On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Steven Peterson <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi Mark, > > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 7:59 PM, 118 <[email protected]> wrote: > > So I haven't read Harris' book. From appearances it seems to be taking a > > view on encapsulating morals into a system which can then be used to > justify > > the morality of the system. As such, a question into the morality of > > creating such a system is appropriate. > > > I don't think he is after an ethical system. What he is doing is > attacking the dogma that science has nothing to do with morals. Once > we agree that morality is amenable to rational inquiry we drop the > relativistic notion that morality is just whatever a particular > cultural group or religion says it is. A culture can be wrong about > what is moral. If he is sucessful in making this case, perhaps > situations like the following will be more rare for him: > Hi Steve, Thanks for that. Now a degree in the philosophy of biology seems a bit meaningless. Kind of like a philosophy of rivers. A philosophy of psychology like James is probably more what it means. In my opinion, a culture cannot be wrong about what is moral because it creates the morality, does not interpret it. If Harris is looking for an overriding interpretation of morality he has to consider that within what has been created by society. The creation of morality itself may follow a template (such as Quality) which is imposed upon us. The clues for the template are provided by its expression. One could say that Science is a branch of morality. That is the expression of moral terms. To stretch the definition, one could say we live in a moral universe which is being depicted through scientific building. Perhaps this is somewhat Platonist in that what is expressed is configured by an underlying essence. I have no problem with a scientific interpretation of morality. It is yet another thing to override morality with science. A painter may paint a landscape but he cannot force the landscape to conform to his painting. Cheers, Mark > > "At the conclusion of my talk [TED], I fell into debate with another > invited speaker, who seemed, at first glance, to be very well > positioned to reason effectively about the implications of science for > our understanding of morality. She holds a degree in genetics from > Dartmouth, a masters in biology from Harvard, and a law degree, > another masters, and a Ph.D. in the philosophy of biology from Duke. > This scholar is now a recognized authority on the intersection between > criminal law, genetics, neuroscience and philosophy. Here is a snippet > of our conversation, more or less verbatim: > > She: What makes you think that science will ever be able to say > that forcing women to wear burqas is wrong? > > > Me: Because I think that right and wrong are a matter of > increasing or decreasing well-being--and it is obvious that forcing > half the population to live in cloth bags, and beating or killing them > if they refuse, is not a good strategy for maximizing human > well-being. > > She: But that's only your opinion. > > Me: Okay... Let's make it even simpler. What if we found a culture > that ritually blinded every third child by literally plucking out his > or her eyes at birth, would you then agree that we had found a culture > that was needlessly diminishing human well-being? > > She: It would depend on why they were doing it. > > Me (slowly returning my eyebrows from the back of my head): Let's > say they were doing it on the basis of religious superstition. In > their scripture, God says, "Every third must walk in darkness." > > She: Then you could never say that they were wrong. > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
