Is 'scientism' a thing, or just a slur?

[mikkel_the_dane]

You have certainly made a clear case for Scientific Philosophy based on your two definitions of life.

That we are imperfect and fallible human beings that can devise numerous definitions of life does not mean that those definitions are all valid or equally useful.

How so you decide that without subjective bias? I can't and I admit it. So don't just as you can. Explain how you do it!!!

 

[MikeF]

Well, no to the Bold one. Some philosophers do try to do that and others claim is not possible.
In short, the claim is as longs as humans remains humans, it is not possible to avoid subjective bias and there is no version of Objective Rationality. That goes for all of us, including both you and I.

You seem to believe it is possible to Truly Objectively Rational and avoid all forms of subjective biases and not just some.

If Philosophy is not playing the role of arbiter, what is Philosophy's role regarding Ethics? What does Philosophy contribute?

 

[MikeF]

How so you decide that without subjective bias? I can't and I admit it. So don't just as you can. Explain how you do it!!!

I would simply refer you to all our conversations we had last year.

However, each ended with you stating in bold lettering and with exclamation points that you could believe whatever you wanted to believe. I conceded that point then and I reiterate it now, you certainly can believe whatever you want to believe.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If Philosophy is not playing the role of arbiter, what is Philosophy's role regarding Ethics? What does Philosophy contribute?

Well, philosophy doesn't contribute, because philosophy is not a thing or an universal concept independent of humans. It is an inter-subjective human behaviour with some variation depending on how a given individual understand philosophy.

What is it with you and the reification of human concepts and behaviour? There is no Philosophy!!! You can't see it, hold it or scientifically quantify it in material terms. It is subjective and depends on thoughts in brains.

Do you really believe that you are a Rational We and everybody else in this sense different than you are in effect no really a part of humanity, because they are not rational like you. It seems to be that you believe in version of rational which is not real and existent, but a Greek philosophical myth and imagine as being real in humans. Have you ever studied the history of rationality?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I would simply refer you to all our conversations we had last year.

However, each ended with you stating in bold lettering and with exclamation points that you could believe whatever you wanted to believe. I conceded that point then and I reiterate it now, you certainly can believe whatever you want to believe.

So we have established that there is no Objective, Universal, Absolute we for all humans, because we can in effect have different lifes with it comes to our subjective biases. You just apparently believe that iis not relevant to you, because you are without subjective biases in all cases and not just some.

 

[Augustus]

Life started billions of years ago and is a continuum.

That's not close to the same as making a case for when an individual life starts

Have we narrowed the scope of Philosophy, or simply declared Ethics as part of Philosophy's sole domain.

I am trying to understand the role of Philosophy in Ethics. Surely Philosophy is playing the role of some type of arbiter between competing or conflicting subjective opinion. What informs Philosophy to enable it to make distinctions between subjective opinions?

That's a bit like asking what is the role of history in the study of the past.

Ethics is part of philosophy by definition. Just like the study of the past is history. You construct ethical frameworks to differentiate between right and wrong based on values. Within reason, you can't objectively call one better than the other.

If you want to say "now it's science" you are going to have to make a case for how we can get fundamental ethical principles using scientific means.

That we can use science after we have defined these does not make ethics scientific, and doesn't mean science can act as an objective arbiter of different ethical principles.

Just like how we may use scientific techniques like carbon dating to help us study history, but that doesn't make history a science.

 

[Yazata]

If Philosophy is not playing the role of arbiter, what is Philosophy's role regarding Ethics? What does Philosophy contribute?

Philosophy's role in ethics is more often metaethical than it is prescriptive.

Philosophy asks what terms like 'right' and 'wrong' mean. What are people saying about something when they call it 'good'? When they call it 'evil'?

And how do human beings determine what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong?

Those aren't things that one can weigh on a laboratory balance, see with a microscope or measure with scientific instruments.

So are these kinds of judgments entirely a matter of personal intuition?

Is there even such a thing as a moral fact? Or is moral judgment more a matter of taste than truth?

And of more relevance to RF, how are the foundations of ethics any more sound or convincing than the foundations of religious belief?

Those are the kind of questions that philosophy asks. I personally think that they are important sorts of questions.

 

[MikeF]

That's not close to the same as making a case for when an individual life starts

I'll table this tangent for now.

That's a bit like asking what is the role of history in the study of the past.

Ethics is part of philosophy by definition. Just like the study of the past is history. You construct ethical frameworks to differentiate between right and wrong based on values. Within reason, you can't objectively call one better than the other.

If you want to say "now it's science" you are going to have to make a case for how we can get fundamental ethical principles using scientific means.

That we can use science after we have defined these does not make ethics scientific, and doesn't mean science can act as an objective arbiter of different ethical principles.

