The Future of Moral Science

[Tassman]

I don't think I understand your objection. And I cannot believe that you think the two paragraphs above are anything like a rephrasing of what I wrote.

Perhaps you don't understand the point of my insistence that we settle this issue. It is simply this: over and over again, you point out that we need science in order to know what actions are likely to be useful in attaining our goals, and then you make some silly remark that philosophy not being able to do the same, as if this was a point of contention.

But we all know that science is very good at discovering causal relations and that these are important for practical reasoning. And I get exhausted at seeing you pretend over and over that this is a controversy.

Now, maybe you think that science can do even more than the below statement says. That's fine. The statement does not say this is the only role for science. It says that everyone recognizes at least this role.

At this point, I suppose you've said enough to conclude that you agreed with the highlighted statement, just so long as we recognize it as placing no limits on the role of science in practical reasoning. Therefore, you will not repeat the same tired facts that philosophy doesn't discover causal relations, science does, and this is part of the data necessary for making reliable practical inferences.

So, let's move on.

No, I don’t think so.

It is clear from this post and the following one that you have no idea where I’m coming from in this discussion, hence it’s likely that we will continue to talk pointlessly past each other. I’ll leave you with a paraphrase of Wittgenstein, with whom I’m in agreement, about the absurdly overblown, and ultimately impotent claims of traditional philosophy as presented by many in this thread:

“Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking”. My emphasis.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/?_r=0

 

[angrysoba]

Here Sam Harris makes an argument that Chomsky is morally wrong for relying solely on bodycount to assess the relative merits of Western foreign policy. However, to me that seems at odds with his theory in the Moral Landscape.



So, I tweeted Sam Harris, this message:

In your reply to Chomsky you argue that intentions matter. I agree. How do you square this with the consequentionalism of TML?

He was good enough to reply:

Intentions have consequences--especially for the quality of your mind and your relationships.

Now, I seem to remember that he has responded before to this charge and used the example of someone kicking a dog which prevented it being run-over. He suggested it makes a difference what the intent is because of the consequences of having that intent. Nevertheless I think this idea is a hostage to fortune. So I wrote back:

However, there seems to be no contradiction in saying that good intentions can result in bad, or even disastrous, consequences

But he has not replied to this. I'm not suggesting that he can't answer, of course, as I expect he is busy doing other things, so maybe one of Harris's followers can explain.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Yeah, I've read that before. It's certainly interesting but again this is an exploration of descriptive morality.

From what I understand, people such as Haidt, Hauser and others (maybe including de Waal) have some interesting research on how people make moral decisions, often with some evolutionary explanation. This is all very interesting, but it falls short of the stronger claims that science can determine morality.

What I find a bit curious about Sam Harris's book is that he seems well aware of some of the pitfalls of these explanations. For example he spells out that his science of morality is explicitly not that of an evolutionary account. (some of his followers seem to have skipped these suras or assume they are not to be taken literally).

I think we agree. Science can give some foundation via innate moral sense, but there is no obligatory, lock-step derivation of specific moral statements to be had from science. These are a matter of social convention, based on preference. The only interesting part there is to analyze when the two conflict, such as when adherents of a given ideology choose what moral actions to undertake, one dictated by creed, the other by empathy.

Haven't read Harris' book, can't comment on that in particular. But as a linguist, I know how easy it can be to mistake social convention for hard truth. The fundamental arbitrariness of convention is anathema to bigots, believers, and Fox news.

 

[angrysoba]

I think we agree. Science can give some foundation via innate moral sense, but there is no obligatory, lock-step derivation of specific moral statements to be had from science. These are a matter of social convention, based on preference. The only interesting part there is to analyze when the two conflict, such as when adherents of a given ideology choose what moral actions to undertake, one dictated by creed, the other by empathy.

Haven't read Harris' book, can't comment on that in particular. But as a linguist, I know how easy it can be to mistake social convention for hard truth. The fundamental arbitrariness of convention is anathema to bigots, believers, and Fox news.

I would also advise against founding morality on empathy just as much as founding it on creed. The reason for this is that empathy discriminates: Pinker even talks about this in his big book on violence in which he brings up a lot of research which shows what we probably already know which is that we tend to empathise with people who are like us, in our group, or better looking, etc...

