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On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions  Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
Thanks, that clarifies it quite a lot. What he quoted seemed simplistic (and even empty) even without knowing what Harris actually meant.
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Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
Bolded the part where it starts being a philosophical claim. While Harris can balk at the is-ought distinction all he wants, none of his empirical arguments say anything at all about what makes "well-being" (defined or otherwise) the sole metric against which actions should be judged with respect to morality. Until he comes up with a good grounding for his system, he's going to be reduced to doing what he's actually been doing this whole time: making the point that utilitarianism is easier if you employ scientific techniques to map the pleasure function. Well, yes, that's not exactly a controversial claim, but it doesn't really say much about whether one should be a utilitarian.
I don't think anyone has ever contested that science can be used to evaluate whether a particular event causes or inhibits somebody's sense of well-being. It's not as if this is a difficult judgment to make. Most of the time, we can just ask people what would make them feel better, or ask their psychiatrists. We don't need to brain scan every person in the world to figure out that most people probably don't want to be tortured.
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On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote:
nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion.
Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better.
I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective.
The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least.
High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth.
They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
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On July 28 2013 06:57 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics. Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled. Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science. Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry.
Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy? Keep in mind that saying "defining well-being with rigor is not important" is in itself a philosophical statement that requires more than cursory comparisons with very different phenomena.
Edit: I realize I'm being rather circumspect, so I'll have revise some once I'm out of work 
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On July 28 2013 07:08 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 06:57 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics. Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled. Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science. Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry. Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy?
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down? Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis? Why does a science of morals need an entirely different kind of philosophical validation than medicine? Harris is trying to make the world a better place, not to get a PhD in Philosophy.
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On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing.
Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being.
That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good.
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On July 28 2013 06:58 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. Bolded the part where it starts being a philosophical claim. While Harris can balk at the is-ought distinction all he wants, none of his empirical arguments say anything at all about what makes "well-being" (defined or otherwise) the sole metric against which actions should be judged with respect to morality. Until he comes up with a good grounding for his system, he's going to be reduced to doing what he's actually been doing this whole time: making the point that utilitarianism is easier if you employ scientific techniques to map the pleasure function. Well, yes, that's not exactly a controversial claim, but it doesn't really say much about whether one should be a utilitarian. I don't think anyone has ever contested that science can be used to evaluate whether a particular event causes or inhibits somebody's sense of well-being. It's not as if this is a difficult judgment to make. Most of the time, we can just ask people what would make them feel better, or ask their psychiatrists. We don't need to brain scan every person in the world to figure out that most people probably don't want to be tortured.
The argument is that we are in actual practice all utilitarian anyway and the discussion is pointless  Not really, we are not utilitarian exactly, just close enough.
Basically the grounding is biology, because what else could it be. There is no other possible grounding for ethics that does not involve endless question begging. Fortunately due to mechanics of evolution we are all pretty similar and thus can agree on rather extensive basis of what "ought to be". Anyone who attempts anything grander in terms of trying to create ethical system, will fail. By grander I mean something that follows from "pure" reason and requires no assumptions. If you disagree please point any system that actually accomplishes more
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On July 28 2013 07:17 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics. It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing. Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being. That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good.
But, as you've just described, the areas of medicine that are most likely to fall into dispute are also the places medicine is most willing to ask philosophy/politics/ethics for help, an operation Harris suggests his "science of morality" need never undertake, which is precisely the problem. For example, the DSM revision process is oftentimes little more than an exercise in linguistic philosophy. Similarly, medicine falls short in solving the abortion debate on its own terms, and in turn it resorts to alternative "schools" in pursuit of a solution. In fact, the very issues in medicine you've described are some of the places any supposed "science of morality" most obviously falls short.
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Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis?
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
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On July 28 2013 07:31 Shiori wrote:It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else. Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse. Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions. I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that: A= our world. B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what. He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
Did you just say that curing syphilis is good, but you can't make up your mind on whether our world is better than everyone always suffering?
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On July 28 2013 07:08 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 06:57 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics. Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled. Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science. Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry. Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy? Keep in mind that saying "defining well-being with rigor is not important" is in itself a philosophical statement that requires more than cursory comparisons with very different phenomena. Edit: I realize I'm being rather circumspect, so I'll have revise some once I'm out of work
That problem immediately disappears when you realize that morality is not actually "ought-to" system. Morality is just an emergent property of human groups and it evolves and changes based on historical events and biological constraints. Ethical systems are just attempts to formalize this complex phenomenon. And well-being seems to be one of the things that allows us the closest approximation of the phenomenon. So defining well-being is not necessary to be able to say moral judgments. Moral judgments are like scientific statements in a sense. "Murder is wrong" , because it is. In the same way as Earth radius is X km, because it is. Moral judgments are observations, not truths. Of course the difference is in the fact that moral judgments are only semi-objective and change in time, whereas scientific ones are objective.
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General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
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On July 28 2013 07:31 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 07:17 mcc wrote:On July 28 2013 05:59 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 05:26 Darkwhite wrote:On July 28 2013 04:03 farvacola wrote:On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote:So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions. But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation? Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible. I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture. On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics. It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing. Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being. That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good. But, as you've just described, the areas of medicine that are most likely to fall into dispute are also the places medicine is most willing to ask philosophy/politics/ethics for help, an operation Harris suggests his "science of morality" need never undertake, which is precisely the problem. For example, the DSM revision process is oftentimes little more than an exercise in linguistic philosophy. Similarly, medicine falls short in solving the abortion debate on its own terms, and in turn it resorts to alternative "schools" in pursuit of a solution. In fact, the very issues in medicine you've described are some of the places any supposed "science of morality" most obviously falls short.
Medicine does not ask for help with the process, it solves issues that ethics provides, but it does not need ethics for its work. This "science of morality" also can work easily without ethics. It can produce statements like, "if you want to cause cause psychological anguish to your wife, the best way is ....", "if you want society to X do Y" ,... . Of course some of those statements are useless if we want to create nice society, but that is beside the point. We need ethics only to decide which of those prescriptions to use. And for that you do not need philosophical ethics, instinctual ones suffice. That is not to say the philosophical ethics are completely useless, they are just not necessary.
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On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote:
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
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On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote:
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
If you feel this way, PM a mod, don't post in the thread.
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On July 28 2013 07:31 Shiori wrote:It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else. Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse. Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions. I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that: A= our world. B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what. He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
No, the moral difference is between two actions. We have world A (ours) and are at a decision point we can either reach world B where people suffer more or world C where people suffer less. The decision leading to B is moral and the one to C immoral.
EDIT: Just to make it clear. Medieval world was not more immoral, just more people did immoral actions than our current one (relative to population). So if I say medieval world is more immoral, it is just shortcut for the latter statement.
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On July 28 2013 07:54 Nachtwind wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote:
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly? I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages".
At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
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On July 28 2013 07:59 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 07:54 Nachtwind wrote:On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote:
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly? I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL. Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there. Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
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On July 28 2013 08:05 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2013 07:59 ZenithM wrote:On July 28 2013 07:54 Nachtwind wrote:On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote:
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly? I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL. Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there. Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself. You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it
And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
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EPT
