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Epistemology (General Discussion)

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Wed, 2014-04-09 15:01
Cerebrate Cerebrate's picture
In technical terms, what you
In technical terms, what you are staring down is called the "is-ought" problem. We've been banging on that one since David Hume formulated it in the 1700s because it would be awfully convenient to be able to derive normative statements from descriptive statements, but no-one's yet found a satisfactory answer. Good luck tryin', but I for one suspect the answer is that you genuinely can't derive the normative from the descriptive, and that most attempts so to do are mere variations on the naturalistic fallacy. -c
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Wed, 2014-04-09 15:16
Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture
DivineWrath wrote:quote
DivineWrath wrote:
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
First, define 'better.'
Why? I don't see why that is necessary. Are you suggesting that my definition is somehow different than other people's definition, or different from what you would find in a dictionary?
Precisely. My definition of what makes a better society will strongly differ from yours. For example. My morality, such as it is, defines the total absence of suffering as evil. It also defines excessive suffering as evil. Does your morality define no suffering as worse than a small amount of suffering? In other words, the definition of 'better' rests on the definition of 'good.' Our societies have been arguing that definition for millennia.
DivineWrath wrote:
If morality were to become a science, then any scientist can do the work and they might bring in different values and beliefs. This might include different definitions of better (if such a thing is possible). Their works, and definitions, would be subject to peer review and other stuff.
So considering that all these studies will require definitions of 'good; and 'evil' in their structures... The peer review will be affected by reviewers biases toward various definitions? Your 'science of morality' sounds like a popularity contest for ethics.
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Wed, 2014-04-09 22:09
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
It feels like I'm being
It feels like I'm being ganged up upon by a bunch of people being difficult. I'm the only one here arguing this point, being in favor of a science of morality. Perhaps I should leave and wait for the topic to change.
Erulastant wrote:
Again, you have simply asserted that suffering is bad. You have not demonstrated it in a scientific way...
I'm not trying to do any proving that suffering is bad. I trying to explain that science should matter to morality and understanding suffering. Simply put, human are the kinds of creatures that suffering matters to, and they don't like it. If you keep trying to get an argument for or against it, I have nothing more to I want to say. I'll move on. Simply put, if you have an ideal system of morality (however you want to define it) that factors in suffering (something else that science can say something about), and then when science says something about that point, then science has changed or supported the morality system (unless you decide to ignore it).
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
DivineWrath wrote:
If morality were to become a science, then any scientist can do the work and they might bring in different values and beliefs. This might include different definitions of better (if such a thing is possible). Their works, and definitions, would be subject to peer review and other stuff.
So considering that all these studies will require definitions of 'good; and 'evil' in their structures... The peer review will be affected by reviewers biases toward various definitions? Your 'science of morality' sounds like a popularity contest for ethics.
Perhaps I explained what I meant to say wrong. What I was trying to get at (or insert somewhere) was, scientists trying to show up and prove that a new theory is wrong does much good for science. They either ends up proving a theory wrong (so improvements can be made), or they further substantiates a theory because they failed to prove the theory wrong. What I was basically trying to say was (maybe I was mistaken), even definitions could be tested... Lets take an example, bats and sonar (or echolocation if you prefer). When it was discovered that bats had sonar, a lot of scientists thought that wasn't possible (things like radar being a recent discovery and invention, so it was considered absurd that bats somehow had it all along). So a whole bunch of scientists showed up to try to prove it wrong... but failed to do so. They ended up providing much more evidence for bats having sonar in the process. ---- Also why are people so hung up about a single axiom (suffering is bad) leading to killing all humans? Its the kind of solution that one can get when they take any idea to the extreme (1 axiom, many axioms, or none). You could take rights of individuals to such an extreme that you can't lie to anyone to save someone's life, nor could you try to stop a person from killing other by using any kind of force. Likewise, one of Zeno's paradoxes says that motion is an illusion (or something like that) which can be difficult to refute, yet it is clearly wrong. I'm not trying to program a machine that might come to the extreme conclusion, I'm trying explain in layman's terms that the idea has merit. Explain to people in layman's terms. Why do you guys keep obsessing over a single axiom? You keep talking like its the only thing for what I'm talking about will ever have. If you want a perfect set of axioms, make one or find me one. I tire of this.
