Also, the questions you pose presuppose that the right way to think of morality is in terms of a notion of value of lives - many ethicists argue that actions are the things that are fundamentally right or wrong, rather than deriving their status from a summation of the values of the outcomes. If they're right, then your questions would be like "what is the viscosity of the ether that the earth drags as it orbits the sun?"
I think this part only furthers my point. These questions cannot be settled by science, that's why you have philosophers of ethics weighing in on them trying to sort things out. Not only do I not think science can answer "how many kittens is one human life worth?" but I don't think it can even answer "which is the better ethics--deontological or utilitarian?". I think there are parts of our brain involved in giving us both deontological intuitions *and* utilitarian intuitions, and we use different ones at different times. You can do countless surveys of how many people respond which way to different trolley problems phrased in different ways, and you can learn interesting things about how people think. But what you won't learn from that is which people are "right" and which people are "wrong" if any.
Your question about whether evidence should inspire belief is a repeat of an earlier thread you and I had... although it does seem to keep coming up, so I think this is probably the most important and interesting philosophical disagreement you and I have. I think you phrased it in an even more clever and insightful way this time than last. And it definitely gives me a sense for why you think the way you do about ethics. But it's not the way I think--my intuition is that you are disguising a question about "is" as a question about "ought" through clever wording... but I will have to think about how exactly to answer it. Will get back to you soon after thinking about it more.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: religious darwinists
Date: 2010-10-13 08:16 pm (UTC)Also, the questions you pose presuppose that the right way to think of morality is in terms of a notion of value of lives - many ethicists argue that actions are the things that are fundamentally right or wrong, rather than deriving their status from a summation of the values of the outcomes. If they're right, then your questions would be like "what is the viscosity of the ether that the earth drags as it orbits the sun?"
I think this part only furthers my point. These questions cannot be settled by science, that's why you have philosophers of ethics weighing in on them trying to sort things out. Not only do I not think science can answer "how many kittens is one human life worth?" but I don't think it can even answer "which is the better ethics--deontological or utilitarian?". I think there are parts of our brain involved in giving us both deontological intuitions *and* utilitarian intuitions, and we use different ones at different times. You can do countless surveys of how many people respond which way to different trolley problems phrased in different ways, and you can learn interesting things about how people think. But what you won't learn from that is which people are "right" and which people are "wrong" if any.
Your question about whether evidence should inspire belief is a repeat of an earlier thread you and I had... although it does seem to keep coming up, so I think this is probably the most important and interesting philosophical disagreement you and I have. I think you phrased it in an even more clever and insightful way this time than last. And it definitely gives me a sense for why you think the way you do about ethics. But it's not the way I think--my intuition is that you are disguising a question about "is" as a question about "ought" through clever wording... but I will have to think about how exactly to answer it. Will get back to you soon after thinking about it more.