Seems like a rhetorical question, with an obvious answer.
Same as, " can religion discover sub atomic particles?"
What point do you wish to illustrate?
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.'”|
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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.
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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?