The Future of Moral Science

[Tommy Jeppesen]

To Wowbagger

Moral ecology looks at morality from the opposite outside-in point of view. This perspective suggests that, despite what our moral language might imply, morality is
created rather than discovered.
page 239 http://www.ockhamsbeard.com.au/wp-c...volution-and-Moral-Ecology-Tim-Dean-Clean.pdf

More later

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

No, the point being avoided by you is that “cheating” is by definition a breaking of the accepted rules of the community and considered ‘wrong’, i.e. immoral, because, in the long run it is not in the communities best interests.

So let's recap a bit. There's this exercise I've been trying to get you to do, which you have been assiduously avoiding, where we try to drill down to that which you, Tassman think is morally good in and of itself. You tend to deny there is any such thing without realising that this makes your own theory incoherent.

So your first attempt at stating what was morally good was "whatever we evolved to do is morally good". There are all sorts of problems with that since we didn't evolve to be good at all, so you have abandoned that position.

Now you have changed to saying "we evolved to obey social rules, and obeying social rules is what is morally good". Now if that really was what you were saying then you were advocating cultural ethical relativism, the thesis that what is good in and of itself is following whatever moral rules your culture believes in.

However we know you aren't saying that, because to the extent that you've made any intelligible claims at all you appear to be positioning yourself as a Harris-style welfare utilitarian (although he avoids using that term since it would show his intellectual debts to moral philosophy). In that case your real "good in and of itself" is the welfare of all conscious beings, and you somehow have to build a bridge over the chasm between what it is we evolved to do, and what it is that maximises the welfare of all conscious beings.

Sound about right?

Now here's the problem: You still haven't solved the is/ought problem. The proposition that it is morally good to maximise the welfare of all conscious beings is not a scientific claim. No experiment can be conducted to prove that it is true. It's just what you have been calling an "assumed axiomatic premise". Yet you simultaneously deny you are using any "assumed axiomatic premise".

ALL your examples have in common the evolved urge to maintain community life within the community. The Taliban have reverted to tribalism (religion tends to have that effect), wherein a strict moral code is maintained within the group whereas outsiders are fair game for rape and pillaging. We were all tribal beings at one point in our history, but many communities have moved beyond that point – especially in the developed world.

So now your thesis has shrunk to saying that we have an evolved "urge to maintain community", but that this claims is so close to meaningless as to make no difference, because it sits equally well with the ethics of suicide bombers, Taliban, nuns and PETA.

This is the fundamental problem you keep bouncing off and circling around again, like a moth around a light bulb. When you weaken your thesis this much it becomes true but ceases to be interesting. When you try to build your thesis up into something actually interesting you inevitably fall over and end up with a thesis which is false, and so you go around again.

You continue to misunderstand Dawkins’ ‘Selfish Gene’. Genes are not the basis of anything other than their natural urge to replicate. It’s the human organism, comprised of those genes, that engages in the development of better and more aerodynamic spears ultimately resulting, millennia later, in the aircraft industry we have today.

You're just posting random sound bites again trying to sound authoritative. The above remarks are nonsensical if taken as a response to what I posted.

Not so. It is reasonable to draw ethical conclusions from the natural facts concerning who and what we are as a species. Yet again, your “rape” example fails to take into account that we are naturally predisposed and socially acculturated to obey the rules of the community. As John Donne puts it: “No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent…”

You still don't get it. The claim that "we are naturally predisposed... to obey the rules of the community" is simply false. Different people are naturally disposed to do all sorts of things including rule-following in some cases, and including breaking the rules whenever they can get away with it and following the rules only when it is advantageous to do so in some cases.

You are trying to act as if it is disastrous for my position that I "fail to take into account" something which we have already been at pains to explain to you is totally false. If that's the best defence you have then your position is in serious trouble.

And I’ve already explained to you that all this nonsense about human selfishness and exploitation are manifestations of tribalism in action – commonplace with regard to primitive man and universal among the other primates. Human tribes have over history expanded the concept of tribes to encompass chiefdoms, nation states, empires and so on. But “Religion and totalitarian ideologies can cause us to regress to more tribal modes, whereas it is our natural human characteristics that tend bind us to each other”. Hermann Bondi (paraphrased)

Once again your ideas about how evolution and society work are terribly simplistic.

Even in tribal situations some tribe-members will try to get away with rape, murder, theft or hogging resources. They are not some happy-clappy Garden of Eden where crime does not exist.

No, “anything at all” could NOT be deemed "right". As social animals we do not exist independent from our community. And once again your language implies that the notions of “good” and “bad” are qualities in and of themselves independent of our evolved instincts towards social cohesion. It is the latter that determines what we regard to be right or wrong.

Fair enough, "anything at all" is maybe just a touch too strong. I'll weaken that claim to just cover, oh, rape, mass murder, genocide, slavery, terrorism, and Fox News. Things which very clearly have been deemed right by some people at some times. I think the point stands that just because something is "deemed" morally okay by someone that is in no way proof it really is morally okay.