If you want to raise money for charity, it is better to have poster children (rather than poster adults) who have big sad eyes and angelic faces rather than grubby, hard-faced ones.

It is partly for this reason that Kant thought morality should be based on reason rather than whatever pulls our heartstrings.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

It is not objective data, because what it is about is subjective. Data about e.g. gravity is objective. Further even if you sampled all of humanity minus yourself, it wouldn't give you any objective data to act on. It would just tell how other humans think and feel subjectively.
That you can observe how another human thinks/feels doesn't make it objective, what that person thinks/feels. Again - independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers. It is not independent of individual thought.

The reason social sciences have the iffy rep they do is because they deal with data in the same way actuarial tables do: we cannot predict individual deaths (or behavior), but in a sample population, we can predict the number of deaths (or range and nature of behaviors) in a given time period.

[By the way, this is also true of individual electrons. You cannot count them as numbered separate entities, doesn't make sense, apparently. Only statistical inference works. (Assuming I understood something I skimmed the other day; need to go back.)]

In a survey of opinions about morality, one derives a description of opinions. The science is at the level of 'what is the case,' and makes no distinction about the nature or origin of such opinions. This is how, say, an anthropologist must get his/her work done.

BTW you can't see your own thinking.

Yes I can. I use it to create well-formed statements in different linguistic codes, and choose among a selection of alternatives. As a multilingual speaker, I can play with codes and tease a fit between concept and expression until I have a single preference (i.e., some things are more pithy in one language than another.)

I can even watch my discourse in conversation, and wryly note when performance, or actual production of utterances, contains an error, which competence, my knowledge of proper formation, identifies and corrects with a follow-up utterance. This body of behavioral data can indicate to me some general indication of body state, normally degree of fatigue. I can also see traces of past experience, in that terms used in one conversation pop up in the next, as train of thought switches to a new track, yet drags the same wagons.

In monitoring the output of writing, I can see which base form of homonyms I produce and which show up in embarrassing ways. Although trivial, I recently discovered that for whatever reason, my preferred form of spelling for one homonym is 'coarse,' not 'course,' even if the latter probably represents over 90% of my actual use of the terms.

I can watch as I code-switch whenever silently counting, as numeracy is still tied to one language alone.

I have conscious thoughts, conscious processing, and objective output. Once something goes out, it is data. What I do not have access to is the back office unconscious, 'who' seems to have 'his' own set of preferences, such as delivering me noise from time to time just to play a prank and laugh when I goof up publicly.

---
I exaggerate for effect. But the line between purely subjective and entirely objective is not as clear as it might seem.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I would also advise against founding morality on empathy just as much as founding it on creed. The reason for this is that empathy discriminates: Pinker even talks about this in his big book on violence in which he brings up a lot of research which shows what we probably already know which is that we tend to empathise with people who are like us, in our group, or better looking, etc...

If you want to raise money for charity, it is better to have poster children (rather than poster adults) who have big sad eyes and angelic faces rather than grubby, hard-faced ones.

It is partly for this reason that Kant thought morality should be based on reason rather than whatever pulls our heartstrings.

Interesting. I wonder if we should not make a distinction between identifying that which science can identify as related to moral thought, and that which we wish to more formally elevate as social code.

Agreed on your point about empathy being tied to group loyalties, and so limited prescriptively.

Sorry to harp in my linguist mode, but while speech is language, writing is a formal skill, just like with innate numeracy (see Dehaene) vs mathematics. Perhaps we need to make the same distinction here between descriptions of behavior and formal moral systems, the latter being social artifacts of broader derivation.

 

[Dragoonster]

Descriptive morality could conceivably tell us how morality works.

So could non-descriptive morality! "Conceivably"!!

Of course, there isn't much evidence from this thread that anybody but me cares. Still, there is evidence that a lot of people seem to think that the kinds of things I'm interested in should be ruled out of consideration. There is also the converse assumption that, by stating such things, I am trying to wipe the other things that are being said out of existence.

That is all irrelevant (and remarkably stubborn and antagonistic and irrational).

"Cares" about what? Morality? Everyone in the thread I've seen cares about morality. "ruled out"? What should be ruled out? Acting moral? No one has said that acting moral should be ruled out. I can't recall anyone saying that morality should be wiped out of existence...

