[Sphinx]

I was reading a novel called "Adrift on the Nile" by Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz is the only Arab novelist who received the Nobel Prize of Literature. His novels usually involve some philosophical thoughts. In this particular novel he made a bold claim that science can be a source of morality. He says that science entails (1) love of truth, (2) honesty in judgement, (3) devotion in work, (4) collaboration in research, and (5) willingness to view the world through the lenses of humanism.

Compare this to, say, Dawkin's view of science, that science is not in the business of morality, except perhaps to show logical inconsistencies of moral claims.

Which view of science do you prefer? I prefer Mahfouz's view. I believe that studying science have had a deep moral impact on my life.

[Suska]

I agree that science entails a value set, it doesn't seem the source is science itself - especially when people like Dawkins try to use science as a foundation for morality. The values of science are a holdover from scholasticism, one of many habits carried on beyond the supposed discarding of religion.

[Ummon]

[youtube]rlaPLvETBug[/youtube]

Freeman Dyson talking about among other things the book Men of Mathematics that inspired him to become skilled in mathematics. He describes the mathematicians within as "mosly crooks and people of very mixed kinds of qualities, not at all saints, and many of them quite unscrupulous and not very clever." Dyson himself is very intelligent, but more than likely wrong on climate change for example. In other words I think it would be specious to necessarily relate the two to one another.

[Potemkin]

I was reading a novel called "Adrift on the Nile" by Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz is the only Arab novelist who received the Nobel Prize of Literature. His novels usually involve some philosophical thoughts. In this particular novel he made a bold claim that science can be a source of morality. He says that science entails (1) love of truth, (2) honesty in judgement, (3) devotion in work, (4) collaboration in research, and (5) willingness to view the world through the lenses of humanism.

Most of these moral qualities are holdovers from medieval scholasticism, as Suska pointed out. Moreover, one cannot deduce an 'ought' from an 'is', as David Hume demonstrated back in the 18th century. Science tells us what is the case, not what ought to be the case. It therefore cannot serve as the basis for any kind of systematic moral or ethical system, and indeed it relies on the cultural legacy of medieval Christian morality for its own ethical basis (i.e., love of truth, honesty in judgement, devotion in work, collaboration in research, and so on). Dawkins understands this point, of course, which is why he does not claim that science can serve as anything other than a fact-checking service for any proposed moral claims about the world.

[mikema63]

Sam Harris claims it but Sam Harris is the least intelligent of the "four horsemen".

Science can't serve as the basis of morality because morality inst perceived by any objective natural processes. They are the subjective musings and feelings of humanity.

[Potemkin]

Sam Harris claims it but Sam Harris is the least intelligent of the "four horsemen".

How does he get around Hume's objection that one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'? Or has he never heard of David Hume?

[mikema63]

I have no idea, he seems to simply assert that since we can imagine a world that has perfect suffering and we can measure unhappieness in the brain with an MRI theoretically that minimizing suffering as a moral goal is scientifically based.

He's kind of an idiot and acts all confused when anyone points out that he's simply assuming that minimizing suffering should be a goal and that our ability to measure suffering is superfluous.

[Potemkin]

I have no idea, he seems to simply assert that since we can imagine a world that has perfect suffering and we can measure unhappieness in the brain with an MRI theoretically that minimizing suffering as a moral goal is scientifically based.

So his position is a sort of retarded version of utilitarianism then?

I swear, scientists really shouldn't dabble in philosophy, especially if they haven't read any....

[mikema63]

He has a bachelor's in philosophy actually, though he ended up getting a PhD in neuroscience because science is like, way cooler.

He's also into some weird new age stuff.

The only reason anyone listens to him at all is because he's the biggest atheist voice for "Islam is a special kind of evil even more evil than Christianity".

[Potemkin]

He has a bachelor's in philosophy actually, though he ended up getting a PhD in neuroscience because science is like, way cooler.

Good grief. A little learning....

He's also into some weird new age stuff.

Yet he rejects traditional religion? Why?

The only reason anyone listens to him at all is because he's the biggest atheist voice for "Islam is a special kind of evil even more evil than Christianity".

In other words, he's a useful idiot, eh? Lol.

[Luna]

I have no idea, he seems to simply assert that since we can imagine a world that has perfect suffering and we can measure unhappieness in the brain with an MRI theoretically that minimizing suffering as a moral goal is scientifically based.

He's kind of an idiot and acts all confused when anyone points out that he's simply assuming that minimizing suffering should be a goal and that our ability to measure suffering is superfluous.

This is an outrageous level of stupid. But of course, we all knew that about Sam Harris.

As you pointed out, there's no basic need for minimizing suffering. You can't verify anywhere that this is what humans should do, scientifically. That relies on value judgment.

You can verify that humans have the emotion of empathy. Even that isn't an "ought," even that isn't a statement on whether we should or not. Some people (e.g. LaVeyan Satanists) think we shouldn't. Science can't prove them wrong. Only the fact that their basic value judgment runs counter to what most people feel keeps their belief from being accepted as true.

Basically Sam Harris has adopted Vulcan morality and thinks that's science because Spock says so.

[Ambroise]

So his position is a sort of retarded version of utilitarianism then?

I swear, scientists really shouldn't dabble in philosophy, especially if they haven't read any....