 

[Tassman]

So let's recap a bit. There's this exercise I've been trying to get you to do, which you have been assiduously avoiding, where we try to drill down to that which you, Tassman think is morally good in and of itself. You tend to deny there is any such thing without realising that this makes your own theory incoherent.

So your first attempt at stating what was morally good was "whatever we evolved to do is morally good". There are all sorts of problems with that since we didn't evolve to be good at all, so you have abandoned that position.

Now you have changed to saying "we evolved to obey social rules, and obeying social rules is what is morally good". Now if that really was what you were saying then you were advocating cultural ethical relativism, the thesis that what is good in and of itself is following whatever moral rules your culture believes in.

However we know you aren't saying that, because to the extent that you've made any intelligible claims at all you appear to be positioning yourself as a Harris-style welfare utilitarian (although he avoids using that term since it would show his intellectual debts to moral philosophy). In that case your real "good in and of itself" is the welfare of all conscious beings, and you somehow have to build a bridge over the chasm between what it is we evolved to do, and what it is that maximises the welfare of all conscious beings.

Sound about right?

Now here's the problem: You still haven't solved the is/ought problem. The proposition that it is morally good to maximise the welfare of all conscious beings is not a scientific claim. No experiment can be conducted to prove that it is true. It's just what you have been calling an "assumed axiomatic premise". Yet you simultaneously deny you are using any "assumed axiomatic premise".



So now your thesis has shrunk to saying that we have an evolved "urge to maintain community", but that this claims is so close to meaningless as to make no difference, because it sits equally well with the ethics of suicide bombers, Taliban, nuns and PETA.

This is the fundamental problem you keep bouncing off and circling around again, like a moth around a light bulb. When you weaken your thesis this much it becomes true but ceases to be interesting. When you try to build your thesis up into something actually interesting you inevitably fall over and end up with a thesis which is false, and so you go around again.



You're just posting random sound bites again trying to sound authoritative. The above remarks are nonsensical if taken as a response to what I posted.



You still don't get it. The claim that "we are naturally predisposed... to obey the rules of the community" is simply false. Different people are naturally disposed to do all sorts of things including rule-following in some cases, and including breaking the rules whenever they can get away with it and following the rules only when it is advantageous to do so in some cases.

You are trying to act as if it is disastrous for my position that I "fail to take into account" something which we have already been at pains to explain to you is totally false. If that's the best defence you have then your position is in serious trouble.



Once again your ideas about how evolution and society work are terribly simplistic.

Even in tribal situations some tribe-members will try to get away with rape, murder, theft or hogging resources. They are not some happy-clappy Garden of Eden where crime does not exist.



Fair enough, "anything at all" is maybe just a touch too strong. I'll weaken that claim to just cover, oh, rape, mass murder, genocide, slavery, terrorism, and Fox News. Things which very clearly have been deemed right by some people at some times. I think the point stands that just because something is "deemed" morally okay by someone that is in no way proof it really is morally okay.

You are going around in circles regurgitating, with your usual superciliousness, the same old arguments and objections. All the above has been covered several times. What you haven’t addressed, apart from a dismissive hand-wave, is the undeniable fact that Homo sapiens have instinctively devised rules of behaviour concerning ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (i.e. morality) going back to our very earliest days over 200,000 years ago. So where did this morality come from in your view? Divine revelation??

Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists argue that morals are derivatives of self-preservation and procreation in every case and are a consequence of natural selection. They are naturally built into us, because those morals were beneficial to the breeding and survival of our species as social animals. In short, they are instinctive.

Thus communal rules of behaviour form the basis of our ethical practices and they have been developed over tens of thousands of years, as members of our species work out how to best live together in community – some more successfully than others. The UN Human Development Index is as good an indicator as any in determining which societies have been the most successful at communal living in modern times.

And yes there are anti-social misfits or selfish opportunists in all communities but this isn't sufficient to torpedo the obvious fact that complex societies based upon cooperation and social order have always existed wherever our species exists.

Oh, you have failed to respond to the discussion point in the previous post, namely:

Kevin Lowe:

Well there's your problem. Without assumed axiomatic premises you'll never get off the ground, you'll just be flapping in circles forever as you are currently doing.

Tassman: On the contrary, with “assumed axiomatic premises” you can never show something to be true. All you have are logically consistent deductive exercises – as seen for example with Aristotle, whereby nearly every philosophical conclusion he arrived at regarding the physical sciences has been shown to be wrong.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...
And yes there are anti-social misfits or selfish opportunists in all communities but this isn't sufficient to torpedo the obvious fact that complex societies based upon cooperation and social order have always existed wherever our species exists.
...

Are those not natural and a part of evolution?
I would like evidence for how you justify with knowledge your use of those words, which have negative cognations and request that you try to explain these processes in objective and neutral words.

And yes, I know that you can't do that, because you don't understand that those are not scientific, but rather subjective emotional judgments. I.e. you take your own values for granted and declare them universal; and you don't understand that this is the ought. You can't see your own ought, because to you it is obvious as how it is, but it is not a fact of how it is. "Anti-social misfits or selfish opportunists" are not facts, they are your subjective value judgments.

 

[Pup]

Are those not natural and a part of evolution? ["anti-social misfits or selfish opportunists"]

If I may jump in here...

