't say which science they're talking about.
Shermer can't answer the question because such science doesn't exist. No current branch of scientific inquiry does this. He can't really shoehorn morality into a random science's field either. If he would claim that it was one of the 'hard' sciences, like physics or chemistry, he would lose the audience that would instantly recognize the foolishness of such a proposition. If he would claim that it was one of the 'soft' sciences, like sociology or psychology, he would lose his "skeptic" audience who value hard data and numbers.
He has to vaguely gesture towards empiricism, being evidence based and doing some field work (asking people what they prefer), and call that "science".
The assertion of "philosophy hasn't solved the moral problems but science can!" arises from a outdated and fundamentally incomplete understanding of what moral philosophers have been doing all these years. Shermer can be so certain of his positions because he doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Not every philosopher has been pondering the meaning of good in an ivory tower. There are ancient moral philosophers, like Epicurus, who had a well-grounded ideas about how our morality arose and how we can determine our moral values. In more modern times consequentialists have also been engaged in scientific inquiry into morality.
Philosophers have been doing the "science of morals" for literally thousands of years. Not even Shermer's idea of asking people their preferences is an original idea. Socrates did that.
I think what he means is science can help us understand what is good for us, what will make us happy, what we SHOULD want, and in that regard help us define values.
It makes sense and definitely true but that is not exactly a true moral system,
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I know right! If it was possible I would get wired up in a heartbeat
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Because that isn't how we want to feel? And happiness is how we want to feel.
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Yes, but the status of being artificially created is different than naturally created. Thus there is a difference.
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I disagree. Happiness is how you want to feel. Is there a difference to a stomach? Why are we speaking of stomachs.
I thought we were talking about mental states. Stomachs don't have those.
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Happiness is the way we want to feel. There is a difference between a feeling based on some fundamental lie like being a wirehead vs. something authentic. That is why you are using it as a counter-example to utilitarianism.
There is a difference between belief and knowledge for example. One of which is the truth of the belief.
Happiness cannot just be some mere neuro-transmitter state, or it would fail to account for possible beings that can be happy yet do not use neurotransmitters.
Happiness is the way a being wants to feel. They either are the way they want to feel, the opposite of the way they want to feel, or some distance between these too. This isn't merely about generating hedons.
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That is up to individuals desired feelings.
Do you want knowledge of comforting false beliefs? Do you want feelings derived from the wire head or not?
I don't disagree that all MY feelings are generated by my brain making electro chemical impulses. I highly doubt that ALL feelings are electronic chemical impulses in my brain.
I also believe that science can in fact determine those feelings most of the time but not all of the time. Does something being difficult to measure mean it is meaningless? I hope that portion of Logical Positivism can be abandoned here. Science generally relies on truth, induction working, and the hope our senses are aligned so that we can make sense of the world. Those are all three very fundamental intangibles.
How can a feeling be authentic or not? That is up to the feeling being. Taking an animal and vivisecting so that I may wire up its feelings may be happiness for that animal. It may have no opinion on the authenticity of its feelings. Yet humans clearly care about authenticity.
I couldn't tell you exactly what authenticity is in a global sense. I could give you a recipe. A feeling is authentic if the feeling being is correct in how it was generated and feels that the way it was being generated is authentic. This is very difficult to get at, but not impossible. It is indeed subjective.
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I've been using want since my first post to define happiness. Happiness is the way we want to feel.
I do believe I am sidestepping the is ought gap.
I didn't say that satisfying wants is right. I said happiness is the way we want to feel.
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I suppose I am a prisoner of common language and shouldn't call how we want to feel happiness? Surely being trapped by this word is the nail in the coffin for my position.
I do believe there are times we would rather feel misery and sorrow than joy. After a great tragedy, I would rather feel misery or sorrow. I will want to mourn my parents when they pass, and I will want to feel all sorts of ways that are not just happy. Moreover it is GOOD that I feel those ways. Or would you tell someone grieving it is bad that they feel grief?
As for your last point, I don't understand why you are moralizing against the BDSM community.
Edit: Language is important and shared. Dictionary definitions are not as clear in their reporting of usage as you insinuate: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happy
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Of course actual harm to the outgroup is wrong and because there are sadists doesn't mean the happiness of a sadist is somehow outweighed by the damage they do. I felt like this was an obvious response any consequential would give.
