I am talking about cases where the decision has NOT been made, yet. Science can answer moral questions, or at the very least, help us answer them.
Help us answer them, yes. Of course! Why do you insist with this?
There is a difference between answering moral questions and helping answer moral questions. Please, leave out the latter so we can concentrate on what's actually controversial.
It would be unscientific to make the decision first, and justify it later. The idea is to use science to discover what the best answer is likely to be, before we reach any final conclusions. (Though, we are allowed to make predictions.)
This seems contradictory with your approach to First Mile Argument #1, where you already accept that the first step is a value judgment. It looks like you're conflating your approach #1 with your approach #2.
A value judgment doesn't need to be justified, and that's what makes it unscientific.
Why would it be wrong? What if David Hume is outdated?
Some of the science of consciousness seems to be indicating that all "oughts" start out as "ises" in the brain, anyway. According to that line of research: We just forget the original "is" state, and classify it as an "ought"in a later process. Perhaps it is too early to be confident about these sorts of discoveries.
Not just perhaps. It is not only too early, but a flawed argument anyway.
By the way, I'm interested in the evidence that supports the claim "all
oughts start out as
ises in the brain". Is there a credible source supporting this?
But you're right that it is too early, because neuroscience is in its infancy, and that makes this argument highly conjectural. Even if we take the claim at face value, it's at least equally conceivable that more accurate observations in the future would offer different results, even if slightly.
But this is not really that important. I'm going to quote Sam Harris' exact words:
Sam Harris said:
beliefs about facts and beliefs about values seem to arise from similar processes at the level of the brain: it appears that we have a common system for judging truth and falsity in both domains.
What does it mean? That "is" and "ought" have similar neural correlates. To argue from this that "ought" is "is" is a non sequitur. It just doesn't follow.
Take this example:
Similar neural correlates for language and sequential learning.
Yet no one argues that sequential learning is language. That's because we define an experience prior to finding its neural correlates. Still, if the word used was
identical instead of
similar, we wouldn't conclude that sequential learning and language are the same. The experience is different nevertheless. What we would do is look for more data instead of concluding something different from what our direct evidence dictates.
An hypothetical example:
What if deductive and inductive reasoning arise from similar processes at the level of the brain? Would we conclude that deductive and inductive reasoning are the same? Again, no. Even if they looked identical at the level of the brain, they are different methods of gathering evidence. They're epistemologically different, no matter how it looks in the brain.
We have to take into account that
neural correlate means "correlation with a specific experience". Without knowing and defining the experience itself prior to looking for a correlation to that experience, we wouldn't find any neural correlates. We need something overwhemingly convincing to make us change how we classify our own perceived experiences.
But, I suspect we will see more of these types of arguments, in the future, that erode the very difference between "is" and "ought" in various ways. I think it is less likely that these distinctions will become any stronger in the future.
In what ways? You're just asserting, but not providing any arguments.
Let's use a practical example: how would you erode the difference between what these two sentences mean?
- Milan is the capital city of Italy.
- Milan ought to be the capital city of Italy.
