Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Ok_Meat_8322 t1_iwdspjj wrote

Scientific progress in ethics? Um... what? Last I checked ethics was a sub-field of philosophy, not science. Someone hasn't been reading their Hume, apparently.

Oh, wait, its the Ayn Rand Institute (lol), that explains a lot.

15

Ombwah t1_iwelw9w wrote

Science and Ethics both lie beneath the heading of philosophy - science is the method philosophers developed to show their work.

You can apply the scientific method to ethical questions if you'd like to find an answer that way - syllogistic argumentation is how it's done in both practices.

(Not that I'd trust a Rand scholar with an opinion on either, mind.)

3

Nickesponja t1_iwhhv9n wrote

You can... use the scientific method to figure out ethical questions? Are you sure? Let's see...

Observation: murder exists

Hypothesis: murder is wrong

This already violates the scientific method, because the hypothesis doesn't explain the observation in the first place. Murder being wrong doesn't explain why it exists. Let's try it another way.

Observation: people think murder is wrong

Hypothesis: murder is wrong

Now we're getting somewhere! Except, well, we already have scientific explanations for why people think murder is wrong (namely in the fields of evolutionary biology and sociology). This extra hypothesis seems to be a violation of Occam's razor. But let's say those other explanations are insufficient. What's the next step? Predictions, of course! Now, what predictions does the hypothesis "murder is wrong" make? Well... it doesn't seem to make any predictions. At most, one could argue that, if the hypothesis "murder is wrong" is going to be scientifically meaningful, it must make the prediction "we will be able to build a measurement device that measures the "wrongness" of murder". But of course, no one knows how to build that device. If not unscientific in principle, this hypothesis at the very least seems to be outside what current science can discover.

Do you disagree? Do you think the hypothesis "murder is wrong" makes any other testable (in principle or in practice) predictions?

2

bumharmony t1_iwfrsh3 wrote

The Pareto calculation is present in any normative ethical theory for example.

1

ladz t1_iwdf8rs wrote

"Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value, elly judgments of all kinds remain necessary."

― Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta

12

bumharmony t1_iwfrmsb wrote

It can and it should. It can count all the resources and possibilities and define what is feasible.

0

iiioiia t1_iwgxkcb wrote

> It can count all the resources and possibilities...

Science tends to only study physical matters, whereas many possibilities lie in the metaphysical realm.

2

bumharmony t1_iwgz48d wrote

So the amount of rsources is not a physical matter question? It is literally the first question of justice.

2

iiioiia t1_iwh2l7w wrote

> So the amount of rsources is not a physical matter question?

Only partially - there is certainly physical matters, but there is also metaphysical matters.

An example: your opinions on various matters, and how these opinions affect your behavior, which in turn affects the overall system.

> It is literally the first question of justice.

Can you link to the resource you're referring to here? I'm curious if there is an accompany peer-reviewed scientific proof.

1

bumharmony t1_iwheuj2 wrote

W t f are you talking about?

We need to know how much there are resources in order to articulate a pareto efficient distribution of them. What makes you to distort everything that has value and is the easiest part to grasp of the subject matter?

2

iiioiia t1_iwhidff wrote

> W t f are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

> Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.[1] It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.[2] The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among [the study of] the natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).[3] > > Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions of:[4] > > - What there is > > - What it is like > > Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.[5]

> We need to know how much there are resources in order to articulate a pareto efficient distribution of them.

Best get cracking then! Maybe it's a good idea to take an ontology textbook with you on your journeys.

> What makes you to distort everything that has value and is the easiest part to grasp of the subject matter?

Technically, from a scientific perspective, your mind is what makes "me" "do" that.

1

DirtyOldPanties OP t1_iwduuj3 wrote

"In answer to those philosophers who claim that no rela­tion can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of val­ues and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do."

From the Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand.

−3

ladz t1_iwe4hqv wrote

As a counterexample, ants and other highly successful hive insects definitely do not consider self-preservation as an ultimate value as evident in their group-benefitting sacrificial behavior.

I've never heard a good argument Ayn Rand. The position that all selflessness is antisocial comes from garbage capitalist dogma and is empathetically bankrupt.

9

[deleted] t1_iwf567u wrote

[deleted]

2

Bek t1_iwg9tdx wrote

OP did respond to the quote.

> let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of val­ues and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life.

Last I checked ants are living entities.

2

DirtyOldPanties OP t1_iwe7ou8 wrote

Human beings are not ants or any sort of hive.

0

Bek t1_iwg9kxu wrote

Your quote is about living entities, not just humans. Ants and anything else that makes up a hive is a living entity.

3

Provokateur t1_iwfcd4q wrote

Haha, I was thinking "Come on, that's just a bad misreading of Aristotle and has been widely refuted for 2,000 years."

Then I saw it was from Ayn Rand (an Aristotelean who never seriously studied philosophy and is best known--in philosophy--for butchering Aristotle and pretty much everyone else she wrote about).

Ya, that checks out.

1

bildramer t1_iwg41tx wrote

Why all the comments just angry at Ayn Rand? Is signaling how angry you are at someone accepted as a refutation of their arguments, and the arguments of anyone else who is somehow loosely associated with something named after them?

Bringing up Hume dismissively doesn't work either. Science can obviously study some facts about ethics, for example what people say about ethics under what situations, or what oughts children usually learn and when, even if it can't directly tell anyone what they ought to do. And once someone has some oughts, new ises can get you to make different decisions, and science can give you plenty of those. If you were omniscient, surely that would help you make morally better decisions, if you wanted.

Finally, if you want to understand morality, you should have some knowledge of the variety of naturally occuring morality, and ideally explanations of why it came to be that way. It's easy to make untrue generalizations that exclude behaviors (or patterns of behavior) that aren't merely hypothetical but already exist somewhere.

4

iiioiia t1_iwgxy6k wrote

> Is signaling how angry you are at someone accepted as a refutation of their arguments, and the arguments of anyone else who is somehow loosely associated with something named after them?

That seems to be the case as far as I can tell.

4

coyote-1 t1_iwdksus wrote

This was covered on this forum just a couple weeks ago. In any event, the Einstein quote addresses it succinctly. The knowledge exists in the world, and science uncovers that knowledge.

And his era is instructive in this. Would it have been wise to not uncover the knowledge of nuclear fission, and to have allowed the Germans to uncover it? Ethical? Even though we ended up deploying the bomb in war, and have been the only ones to do so?

3

Provokateur t1_iwfde7m wrote

Ah yes, Sam Harris, Stephen Pinker, and Michael Shermer--the leading voices at the forefront of moral philosophy!

I would summarize the article "Three people who never studied moral philosophy said that science can solve moral problems. So scientists should do that. How, you ask? Aristotle or something."

I would be shocked if whoever wrote this has even taken Phil 101. There are many folks studying experimental philosophy and a lot of cool work is coming out of that area. But it's clear this author has never even heard of it.

2