coberst

Science of Morality, Anyone?

Where, in American culture, is the domain of knowledge that we would identify as morality studied and taught?

I suspect that if we do not quickly develop a science of morality that will make it possible for us to live together on this planet in a more harmonious manner our technology will help us to destroy the species and perhaps the planet soon.

It seems to me that we have given the subject matter of morality primarily over to religion. It also seems to me that if we ask the question ‘why do humans treat one another so terribly?’ we will find the answer in this moral aspect of human culture.

The ‘man of maxims’ “is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality—without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.” George Eliot The Mill on the Floss

I agree to the point of saying that we have moral instincts, i.e. we have moral emotions. Without these moral emotions we could not function as social creatures. These moral emotions are an act of evolution. I would ague that the instinct for grooming that we see in monkeys is one example of this moral emotion.

We can no longer leave this important matter in the hands of the Sunday-school. Morality must become a top priority for scientific study.

Master_Shake

I don't think science has anything to say on the subject of morality. We can scientifically discuss why people behave in a certain way (psychology or sociology), and we can scientifically discuss the effects of those behaviours on individuals and on society, but there is little science can do to teach us which behaviour is BETTER or WORSE than any other.

Which behaviour is better or worse depends upon the goals you want to achieve. Frankly, I would be a little worried if every single human being had the same goals so I'm glad we all have different views on what is moral behaviour. As long as we can agree on the really big ones (murder is wrong, rape is bad, you shouldn't fuck corpses) then we'll be fine.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

dippin

We can study how morality has changed throughout the years.

But it is impossible to determine scientifically what is moral. Philosophers have long recognized this, at least since the days of David Hume. You cannot deduct ought from is.

coberst

Why is grooming, as displayed by monkeys, an indication of moral emotions?

Emotions are instincts; they are something that is part of our genes. They are part of our genetic makeup because they were necessary for the survival of the social species. Some species are loners but some are naturally social. The social species needed emotions that facilitated social unity. Mutual grooming is one means for bonding between individuals and the group.

Would morals count as knowledge? Do emotions count as knowledge? Directly I must say that the emotion of fear is not knowledge. The emotion leads to a feeling and the consciousness of the feeling becomes knowledge. Morality is about relationships, i.e. certain instincts make a social group possible.

Without social cohesion social groups cannot survive. Reasoning about facts is a human means for survival and thriving. The more we know and understand about relationships the better will be our lives. In fact, because we have developed such powerful technology and thus have placed in the hands of people such power that if we do not do a better job about relationships our species cannot long survive.

asaris

I would argue that the inability to have a science of morals has been recognized since Aristotle (and would disagree with Hume in any case). The realm of human affairs is simply too complex to easily derive the relevant oughts, apart from some very broad precepts (it's usually bad to kill, it's usually bad to lie, etc.) Combined with the difficulty in separating out self-interest in mode so tied up with our way of life, any attempt to develop a science of ethics is bound to fail.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

coberst

The human brain is capable of a systematic and disciplined study of any domain of knowledge. One reason that we have so much difficulty with moral judgments is because no one knows any thing about these matters beyond what they learned in Sunday school or from their parents who are ignorant of such matters also. Religion is not morality. We have allowed religion to take over this domain of knowledge and thus many of our wars that are fought in the name of religion.

Physics is a science that explores the laws of nature regarding objects. We must make morality into a science that explores human moral impulse and from that impulse we must explore the practical and the theoretical aspects of how we can channel these impulses into a behavior that will help us develop a harmony among all humans.

We must learn how to use our imagination to help us in matters of our relationship among others. We have a very productive imagination in matters of physics perhaps that same imagination will help solve problems relevant to human relationships.

Philosophy is the mother of science but is no substitute for scientific empirical study similar to other human sciences. I think that psychology and SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) can be useful in starting such an effort.

Also, I think that there is confusion regarding the meaning of ethics and the meaning of morality. Thus further evidence for the need for an empirical science of morality.

I think that there is also a good bit of confusion as to the meaning of the word "science". I use the word 'science' here to mean a systematic and disciplined study of a domain of knowledge. I do not restrict the word to mean only those domains of knowledge that can be measured with a scale and/or calipers.

dippin

It is impossible to have a "scientific empirical study" over what is moral.