Just like how we may use scientific techniques like carbon dating to help us study history, but that doesn't make history a science.

I feel like you are deflecting somewhat.

Let's forget about Science and focus on Philosophy.

You state that Philosophy gives us fundamental ethical principles. How is this done? What source is used to justify and substantiate a fundamental ethical principle?

 

[PureX]

That we are imperfect and fallible human beings that can devise numerous definitions of life does not mean that those definitions are all valid or equally useful.

It does, however, mean that any specific definition of 'life' we pose is only valid relative to the context within which it's being applied. And it is to this relative nature of 'truth' that philosophy addresses itself.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'll table this tangent for now.



I feel like you are deflecting somewhat.

Let's forget about Science and focus on Philosophy.

You state that Philosophy gives us fundamental ethical principles. How is this done? What source is used to justify and substantiate a fundamental ethical principle?

No, he doesn't do that. Read all of his posts. You can construct different ethical principles, but you can't construct fundamental ethical principles.
How is that so? Well, it is easy. You can just construct another set of ethical principles, thus there is no fundamental one, because you can use another.

 

[MikeF]

Philosophy's role in ethics is more often metaethical than it is prescriptive.

Philosophy asks what terms like 'right' and 'wrong' mean. What are people saying about something when they call it 'good'? When they call it 'evil'?

And how do human beings determine what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong?

Those aren't things that one can weigh on a laboratory balance, see with a microscope or measure with scientific instruments.

So are these kinds of judgments entirely a matter of personal intuition?

Is there even such a thing as a moral fact? Or is moral judgment more a matter of taste than truth?

And of more relevance to RF, how are the foundations of ethics any more sound or convincing than the foundations of religious belief?

Those are the kind of questions that philosophy asks. I personally think that they are important sorts of questions.

They are absolutely important questions. I certainly agree. If I have given the opposite impression then I can only say I have failed to adequately communicate my thesis.

The question now becomes how do we begin to answer these questions. Where do we start? What is required to make an informed decision?

 

[MikeF]

It does, however, mean that any specific definition of 'life' we pose is only valid relative to the context within which it's being applied. And it is to this relative nature of 'truth' that philosophy addresses itself.

I assume we agree that we are observing real things in the real world in this discussion of 'life'. Can we not generate a set of objective properties or criteria based on our empirical observation?

 

[Augustus]

I feel like you are deflecting somewhat.

Let's forget about Science and focus on Philosophy.

You state that Philosophy gives us fundamental ethical principles. How is this done? What source is used to justify and substantiate a fundamental ethical principle?

Deflecting from what? I think you are looking at the wrong thing.

It seems like you are trying to make a competition between "science" and "philosophy" to see which one is better at judging between ethical values. So you would have a "scientist" and a "philosopher" using their own specialist techniques to judge between alternatives. So you want me to make a case why the "philosopher" is better than the "scientist" in this regard.

My point is that any attempt to create normative moral frameworks and define what behaviour are 'good' and what are 'bad' simply is philosophy.

Normative ethics are subjective value judgements based on reason and intuition. "Philosophy" doesn't give you them by following a formula or something

If you are not familiar with the concepts:

Ethics - Wikipedia

If you want to make the case that science can now answer these questions 'objectively' then make a case for it.

If not, whatever science you use is ultimately dependent on philosophy.

(remember I'm not making an argument that it is a competition for which is best, just that certain problems in philosophy cannot be solved "scientifically" and there is nothing wrong with accepting that)

So, back to the science which you claim could definitively solve the question of the ethics of abortion

 

[PureX]

I assume we agree that we are observing real things in the real world in this discussion of 'life'. Can we not generate a set of objective properties or criteria based on our empirical observation?

When I watch a magician do a magic trick, I am "really" watching a magician perform a "real" magic trick. I am "real", the magician is "real", the trick is "real", and the different experience each of us has of that trick's happening is "real". In fact, NONE OF IT WAS UNREAL. The magician really is a magician, and the trick really is a trick, and I really was fooled by it even though I wasn't really fooled by it because I knew it was a trick.

I say all this to try and get you to understand that reality is all there is. Misperceived, misunderstood, mistaken, mislabeled, or whatever else; it's all "real". There is no "unreality" vs "reality". A theory about reality does not exist in some realm apart from the reality it's about until it's "proven to function" by some physical mechanism. The sound of a train horn does not exist apart from the ear that hears it. They are conjoined phenomena. In fact all of existence is a conjoined phenomenon. All the "parts" of it that we perceive are only being perceived as 'parts' in relation to all the other 'parts' of it that we perceive in relation ... you get the idea. In truth, it's just one big complicated phenomenon taking place in an endless sea of 'nothing else'.

