“Do no harm”
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From the Wikipedia of “The moral landscape”
“Harris contends that the only viable moral framework is one where “morally good” things pertain to increases in the “well-being of conscious creatures”. He then argues that, problems with philosophy of science and reason in general notwithstanding, moral questions have objectively right and wrong answers grounded in empirical facts about what causes people to flourish. Challenging the traditional philosophical notion that an “ought” cannot follow from an “is” (Hume’s law), Harris argues that moral questions are best pursued using not just philosophy, but the methods of science, because science can tell us which values lead to human flourishing. It is in this sense that Harris advocates that scientists begin conversations about a normative science of morality.”
Analytic philosophy is basically sciences step son and deifys science. I prefer continental philosophy. I think existentialism explains ethics more perfect than science. Using the word science to say it’s an ethical framework is ambiguous. It needs reduction of definition. Science in terms of ethics would be zimbardos prison experiment or millgrams objection to authority. There is ethics violations in those experiments alone which are deemed scientific.
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Idk I feel like a lot of the arguments against analytical philosophy get pretty semantic. For example i totally agree with the premise that we can use science to answer moral questions. The argument against it is that wellbeing is subjective but I think when you get close enough to mechanics of what well being is on the individual level it’s very likely that we could come up with ways of engineering the world that work for everyone
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Can you describe the violations? I don’t know much about the experiments
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Philosophy gives many frameworks to analyze something. Religion and science are Unitarian. Take the trolley example. A trolley is head for 5 people to kill them you can pull a lever to divert the train and kill one, what would you do? How would science answer that? Only philosophical frameworks can. A utilitarian would say do the greatest good for the most, so save the five people and kill the one. A consequentialist would say if you pull the lever and kill the one you’re guilty of murder if you just didn’t interfere then the five would be killed and it would be an accident. An egoist is concerned with their own welfare so they would not interfere. A deontologist is concerned with always doing good so what would they do? What’s good? It’s an ambiguous term. How would a Christian approach the situation or a scientist. There are a lot of ways to analyze the situation using philosophy. That’s what philosophy is good at, giving different frameworks to view things. Right and wrong are not cut and dry.
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Science and medicine falsifies data a lot when it comes to research in favor of money. Take Sam Harris. Do you know when he became famous? 9/11 because people were angry at religion. He and hitchens capitalized on this. Science at work.
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I would just argue that the problem is the people doing the science not science or what science as an abstraction means. To me there’s an obvious answer to the trolly problem given the information you have. 5 lives on its face is more valuable then one. There’s a million ways to complicate the problem but with the information you have the moral thing to do is save the 5. To me inserting science into that specific scenario would mean having all the details about the people on the rails and then making the decision based on that information. I think the reason analytical philosophy doesn’t get the respect it’s due is because we can’t really measure well being or suffering. There’s also this kind of sterile mechanical element to it that I think turns people off.
Edit: you’d also have to factor in what pulling the lever does to the person who has to pull it.
Five bucks says this devolves into a NO FAP thread.
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So isn’t the question is your pleasure better than another’s suffering?
Yeah pure hedonism has it’s limits. Child exploitation is disgusting and rightfully wrong and punishable.
We don’t operate as individuals in a pluralistic society. I think it’s a dumb argument. Individually have fun but not if it affects your society or it’s evil or not good…that is another argument for philosophy but still…
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I put my pleasure ahead of the cow’s suffering.
[ takes another bite of steak ]
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I liked the no fap joke more. #savetheanimals
#avoidfreezerburn
I think with the science talk it’s a begging the question fallacy from what I wrote. To choose one idea over another you must first discredit the first most idea then replace it with a better one. How do you discredit philosophy in terms of ethics? To replace it with something better.
happy birthday dude! 543453
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