Morality has nothing to do with Science.

Sorry, I messed up our quotes. Here's the correction.

DrewDad wrote:

Thomas wrote:
3) In your opinion, would it be reasonable of me to ask the professor for alternatives, and for evidence of their moral superiority?

I would not find such an approach unreasonable.

So your answer to ebrown's original thesis would be that it's wrong -- that moral judgments are, at least in part, judgments about something that's real, that we can learn about through evidence, and that we can meaningfully reason about. Is that fair to say?

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@dagmaraka,

dagmaraka wrote:

intrinsic? it would have no meaning if we lived each alone on an island. the code of ethics - how we decide internally what is and what is not moral - comes from somewhere. we don't suck it out of thin air, but largely from the society around us. system of values is built in a constant dialogue with the social environment, thus it is not really intrinsic. ethics without society has no purpose.

I disagree completely. If our societies and upbringings had a such the influence that you claim, then no one would ever make up their own minds. No one would ever leave their religion. There would never be anyone avoiding going to war on moral grounds. Everyone would just accept the complete truth indoctrinated in them from their upbringing.

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BTW, read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He explains it far better than I ever could.

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@Wilso,

perhaps you disagree completely, but your post does not go against mine. the fact that our values are shaped to the large degree by society does not mean we don't have brains and opinions to use them as we deem appropriate. but we did not create them in a vacuum, that's all. even our own conscience is conditioned by society. what's wrong and what's right only makes sense in a society. without people (more than one), "moral" or "immoral" doesn't even exist.

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@edgarblythe,

thats true

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A Harvard scientist came out with a book on morality last year. Can't recall the name, but I'll look it up. He, as you may well predict, talked about universality of the moral instinct. And around the same time, a couple of authors did a metanalysis on the research done on morality over the years, and they said pretty much the same thing.

This research did not set out to establish any norms for normal behavior; rather it was trying to find out if our brains have picked up morality over the course of evolution. Seems like they did.

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@ebrown p,

OK, Mark Hauser is the Harvard guy, and the metanalysis was done by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt had something to say about political affiliations too.

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Morality has nothing to do with Science.

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