But it should be ruled out of scientific consideration because science does not decide morality.

That is interesting to me, and I wonder if it could inform an understanding of morality, perhaps indirectly, as the dynamics of social status.

Welcome to anthropology and sociology! Doing good work in describing many cultures' subjective moralities and social status and influences for decades. (objectively)

p.s. Obviously the largest dynamic/status/etc. so far has been religion. I can't tell if that would blow your mind and you'd immediately seek out the most likely moral religion or what. You seem to be searching for something to validate your personal morality, since you don't seem to think it's valid as is, and need some higher religious/scientific power to validate it. I can only imagine your desperation.

 

[angrysoba]

Interesting. I wonder if we should not make a distinction between identifying that which science can identify as related to moral thought, and that which we wish to more formally elevate as social code.

Maybe, but is this really something that comes down to science? I would imagine that there are many communities which moralize differently to other communities. Some cultures, for example, moralize things that we may simply consider to be amoral (dining etiquette, dress sense, handedness, whether shoes can or cannot be worn in the house etc...)

Agreed on your point about empathy being tied to group loyalties, and so limited prescriptively.

Yeah, I think I know what you mean, though. I think Hume, for example, was sure that morality simply came down to "sympathy" (which is probably the same as what we call "empathy" today). From what I remember he was mostly descriptive about ethics, though there may have been some element of prescriptivism to his ethics as well. I think he has sometimes been referred to as a moral skeptic, though, suggesting he thought that as important as morality is considered to be in our daily lives there really was no such thing.

Hume was skeptical of a lot of things though (causation, the self, matter, etc...) and admitted that while rationally we can find no basis for many of these things we have little choice in our daily lives other than to assume the truth of them.

Sorry to harp in my linguist mode, but while speech is language, writing is a formal skill, just like with innate numeracy (see Dehaene) vs mathematics. Perhaps we need to make the same distinction here between descriptions of behavior and formal moral systems, the latter being social artifacts of broader derivation.

At the risk of derailing, is it true that "speech is language" given that some communities use sign language or that there is "innate numeracy" given that some languages do not have numbers (other than "one", sometimes "two" and then "many")?

 

[phiwum]

No, I don’t think so.

It is clear from this post and the following one that you have no idea where I’m coming from in this discussion, hence it’s likely that we will continue to talk pointlessly past each other. I’ll leave you with a paraphrase of Wittgenstein, with whom I’m in agreement, about the absurdly overblown, and ultimately impotent claims of traditional philosophy as presented by many in this thread:

“Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking”. My emphasis.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/?_r=0

I wonder who you have in mind? I don't think I've seen anyone making grand claims for the successes of philosophy. I certainly don't believe I've made any such claims.

I have never argued that philosophy is necessary to do practical reasoning, nor that philosophy provides the premises for a practical syllogism, nor that the average man in the street needs guidance from philosophy in order to make good choices.

As far as I'm concerned, the norms and arguments of practical reasoning are one of the things philosophers like to study. They are interested in distinguishing good practical reasoning from bad.

You seem to pretend that there's a minor holy war going on over practical reasoning, as if philosophers are on one side, claiming that science is bad and everyone should decide what to do with purely a priori arguments whose premises are grounded by pure and undisturbed reflection. It is a very odd image you conjure up.

But no matter. If you think the conversation has played out, then we'll move on. Enjoy your good fight in the battle of solid, rational science against the forces of ignorance.

 

[phiwum]

The only interesting part there is to analyze when the two conflict, such as when adherents of a given ideology choose what moral actions to undertake, one dictated by creed, the other by empathy.

Interesting article on this topic, titled "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn", by Jonathan Bennett.

 

[angrysoba]

I wonder who you have in mind? I don't think I've seen anyone making grand claims for the successes of philosophy. I certainly don't believe I've made any such claims.

I have never argued that philosophy is necessary to do practical reasoning, nor that philosophy provides the premises for a practical syllogism, nor that the average man in the street needs guidance from philosophy in order to make good choices.

As far as I'm concerned, the norms and arguments of practical reasoning are one of the things philosophers like to study. They are interested in distinguishing good practical reasoning from bad.

