Science can't equate good feelings to good.


It can maximize good feelings. It can classify all feelings and then try and find ways to maximize them. It can study how best to condition someone to emphasize certain feelings over others to achieve some desired outcome.


It can't be used to establish that outcome is good.


I would also get back to the history of morality in Christianity to really see how morality and how it relates to knowledge is complicated. The idea of it being based on science assumes that a theory is established and tested. ie if you do Z then Y will happen or is likely to happen. Modern morality on the other hand is not based on outcome but the belief in the worthiness of the act.

 

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I disagree with you. If I had to explain my ethics to someone I would absolutely tell them that the happiness I bring to other is my primary consideration in an informed ethical decision. And if you asked me how I came up with that I would tell you that I considered many different alternatives and came up with that as the truest form of righteousness. You can absolutely test other ideas either in practice or in a thought exercise, and by testing other ideas and coming up with a conclusion I'd think you are using science to come up with that conclusion.

Even if your baseline is something arbitrary and the solution is something arbitrary you can still test the solution against other arbitrary solutions. Sometimes you only have three choices and none of them are perfect but you can still consider them. Consider all the fallout then make a decision, and that still seems like a scientific evaluation to me.

How else would you define that process?

 

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You are still just using science to maximize good feelings.


You can even use science to examine how you think through various moral questions.


None of that proves that good feelings equate to good. One way people can answer moral questions can be based on principles or right and wrong as opposed to predicted outcomes. Good for the sake of good instead of for the sake of an outcome is really where ethics gets interesting.

 

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That's not the sort of science Enkidu is talking about because it isn't objectively verifiable or reproducible by anyone else.


Thinking things through is not the same as science. Science is about subjecting hypotheses to objectively verifiable testing.

If good is a universal truth we are guessing at it, and those guesses can be tested against other potential guesses using whatever baseline we want. If good is just good to you and relative then the potentials for what is good can still be tested and evaluated even more easily.

Either morality means nothing or what it does mean can be tested.

Maybe this issue is much more complex than it seems, and I am not getting it, but you guys seem really confused over nothing to me. whatever morality is, and however you want to define it, you have to make that decision somehow. When you make that decision you can use good rational decision making to do it, and if you consider multiple alternatives and use any kind of rational basis for evaluating it, I think you can reasonably call that science. And I honestly have no idea why you two think you can't.

 

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That's the disagreement. The way Enkidu defined science originally is a method by which you can subject a hypothesis to objectively verifiable and reproducible testing.


You can't do that with moral judgments. There is no way to design an experiment to figure out if you are really right that the best thing you can do is make other people happy.

Hmm. Then maybe I am just a knucklehead. It seems to me that you could do those things. I know calling you a poopyhead would make you sad, but I could still do it and see. Are you saying that thinking it through isn't scientific but going ahead and calling you a poopyhead is? Maybe I'm just poor at understanding science.

The fact that you don't test an outcome you view as probable for rational reasons doesn't seem like it takes that decision making outside the realm of scientific thinking/inquiry.

I thought albert einstein was famous for his thought experiments. I will have to reevaluate my opinion of that clown.

 

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It is very simple and straight forward. You can't prove right and wrong.


The only way to test it is to see how well it lives up to other things that you can't prove are right or wrong.


Right and wrong can be taught and conditioned but ultimately right and wrong is an extension of our biological imperatives that are hard coded and then evolved through society.

 

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Yeah, but no matter what happened that wouldn't tell you anything about whether making people sad is a bad thing to do or not.


The best you could get is to design an experiment to show that most people feel bad about themselves when they make other people sad. But that still doesn't tell you that being sad is bad.


There are some fundamental baseline moral judgments you just have to make before science can help you out. You probably actually only need one if you buy into the utilitarian idea that pleasure = good. From there you can use science to maximize pleasure. But you can't use it to figure out pleasure is good in the first place.

evolved through society ruins your point doesn't it? We have ideals. but you can't prove those ideals weren't learned and tested. Otherwise why would it have been a good thing to kill outsiders when you lived next door to the gauls but a bad thing when you lived next door to the spaniards?

 

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