Once we understand this: that any 'knowledge' (of existence) we can seek is contextual, we can begin to see what the philosophers are debating, and why. They are debating the contextual validity of a proposed truth-claim against those of other proposed truth-claims. Because philosophers understand that "truth" is a moving target: that it's contextually dependent. And the contextual possibilities are endless, given that the complexity of existence is endless.

 

[Augustus]

Hmmm. So would you agree with his premise that the terms 'Religion' and 'Science' are labels attached to categories that are not useful? That there are no shared properties that constitute membership in the category religion, nor shared properties that constitute membership in the category science?

Religion is not a particularly useful term as it is almost impossible to create a distinction between 'religious' and 'not religious' belief systems.

Science as a term is more meaningful.

His point was that the word science didn't gain its modern meaning until the 19th C, and neither did religion.

As to sources of value, I only gleaned one, religion, mentioned in the 6th video. What were the others that I missed?

Other than philosophy, I can't remember off the top of my head.

But his idea is simply that science should be directed by values and these have to come from outside science.

 

[PureX]

They are absolutely important questions. I certainly agree. If I have given the opposite impression then I can only say I have failed to adequately communicate my thesis.

The question now becomes how do we begin to answer these questions. Where do we start? What is required to make an informed decision?

Here is where I think we should begin: It is better to exist then not to exist, based on the observation that everything that does exist, "works" to maintain it's state of being. I think that once we accept this as an existential truth, we will have a platform from which to build a proper, functionally positive set of universal ethical imperatives that can then be used to determine the morality/immorality of human thought and behavior going forward.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Here is where I think we should begin: It is better to exist then not to exist, based on the observation that everything that does exist, "works" to maintain it's state of being. I think that once we accept this as an existential truth, we will have a platform from which to build a proper, functionally positive set of universal ethical imperatives that can then be used to determine the morality/immorality of human thought and behavior going forward.

Well, as a skeptic I can find relative contextual limitations to your bold one. So no. In practice your idea breaks down in some limited cases. I know this, because of my wife's work. She works special needs humans and on top of that, I am myself a special needs person.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

They are absolutely important questions. I certainly agree. If I have given the opposite impression then I can only say I have failed to adequately communicate my thesis.

The question now becomes how do we begin to answer these questions. Where do we start? What is required to make an informed decision?

By establishing in part that there in effect is a "we" that is universal for all humans and without subjective bias relative to morality and ethics.

A note. That has been tried for close to 2500 years now and nobody has been able to do it. So I really would like to know how you do that "we"?

 

[MikeF]

It seems like you are trying to make a competition between "science" and "philosophy" to see which one is better at judging between ethical values. So you would have a "scientist" and a "philosopher" using their own specialist techniques to judge between alternatives. So you want me to make a case why the "philosopher" is better than the "scientist" in this regard.

I'm not asking you to make a case as to why the philosopher is better than the scientist as I asked that we set Science aside for the moment. I am trying to find common ground as to what it is that Philosophy does in regards to Ethics. If Philosophy is making choices, is arbitrating between options, what is the source or justification used? How are fundamental ethical principles arrived at?

My point is that any attempt to create normative moral frameworks and define what behaviour are 'good' and what are 'bad' simply is philosophy.

Great. It's Philosophy. Is it permissible to evaluate how Philosophy attempts to create moral frameworks? Is it possible that there can be an inherent flaw in the way Philosophy is practiced?

Normative ethics are subjective value judgements based on reason and intuition. "Philosophy" doesn't give you them by following a formula or something

And here you have introduced a wildcard - intuition.

As to Ethics being subjective, they are not subjective in the same sense as deciding what color car to buy, or whether to brush teeth first then comb hair or visa versa.

There is a recognized weight or consequence to subjective ethical choices. We cannot be indifferent or arbitrary in the way we construct our fundamental ethical frameworks.

Therefore, it is important to evaluate and question how one comes up with a fundamental ethical principle.

You seem to indicate that ethical principles are judged using reason and intuition. Here is my concern. Reason requires empirical evidence upon which to reason from ( outside of pure abstractions such as math and logic) and in discussing human behavior we are not talking abstractions. Intuition is unbounded and includes the infinity of imagination. It is simply an expression of the imperfect and fallible human being and cannot be taken on face value. This, to me, does not appear to be a strong foundation from which to build ethical principles.

 

[MikeF]

Here is where I think we should begin: It is better to exist then not to exist, based on the observation that everything that does exist, "works" to maintain it's state of being. I think that once we accept this as an existential truth, we will have a platform from which to build a proper, functionally positive set of universal ethical imperatives that can then be used to determine the morality/immorality of human thought and behavior going forward.

No real complaint here. Certainly conforms to a Scientific Philosophy approach.