You seem to pretend that there's a minor holy war going on over practical reasoning, as if philosophers are on one side, claiming that science is bad and everyone should decide what to do with purely a priori arguments whose premises are grounded by pure and undisturbed reflection. It is a very odd image you conjure up.

But no matter. If you think the conversation has played out, then we'll move on. Enjoy your good fight in the battle of solid, rational science against the forces of ignorance.

Tassman seems to hold some strawman idea that philosophers believe science and philosophy compete to see who can describe reality the best and that philosophers think, perhaps, that they are better equipped at inventing rockets that can fly to the Moon, or something, which is probably why he is vague enough about "the absurdly overblown, and ultimately impotent claims of traditional philosophy as presented by many in this thread".

What claims are these, and who has made them? We can hope for specific answers but I very much doubt we will see any. Perhaps Tassman will bring up Aristotle again as though he were posting in the thread.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Maybe, but is this really something that comes down to science? I would imagine that there are many communities which moralize differently to other communities. Some cultures, for example, moralize things that we may simply consider to be amoral (dining etiquette, dress sense, handedness, whether shoes can or cannot be worn in the house etc...)

Certainly the part relating to theory of mind, and such conditions as mirror-touch synethesia, which if real (just saw it today) is/would be an astounding manifestation of what goes on with mirror neurons and so on.

But totally agreed, specific value statements are cultural. There do seem to be some small universals, but the examples I've seen don't dilute the general observation.

At the risk of derailing, is it true that "speech is language" given that some communities use sign language or that there is "innate numeracy" given that some languages do not have numbers (other than "one", sometimes "two" and then "many")?

Innate numeracy: Let's see, where was that. Ah, yes, see this Princeton Media series lecture, or just google Stanislaw Dehaene. Fascinating. (The vid has another speaker who, for this topic, is a bit out of his comfort zone, but otherwise a stout fellow in his field.)

Oops! Video seems to be down, so no link to stick into text above. Here is a reference to it, maybe with more work it can be found on YouTube.

Sign language is another fascinating topic. But yes, depends on the same innate grammar capabilities. Has separate languages (e.g., American Sign), dialects, as well as personal 'styles.' Wish I 'spoke' one.

 

[angrysoba]

Thanks for the links.

These are topics that I find interesting although I am not sure if they have an application in normative ethics.

One of the topics just mentioned about "mirror neurons" is one in which, again according to Pinker, there are some very bold claims made based on some rather slight evidence. I think he pointed out that we can know that certain parts of the brain are activated when watching someone perform an action which are also activated when we perform the action ourselves. Or at least it happens in monkeys, which may empathise with other monkeys. Or may not, and in fact tend to be quite aggressive.

Another theory (possibly related) is by Hauser who thinks that humans may have a moral faculty analogous to the Universal Grammar posited by Chomsky. On the other hand, some of his data appears to have been fairly dubiously collected, and Chomsky's UG may not be such a good model after all as there is a large body of evidence by linguists and developmental psychologists who now think Chomsky's UG and Pinker's language instinct are just flat-out wrong making it a bad model to base the theory on.

Certainly this is worth exploring though.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Thanks for the links.

These are topics that I find interesting although I am not sure if they have an application in normative ethics.

One of the topics just mentioned about "mirror neurons" is one in which, again according to Pinker, there are some very bold claims made based on some rather slight evidence. I think he pointed out that we can know that certain parts of the brain are activated when watching someone perform an action which are also activated when we perform the action ourselves. Or at least it happens in monkeys, which may empathise with other monkeys. Or may not, and in fact tend to be quite aggressive.

Another theory (possibly related) is by Hauser who thinks that humans may have a moral faculty analogous to the Universal Grammar posited by Chomsky. On the other hand, some of his data appears to have been fairly dubiously collected, and Chomsky's UG may not be such a good model after all as there is a large body of evidence by linguists and developmental psychologists who now think Chomsky's UG and Pinker's language instinct are just flat-out wrong making it a bad model to base the theory on.

Certainly this is worth exploring though.

Your concerns are in line with mine. I sincerely doubt there is a moral grammar engine. I think empathy and so on is composed more likely of a variety of subfunctions and is the result, not a direct motive.