If one speaks from the dominant point of view of society, that's what they'd be, but I think any society can support a certain level of such people. The problem (from a society's point of view) is when they get to be too great. For example, if a few people pick the flowers in the park and take them home for their own enjoyment, no one will notice, but if half the people do it, there won't by flowers left for the other half to enjoy.

Societies are set up to function with a low level of shoplifters, tax evaders, murderers, rapists, etc. When the level gets to be "too high"--whatever too high is for that society--and they can't be kept down by social pressure and law enforcement, the society will fundamentally change, maybe to be better adapted, maybe to be worse. But in general, if the society continues to thrive, that's a sign the change made it better adapted for survival.

So I don't see that one can speak from an omniscient viewpoint and declare certain behaviors by definition always a mark of anti-social misfits or selfish opportunists. At most, one could say that an "anti-social misfit" is one who doesn't follow the norms of the society that he/she lives in. But the person's actual behavior might be central to the smooth functioning of a different society.

An example: the selfish opportunism of a slave who "steals himself" and runs away, and the anti-social misfits who preach against slavery on principle, when society considers slavery a positive good. A slave-based labor system can handle a certain low level of runaways and abolitionists, but if it becomes such a problem that owners are spending most of their resources trying to stop runaways and shut up abolitionists, the society will either collapse from inefficiency or adapt and change to a free labor system.

 

[epepke]

You are going around in circles regurgitating, with your usual superciliousness, the same old arguments and objections. All the above has been covered several times. What you haven’t addressed, apart from a dismissive hand-wave, is the undeniable fact that Homo sapiens have instinctively devised rules of behaviour concerning ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (i.e. morality) going back to our very earliest days over 200,000 years ago. So where did this morality come from in your view? Divine revelation??

Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists argue that morals are derivatives of self-preservation and procreation in every case and are a consequence of natural selection. They are naturally built into us, because those morals were beneficial to the breeding and survival of our species as social animals. In short, they are instinctive.

I'm going to be vague and philosophical a bit, not because I like it all that much, but because there isn't a lot better. Still, I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

There is some precision lacking in this discussion, and I think it would be better to have some precision and less hand-waving. As a very rough approximation, I'm breaking it up into three subtopics, which I'll further break down. This may not be optimal, but it's better, I think, than conflating.

1) That there is a moral/ethical sense at all.
2) How this moral sense works.
3) What the details of morality are.

I'm breaking it out this way because it seems to me that philosophical, anthropological, and even "scientific" (scare quotes because it might be pseudoscience), in practice, only starts at number 3. This seems to me to be a bad idea, because numbers 1 and 2 need to be worked out, probably first, or at least as well. Ironically, the fact that this happens might mean something with respect to 1 and 2.

For Number 1, it seems to me that there is a lot of evidence that some kind of moral sense is universal or nearly so amongst humans. There are, of course, a lot of sociopaths. I don't think that compels the conclusion that they have no moral sense; it could simply be that their moral sense is "implemented" differently from other people's, which would put it under Number 2. It may not be, but I think it would be better to exclude possibilities under Number 2 first, and I don't think that has been done.

So I think it's reasonable to conclude that Number 1 evolved. Less safe but still pretty safe is the assumption that it evolved under pressure from being social animals. Some evidence suggests its presence in non-human animals, though of course it's weaker than amongst human animals, because it's kind of difficult to ask them questions.

It also seems to be extremely strong, and that's where the meta-evidence comes in. It is extremely rare to see a discussion of morality that isn't, to a huge degree, fairly obviously driven by the moral sense of the people doing the discussing. People who can, fairly easily, discuss even extremely controversial ideas in mathematics and physics dispassionately, don't seem to be able to manage it for the most part in discussions about morality. I suggest that this is because thinking about morality activates morality by well understood neurological mechanisms, and that the morality mechanism is strong enough to drive behavior to the exclusion of thought.

As evidence for this, I once again bring up Sam Harris. He's very bright and can obviously be quite a good scientist. However, when he gives talks about his "scientific" examination of morality, he enjoys showing pictures of women who have been disfigured by having strong acids poured on their faces (though I suspect that strong alkali would do the same thing). This I find extremely stupid in two ways and one meta-way. One of the ways is that you obviously don't need an MRI machine or a deep understanding of neurophysiology to figure out that burning someone's face off is harmful to them. The meta-way is that Harris almost certainly knows this and shows the pictures precisely for this reason, which supports the idea that morality (in this case, Harris' own morality, which he reasonably expects his audience to share) is powerful enough to make smart people do stupid things. I'll get into the third way in a bit.

One thing about this that I think is not sufficiently appreciated is that there are definitely moral and non-moral realms of thought, rhetoric, and argumentation. Still, I observe that this is constantly, and I think dishonestly conflated. You can do experiments on this yourself, though you will have to find an audience of a certain age. Simply ask them what moral transgression Bill Clinton did while in office. I absolutely guarantee you that if they are old enough to remember anything about Bill Clinton at all, en masse they will respond with something having to do with Monica Lewinsky. It will not be about any of the other things that Bill Clinton did which cost lives or money or whatever, even though these are the kinds of things that philosophers like to bring up when they are trying to describe morality in books and stuff. Even those who hate Bill Clinton and could go on and on about all the bad things they thought Clinton did, when you specifically mention moral, it won't be about any of them.

