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Author Topic: Ontology and Epistemology Post [Locked]
Snarf_Igraine  2 stars
Posts: 258
Registered: 2003-12-13 14:36:34
enkidu is just believes in the natural ontological argument when it comes to epistemology. He doesn't allow that moral knowledge can come from other sources and the possibility that moral facts does not exist at all. How is moral knowledge possible then? Enkidu would have you believe there is only one valid way,what he simplifies as "appeal to science". However there are a lot of possibilities and here are a few more clusters of arguments in moral epistemology. The sociological argument, the psychological argument, the ontological argument, and the evolutionary argument.

The sociological argument of how we get moral knowledge is one two choices: No moral facts exist to be known, since moral disagreements exemplify clashes in moral sensibility rather than differences about matters of fact. However you can admit that moral knowledge does exists, but moral facts are relative to the social group in which moral sensibility is formed with the result that no moral truths are known to hold universally.

Psychological argument: This is best argued by David Hume who suggested that moral knowledge is not even possible based on the fact that morals motivate us to act. If morals are based on reason or knowledge so that they consist in true or false ideas, they would have to be in themselves incapable of having this direct influence on our actions (Hume, Treatise, Book III, Part I, Section I, Paragraph 6.) As he famously said, it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of a finger. The argument is expressed as a valid deductive argument from three premises: (1) If moral knowledge is possible, then some moral judgments are beliefs. (2) Our moral judgments by themselves necessarily give us some motivation to act, even without the accompaniment of already existing desires. (3) A belief by itself, unaided by already existing desires, can never give us any motivation to act. Therefore, moral judgments are not beliefs. Therefore, moral knowledge is impossible.

Ontological argument: Here is where Enkidu really gets selective. There are three possibilities where we get moral knowledge through the ontological argument. Theological, non-natural, and natural. The theological position is that moral knowledge is basically the will of God/s. The non-natural ontological argument is the proposition that moral knowledge has its basis in non-natural aspects of the world that can be apprehended only through a faculty of moral intuition or reason that is independent of sense experience. Moral reality is reducible to neither the natural nor the supernatural and requires a mode of apprehension comparable to mathematical intuition. The natural ontological argument as advocated by Enkidu argues that moral knowledge should not be more problematic than other kinds of knowledge of the natural world and is empirically observable.

Evolutionary moral epistemology: The Darwinian argument that morals are about survival and reproduction and have nothing to do with moral truth. In addition while the intuitive, emotional basis of moral judgments was useful to our ancestors, this basis is out-dated and unreliable in modern industrial society and thus current moral thought in such society.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-epistemology/
Yukishiro1  4 stars
Posts: 3,243
Registered: 2002-9-20 23:52:57
This is an awful lot of text dedicated to showing Enkidu spouts off first and thinks later if at all. Did we really need all this to prove that point?


Science can't tell you whether something is good or bad. Once you decide what good and bad are it can help you figure out which choice is actually going to produce each, but that's all.
Z-Elder  3 stars
Posts: 671
Registered: 2002-3-15 13:58:39
But this horse has to be beat at least once every year.

 

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NuEM  4 stars
Posts: 1,007
Registered: 2004-3-2 09:08:11
"Good" is a word that translates to "I want more of that". It doesn't come with a higher meaning.

 

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_Enkidu_  2 stars
Title: Zen Badger
Posts: 280
Registered: 2001-12-24 05:02:15
Sin_of_Onin posted:

It means people are born with the capacity to address moral questions of good and bad.


I am still waiting for you to answer my question and demonstrate your position. So far you have made claims that yes science can prove good and bad and science can answer moral questions. Your only attempt to answer these rather fundamental issues with regard to the topic you brought up is a demonstration that you are not even willing to address the issue of moral knowledge.


How does one obtain moral knowledge?


Is there such a thing?



No people cannot address moral questions at birth, that's why we don't try juveniles as adults. You learn what is moral, it's stupid beyond belief that you even think that people don't learn their morality. Why do you think people have such wide ranging views on morality?


Some people...

 

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_Enkidu_  2 stars
Title: Zen Badger
Posts: 280
Registered: 2001-12-24 05:02:15
Snarf_Igraine posted:

Something he clearly doesn't understand since most of it supports what myself and others in this thread have been saying all along.



The one part of this that is truly amusing is snarf's idea that getting knowledge from dieties or the supernatural is somehow different than an appeal to authority. It's not, and subject to all the same liabilities. There's a reason why there are only four appeals in epistemology.

 

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Modeeb  4 stars
Title: A Ghost In The Machine
Posts: 1,258
Registered: 2002-4-19 10:48:36
Why is there no appeal to Silence?

 

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Yukishiro1  4 stars
Posts: 3,243
Registered: 2002-9-20 23:52:57
All moral judgments come from unverifiable hypotheses about what is right and wrong.


There is no way for science to demonstrate whether killing someone is moral or immoral. It just can't be done because it's not a situation susceptible to objective investigation.


Science will help you figure out what exactly is going to happen if you kill someone. But it can't tell you whether or not the choice is moral.


You don't need religion for that, obviously. But you do need to make some assumptions which simply are not susceptible to proof.
Sin_of_Onin  4 stars
Posts: 1,307
Registered: 2005-6-29 08:21:12
_Enkidu_ posted:

No people cannot address moral questions at birth, that's why we don't try juveniles as adults. You learn what is moral, it's stupid beyond belief that you even think that people don't learn their morality. Why do you think people have such wide ranging views on morality?

Some people...



Actually even infants have empathy. The way our brain works in order to address moral questions does change as we age. The idea that it is just a learned thing is factually incorrect according to science.

HTH

Keep ignoring the fact that you have not answered my question though. It is hilarious you started this thread like you were the prof and we were the students and now you are all squirmy.

 

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_Enkidu_  2 stars
Title: Zen Badger
Posts: 280
Registered: 2001-12-24 05:02:15
Not sure you can learn from silence, pretty sure you have to be trying to communicate information in someway.


Odd you should pick science deciding the morality of death yuki, since it is used in thousands of ways to decide who lives and who dies everyday. Everything from vehicle safety laws, food contamination levels, to air and water quality and everything in between use science to set the acceptable level of death. In fact almost all of our codified morality in the US is based on science and not the bible.


Thank god for secularism!

 

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