As an aside: Just bought a huge text in neurosci 101, and am only returning to linguistics after a 40 year hiatus. Goal line is in a small Italian town, where if cash permits, I'll attend my first biolinguistics conference in those same years next year. Some of my claims require serious updating, but I think I'm square in general terms.

Anyway, if there is one thing one takes away from a proper neurosci text in the first chapter, it is that common knowledge lags as badly as it does in physics. Scratch that, worse. Humble pie, bigtime!

 

[phiwum]

Tassman seems to hold some strawman idea that philosophers believe science and philosophy compete to see who can describe reality the best and that philosophers think, perhaps, that they are better equipped at inventing rockets that can fly to the Moon, or something, which is probably why he is vague enough about "the absurdly overblown, and ultimately impotent claims of traditional philosophy as presented by many in this thread".

What claims are these, and who has made them? We can hope for specific answers but I very much doubt we will see any. Perhaps Tassman will bring up Aristotle again as though he were posting in the thread.

Yes, as far as I can see, it's all a big football match from Tassman's perspective. On one side is, of course, the noble spirits doing science and on the other side, we have philosophers who insist on ignoring any information which comes by way of observation and who would not sully themselves with any science. Be pure, dear philosophers, and just think hard and you will triumph!

Similarly, Tassman has this odd view that if his opponents are doubtful that a particular topic is properly part of science, then it must be that they think philosophers can do it.

It's really a pretty funny misconception of what philosophers do.

 

[Dani]

Here Sam Harris makes an argument that Chomsky is morally wrong for relying solely on bodycount to assess the relative merits of Western foreign policy. However, to me that seems at odds with his theory in the Moral Landscape.

"Intentions matter" sounds more deontological than consequentialist to me, though at the same time it can be argued that mere bodycount would be a very simplistic and short-sighted type of utilitarianism, and I think he succeeds with the WW2 counterexample. But then this brings about the following question: how complex can a utilitarian assessment be? Is there a limit? It looks like utilitarianism is useful as long as we arbitrarily reduce the variables to a workable degree. I think I'll have to look again at Dennett's Three Mile Island Effect, which you brought up earlier in this thread.

If you ask me, I have a mix of moral intuitions. Sometimes, they can be best explained through consequentialist theories, but other times they don't. "Intentions matter" could just be a bad choice of words by Harris, or maybe it's the consequence of having deontological intuitions masquerading as utilitarianism.

 

[Dani]

Yes, as far as I can see, it's all a big football match from Tassman's perspective. On one side is, of course, the noble spirits doing science and on the other side, we have philosophers who insist on ignoring any information which comes by way of observation and who would not sully themselves with any science. Be pure, dear philosophers, and just think hard and you will triumph!

"On the science side, with number 10: Induction! He gets better the more he plays!"

"On the philosophy side, with number 10: Deduction! He was born with the skills!"

 

[angrysoba]

"On the science side, with number 10: Induction! He gets better the more he plays!"

"On the philosophy side, with number 10: Deduction! He was born with the skills!"

And then we will have to decide whether Greek or German philosophy is better. If you remember the Greeks scored a goal against Germany which was disputed by the Germans:

Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside

 

[mijopaalmc]

"On the science side, with number 10: Induction! He gets better the more he plays!"

"On the philosophy side, with number 10: Deduction! He was born with the skills!"

Ignoring that the formalization of induction and deduction are both party of the completely useless branch of philosophy called "logic".

 

[epepke]

So could non-descriptive morality! "Conceivably"!!

Yep.

That is all irrelevant (and remarkably stubborn and antagonistic and irrational).

It's certainly antagonistic. It's not all that stubborn, as I only sporadically view or reply in this thread. I don't think it's irrational. It may not be particularly rational, either, but it isn't against reason.

"Cares" about what? Morality? Everyone in the thread I've seen cares about morality.

Something that I care about, and you seem not to, which is probably why you're making silly "guesses." I'll say once again what it is, and if you want to dismiss it, it will confirm what I said.

I am interested in studying morality, using science. That is, I want to know how morality functions in a human brain.