Of course bdsm is consensual. This is why I am not sure why sadistic glee is some sort of counter example.
Sorry you took it as aggressive, but I was clear in my definition of what I meant by happiness from the start as how you want to feel. Frankly sentences like "I would be happier in misery than in pleaure" seem meaningful and productive sentences. Dictionary mongering is just silly.
Goodbye.
>(science_fiction)
Your link answered your question. We don't become wireheads because it's impossible.
Many people use mind altering substances to stimulate their brains. It doesn't (usually) end well.
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That is a better concept. But it isn't what he means. Or what he said or wrote.
Yeah I just wrote what came to my mind reading the title I am definitely off topic. My bad
What scientific claim supports the starting proposition that 'morality is aimed at protecting human interests'?
What scientific claim supports that determining human interests is a scientific endeavour?
It seems Shermer is taking normative 'ought' propositions without acknowledging them or dressing them up as scientific 'is' propositions and then using those propositions to further propose that science OUGHT to resolve moral issues.
>What scientific claim supports that determining human interests is a scientific endeavor?
In the general, the Modernist understanding of science is that it is the measure of all things. In the specific, the field of sociology (and several others) is explicitly concerned with understanding human interests
This is precisely what I am contesting - the proposition that science is the measure of all things is not itself a scientific proposition.
As for sociology, I would hardly describe it as science itself, but even if I did bite on that one, I would say sociology is concerned with what 'is' - it can make claims about how human societies develop and organize themselves and so forth. But as soon as you delve into the question of how a society ought to organize itself, you have (at the very least) a couple of choices:
But regardless of which choice you make, in the end analysis, you are not making recommendations on the basis of science - you are either making a moral determination to defer decision making to science by reference to what is likely a utilitarian framework (and then science just fills in the blanks) or you are properly considering moral questions in the realm of philosophy and not simply ignoring that trusting science with moral questions is of itself a moral judgment.
The proposition is absolutely within the realm of science: it can be measured and tested.
A disdain for the 'soft sciences' is an odd thing to encounter in a philosophy forum, but they are scientific: they engage in the iterative system of observation, hypothesis, testing, and analysis which defines science. As for the second point, science is not just concerned with what 'is,' but also why. While science cannot (yet) directly engage with the moral quandary, by engaging with systems scientifically humans can ask better questions and evaluate systems on more concrete grounds than purely qualitative ones.
At the end we have a bit of a paradox: the question of what ought to be escapes our current ability to directly test and measure; however, both the cause and effect of that quandary exist in the real, testable world. This is the role of science, to not merely evaluate decisions to slot into a moral framework, but to expand our understanding of both decision and framework in the pursuit of more complete knowledge.
It is not a disdain for sociology - I quite like the field - I just don't think what they do is really scientific. While they purport to use scientific method conceptually, it is only in the very loose sense you described. The nature of the field is such that it cannot use maths to make proofs. The best it can do is collect empirical data samples (usually small due to lack of funding) that usually have poor variable control and conduct statistical analysis to make some conclusions. It is far from giving the same level of certainty in its claims as physics or chemistry - while even those do not give 100% certainty, we can send people to the moon with them. I can't say the same for sociology.
As to your second point, why something 'is' in a scientific sense is because something else 'is'. It is the examination of why in a causal sense. Apples fall from trees because gravity exists. It is not because things ought to be that way or because apples have some moral trait. That is no longer the realm of science.
Science can tell us whether humans feel positive or negative emotion from certain stimuli. That is an 'is' proposition. Science however cannot tell us how to create a moral framework UNLESS we take the starting step and say something like 'any moral framework must maximise the positive emotions felt by the people in it'. And at that point, we have pulled an ought statement from absolutely nowhere!
Regarding the paradox - you have described the 'is' / 'ought' problem outlined by Hume and the limit of how much science can intrude on philosophy. Real scientific facts can cause us to consider new moral questions - developments in technology commonly do this. But they do not automatically create moral predicaments. That requires someone to think about whether a situation is moral (unless youre an objectivist).
Science can give us new options in responding to moral questions. It can create situations that are themselves new moral questions. But it cannot answer those questions for us by itself. Science in a pure sense is amoral.
Ah yes old mike “don’t ask any questions about 9/11” shermer, truly a skeptic’s skeptic
Rookie mistake: You cannot get an Ought from an Is.