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Thu, 2014-04-10 00:43
Cerebrate Cerebrate's picture
DivineWrath wrote:It feels
DivineWrath wrote:
It feels like I'm being ganged up upon by a bunch of people being difficult. I'm the only one here arguing this point, being in favor of a science of morality. Perhaps I should leave and wait for the topic to change.
I apologize if it seems as if you're being ganged up upon, but I promise we aren't trying to be intentionally difficult. What we are trying to point out, though, is that you are making what a rationalist would call a category error. What you describe as a science of ethics/morality is in fact not one; it's a science of praxis. Which is to say: it answers questions of the form, "GIVEN that suffering is bad, IS treatment with (a) sulphuric acid, or (b) morphine a better way of amelorating suffering? Answe: morphine.", and does not answer questions of the form "WHAT is bad? Answer: suffering." The latter is ethics, or morality. The former is not. In short, you started out claiming that you could develop ethics/morality using science, and are subsequently trying to back up that claim using examples that only show that you can do praxis using science, which is why we're having such a jolly time talking past each other. (The later digression into unfortunate consequences is merely a side-conversation on why it's really, really important to have your ethics in a row before you start doing the praxis, as answering your how questions before your why and should-we questions rarely leads to good consequences. And that this opinion is held not just by me, but by people who do this sort of thing for a living - in fields where the consequences of getting it wrong may include humanity being eaten and repurposed as wireheading computronium.) -c
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Thu, 2014-04-10 05:03
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
*Sigh* Well, I don't do this
*Sigh* Well, I don't do this for a living, a hobby really, so thats probably why I'm running into difficulties then. I like toying with an idea until it ceases to be amusing, then I move on. I should probably stop then, as I don't want to wind up being the idiot that wrecks a good idea just because they can't explain it well. I did like the point he made, but I haven't read enough of his works to get a complete picture of what he says (I thought I understood the point well enough to avoid major problems).
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Thu, 2014-04-10 06:09
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Doesn't matter if you do it
Doesn't matter if you do it for a living or a hobby. Whatever you say can hold just as much merit regardless. Like Cerebrate said I don't think anyone is trying to "gang up on you" and I am sorry if that is how you feel. Nor am I, or have ever been, trying to be difficult. The only thing I am concerned about is the strengths and validity of the arguments involved. This all started with someone making the claim that science was going to make everything else obsolete, including and especially philosophy. People then said that science can't give us ethics, only philosophy can at which point (if I am not mistaken) you jumped in to defend science by saying that it can too give you ethics. When pressed on this matter, you have given excellent examples of how science can [i]help[/i] an ethical system by finding better ways to implement it. I don't think anyone is disputing this point. What we are wondering is how science can tell us which is objectively right or wrong, to alleviate or inflict suffering. No one has managed to give a satisfying answer to this yet. Also, one thing that upset me a little is that you said that people who thought that killing all life to end all suffering is a logical consequence of "suffering is bad" are insane and should seek help (or something such). That felt a bit like an insult to me.
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Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]
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Thu, 2014-04-10 22:58
Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture
DivineWrath wrote:
DivineWrath wrote:
Simply put, if you have an ideal system of morality (however you want to define it) that factors in suffering (something else that science can say something about), and then when science says something about that point, then science has changed or supported the morality system (unless you decide to ignore it).
This is what i was getting at. Science can help us work out the best way to implement a system of morality. But we need the philosophies of morals and ethics to create the definitions for science to work with in the first place. Thus science can have its place here, but it can't replace philosophy. Ethics for definitions, science for implementation.
DivineWrath wrote:
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
DivineWrath wrote:
If morality were to become a science, then any scientist can do the work and they might bring in different values and beliefs. This might include different definitions of better (if such a thing is possible). Their works, and definitions, would be subject to peer review and other stuff.
So considering that all these studies will require definitions of 'good; and 'evil' in their structures... The peer review will be affected by reviewers biases toward various definitions? Your 'science of morality' sounds like a popularity contest for ethics.
Perhaps I explained what I meant to say wrong. What I was trying to get at (or insert somewhere) was, scientists trying to show up and prove that a new theory is wrong does much good for science. They either ends up proving a theory wrong (so improvements can be made), or they further substantiates a theory because they failed to prove the theory wrong. What I was basically trying to say was (maybe I was mistaken), even definitions could be tested...
Thing is, peer review is great for dealing with hypotheses, not so much for dealing with definitions.