People have an extremely clear sense of what is in the moral realm and what is not, and they will tell you what that is, if you'll listen.

As for Number 2 I really don't know, but I have some ideas. This is where I think some good science could be done.

I suspect that the moral sense is strong, but that it can be, for want of a better word, "programmed." Maybe this happens through culture, or by individual experiences, or whatever, but it can be programmed in lots of different ways. It seems to be more easily programmable than lots of other things in a brain.

One of the things that the moral sense can be programmed to do is harmful actions. This is the third way in which Sam Harris is being stupid.

A while back, there was a thing in Australia called the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House (which, frankly, I'm getting tired of seeing, as it gives the impression that it's the only large building in Australia). A guy was scheduled to give a talk entitled "Honour Killings are Morally Justified." There was public outrage, and the talk was canceled. You can read about the gory details here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-...val-cans-honour-killings-speech-badar/5548006

I would have liked to have heard what he had to say, but I didn't, so I can't speak for him. I, however, could have given a talk with the same title. I would argue that not only are honor killings morally justified, but there is no other way to justify them. What else other than morality is strong enough to make a human being kill their own offspring? If there is anything to be learned from evolution, it is that if you have a brain that is big enough and isn't seriously malfunctioning, you don't kill your offspring.

Now, when I mention this on this forum, people tell me that I'm equivocating and that "most people" don't think that morality is about doing horrible things. At this point, my moral sense makes me really wish there were a "bitch slap" button on my keyboard. Because first of all, this is very clearly within the realm of moral discourse in a way that, for example, saying "Good morning" to someone on the street isn't. Second of all, though of course such behaviors as honor-killing and acid-pouring aren't a result of my morality, they are clearly a result of somebody's morality, which is different from mine. Like the Bill Clinton thing, they'll tell you that they acted morally because of their morality, if only people would listen. And third, well, this just goes back to what I said earlier about the moral sense being so strong that people have a hard time disengaging from their own morality when talking about that of others.

Anyway, when Sam Harris does this, he is presenting evidence that morality is not about promoting well-being, which he tries to tell us it is. That's the third stupid.

Now for Number 3. Because the moral sense can be programmed so wildly, the idea that a particular morality evolved to satisfy and improve social functioning is on extremely shaky ground. Surprisingly, there is some evidence for it, but only twice in history. There are several lines of evidence pointing to the idea that somewhere around 50,000 years ago, give or take a couple of score thousand, a single mutation in one male human (though not on the Y chromosome) made people, for want of a better term, much more cooperative with each other. And then there's another gene, this time on the Y chromosome, that didn't spread as rapidly but makes males less cooperative. (I think the estimates are currently that about 1/3 of the male population has it, but I could be wrong.)

So it's quite ambiguous, and one could make arguments that both convergence and divergence of morality have been selected for.

This has not escaped attention (and this is where some of the philosophical hand-waving comes in). Nietzsche described two competing bases of moral systems. So did George Lakoff. I haven't yet decided whether this means that there are two moral systems, and they are slicing them in a slightly different way (or a really different way), but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that it's pretty easy to come up with plausible and even compelling arguments for multiple, competing moral systems.

You can see Lakoff talk about them here:



I don't know for sure if he's right, or if he's defined something at only a particular level of abstraction, but it's food for thought and I think a lot better than that Jonathan Haidt guy (http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en) whom I am pretty sure got the level of abstraction wrong.

I also want to reiterate the Bill Clinton lesson. Though philosophers like to say that morality is about well being and fairness and justice and not killing or stealing and all that nice-sounding crap, even a casual observation reveals that it's usually about sex. Specifically, it's about keeping people from getting laid if they don't follow your rules and hurting them in some way if they try. This could be used to support an evolutionary hypothesis; it just wouldn't be a very nice one, certainly not as pleasant and comfortable as saying that it's needed for social functioning.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

...

Thanks, you put the E in ISF

 

[Dani]

A bit late for a discussion that was tangential, but anyway. This type of delay won't happen again within the next hour. I promise.

Sure. Sam Harris.

The whole basis of his argument for science to support normative morality would go to hell in a hat under scientific investigation, in a descriptive way, against his morality.

I don't think we need any scientific investigation for that matter. He is wrong. His surreptitious redefinition of morality makes him discard the differing approaches in a similar way I can redefine "car" and from that conclude that only my favorite car is really a car. You know, welcome to No True Scotland. I think it's got more to do with carts before horses and silly word games. We don't need empirical input at this stage to know that he's spouting nonsense. By the way, he also tried to broaden the definition of science. He seems to try anything that suits his conclusion.

Now, I do not know if he is intelligent enough to figure it out. So it might not be completely accurate to say that he is against descriptive morality in a de facto sense. I did try to address this in my previous post.

I also tried to say how, but some things need repetition. I'll do that now.

Scientific investigation into descriptive morality would challenge the assumption that morality is about well-being.

