If you run into that idiot, ask him whether anchovies on pizza are a good thing or a bad thing.
As scientist I say that’s a BS characterization and few think that way.
No scientific description of the process of eating can capture what it’s like to bite into a piece of chocolate cake. You can talk refraction and air density all you like but you will never convey what it’s like to experience a sunset.
@current res
Is there a “winner” icon?
Morality, the why of human behaviour of which it is a subset, is increasingly amenable to science’s ever extending reach, which feeds back in to it. Morality is evolving. What the beyond has to do with that I haven’t the faintest idea. And neither has anyone else.
I know it well. Being is meaningless, so we need to make up meaning. Evolution has given us an enormous helping hand.
We all know the world around us, none of us without qualia, emotionally labelled snapshots. Data as poetry is a start. A fully Proustian scientific educative rational discursive iterative chaotic endless description, including full 3D Sensurround immersion, of experiencing a sunset is not the experience. It’s another. Every exact repetition will be different because the observer is. Which will be added to the story. This is due to the nature of consciousness. Which is bigger than we are. Bigger than mere words. We’d need to go beyond such experience and take the full mental experience of what one experienced, having recorded it with every emotional sensation on the ultimate encephalogram of the entire brain state during the experience, and download it. As Grey Area does in the ultimate Purgatory in Banks’ peerless Excession. And we’re getting there. And it still wouldn’t be the same. Because none of us is a passive full empath.
But it would be on the way. It would be sufficient.
Another method of approximation which of course cannot be passively voiced in mere words would be by hypnosis.
Yes! …And yet also - in some inaccessibly objective way, we have the unshakable conviction that the thing being reacted to is actually there for us to behold - to delight in - as a shared experience.
Certainly capuchin monkeys assess “this is unfair to me!”. It’s rather harder to tell, but there is very little evidence for animals making the generalization about something being unfair to others - I don’t think the capuchin getting the better reward ever seems to have a problem with it.
Lotta people like that.
“Morality, the why of human behaviour of which it is a subset, is increasingly amenable to science’s ever extending reach” This confuses two different issues. Science has some capacity to investigate the patterns of morality. Does this particular moral stance convey a potential evolutionary advantage? Perhaps, but it is nearly impossible for such ideas to avoid being just-so stories, in Gould’s terminology -“could convey an evolutionary advantage under certain circumstances” is far short of proof of a mechanism. Trying to investigate human behavior is full of both ethical and practical difficulties. Similarly, technology can let us see what parts of the brain are involved in making particular decisions, but the claims that this tells us about philosophical questions are ridiculous.
But science is completely incapable of telling us “you morally ought to do this”, as Hume pointed out. Science can tell us “if you do this, here are the likely consequences.” It can describe possible processes involved in the development of ethics. After all, biblical ethics are not merely the law, they are good ideas; there are likely benefits to ethical systems. Science is merely descriptive, not proscriptive.
Aye, science clearly shows that there is an evolved genetic basis to morality. That being 90% psycho monkey pack predator and 10% bee is a very effective combination. There is no absolute morality in that. Higher, intentional morality, rationalism, enlightened self interest and ‘true’ altruism beyond it, to the other, any other, strangers, the species, comes with headspace, privilege, in some; noblesse does oblige, and storms. Which must have been selected for unless it too is a spandrel. Rationality demands co-operation to equity; equality of outcome. Universal kindness. Science proves it. That being co-operative works, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. It’s easily quantifiable. Empirical. Scientific.
All pretty good there … though with caveats needed at …
Science illuminates it rather (and incompletely). Science illuminates what was already there prior and what transcends scientific analysis. Hence the illumination being only partial.
It is indeed an incarnated God that we worship.
I remember reading some BBC (ok, not academic, but still reputable) papers on how toxic personalities win in the work place, and wind up being promoted; and how chimps that bang and make loud noises beat out the kinder ones. In undergrad, we studied panfish and how “playboy” fish distributed sperm in stable couples to perpetuate their lines. That’s not the case in all instances. In some species, stability and altruism seem to win, with some exceptions. It’s not clear to me that evolution universally favors goodness, or if survival favors goodness with exceptions (sort of group evolution with the exception rounding out the rule). I’d be interested in your thoughts. Whether we take evolution as favoring a rule or not, as GK Chesterton had Father Brown write,
“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”
“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”
The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:
“Yet who knows if in that infinite universe–?”
“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth…
“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, `Thou shalt not steal.'”|
I admire the push back Mervin, as you know. I desire it to be so. But my forehead is as adamant; flint. I made a synergistic, cybernetic circle of empiricism and rationalism, as is my wont. That explains everything, including Jesus’ entirely love based morality. As natural. I hope I’m wrong.
Animals can be kind, loving, and forgiving. They can co-operate toward a greater good. I love animals with my whole heart.
But animals can also be mean and violent. They fight for mates, for food, for territory, for rank in the herd or pack.
I have two wonderful beagles, but I have to watch them when they eat breakfast because the old male steals food from the young female.