Hume’s law
I always assume Shermer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Makes it much easier to handle his suggestions.
“Non-overlapping magisteria” no longer, I suppose
That's so cute. Science is intentionally valueless. Only people can define harm, decide which desires are good and bad.
Not going to take advice on morality from a man with multiple sexual assault allegations.
Science is a tool we use to know the universe. Philosophy is a tool we use to know ourselves.
Thanks for sharing this podcast. Listened to a couple episodes now and it's quickly becoming a favourite
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I say, we need Thales to re-do democracy. LOL. It's such a bloody stupid cycle, as far as the betterment of man. But it's needed now, with the Abrahamic ordeal. It started well with Alexander The Great, or slightly before through the great Greek minds... but Christianity was never meant to control this thing. That's probably Aristotle on stupid people in a society summed up.
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This sounds like an argument where if you take it literally, then there is nobody opposing it
Because of course once you define an objective function like "maximize wellbeing" then science (and the humanities, which in Germany would just be called sciences btw) can give lots of input about how to achieve that.
If you take the argument more like it was meant, then it becomes a bit more controversial, because what it really says is
>It's a no-brainer that wellbeing is the objective of ethics/morality, it's just defined like this. Everybody is consequentialist, some people just don't admit it.
>
>And because that point, which philosophers deem to be the heart of the debate, is trivially solved, then the real debate about how to reach wellbeing is to a large part answered by science.
This dreadful discussion again. I am all for science'ing morality, but it seems people keep forgetting what science about. Science is first and foremost about describing and predicting the natural world. It's not about telling you what to do. It's about telling you what will happen when you do a thing.
If you want to do science of morality, you have to observe how actual people behave and react in the real world. Forget whatever morality system and thought experiments you heard about in philosophy class, nobody behaves that way. Forget the bible as well, as nobody behave according to that either, even if they claim so. Look at how people actually act. Look at how indoctrination can influence them. Look at how in-group/out-group drastically changes things up. All that stuff.
Abstract: Philosophers customarily claim that moral questions are out of the reach of science. Michael Shermer argues that this is not the case. Moral claims are intimately related to two facts: what humans want and don’t want (e.g. avoiding slavery), and methods by which to satisfy these values (e.g. by institutions aimed at securing human rights). Both of these aspects have factual claims baked into them, and so, can be studied empirically. For example, social sciences have (or at least could) established that democracies are better than autocracies in protecting people against various forms of harm. To the extent that our fundamental values are out of reach from science, we can treat morality as a set of hypothetical imperatives (i.e. a set of if-then statements).
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#HellIsChildAbuse #ProveSouls #ChristsThugs 🙏🏼🔪🪓⛓
Morality arises from us being the types of creatures we are living in the type of universe we are living in. Science and philosophy both attempt to understand this predicament. Therfore both science and philosophy have something to say about ethics. Done argument over see ya later.
Morality is a fucking lie
Intentionally harming others is ubiquitously considered bad by any moral framework worth its salt. So, though there might not be an objective yardstick, we have a certain metaphysical inkling of right and wrong.
There are groups that believe in honor killings
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That doesn't mean there isn't a biological basis for the near-universal human preference to avoid pain.
> Intentionally harming others is ubiquitously considered bad by any moral framework worth its salt.
"worth its salt" smells tautological.
eliyah23rd t1_ivas7n2 wrote
The following is an example for an argument for a moral claim.
Value: All random killing is wrong
Fact: X is a random killing
Moral claim: X is wrong
Science can provide insight into the Fact clause here. Therefore, Science helps us determine the claim. However, Science cannot provide justification for the Value clause.
Shermer makes the following assertions in the interview (roughly).
"If you want to know if something is wrong, ask the people". - This just shows what their preference is. It does not entail anything beyond their preference.
"If it is right for you, it is right for everybody". - While most people today would wholeheartedly agree, this maxim too is a value statement. It could be seen as a version of Kant's Categorical Imperative, but, it is (arguably) an axiom rather than anything independently supported by either Reason or Science.
The best understanding I can give to Shermer is that morality is whatever people prefer. Perhaps that is the best we can do, but it is deflationary of morality. If true, morality is not a useful concept. There are only subjective preferences. It also does not solve the problem of how to aggregate opposing preferences.