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Fuck you, Science!

isn't it impossible for any of us to comprehend?

Through a glass darkly...and all that
 
Junebug said:
How, in your view, does empiricism impact policy decisions? I mean, empiricism just provides observations, numbers, etc. It doesn't provide a guiding principle that tells us what we should do with those results.
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Empirical science informs decision makers about the state of the system they are managing and helps makes predictions about the out comes of their policy choices. Science does not value which of those outcomes are preferable, that is society's job.
 
Junebug said:
No one bit on this, so I'll pose a direct question: do you agree that the very concept of ethics points to the existence of God?
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No

Are our notions of ethics attempts to grasp universal truths?
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Maybe

Are these truths written into the fabric of the universe, like gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, etc.?
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No

Or, supposing truth is a woman
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What

are ethics mere social mores that, ultimately, can be explained by resort to social darwinistic priciples?
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What no
 
Ethics have nothing to do with the existence of God. What is right and wrong is about creating a sustainable society. There's no reason to think a totally atheistic society won't have ethics and morals.
 
Junebug said:
No one bit on this, so I'll pose a direct question: do you agree that the very concept of ethics points to the existence of God? Are our notions of ethics attempts to grasp universal truths? Are these truths written into the fabric of the universe, like gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, etc.? Or, supposing truth is a woman, are ethics mere social mores that, ultimately, can be explained by resort to social darwinistic priciples?
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Any cross cultural similarities in ethics can be explained by evolutionary theory and with more parsimony that a god. Not social Darwinism, actual behavioral ecology and behavioral evolution.
 
Junebug said:
So, to be clear, the idea that "murder is wrong" is a byproduct of the fact that if we all went around killing each other we wouldn't survive as a species? That society is akin to an organism, and nature selects people who aren't murderous?
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Not as a species. Group selection is a fairly rare thing and generally comes down to reciprocal altruism or relatedness among the individuals in a group. It is pretty easy to see that if you are trying to rear children and you collaborate with your cousins and siblings, if members of the group murder each other everyone suffers from a genetic promulgation standpoint. Individuals in groups that were behaviorally averse towards murder with in their own groups, out competed individuals in groups that didn't exhibit those behavior. This is both a group relatedness argument and reciprocal altruism.
 
Junebug said:
Am I right in thinking, on this account, that there is nothing objectively "wrong" about murder? It's just that we have built into us, by virtue of natural selection, a genetic desire to avoid murder? Sort of like we have built into us a natural aversion to spiders and snakes?
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Yes murder is not objectively wrong. Plenty of animals engage in murder, even some of our closest relatives. It is pretty common among primates for Males to kill the offspring of other males. Human tendencies to avoid within group murder (out group murder is quite common and often encourage, e.g., battle field killings) is not so much a "genetic desire" but a behavioral tendency. It is a bit odd to think about in terms of a specific behavior like murder, but I generally think of it terms of proclivity to follow group stabilizing rules. Individuals in groups that set rules and established mechanisms to enforce them, genetically out performed individuals in groups with out those rules. I only dabble in evolutionary theory and haven't really studied evolution since at best 2004, so these are just my thoughts and opinions and don't really know what the leading opinion or research is on the evolution of ethics.
 
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Robert K. Merton - The Sociology of Science - Science and the Social Order - 1938
 
Junebug said:
So, if I don't like person A, so much so that I don't want him around, and he is outside the group of people who can provide some benefit to me, why shouldn't I kill him? I am smart enough to plan a murder I can get away with it and I have trained my conscience not to be weak, unlike Pyotr Petrovich.
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First of all out group killing happens all the time. E.g. War. Also plenty of people plan the perfect murder and think they can get away with it and some universal ethical principle against murder doesn't stop them. Probably what stops you from killing the person you want to kill is your belief in an all powerful super natural system of justice that will eternally punish you for your actions. It is a very clever and useful invention for maintaining order and justifing behavioral rules with in a society.
 
From an evolutionary perspective solely or are we including societal concepts like "individual rights" and "consent" that may be more specific to humans?
 
Junebug said:
No, my question to you was, in your world, if I want to kill another individual and I think I can get away with it, both legally and in my own conscience (which is just a by-product of natural selection anyway), is there any reason I shouldn't do it? I will be happy to address your points but I want to be sure I understand your position first.
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Nope, no reason.
 
Calling Birdman -- big day for you!

 
Junebug said:
I don't understand your invocation of the frequency of war and murder. Are you saying that the fact it happens often proves it isn't morally wrong? If so, that argument is pretty easily defeated by the rejoinder that belief in moral absolutism does not require the unrelated view that man is a perfect moral actor.

As to your second point, belief in moral absolutism also does not require the unrelated view that God will either (a) punish us for our moral failings or (b) do so eternally. Strands of BCE Judaism, for example, didn't believe in the notion of an eternal soul, yet they plainly believed in moral absolutism. Strands of mid-20th century continental Christian theology accepted the notion of an eternal soul, but held that only the evil within us was punished eternally by being relegated to non-existence at the end times. Virtue, in other words, can be its own reward.
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Acceptability of murder is contextual, some times it is warranted sometimes it is not. Therefore it is not universally morally wrong. For something to be universally wrong it always has to be wrong.
 
birdman said:
Acceptability of murder is contextual, some times it is warranted sometimes it is not. Therefore it is not universally morally wrong. For something to be universally wrong it always has to be wrong.
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Murder is a legal term. It's different than killing someone in self-defense or in war.
 
Junebug said:
I don't really think it's accurate to say that the acceptability of "murder" is contextual. Maybe "killing," but not murder. From a legal standpoint, murder is, losely, the intentional killing of another human without justification. There are many claimed justifications for murder -- just war, self defense, defense of others, etc. We can have honest disagreement about what is and isn't a valid justification, but that really just goes to prove the underlying point that almost no one is going to argue that intentionally killing another human being without, at the very least, some colorable claim of justification is a morally ambiguous act.
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You're the one that brought up murder as an example of a moral truth and now you are blowing it off as a legal term. But it doesn't matter what the act is, if you claim some prohibition on behavior is based on a moral truth woven into the fabric of the universe, like gravity, but that engaging in that behavior can be justified in certain contexts, then it is not a moral truth. Gravity isn't justifiably violated in certain justifiable contexts.
 
Junebug said:
Birdman, care to confirm? I mean, if there is no such thing as right and wrong, aren't all arguments that putatively come from a moral high ground illusory, whether that high ground is based on antiquated notions of God or the Good, or more modern notions, like "individual rights" and "consent"?

In fact, if Christians are weak for needing a god to tell them what is right and wrong, aren't moderns just as weak? Are they not weaker? Although, to their credit, they have killed god, instead of having the courage to look directly into the void, they had to invent another god in his place, with vague concepts like "individual rights" and consent," which they wear like a blankey in the cold. Slightly less stupid, to be sure, than Christians, because notions of "individual rights" and "consent" don't require belief in the fairy tale of creator sitting in the sky, but weaker just the same, no?
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Yes I will confirm that. I think that society sets and collectively accepts the norms that we follow and society determines what is moral and what is a right. I think there is pretty good evidence that these standards change over time. I don't think there is anything immutable or sacrosanct about individual rights. I am really glad I was lucky enough to be born in a society that embraced the concept and I am hoping it continues to embrace the concept so that my kids get to enjoy the freedoms I have. I think these things are tenuous and I therefore don't take them for granted. I don't judge anyone as weak (and I am not sure why that is such a big component of your second paragraph), it's just the way humans are and the way things work.
 
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