You can study changing definitions of morality. You can study what people's opinions regarding morality are.

But you can't use empirical science to determine what is good and moral and what is not moral. There are no laws of nature regarding morality. Psychology and cognitive science cannot tell you what is moral or not.

They can tell you that, given that X is morally preferable to Y, you can achieve X in a certain way.

asaris

For example, coberst, you say that we need a scientific notion of morality to promote harmony among mankind. Why? Why is harmony among mankind a valid goal? You're assuming a notion of morality already before you begin your scientific study.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Plan9

Death-by-Powerpoint ethics training is a required component of many government entities, especially the Department of Defense.

Proportionality is always stressed.

...

Science =/= morality.

It's like asking someone to define the flavor of pride.

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

coberst

War has been our means for communicating with one another. We have placed extrodinary power now in the hands of ordinary people, this a recipe for the destrucion of the species and perhaps even all life on our planet.

roachboy

i dont think the ethics/morality distinction is that difficult or interesting, really. there's two basic ways to think about it: as a matter of style, ethics is concerned with how should i live, where morality is concerned with what not to do. same questions, inverted ways of framing the sentences generated in response. past that, you have differing conceptions of agency. morality tends to come out of religious frameworks which tend to be about social control, whence prohibitions as the basic mechanism. the reason the dyad seems operative these days is as a function of the morality/religion association. it wasn't always like that.

the rigorous-ish deontology is from kant. deontology is basically the attempt to deduce ethical principles from a kind of hardwiring, which in the end is dependent on a god, but which doesn't require that god to be operative.

that the op is calling for basically is a "scientific" deontology. there''s still schools within ethics that like deontology--typically the members are christian, but it's not universal---it seems that these folk imagine themselves hans brinker standing with their thumb in the breach of the dyke of human irrationality. if they gave up on the framework and pulled out their thumb, bad things would happen. so as with most christians, there's a really cynical view of agency involved with this. fallen, corrupt humans need Rules else everything turns to shit. once again, nietzsche was right.

i dont personally think that ethics or morality is a particularly useful or interesting category. ethics are political expressions, so the category that interests me more is the political.

o, and alot of the stuff you read that references complex dynamical systems modelling in the context of ethics is concerned with trying to show that c-d-s- models are amenable to traditional ethics in order mostly not to freak out conservatives too much. the results, from what i've read, are variably interesting---the problem is that c-d-s poses very basic challenges to the notion of agency that traditional western ethics presupposes. so it really is a watering down and playing nice for the retro-set. the other problem surfaces through what i've just said tho: if i argue that ethics is a problem, what i mean is the approach to thinking about the subject matter in philosophical terms, not the idea of self-limitation as such. that i felt compelled to say that shows where the problem is.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

You mention deontology, roachboy, but oddly enough when I hear the phrase "Science of Morality" I think of Spinoza first. I suspect it's because modern deonotologists seem to have largely given up on the project of deriving an ethical system the way Kant tried. In general, philosophical programs of ethics are always suspect to me, regardless of their origin, because they all take pains to reach the same results. They're not falsifiable, or to the extent they are, they're indistinguishable except in how they describe ethics. I find, in my own ethical life, that I use whatever seems to be the best way of thinking about a specific problem. Sometimes it's deontology, sometimes it's consequentialism, and sometimes it's virtue ethics. Maybe Moore was right, that 'goodness' is simply an irreducible property of reality that we just 'see'. Though I'm sure you know the problems with that.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Master_Shake

But why is the destruction of our species and of all life on our planet a bad thing? How can you possibly establish that scientifically?

Frankly, it would probably be best for any other intelligent life forms out in the universe if we did destroy ourselves. The last thing they need is to have some stupid human space corporation determine that their planet is home to mineral x and badly in need of massive strip mining. By eliminating ourselves from the universe we would be doing that alien planet a great favour.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

filtherton

Winston Cigarettes are the flavor of pride.

coberst

You may be correct. However it is not something that I am prepared to accept without an effort to prevent. If we take our self out we may very well take out all life on this planet and that is an attrocity.

Master_Shake

Why is an atrocity a bad thing? What kind of scientific evidence could be offered to prove or disprove that an atrocity is a bad thing?

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

coberst

This reminds me of when my son was very small and had so many Whys. I ran out of answers just as I am doing now.