First, let's work in the framework that "creating a thriving global civilization" is used as our metric for success, which can be measured by a few things like population level, lack of poverty, education level, and self-professed, sincere happiness to start. Just assume this for now.
If your plan is to assume something is ethical, then it sounds like you don't plan on trying to demonstrate it's ethical via science. But you do say "for now" so perhaps you imagine that in the future we'll be able to prove that a thriving global civilization is what everyone ought to aim for?
You might try to claim that that's what everyone means when they say something is ethical, or that everyone has the same intuition there, but that's clearly false. (I'll get to that in a minute.)
Also, the premise you're starting from is to vague to correspond to science, but let's ignore that for now and focus on what such an ethical framework might imply. I think if you were to claim that actions are ethical if and only if they support a thriving global civilization... then you'd run into some pretty bizarre implications. For example, if that's your metric, then parents should not be telling their kids "eat your dinner, because there is someone starving in Africa." Instead they should not allow their kids to eat at all... because that food could be used to keep at least 5 kids in Africa from starving one more day. According to your "scientific" framework for ethics, it is a sin for anyone in the first world to eat when they could be feeding multiple people in the developing world. And it's a sin to care more about your own kids than someone else's. Personally, I would disagree, although I don't think there is any objective reason for that, I just think different people have different moral intuitions about stuff like that.
Also, the thing most usually associated with "thriving" in science is population growth, and it's not clear at all that expanding the population is ethical. Indeed, that would seem to imply that the Pope is right, and that birth control is indeed a sin... since it would limit population growth.
Ayn Rand would be an example of someone who would be an extreme opponent of the view you're describing, where the health of the global population is what matters ethically. She argued that it was not only not virtuous to sacrifice yourself for society, but downright evil. Anyone who is concerned with the thriving of the global population more than with their own individual happiness is evil according to Ayn Rand. According to you and Sam Harris, though, she is evil. (And I think a lot of Sam Harris's moral intuitions may come from Buddhism, I read somewhere that he is a Buddhist--although I should check on that.) So is Harris right and Ayn Rand wrong, or is Ayn Rand right and Harris wrong? How could science settle that? I don't think there is a way for it to settle that dispute, even in principle.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 02:59 pm (UTC)First, let's work in the framework that "creating a thriving global civilization" is used as our metric for success, which can be measured by a few things like population level, lack of poverty, education level, and self-professed, sincere happiness to start. Just assume this for now.
If your plan is to assume something is ethical, then it sounds like you don't plan on trying to demonstrate it's ethical via science. But you do say "for now" so perhaps you imagine that in the future we'll be able to prove that a thriving global civilization is what everyone ought to aim for?
You might try to claim that that's what everyone means when they say something is ethical, or that everyone has the same intuition there, but that's clearly false. (I'll get to that in a minute.)
Also, the premise you're starting from is to vague to correspond to science, but let's ignore that for now and focus on what such an ethical framework might imply. I think if you were to claim that actions are ethical if and only if they support a thriving global civilization... then you'd run into some pretty bizarre implications. For example, if that's your metric, then parents should not be telling their kids "eat your dinner, because there is someone starving in Africa." Instead they should not allow their kids to eat at all... because that food could be used to keep at least 5 kids in Africa from starving one more day. According to your "scientific" framework for ethics, it is a sin for anyone in the first world to eat when they could be feeding multiple people in the developing world. And it's a sin to care more about your own kids than someone else's. Personally, I would disagree, although I don't think there is any objective reason for that, I just think different people have different moral intuitions about stuff like that.
Also, the thing most usually associated with "thriving" in science is population growth, and it's not clear at all that expanding the population is ethical. Indeed, that would seem to imply that the Pope is right, and that birth control is indeed a sin... since it would limit population growth.
Ayn Rand would be an example of someone who would be an extreme opponent of the view you're describing, where the health of the global population is what matters ethically. She argued that it was not only not virtuous to sacrifice yourself for society, but downright evil. Anyone who is concerned with the thriving of the global population more than with their own individual happiness is evil according to Ayn Rand. According to you and Sam Harris, though, she is evil. (And I think a lot of Sam Harris's moral intuitions may come from Buddhism, I read somewhere that he is a Buddhist--although I should check on that.) So is Harris right and Ayn Rand wrong, or is Ayn Rand right and Harris wrong? How could science settle that? I don't think there is a way for it to settle that dispute, even in principle.