Scientists, such as Sam Harris, argue from hypotheses which, unlike the axioms of philosophical argument, have the potential for empirical verification. It is YOU who is arguing for “moral axioms” and it is YOU who need explain how YOU arrive at moral axioms YOU consider correct?
Which
hypotheses are you talking about?
As for "moral axioms", I did not introduce the term to the debate (as far as I can remember), but I think it is a sensible term.
In Sam Harris's case the moral axiom he is working from is that what is morally good is "maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures". This is, as we have stated before not a bad place to start from, and will require philosophical justification in the sense that it could be challenged by counter-examples such as "Ah! But what if we had a hospital in which the doctors secretly used every 10,000th patient for spare parts but the hospital itself ended up maximizing the welfare of all the other patients! Is that moral?"
However, the moral axiom is not itself testable empirically: it is asserted. That is to say it is presupposed as being morally good.
It ain't science, mate!
See above re “axioms” in philosophy vis-à-vis science.
And you see mine!
It is you claiming the soundness of moral axioms, not me.
Where do I make this claim? Surely axioms are by their nature unprovable starting points. That is to say assumptions. The question is how safe are the assumptions? In Sam Harris's view his axiom is so clearly safe, he believes, that anyone who disputes it is not worth talking to. I think he has not proved his case, and furthermore he certainly has not done so with science.
Hence your argument: “science can inform us of how to proceed in all kinds of moral issues, once we have decided our moral axioms”. So what are these “moral axioms” of yours and how have you arrived at them?
Let me humour you a little and break it down. The question is somewhat ambiguous and I think you are struggling with the very ambiguity of it judging by your answers to me and to others.
There are a few distinct ways we can answer the question here:
There's the
physiological answer:
How does any human make any decision using their brains? Well, it is a matter of physiology and therefore one amenable to scientific scrutiny. If we ever find out it will be interesting, and I don't doubt that trying to figure out why Person X thinks Thought Y is a scientific question. I think you of the opinion that answering this question somehow will tell us something about normative ethics, but that is not the case. This is a descriptive question and is not to be confused with:
The
propositional answer:
In this case, we are looking at propositions distinct from the physiological processes required to think them. In this case, we can ask, "Is it right to eat meat?" and then drill down into it to ask about whether the meat came from a conscious animal, and if it suffered pain, and in what circumstances it would be justified. This is a process of conceptual analysis, and while we may use empirical data to let us know whether the animal felt pain, we still have to make judgments that science can hardly help us with such as "Is it right to cause pain?" Ultimately, we may reach the point that someone like Bentham did in which he sees no other considerations for morality other than pleasure and pain, to the extent that something is considered good if it produces pleasure and bad if it produces pain. If we start with that axiom, then we can find all kinds of ways in which science can help promote one and reduce the other. For example, we can build a pleasure machine in which you can strap in and spend the rest of your life having the serotonin receptors stimulated constantly. Of course, a few philosophers saw something inadequate in that conception of morality and improved on it after that. That's a small sample, and I would be interested to know if you see what is meant by moral axioms now. This is the normative answer.
Then there may be a
social answer as well.
I call it that, but essentially what I mean is trying to get others to go along with what you see as self-evidently moral. This is trickier ground, but here we come up against problems of relativism, absolutism and nihilism, to name but a few. Sam Harris is a moral realist, that is he thinks there genuinely are objectively true moral propositions. In his opinion, if people disagree about morality, that's because basically almost everyone is wrong just as much as many people used to believe the world is flat. (As far as I remember this was also something Wowbagger believes). This is the meta-ethical answer, I think.
I'm not entirely sure if this is completely correct, however, so I would welcome constructive feedback from you, Tassman. Also, I would be very happy for feedback from Dani, Cavemonster, Kevin Lowe and anyone else.
Oh, and Wowbagger, if you are still out there.
ETA:Let me also repeat in response to your question, "what are these “moral axioms” of yours and how have you arrived at them?":
"I have not made any axiomatic claims."
I'm not disputing that what you can't understand you dismiss as "world salad".
Now, now. I go to a lot of pains to explain elementary philosophy to you, can you not realize that I may struggle to understand rarefied gobbledygook?
Potentially yes. I think it reasonable to argue that moral decisions are potentially subject to the same kinds of rational, empirical scientific examination as everything else. On what grounds do you argue, with your uncompromising “NO”, that the science of morality can NEVER answer normative moral questions?
Because it would be like setting up an empirical enquiry into whether all triangles have three sides. Or whether circles are more sparkly than squares. Or whether purple was more interesting than curry. Or which of the Chuckle Brothers was funniest. It's not a scientific question. That's why!
No you tell me. Science does not resort to axioms to construct the premises of arguments, only philosophy does that. So again, how are the moral axioms you refer to arrived at?
See above.