Again, we already know that this would challenge his assumption because we happen to know that there are differing opinions on what is good, even at a meta-ethical level. Since it's so bloody obvious that we don't even need the input from science, I'll go with "utter confusion" as a better explanation for what's going on here.

In any event, Harris' statements about science and normative morality all requires the assumption that it's about well-being. Furthermore, they require the assumption that it's about actual well-being, not simply supposed well-being. Study of descriptive morality is a threat to that, and so de facto his ideas of normative morality are against doing it. (That I go further and say it's a slam-dunk is true, but it is not needed for this argument.)

But at this stage, if we want to counter Harris' claims, study of descriptive morality is of course welcome but not needed at all. He doesn't have any more reason to fear a scientific study of descriptive morality than the mundane fact that people's opinions on what's ultimately good differ. It's like making a study on Scottish people to determine whether a Scotsman who puts sugar on his porridge is Scottish. His argument is wrong, even in principle.

As I've said, he may not be bright enough, and your being impressed with him doesn't really sway me. However, he did put out that rather bogus challenge to his ideas. He carefully stated them, and I find it mind-bogglingly obvious. Yes, his assertions about science helping with well-being are true, but no, it has nothing to do with morality, because morality isn't about well-being.

He might not be a sophisticated enough thinker to address this, as all I have seen is hand-waving. The fact that he hasn't already addressed (to my knowledge) what I see is a blindingly obvious objection to his central idea indicates something to me.

It may be like creationists who make bogus arguments against evolution on the grounds of thermodynamics. I am not aware of any who actually said, "I'm too stupid to understand thermodynamics," so I cannot show you where they claimed it.

Now I'm pretty confident that you have been mistaking Dennett for Sam Harris. Yeah, him again. Harris is a terrible intellectual, I have no doubts about it.

 

[Dani]

I think I have posted this before, but it is worth watching for those who seem to get confused on the difference between descriptive morality (i.e. what science tells us about human nature, the human condition, and also how science can provide us with data which informs our ethical choices) and normative morality (i.e. the values we decide are important when making choices).



Shermer is completely lost at sea in this debate and doesn't even understand the problem with his arguments. He seems to genuinely believe he is arguing something new and interesting whereas Pigliucci continually has to point out that Shermer is trying to smuggle in value judgments and often they are value judgements that are quite specific to his particular political philosophy which is a kind of libertarianism it seems.

I remember this debate. The coup the grace for Shermer begins at 27:20 with Julia's question. Shermer tries to explain the existing political differences, arguing that politics is an ongoing experiment that is carried out through elections and ends up saying "that's science". I remember being so perplexed the first time I saw the debate that I paused the video to listen carefully to that part again. In that second view, I noticed Pigliucci's reaction from his body language, at about 29:55 to Shermer's "that's science". Very funny.

 

[angrysoba]

I remember this debate. The coup the grace for Shermer begins at 27:20 with Julia's question. Shermer tries to explain the existing political differences, arguing that politics is an ongoing experiment that is carried out through elections and ends up saying "that's science". I remember being so perplexed the first time I saw the debate that I paused the video to listen carefully to that part again. In that second view, I noticed Pigliucci's reaction from his body language, at about 29:55 to Shermer's "that's science". Very funny.

Yeah, Shermer's whole approach to this seems to be to engage in world salad by plucking various things we know about evolution or psychology or about "political science" and throwing them in a big bag he calls "Moral Science". There's no real attempt to actually form a logical or coherent argument anywhere and even when he is asked about how these things are supposed to cohere, as Julia Galef does earlier in the debate by asking where the argument from naturalism has any advantage over arguments from preferences or arguments from harm, Shermer cops out by making a joke, "Can I use a lifeline?"

Julia, being a good sport, laughs at the lame joke and then suddenly looks astonished as she realizes that he really wants to duck the question like that. (She does a double take and offers to change the question) Finally he says, "well I'm not a moral philosopher blah blah blah..." and babbles on a lot to change the subject to who the real enemy is (religion) and never gets round to arguing the philosophical point.

His arguments after that are the same kind of confused mess of non-sequiturs and failure to distinguish between what science can and cannot do that is now very familiar to anyone who has seen Sam Harris's work, or participated in a thread like this on JREF/ISF.

Speaking of which...

 

[angrysoba]

That’s as maybe but, as I’ve said before, your oft-times sneering approach towards those you disagree with is reminiscent of many Evangelical apologists I’ve encountered. The same applies to your fellow-traveller in this discussion.

You cannot blame me for your own prejudices in these discussions. If somebody's "sneering approach" makes you think of "Evangelical apologists" then that is a mental phenomenon of yours to sort out. It is not my problem.

There is good reason to think that our morality (i.e. our sense of right and wrong) is innate.

And there's good reason to think that different people have very different ideas of what morality is, as I am sure that you and I have very different ideas about morality compared to a "sneering Evangelical apologist" or a member of the Taliban, or a neo-Nazi. But either way what does this fact, if it be a fact, tell us anyway? Does it tell us, in your opinion, that there is some objective right and wrong accessible to science? Does science tell us The One True Way?

