A Science of Morality - That's Different

I know, it is a TOUGH subject.

I think, is that there really is no absolute morality.

madbolter1 -- "At least I do know what I'm talking about."

Who said that? That is YOUR hyperbole. I've said time and again science is (only) a tool for investigating how the world works in terms of facts, in terms of "what is" or "what are."

Don't just appeal in broad strokes to, for example, anthropology! TELL us exactly what moral facts anthropology reveals!

Dingus -- "I have no need to appeal to any authority, mythical or otherwise."

Jan -- "There are no absolutes ....."

Yes, and we've come to some pretty solid conclusions. One conclusion is that the anthropological/sociological approaches to ethics fail dismally. The relativism shared by most everyday people is indefensible and fails dismally. And, finally, that authority-based ethics is the most defensible, promising line of ethical thinking.

authority-based ethics is the most defensible, promising line of ethical thinking.

There it is, in a mere three paragraphs, Jan emasculates MB1!

Science gave us (not to mention Pakistan and soon Iran) the ability to develop an H bomb - In terms of natural facts, physical facts. But could it ever tell us we SHOULD drop the H bomb - in terms of moral facts?

long before humanity's arrival.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
    Richard Dawkins, "God's Utility Function," published in Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85

BTW, how often do philosophers even BOTHER to distinguish them in discourse?

If by "scientism" you only mean, advocacy for, or belief in, a method, or methods, of science (and engineering) - and nothing more, in particular nothing perjorative in the way retro philosophers to theologians use it in their circles - or should I say, their "group gropings" - then, yeah, I bit the bullet a long time ago. Proudly. I consider this an achievement.

.....

It's a mechanistic universe. (Bite the bullet.) There is no ghost in the machine. (Bite the bullet.) Evil existed as part of the evolutionary process among living things on earth long before humanity's arrival. (Bite the bullet.) Dump the "Abrahamic indulgences" e.g., eternal life, etc.. (Bite the bullet.) Attitude counts. "Attitude is everything." In and out of climbing. Whether it is climbing or living

We could dredge those posts up, too, if you like.

What is determinism's relationship / significance to so-called "free will."

I'll try to think of ONE THING academic philosophy has done for the public good in the 21st century.

(1) Either I have the "freedom" to escape this jail cell or I don't.
(2) Either this sweet hot thing has the "freedom" to climb Astroman or I don't.

Essentially, humans and rocks are nothing more than clouds of sub-atomic particles, causally affected to produce EVENTS in the world. But none of those events are actually CHOSEN, and none of those EVENTS are FREE. Just like a volcanic eruption, if you knew the preconditions with sufficient accuracy, you could predict EXACTLY what the next link of the causal chain would produce.

Insofar as any system - biotic or abiotic - has agency (and by the way, how many in pop culture are going to understand this word? which is ultimately to whom my group is going to appeal), it has freedoms - degrees of freedom, dimensions of freedom, powers of freedom - however you'd like to say it - doesn't matter to me. It is freedom.

"However, it is difficult for you to see your own superstitions or other superstitions..."

Any examples?

I'll put it to you: Is not the Abrahamic religion in all three forms the #1 obstacle to science education? You just happen to be addressing a climber here who sees science education as a superb FOUNDATION for the practice of living and has taken on the right if not the duty to defend it as such.

My use of "freedom" is no more loose and uncertain than the philosopher's use of...

Sorry for the news, if this is taken as bad news,
Said the man eating freely from his bowl of ice cream.

Yes, this is tiring now.
I think I'll go free-climb something tomorrow for a pleasant escape
From all this philosophizing (term used loosely).

Hmm... I should at least have the freedom to climb Nutcracker, I think.

It's all very challenging.

...living things are agents with variable degrees of freedom), what more is there, what more do we have to discuss?

the cortex is the least effective in driving human behavior, and since the mammalian and brain stem must be met on their own terms, with their own language and symbolism (music, mythology, et al), you best get busy and address these aspects of existence because while we might have evolved quite a ways, mind is still a supporting actor in this theater of the heart.

Q: What do you think the role of religion is in determining human morality?

Harris: I think it is generally an unhelpful one. Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but in so far as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious. You do not need to believe that the Bible was dictated by the Creator of the Universe, or that Jesus Christ was his son, to see the wisdom and utility of following the Golden Rule.

The problem with religious morality is that it often causes people to care about the wrong things, leading them to make choices that needlessly perpetuate human suffering. Consider the Catholic Church: This is an institution that excommunicates women who want to become priests, but it does not excommunicate male priests who rape children. The Church is more concerned about stopping contraception than stopping genocide. It is more worried about gay marriage than about nuclear proliferation. When we realize that morality relates to questions of human and animal well-being, we can see that the Catholic Church is as confused about morality as it is about cosmology. It is not offering an alternative moral framework; it is offering a false one.

Q: So people don’t need religion to live an ethical life?

Harris: No. And a glance at the lives of most atheists, and at the most atheistic societies on earth—Denmark, Sweden, etc.—proves that this is so. Even the faithful can’t really get their deepest moral principles from religion—because books like the Bible and the Qur’an are full of barbaric injunctions that all decent and sane people must now reinterpret or ignore. How is it that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims are opposed to slavery? You don’t get this moral insight from scripture, because the God of Abraham expects us to keep slaves. Consequently, even religious fundamentalists draw many of their moral positions from a wider conversation about human values that is not, in principle, religious. We are the guarantors of the wisdom we find in scripture, such as it is. And we are the ones who must ignore God when he tells us to kill people for working on the Sabbath.

Q: How will admitting that there are right and wrong answers to issues of human and animal flourishing transform the way we think and talk about morality?

Harris: What I’ve tried to do in my book is give a framework in which we can think about human values in universal terms. Currently, the most important questions in human life—questions about what constitutes a good life, which wars we should fight or not fight, which diseases should be cured first, etc.—are thought to lie outside the purview of science, in principle. Therefore, we have divorced the most important questions in human life from the context in which our most rigorous and intellectually honest thinking gets done.

Moral truth entirely depends on actual and potential changes in the well-being of conscious creatures. As such, there are things to be discovered about it through careful observation and honest reasoning. It seems to me that the only way we are going to build a global civilization based on shared values—allowing us to converge on the same political, economic, and environmental goals—is to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way the questions about human health do.

From a New York Times Article today:

How meditation may change the brain.

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.

Previous studies have also shown that there are structural differences between the brains of meditators and those who don’t meditate, although this new study is the first to document changes in gray matter over time.

In a 2008 study published in the journal PloS One, researchers found that when meditators heard the sounds of people suffering, they had stronger activation levels in their temporal parietal junctures, a part of the brain tied to empathy, than people who did not meditate.


http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/how-meditation-may-change-the-brain/?src=me&ref=general

Joshua 1:8 ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth , but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success’.

Make a "life bomb" so you do not die!

When one takes into account (a) that our species strengths are phenotypic expressions of our genetics and genotypic strengths; (b) that genetic systems including ours can be sharpened by selection or dulled by pressures, e.g., entropy; (c) that history's honing mechanisms via natural selection have been by and large turned off on H. sapiens by modernity's control over "the arena of pressure" known as nature red in tooth n claw - there are reasons for concern. -Reasons for concern that aren't being talked about - that those in the know (e.g., many an evolutionary biologist or geneticist) not to mention politicians won't touch with the proverbial 10-foot pole for obvious reasons.

The adjective moral is synonymous with "good" or "right."