maybe nothing will tell you that ever. Does that mean you can't use science to see?

 

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Many of our morals are learned obviously.


You are also giving example of morality based on outcome which is actually one of the most primitive forms of morality by today's standards.

 

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Of course not. Nobody in this thread disagrees with that.


Once you decide making people happy is a good thing science can help you out in all kinds of ways at knowing what to do to make other people happy.

In addition, to Yuki's comments. Happiness is a relative position. This is exactly why moral knowledge cannot be based on objective/empirical experience of the natural world. Kant would say that if we have moral knowledge at all we would have the ability to know a general moral truth of which we can deduce specific conclusions. We would then be able to know this truth from the basis of experience only by generalizing from examples of right and wrong that we encounter from experience. However, what about specific acts of cruelty that are done for fun (happiness). How can science say that act done to increase happiness/fun is actually right or wrong? We have to infer it from a general moral truth, but for science to explain how we know that general moral truth we must experience specific examples of right and wrong...this leads to a big circle of where we began. The only way to avoid this circle is the assumption that we know a priori that some acts are wrong. In general, no moral knowledge is based solely on experience. Moral naturalism/scientism cannot, therefore, provide an appropriate ontology for moral knowledge.

Again, you are missing the point. How we think about anything doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is always informed by our knowledge. How we get that knowledge deterines how trustworthy the information is. If you depend on intuition your information will be less trustworthy than if you explored the issue. You guys keep coming back to intuition as your default position and it's unreliable. So why keep coming back to it?


It's insane.

 

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So the heart of the matter is, you don't like that the only reasonable explanations on morality come from those outside of naturalism/science. It goes against your worldview, of what I can tell is strong reductionism.

What you use to determine your morality isn't for me to like or dislike, I really don't care.


You, on the otherhand, should be very concerned, because you are purposefully choosing to use an unreliable appeal to make important decisions in your life. Knowing this your choices are to rethink your positions using a more reliable appeal or live with the consequences of your hubris.

 

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So you are making the claim that science should be used but have yet to demonstrate how it can actually derive the assumptions in question.


I think it is a rather uncomfortable conclusion but our decisions are up to us. All of those other appeals to knowledge or certainy can't overcome the fact that we have to make a choice.


There are a lot of people that have a hard time making any choice because of this. They will research every decision to a crazy degree but the final leap is very difficult for them.

 

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What assumption?

 

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You are assuming what is good.


Seriously dude it is page 4, wtf?

 

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