Sam Harris is a particularly egregious example of this though. He is a dilettante extraordinaire, having been a trust-fund baby who more or less got those academic qualifications as a status symbol, and he is not taken seriously in either of those fields. He has made a habit out of chasing down experts in any given field, without doing even the requisite preliminary homework in that particular field, and then trying to lecture said experts on their field armed with cocksure confidence that everything would just be fine if the experts could simply rise to his level of brilliance, and if only they would stop misunderstanding his super vague, barely formed and contradictory stances.

This almost always tends to lead to hilarious results, with no self-awareness whatsoever on his part of just how bad he comes across as. When he isn't obliviously and blithely trolling experts, he's writing sophomoric blogs that most freshmen would have been embarrassed to publish, on how to solve wealth inequality, among other pressing topics.

He is a favourite poster boy for parody in the subreddit r/badphilosophy (and various other philosophy-related subreddits) after all, and for very good reasons. When you're so bad you're a laughingstock even on Reddit, with your own custom derisive tags and accompanying memes (I believe they refer to him as Ben Stiller's best role).

[Ummon]

I agree with what you guys are saying (also abou Harris though he doesn't raise my ire), and my earlier comments also stand, however I think you can explore "morality" as a physical or computational process, not as something that defines what is correct/incorrect, but about how organisms -relate- how they are likely to interact in a given situation. That I think is something that could be made rigorous and subject to experiment. The reason I favor this is because I am a fan of David Deutsch and while I am sure he would disagree or take umbrage(?) with the idea his principle of creating a way of looking at science/the universe without having to refer to an outside source as he refrains from doing in his constructor theory implies that we must be capable of explaining -all- phenomena from with the scope of the material. Plainly, I think a lot of the is/ought distinctions and blah blah of premodern philosophy are a bunch of bunk! What is an "is/ought" distinction physically? A NOT gate? An XNOR? What kinds of systems compute is/ought distinctions? How do they do so?

[mikema63]

Theres a scientific explanation for morality sure, it's likely the outcome of in built emotional systems that evolved to create and maintain groups and societies. This doesn't really say that those systems are right or wrong in any external sense. Only that they were evolutionarily advantageous.

The is/ought distinction is largely built out of the difference between what we experience and perceive about the world and the material world as it is. We evolved to have a moral sense only to discover that moral sense only exists because it helped us have more babies and not because there was actually any morality built into the material world. There is not ought physically, only is, the ought is an entirely internal development brought on by evolutionary forces that exists out of convenience not external reality.

[Paradigm]

So his position is a sort of retarded version of utilitarianism then?

Precisely

I swear, scientists really shouldn't dabble in philosophy, especially if they haven't read any....

The pioneers of quantum mechanics such as Schroedinger and Bohr seemed to actually be quite literate in philosophy. Unfortunately, the philosopher-scientist has long since become a relic of the past.

Yet he rejects traditional religion? Why?

He believes that because mystical experience is universal across different religions that it therefore doesn't need religion and should be the subject of scientific study instead.

As for the subject matter of this thread:

[mikema63]

The pioneers of quantum mechanics such as Schroedinger and Bohr seemed to actually be quite literate in philosophy. Unfortunately, the philosopher-scientist has long since become a relic of the past.

It's not exactly easy to double major.

[Ummon]

Theres a scientific explanation for morality sure, it's likely the outcome of in built emotional systems that evolved to create and maintain groups and societies. This doesn't really say that those systems are right or wrong in any external sense. Only that they were evolutionarily advantageous.

The is/ought distinction is largely built out of the difference between what we experience and perceive about the world and the material world as it is. We evolved to have a moral sense only to discover that moral sense only exists because it helped us have more babies and not because there was actually any morality built into the material world. There is not ought physically, only is, the ought is an entirely internal development brought on by evolutionary forces that exists out of convenience not external reality.

I think you're likely right and I mostly agree, however that seems too unspecific and undefined to really satisfy? It's like discovering there are atoms and then having the idea "Oh, everything is just made up of atoms!" and then just stopping there and no longer having an interest in chemistry. Oughts do exist, in this sense, they are projections of the likely "best scenario" we can conceive of with the information that we have at the time. They're not absolute, they're statistical, and they're limited by unknown unknowns that we can't predict among other things. At the absolute other end of the spectrum we can't preclude universality in some aspects of human behavior

[Potemkin]

Oughts do exist, in this sense, they are projections of the likely "best scenario" we can conceive of with the information that we have at the time. They're not absolute, they're statistical

Moral 'oughts' are far more than that, Ummon. They are, in some sense, absolute commandments or imperatives, rules which we must/should obey. A scientific analysis of the evolutionary advantages of a moral code takes us not one step closer to actually establishing a moral code, which almost always is established by religious sanction rather than some sort of 'statistical' or scientific analysis. And, as David Hume showed, one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'; if we could, then everyone would agree on the correct moral code by deriving the 'oughts' of morality from the 'is' of reality by scientific analysis. Yet actual moral codes are specific to a given culture and have a definite history or 'genealogy', as Nietzsche liked to point out. And there can be no such thing as a relative moral code; morality, by its nature, must be absolute or must at least pretend to be absolute, despite its cultural specificity and its historical rootedness.

[Paradigm]

One little hiccup in the is/ought problem I saw pointed out once is the concept of a promise. A promise, by its very existence, implies an obligation to keep it, regardless of whether or not one does so.

[mikema63]

Wouldn't it be a social obligation? You could lose respect in the community if you don't keep it but this seems more like society constructing and enforcing it's own made up rules rather than the universe at large.