In Parus minor, the blue tit, there aren’t enough grade A males to go round. So grade A females get a grade B male to make them a nest. And sneak off and mate with a grade A male first.
The thing about kindness in humans is, it’s subversive. And quite sexy.
Ive never heard anyone say that. (" often hear people say science is the only way…")
Am I wrong?
“Aye, science clearly shows that there is an evolved genetic basis to morality. That being 90% psycho monkey pack predator and 10% bee is a very effective combination. There is no absolute morality in that. Higher, intentional morality, rationalism, enlightened self interest and ‘true’ altruism beyond it, to the other, any other, strangers, the species, comes with headspace, privilege, in some; noblesse does oblige, and storms. Which must have been selected for unless it too is a spandrel. Rationality demands co-operation to equity; equality of outcome. Universal kindness. Science proves it. That being co-operative works, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. It’s easily quantifiable. Empirical. Scientific.”
This is a good example of the inability of science to address most key aspects of morality. Humans are not monkey-bee hybrids; that is merely a metaphor. The genetics and reproductive patterns of eusocial insects are quite different from that found in mammals, though mole rats have a somewhat similar social system. Human ethics depend strongly on ideas, which have a strongly non-genetic component of transmission. Ideas easily jump from individual to individual, can get mutated and recombined in all sorts of ways, and do not require any clear ancestral idea but can come essentially out of the blue. This also means that, unlike with genes, ideas are very difficult to trace back without historical records.
What evolved, genetic basis is there for morality? Of course, many moral choices are likely to have some effect on one’s chances of passing on genes. But there are all sorts of possible advantages and disadvantages of any particular action. Either more cooperative or more selfish approaches can give an advantage under particular situations. “This could provide an evolutionary advantage under certain circumstances” describes practically anything, and as such, actually explains practically nothing, just like “that’s the way some sort of unspecified designer wanted to design it”. Kin selection is invoked to explain tribe members taking sides in a dispute with more genetic precision than their language defines and to explain someone risking their life to help a stranger. What human traits are genetic versus learned versus individual innovation? Humans are both practically (small litter size, long developmental period, don’t do well in captivity, complex) and ethically terrible subjects for genetics experiments. Even the relatively simple traits popularly billed as Mendelian in general biology like attached earlobes, handedness, or tasting PTC are rarely reliably documented genetically. Given the ease of human genomic sequencing, it’s not hard to come up with genetic variants that correlate with some trait, but there’s so much DNA that mere chance will produce several correlates. And there is the possibility of spandrels. If a particular moral choice is not a direct product of selection, but merely reflects a capacity that has been generated by the evolutionary process, then the choice might conceivably have no possible evolutionary advantage and still be a byproduct of evolution.
The claim above also illustrates confusing description with prescription. “Here is a possible explanation of how that moral belief could arise evolutionarily.” That might even be specific enough to be possible to investigate and come up with some evidence, though in reality such ideas are rarely amenable to rigorous testing. But that is worthless with regard to my deciding what I should do. If someone disagrees with me, should I try to figure out what their point is and seek to explain the issue, or should I resort to insults and dismiss them? The fact that I can think of possible evolutionary influences that could favor one or the other does nothing to assist with choosing which to do, though it might make a handy excuse if I know I’m picking a bad option. Hume and Kant pointed out the logical failing of a supposedly purely empirical and rational approach to ethics. “This is the way things are” cannot tell us what is the way things ought to be. “Rationality demands co-operation to equity; equality of outcome. Universal kindness. Science proves it. That being co-operative works, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. It’s easily quantifiable. Empirical. Scientific.” “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” These are merely fancy ways of saying “Smart people will of course agree with me about what is right and wrong”. In reality, in modern (“Enlightenment” onward) Western culture, these moral systems are generally “I have picked the parts of Christian ethics that I like and dismissed those I don’t.” Being co-operative works. So does being treacherous. The tragedy of the commons applies to many situations. To each according to their ability to grab stuff, from each according to what each is compelled to give is the actual practice of both communism and unbridled capitalism. “Look out for #1” is generally quite effective as a short-term strategy. Of course, it is bad for everyone else, and likely to do more poorly in the long run than a more cooperative approach, but evolutionary self-interest is not overly concerned with either of those. Besides, why shouldn’t I say “I don’t care if this is in my evolutionary self-interest or not, it’s what I want to do?”
Of course, it is true that good morals are generally good for you. They tend to involve delayed gratification and an increased advantage for the total group rather than maximized individual advantage, but your whole group crashing tends to be bad for your individual success. But overall, following good ethical principles probably will be in your best interest. So it is not at all surprising that plausible evolutionary explanations can be found. But again, the existence of a possible evolutionary explanation neither proves that it is correct nor gives philosophical compulsion to actually follow that principle.
Another way to illustrate the problem here is to try making similar claims about another natural law, such as gravity. Gravity tells us that masses will tend to move together, given the opportunity. Therefore, I should drop a heavy rock on your foot. (Don’t worry, in reality I wouldn’t want to damage the rock.)
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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