But why can't you have a scientific study of normative questions?
I think you can have a scientific study of social norms, and get a nice model for how norms form and where they are rooted in specific properties of the brain and in specific long-existing social institutions and structures.
And I also think that you can have a scientific study of which norms lead to which consequences. For example, you could study whether releasing a certain type of gas into the air is going to increase or decrease the number of living species. But the basic values, like "let's try to preserve life" I don't think can be studied other than in the first sense. In other words, they're not questions that science can provide a convincing answer one way or another.
Where catithat and I disagree, I think, is that he seems to think people get those values from religion. Whereas I think religion is a combination of pre-existing values and random noise, mostly random noise.
Re: religious darwinists
But why can't you have a scientific study of normative questions?
I think you can have a scientific study of social norms, and get a nice model for how norms form and where they are rooted in specific properties of the brain and in specific long-existing social institutions and structures.
And I also think that you can have a scientific study of which norms lead to which consequences. For example, you could study whether releasing a certain type of gas into the air is going to increase or decrease the number of living species. But the basic values, like "let's try to preserve life" I don't think can be studied other than in the first sense. In other words, they're not questions that science can provide a convincing answer one way or another.
Where