DivineWrath wrote:
Lets take an example, bats and sonar (or echolocation if you prefer). When it was discovered that bats had sonar, a lot of scientists thought that wasn't possible (things like radar being a recent discovery and invention, so it was considered absurd that bats somehow had it all along). So a whole bunch of scientists showed up to try to prove it wrong... but failed to do so. They ended up providing much more evidence for bats having sonar in the process.
This is a good example of hypotheses being tested. You might note that the scientists were not trying to review the definition of 'sonar,' or the definition of 'bat.'
DivineWrath wrote:
If you want a perfect set of axioms, make one or find me one. I tire of this.
Creating the axioms is what philosophy is for. TL:DR version. I agree that science can be used to improve implementation. I disagree that it can replace philosophy, because you still need to define the axioms first.
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Fri, 2014-04-11 04:33
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Lorsa wrote:This is what i
Lorsa wrote:
This is what i was getting at. Science can help us work out the best way to implement a system of morality. But we need the philosophies of morals and ethics to create the definitions for science to work with in the first place. Thus science can have its place here, but it can't replace philosophy. Ethics for definitions, science for implementation.
I wasn't trying to say that philosophy has no place any more, but rather I was trying to argue this science in such a way that you didn't need to go back to philosophy to do science on morality (or at least reduce it to as little as possible). Perhaps I should try to explain getting an ought from an is (this is some philosophy on my part). Lets make up an example. Lets say that science has thoroughly proven that teaching women to read increases GDP (as opposed to punishing them for trying to learn to read), which helps to reduce suffering. Therefore, one could take that literacy is moral because it leads to reducing what was deemed bad. From that, one could say that we ought to teach women to read, and we should value literate women. Did you see that, I had a desired outcome and used that to get oughts and values that would lead to that outcome. Because those things can get results (or at least improve them), we should have them.
Lorsa wrote:
Also, one thing that upset me a little is that you said that people who thought that killing all life to end all suffering is a logical consequence of "suffering is bad" are insane and should seek help (or something such). That felt a bit like an insult to me.
Well, I felt it was very off topic to be arguing about that. I thought that it was meant to be a distraction or even a strawman argument. I'd be happy to drop it if it stopped coming up.
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
Thing is, peer review is great for dealing with hypotheses, not so much for dealing with definitions.
I don't know why it was even brought up then (I was asked to define better). I guess I reacted to it due to a lapse in judgement. I'd be happy to forget about it.
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Fri, 2014-04-11 06:10
Kremlin K.O.A. Kremlin K.O.A.'s picture
DivineWrath wrote:Perhaps I
DivineWrath wrote:
Perhaps I should try to explain getting an ought from an is (this is some philosophy on my part). Lets make up an example. Lets say that science has thoroughly proven that teaching women to read increases GDP (as opposed to punishing them for trying to learn to read), which helps to reduce suffering. Therefore, one could take that literacy is moral because it leads to reducing what was deemed bad. From that, one could say that we ought to teach women to read, and we should value literate women. Did you see that, I had a desired outcome and used that to get oughts and values that would lead to that outcome. Because those things can get results (or at least improve them), we should have them.
It's more expanding an ought. It relies on an axiom that reducing current suffering is good. It also relies on the (unproven) fact that higher GDP means lower suffering. the second can be demonstrated scientifically. The first, not so much.
DivineWrath wrote:
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
Thing is, peer review is great for dealing with hypotheses, not so much for dealing with definitions.
I don't know why it was even brought up then (I was asked to define better). I guess I reacted to it due to a lapse in judgement. I'd be happy to forget about it.
That would be my bad. I have a habit of asking tangential questions that are meant to reveal my central point indirectly. In this case, the point I was trying to hint at was the definition problem. Anyhoo it's all good here.
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Sat, 2014-04-19 04:43
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:It's
Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:
It's more expanding an ought. It relies on an axiom that reducing current suffering is good. It also relies on the (unproven) fact that higher GDP means lower suffering. the second can be demonstrated scientifically. The first, not so much.
OK, you got me at the GDP part. True, GDP doesn't directly measure well being. GDP is more of a measurement that people can afford nice things, not that they actually have nice things. Generally, from my understanding, 1st world countries (nice places to live) have high GDP, while 3rd world countries (bad places to live) tend to have low GDP. However, I need to stop and review this subject before I talk more about it more. Anyways, I might resume this thread at a later date. I have other interests at this time. I just wanted to tie up a loose end before I left.
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