-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On 09/08/2014 12:57 PM, SS wrote: > On Mon, 2014-09-08 at 11:37 +0200, Dave Long wrote: >> (to what degree do the philosophers and the priests differ from the >> fiction writers?) > > Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but Sci Fi writers ( to > the extent that I have read scifi in recent decades) generally do not > deal in questions of morality except in terms of some power or entity > who is a threat to humanity or something that restricts rights.
I would certainly agree that not all science fiction deals with morality, unlike philosophy/religious (although I'm tempted to point out the bits about things like origin stories, or a chunk of Greek mythology, where there's just random stories about the Gods that don't have much moral focus) assuming we use > principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good > and bad behavior. as the definition of morality, I think amongst other examples Ray Bradbury's work certainly deals with issues of morality. Admittedly, sci fi doesn't always explicitly spell out the reasons why some action that is considered moral/immoral is actually the opposite, so they tend to attack more obvious topics, but they still focus on morality. Specific examples would be censorship from `Fahrenheit 451' and multiple issues in `The Martian Chronicles'. The television show Babylong 5 definitely deals with morality as well. Other obvious general definitions are: what an ideal society looks like, and the fate of the universe or man, but I'm just going to leave this article from Spectacle [0] here because many of the examples I'm remembering are partly derived from this article anyway. > Philosophers and priests tend to address morality. Morality is > generally a restriction of rights. The proof through a story about how something deemed immoral but is not actually immoral wouldn't deal with the restriction of rights. It would deal with them in the context of showing why they aren't, but something deemed moral doesn't have to inherently be a restriction of natural rights. Presumably natural rights deals with moral issues after all (or did I just misinterpret that statement) > Sci Fi can be taken as one type of literary output from societies > where science and technology have profoundly influenced the lives of > people in those societies. The creation of science fiction (as > opposed to pure fiction) I believe has occurred only in some > societies. If the "mood" of SciFi output has changed over many > decades from positive to negative, it could possibly indicate a > change of attitude about the future in that society. But this would > be a sociological judgement, unless I am mistaken. > > Strictly speaking I don't think the societal issues that Sci Fi > writers deal with coincide with the issues that priests and > philosophers deal with. The common areas are restricted to where > science has affected morality - and to that extent science and > morality have come into conflict. I am not sure if Sci Fi writers > have taken sides on these issues. > > Once again, please correct me if you think I am wrong. The "science" > (if that is what it is) of sociology came up only because of the need This is just a massive personal bias in definition but: the science of anything is the correct application of mathematics to a field of study, because maths is how you actually define the relationships between two or more constructs as an entity rather than an untestable hypothesis. > to study non western societies and document the differences between > the "normal" society of the sociologist with the exotic "other" > society. Not a lot of effort was expended in "observing" western > societies from the outside because all sociologists were from within > western societies and were unable or unwilling to comment on western > societies that funded their work and left it to the priests, > philosophers and more recently Sci Fi writers. So following the above, sociology that actually used statistical methods correctly (Otis Duncan is an important example) was/is a science, even if it only studied western societies. The lack of representative sampling for the world simply means that you can't generalise models that fit the sampled society to non-western societies without rigorously testing that assumption that the model is invariant across those cultures. I'll certainly agree that psychologists (much to my deep annoyance), sociologists, and others ignore, or simply do not know/understand, many of the assumptions that are built into statistical models, (e.g., ones who tried to understand Chinese culture using US sampled models, or those who just kinda looked at things and guessed in the dark) do not deserve the title of scientist though. happy to have something to contribute finally, landon Please note that I don't agree with everything the author states in the following link (the mildly rampant christian morality viewpoint especially), but I certainly think it represents sci fi that concerns morality. [0] www.spectacle.org/396/scifi/pavlac.html > But surely it would have to be sociologists, more than any other > people who would be able to comment with authority and knowledge on > all societies and express some opinion on features of societies that > may be negative or positive. If they don't know who would? > > shiv > > > > > > - -- Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJUDlcJAAoJEDeph/0fVJWsm6EP/i+QcDnBjoGIpq51rpk5zAb9 lW49DsQ8pWv4ntlxoVJkgCmMtGkZP4zWIVyaUY2XCDL8vf7lpPDgs0ah5oPRulyl RuI0hhaipPQCo9p9bMjE27DVnGONWqGeFZwfOmTTOTn4DWB006qDPLPX8nVVTL4w JkhRSVO/z3SyMwAtUvVPg9OFUd7loJGAnKyVQ1Zjo0pGortrQj+Ka6i2yVklApd9 h9Cbt9ZGIZvXrDvVzJ2AKPIcm2/DvFvaPUg7vSnKh68uWgwFvyN6wrz/bEf57KoY yigc6EsML7KqJYtdgCoWZyYKHSGCvs1KZXmnZERvZGbTu0q2zz5haXTSzvoFaCyB fghUo/lagW3P2oYUhPL4MfwGoMgwTymKhAa+Xml0hc8TLQe1vdtZJdsztfZW3K/u E1+o3K5chpj4BM06AFis5SDleiuTfGCvlVeyQOiaMWgJem+SqZvqM27G0hK9mq0e 1cwdEfBjUcFoWxzTtNTixvR9S/I35exoVjVeqQqBV7ar9TU9I8DMu11vCRzfhVdd 51u6zOOuFCiWFrwh9meDKzHcWDt9lJJ5NcQlBCIGNW6KmxKpczT93N6oVGNs1/Rh QkTey4mmwkCSPzzP+CTVrVyhKuLztH0KSTZhtN4xmJ2nHuYuEc9XxnApyyds/ECu 1s4ddsJbo8rwj1B4j4UC =lB4y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