Here's an analogy. Let's say the subject is language. There are a lot of things you can do with language. You can speak it, read it, write it, listen to it, understand it, and so on. Nearly everybody does it. There's also a field called "linguistics," which is something else entirely. Actually, there are several fields called "linguistics." There's structural linguistics, historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics, and what is now called Cognitive Science.

But it should be ruled out of scientific consideration because science does not decide morality.

Right. Just like science does not decide what word you call a "cat." But science can shed some light into, for example, how the category of a cat is functionally structured in the brain, how the short words in languages refer to embodied qualities, the relationship between "cat" and "lion" and "tiger" and "Manx cat" and "tabby cat" as primary and secondary categories, how these short words correspond usually to the genus in the Linnaean classification system, which may not be as big a surprise as it seemed because Linnaeus may have used this to define a genus, and so on.

These things are interesting to me, and there's a lot of science involved in figuring them out. Similarly, I think it would be possible to do this about morality. There are cognitive processes involved in morality, and figuring them out is of interest to me.

I also maintain that this could be one of the things that the term "moral science" refers to. I even maintain that it could be one aspect of the future of moral science (which is the title of this thread). That is, in the future, using science, we might be able to understand more about how morality works. It might take some time before we get as good at is as Cognitive Science is with language, but that is what interests me.

Now, if, as you seem, you declare that this should be dismissed, then that's fine. However, you will have demonstrated my point. That is, the arrogant and offensive one. Earlier in this thread, I recall having been told that I was forcing what I was interested in on everybody and declaring that they shouldn't talk about other stuff. Now, it seems very different to me. It seems to me that people in this thread only want to have a micturation contest between people who don't understand Hume and people who do (or find it extremely obvious). It quite reminds me of Christians who say that they are oppressed by the fact that not everyone wants their kind of theocracy.

Nor am I going to ask you to stop. If it makes you happy to engage in the sort of exercise you like, then great. I am not trying to interfere with your bliss. Please feel free to ignore everything I say. But it is certainly not an irrational thing for me to be interested in it.

Welcome to anthropology and sociology! Doing good work in describing many cultures' subjective moralities and social status and influences for decades. (objectively)

Yes, I quite like anthropology and sociology, though I'd like to see it grow into something more, like Cognitive Science. You may note that that the word "future" is in the title. I'm not sure why you are so quick to dismiss it. Would it make everything all better for you if the thread title said, "Anthropology"?

You seem to be searching for something to validate your personal morality,

Now you are dismissing me to the point of getting what I am saying completely the opposite of what I am. Again, if it makes you happy to think this way, I'm not going to do any more than to declare that you would be much happier just pulling stuff out of your butt. You do not require my participation, which is one of the reasons I only sporadically come back to that thread.

However, if someone were to want to read what I write and were in possession of the ability to do so, I would simply say this:

I am not looking for validation of my personal morality. I am quite certain that science cannot do it. I am one of the people who find Hume's observation obvious to the point where it puzzles me that he got famous for it.

I don't even know if I have a personal morality. I sometimes feel good when I do things. Is that morality? It seems to me an internal experience of morality, but it doesn't tell me what morality is. It doesn't tell me how it works, how it can be re-programmed, etc. and so on and so forth. I'd like to understand that better. I think it's possible that science might be a good tool in doing this.

I can think of a lot of ways of trying. For example, we could find out how parts of the brain light up when people are 1) engaging in moral reasoning, versus 2) making decisions that we would consider moral. I suspect that the results would be interesting and perhaps even counterintuitive. Whenever I see someone claiming to do or be interested in moral science, I always hope that they are thinking along those lines. Inevitably I am disappointed, as with Sam Harris, who is as far as I can tell a complete idiot about such matters.

So far, however, you appear to have absolutely no idea what I am saying.

since you don't seem to think it's valid as is, and need some higher religious/scientific power to validate it. I can only imagine your desperation.

Imagine away! Enjoy yourself! Pat yourself on the back a lot! Hooray for you! You are right-thinking! You know all the questions that can be asked! Huzzah, hurray!

In the mean time, having found nobody with whom to discuss ideas about how science might inform our understanding of morality, I shall have to be content with seeking to understand the brain for the purpose of building an army of steampunk robots to take over the world. And then I'll go after Google. Then you'll be sorry.