-Scientific inquiry is the only revealer of truth -Philosphy (and similar lines) are only "human approximations" to these truths -Some problems/questions are currently untenable to science, and some of these may remain forever untenable due to complexity issues. -Where unable, science should be replaced with philosophical/etc arguments.
If you're thinking of truth as a representation of reality, as in... objective truth, then I agree.
But I don't think when people talk about human actions being "right" or "wrong" they are talking about that kind of truth. They're really just expressing whether they like or dislike certain actions. So if it counts as "truth" at all it's a radically different kind of truth than the kind of truth where you're trying to describe the world. If you hold that "everyone has a right to life" is true, then it doesn't mean there is some fact of the world that everyone has a right to life. If there was, then you could just measure whether everyone has a right to life and record the result. But there is no such fact one way or the other, there is only our subjective desires... namely, that most of us would like to live, and would like to see others live. So I don't think of morality as involving any kind of objective truth. I used to just take a completely non-cognitivist view where people are just mistaken when they say that moral claims are about truth. But lately I've been liking more the subjectivist approach, where moral claims are seen as true or false, but only for a particular person or a particular society... it's going to vary from person to person or society to society. So it's not an issue of complexity here, it's an issue of there not being a right or wrong answer that science or anything could find.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 03:17 pm (UTC)-Scientific inquiry is the only revealer of truth
-Philosphy (and similar lines) are only "human approximations" to these truths
-Some problems/questions are currently untenable to science, and some of these may remain forever untenable due to complexity issues.
-Where unable, science should be replaced with philosophical/etc arguments.
If you're thinking of truth as a representation of reality, as in... objective truth, then I agree.
But I don't think when people talk about human actions being "right" or "wrong" they are talking about that kind of truth. They're really just expressing whether they like or dislike certain actions. So if it counts as "truth" at all it's a radically different kind of truth than the kind of truth where you're trying to describe the world. If you hold that "everyone has a right to life" is true, then it doesn't mean there is some fact of the world that everyone has a right to life. If there was, then you could just measure whether everyone has a right to life and record the result. But there is no such fact one way or the other, there is only our subjective desires... namely, that most of us would like to live, and would like to see others live. So I don't think of morality as involving any kind of objective truth. I used to just take a completely non-cognitivist view where people are just mistaken when they say that moral claims are about truth. But lately I've been liking more the subjectivist approach, where moral claims are seen as true or false, but only for a particular person or a particular society... it's going to vary from person to person or society to society. So it's not an issue of complexity here, it's an issue of there not being a right or wrong answer that science or anything could find.