And given the rapidly emerging areas in the cognitive sciences, such as neurobiology and sociobiology, science is, or will be, the best discipline to inform us of the optimum behaviors required to maintain the social cohesion we require to survive as a species.

And are you equating "social cohesion we require to survive as a species" with what is moral? If so, then are you not saying it is "moral in and of itself"? If not, then what's the relevance?

Hence, I repeat "J. J. C. Smart's injunction that we take science as our best guide to metaphysical truth (Smart 1996, 6) doesn't require us to treat our current scientific understandings as infallible. It merely invites us to do what good scientific practice itself does in deferring to our present background state of general scientific understanding as the best story we now have about the universe and its furnishings. It is no doubt a flawed, imperfect story still very much in progress, but far more to be trusted than the rival guidance we might seek from theology, say, or the wilder reaches of a more speculative metaphysics as we persist with a philosophical enterprise itself no less fallible and incomplete."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/

Random quote is random.

Furthermore this seems to be the position of increasing number of scientists and philosophers including the likes of Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Patricia Churchland, Simon Blackburn, Richard Carrier and others who are representative of those exploring the nexus between science and morality.

Your mistake is to demand definitive conclusions from what continue to be emerging areas of science. Nor have you offered an alternative approach.

There's a whole stack of fallacies here:

1. The Argument from authority "Look some scientists and philosophers think X; therefore X must be true!"
2. The Argument of appealing to popularity "Lots of people think X; Lots of people can't be wrong; therefore X must be true!"
3. The Argument from Novelty "Old ideas were good, but X is new; New is better; therefore X must be true!"

But on top of that, we have already seen some of these names pop up and a little examination destroys this supposed consensus you believe exists:

Sam Harris - you already know what I think of his work; the only thing that he has to say that would be profound if true, is actually false.

Peter Singer - rejects Sam Harris's thesis and did so when he discussed these ideas at a group discussion of Harris's ideas. Harris tried to smuggle in the idea that when he is talking about science he is also including moral philosophy, which is such a cop-out that completely waters his thesis down to nothing.

Simon Blackburn - how you can think Simon Blackburn agrees with Sam Harris I do not know. He explicitly rejected the thesis.

Stephen Pinker - Actually I think that Pinker is way too cosy with a certain group of thinkers to the point where he has to couch his disagreements in such diplomatic language that it doesn't look like he's disagreeing very much. But he also says when it comes to whether or not science can answer moral questions, "Yes and no". By "Yes" he means it can tell us a good way to achieve certain aims once we already have those aims, and no, science cannot tell us those aims. This is actually a very conventional viewpoint that essentially no moral philosopher disagrees with.

Patricia Churchland - well, you have not actually read her, so it is probably best that you reserve judgment on what she has to say until you have.

Richard Carrier - this seems like another desperate attempt to pad your thesis with names. I saw no evidence from what you have written that you are familiar with his work let alone provided a convincing exposition of what he says, and let alone demonstrated that he has a convincing argument for your thesis.

In fact, despite us asking you to show us where Carrier "demolished" Pigliucci all you managed to show was that he demolished Shermer who is on your side!

So I remain unconvinced that you have demonstrated anything but an inability to concede when you have lost the argument.

 

[epepke]

I don't think we need any scientific investigation for that matter. He is wrong.

Well, of course I agree.

What I am trying to do is to figure out what it is that is going on inside not only his but so many people's brains that results in this absurd behaviors.

Now I'm pretty confident that you have been mistaking Dennett for Sam Harris. Yeah, him again. Harris is a terrible intellectual, I have no doubts about it.

No. Generally I like Dennett, but I did see a video where he was spouting the same facile "morality==well-being" stuff that I think is a serious symptom of the disease. Now, Dennett, of course, being old enough to know which end to use, eventually usually punches through to something sensible. But he's still vulnerable to the homo fecit, and I'm interested in finding out what it is that makes people do this.

My hand-waving idea, which isn't strong enough even to be called a hypothesis, is that it's a meta-problem. Because morality is such a strong force, the effect of which is to make people feel that they are doing good, it causes people to say nonsense because the nonsense they say goes through the same moral mechanisms and, by the feeling of goodness, contaminates their thinking.

I also suspect that this has something to do with the predominance of Hebbian learning and simply reciprocal activation of different parts of the brain. That is, when people think about morality, it activates the groups of neurons that do or implement morality, and that controls their thinking.

Dennett is, of course, a much better thinker, and so he can ameliorate the extent to which this affects his thinking, but to me that's a side issue, especially as it generally only results in more thinking in the good/bad realm (e.g. that Harris is a terrible intellectual.) But once you've gotten to the "Harris is worse than Dennett" level, which is essentially a value judgment and therefore also within a moral framework, I get bored very quickly. I want to know how the little gears work in people's heads.

It's like the difference between doing effective writing and doing effective linguistics. They aren't really the same thing in the way most people think, and that fact has held linguistics way back. People do language pretty much automatically, and they keep getting better, but they have no idea how they do it. Then when they try to explain it, they come up with something that sounds good to them but is just plain nonsense. Building on a concept that Lakoff called the folk etymology, I think there's a folk model of the brain that the brain constructs of itself, and it's wrong. (And isn't it interesting that "wrong" has a moral meaning as well as a factual one?)

I'm much more interested in the Cognitive Science aspect, to figure out how this works. I want to know the mechanisms that make this stuff happen. OK, so Harris is wrong, but why is he wrong? I don't mean what arguments you can come up with to show that he's wrong; that's easy stuff and fairly obvious. I want to know what goes on inside his head that makes him be wrong or stupid so consistently. It's not a lack of raw intelligence. I also don't think that it's a lack of understanding of the conventions of philosophical thought, because I see more wrongness of this self-confusing and self-conflating type (or at least it seems to me so) than I do anywhere else.

Certainly more than I see in science, although of course it happens plenty in science too, just not as much, and good work is more likely and frequent. Given this, I want to see science applied more to this. So, OK, maybe you can hook up an MRI to someone and see about their well-being, but it doesn't seem to be a quantum leap to just seeing how loud they scream. Hooking up an MRI to a philosopher thinking about morality, on the other hand, and doing experiments to try to isolate moral functioning from what I might as well call meta-functioning, for want of a better term, might be very interesting and surprising.

This is what I hope that people who talk about investigating morality scientifically mean, but they don't. (And isn't that interesting, and might it not be closely related to how moral functioning works?)

And it's because I can't state these ideas in more than vague terms (on the extremely rare occasions when I can communicate anything at all), that I wants me some more science about this.

ETA: I just re-read your post, and I thank you for it, because I so rarely get a thoughtful response. So even if you think of something a year from now, go ahead.

I also have to say, though, that I really don't want to counter Harris claims. It's a bit like a very old cartoon I once saw in the New Yorker, where a congressman says, "I rise to refute the Smothers Brothers." I bet there are doctoral theses with critical analysis of Larry, Moe, and Curly, but it's not the kind of thing that fascinates me. It's too easy, like fishing with dynamite. It's not really sporting, if you know what I mean.

 

[angrysoba]

Generally I like Dennett, but I did see a video where he was spouting the same facile "morality==well-being" stuff that I think is a serious symptom of the disease.

Do you think you could give us a little more to go on? Was this video available on You Tube? Do you have a link?

 

[epepke]

There's a whole stack of fallacies here:

Well, Stephen Pinker and to a lesser degree Richard Carrier (and I don't think Pete Seeger even deserves mention) are dopey. But that's as far as I'll go in the moral/value judgment realm, because it's easy to see that they are dopey. Pointing out fallacies is only slightly more interesting.

The interesting thing (to me, at least) is that Cognitive Science has, amazingly, given its short tenure in history so far, gotten good enough to show definitively that they are dopey. I mean, you can do real experiments that show convincingly that the things they say are just plain inaccurate, no matter how good they sound.

Unfortunately, in science you pretty much have to think up every wrong thing to test it and show that it's wrong, and then you provisionally accept what's left. If one model is obviously better than any other extant model, that's happy time. But we aren't there yet, which makes the idea both exciting and infuriating.

So thanks to Pinker, Carrier, et al. for thinking up and exploring a bunch of stuff that we can now show is wrong. That's an important part of the process, which is why I don't really mind the mostly electrical engineers who try to debunk relativity or even woos that talk nonsense about quantum mechanics. They are performing a valuable service, and it's worth it not only to figure out why they are wrong but possibly to learn something about the brains of electrical engineers.

Still, it's just a beginning.

 

[angrysoba]

Well, Stephen Pinker and to a lesser degree Richard Carrier (and I don't think Pete Seeger even deserves mention) are dopey.

Peter Singer, not Pete Seeger.

But that's as far as I'll go in the moral/value judgment realm, because it's easy to see that they are dopey. Pointing out fallacies is only slightly more interesting.

Well, what is interesting is itself a value judgement and what is not interesting to you may be interesting, or even - dare I say it - instructive to others.

The interesting thing is that Cognitive Science has, amazingly, given its short tenure in history so far, gotten good enough to show definitively that they are dopey. I mean, you can do real experiments that show convincingly that the things they say are just plain inaccurate, no matter how good they sound.

I am not even sure what you are talking about at this point. It's vague to the point of useless.

 

[Tassman]

And there's good reason to think that different people have very different ideas of what morality is, as I am sure that you and I have very different ideas about morality compared to a "sneering Evangelical apologist" or a member of the Taliban, or a neo-Nazi.

Well we have yet to hear about YOUR different ideas about morality. Why so shy?

But either way what does this fact, if it be a fact, tell us anyway? Does it tell us, in your opinion, that there is some objective right and wrong accessible to science? Does science tell us The One True Way?

Do you actually read what you are responding to?

Once again: “given the rapidly emerging areas in the cognitive sciences, such as neurobiology and sociobiology, science is, or will be in my view, the best discipline to inform us of the optimum behaviours required to maintain the social cohesion we require to survive as a species”. But we are not there yet and at this stage there is considerable divergence of opinion among the experts in the field. Science is, as always, a work in progress.

And are you equating "social cohesion we require to survive as a species" with what is moral? If so, then are you not saying it is "moral in and of itself"? If not, then what's the relevance?

I would have thought it obvious that I’m equating “social cohesion” with the survival of social species’. It is not "moral in and of itself" as I’ve said many, many, many times.

Random quote is random.

There's a whole stack of fallacies here:

1. The Argument from authority "Look some scientists and philosophers think X; therefore X must be true!"
2. The Argument of appealing to popularity "Lots of people think X; Lots of people can't be wrong; therefore X must be true!"
3. The Argument from Novelty "Old ideas were good, but X is new; New is better; therefore X must be true!"

But on top of that, we have already seen some of these names pop up and a little examination destroys this supposed consensus you believe exists:

I didn’t say or imply that a consensus exists; yet again you misrepresent the argument – did you actually read the argument? In my view a trend is developing. And I named some appropriately credentialed people by way of illustrating J. C. Smart's injunction, which I agree with, as quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“…that we take science as our best guide to metaphysical truth doesn't require us to treat our current scientific understandings as infallible… It is no doubt a flawed, imperfect story still very much in progress, but far more to be trusted than the rival guidance we might seek from theology, say, or the wilder reaches of a more speculative metaphysics as we persist with a philosophical enterprise itself no less fallible and incomplete."

The remainder of your toxic nonsense has been snipped; it’s irrelevant.

 

[angrysoba]

Well we have yet to hear about YOUR different ideas about morality. Why so shy?

Because it is irrelevant.

Do you actually read what you are responding to?

Yes, I don't give it high marks though.

Once again: “given the rapidly emerging areas in the cognitive sciences, such as neurobiology and sociobiology, science is, or will be in my view, the best discipline to inform us of the optimum behaviours required to maintain the social cohesion we require to survive as a species”. But we are not there yet and at this stage there is considerable divergence of opinion among the experts in the field. Science is, as always, a work in progress.

So? Now you have snipped the bit that introduced it which suggested it had something to do with morality. Does it? Because in your "once again" requote, you simply say that science can tell us about social cohesion and survival. What's contentious about that? The question is, what does that have to do with morality?

I would have thought it obvious that I’m equating “social cohesion” with the survival of social species’. It is not "moral in and of itself" as I’ve said many, many, many times.

Then what relevance does it have to morality?

See, this is what you have been told many, many times. You tell us a bunch of platitudes that nobody disagrees with, then you do some sleight of hand where you try to equate it with the scientific discovery of normative morality, then you uncouple them again when challenged and plead that you were only making very uncontroversial views.

So which is it? Your idea is trite and uncontentious?

Or your idea is profound and false?

I didn’t say or imply that a consensus exists; yet again you misrepresent the argument – did you actually read the argument? In my view a trend is developing. And I named some appropriately credentialed people by way of illustrating J. C. Smart's injunction, which I agree with, as quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“…that we take science as our best guide to metaphysical truth doesn't require us to treat our current scientific understandings as infallible… It is no doubt a flawed, imperfect story still very much in progress, but far more to be trusted than the rival guidance we might seek from theology, say, or the wilder reaches of a more speculative metaphysics as we persist with a philosophical enterprise itself no less fallible and incomplete."

The remainder of your toxic nonsense has been snipped; it’s irrelevant.

No you didn't! Just because you quote someone called Smart over and over again does not mean that your posts become smart.

And then you just lob around a number of names of people whose work you appear to be unfamiliar with.

It seems to be you who is struggling to say anything relevant, here.

 

[Tassman]

Because it is irrelevant.

So, you consider your views on morality and how one arrives at a moral position, to be irrelevant in a discussion on morality? Seriously!

 

[angrysoba]

So, you consider your views on morality and how one arrives at a moral position, to be irrelevant in a discussion on morality? Seriously!

Yes, my personal views about what is morally right and wrong are irrelevant to the question of whether or not science can tell me what is right and wrong.

The stuff in italics is the subject of the thread. My own personal views about what is morally right or wrong are off-topic. So, please try not to derail the thread by changing the subject.

 

[Tassman]

So? Now you have snipped the bit that introduced it which suggested it had something to do with morality. Does it? Because in your "once again" requote, you simply say that science can tell us about social cohesion and survival. What's contentious about that? The question is, what does that have to do with morality?

You've snipped the post. I say more: “the rapidly emerging areas in the cognitive sciences, such as neurobiology and sociobiology, science is, or will be in my view, the best discipline to inform us of the optimum behaviours required to maintain the social cohesion we require to survive as a species”. Morality is defined as the “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour”. That’s what it has to do with morality - behaviour that best enhances the survival of the species is right behaviour. Social cohesion and survival of the species are the foundation of our moral system, i.e our code of behaviour, and have been from our earliest days.

Yes, my personal views about what is morally right and wrong are irrelevant to the question of whether or not science can tell me what is right and wrong.

The stuff in italics is the subject of the thread. My own personal views about what is morally right or wrong are off-topic. So, please try not to derail the thread by changing the subject.

Once again: So, you consider your views on morality and how one arrives at a moral position, to be irrelevant in a discussion on morality? I disagree.