[MD] A Science of Morals

[John Carl]

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:

> Steve, Platt, Mary, and All --



>  In fact, neither Harris nor Pirsig support a concept that will "free
> morality from its social cage."  Social morality IS a conventional precept,
> not a science or a cosmic principle.  As long as morality is thought to be
> "the basis of the world's order," it will never represent the value
> preferences of the individual choicemaker.  Contrary to Steve's (Harris's?)
> FACT #8, no "ought" an be derived from "is", and ideological attempts to do
> so -- e.g., authoritarianism, collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism --
> demean human freedom.
>
>
John)

I dunno Ham.  For isn't "is" actually a species of "ought"?  That which
exists as fact for us, does so because it ought to be, in the perception of
a mind independent of our own.

Facts are not ultimately given, but arise out of this interpretative matrix
which can be construed as "the higher ought".

This should tie them together relationally enough I think, to deal with
Harris's question.

For a Pirsigian, I'd say they come together in Quality.  Or just take life
itself.  Life is and Life ought to be.  Those moral pulls toward more life,
or biodiversity, are moral pulls of something fundamental to being, and thus
demonstrably real.

At least imho.


 Ham:

For me, at least, the star in the controversy over Harris's speech was Sean
> Carroll, a fellow scientist and his primary antagonist.  Here is what
> Carroll said:
>
> "But what if I believe that the highest moral good is to be found in the
> autonomy of the individual, while you believe that the highest good is to
> maximize the utility of some societal group?  What are the data we can point
> to in order to adjudicate this disagreement?


John:

Well the data I'd point to is the inextricable dependence of individuals
UPON a social matrix which trains them to be and think of themselves as
individuals in the first place.

And provides them a context to isolate themselves from.  A man standing by
himself is not a loner if there is no other person in the world.  He's only
a loner if there's a bunch of people huddled around a campfire, and he's on
the outside.



> We might use empirical means to measure whether one preference or the other
> leads to systems that give people more successful lives on some particular
> scale - but that's presuming the answer, not deriving it.  Who decides what
> is a successful life?  It's ultimately a personal choice, not an objective
> truth to be found simply by looking closely at the world.


Sorry Ham, but this guy really needs to read ZAMM.  Where does "personal
choice" come from if not in contemplation of value?

Individuality presupposes Value.

Pirsig's right on.



> How are we to balance individual rights against the collective good?  You
> can do all the experiments you like and never find an answer to that
> question."
>
>

Royce actually has a lot to say on this issue.  Royce was eager to apply
logical rules to the balance Carroll describes and came up with many useful
answers to those very questions.  Of course, there is no one right answer
which covers all cases, all the time.  But there is a right process which
can lead one to the best answer in the moment.  And we can improve our
processes anytime we really care to.

This guy is victim to the same bad screenwriter Pirsig quotes who says "we
didn't get the results we expected. The experiment failed."

Every experiment done in the quest to balance the individual's right and the
collective good yields at least once answer.  Get enough answers and you'll
start asking the right questions.  Ask.  But Ask NOT what you're society can
do for you.  Ask what you can do for your society.

Individuals and communities are co-creative and ethically each should be
focused on the other's good.  Communities should be concerned with the
quality of its individuals and individuals should be concerned with the
quality of its communities.

And I'm sure you would at least agree with me Ham, that as individuals
today, we should especially be concerned with the quality of our society,
because it seems to be degrading at an increasing pace.



> Carroll also had this to say, which was not quoted by Harris:
>
> "There are no objective moral truths (where "objective" means "existing
> independently of human invention"), but there are real human beings with
> complex sets of preferences.



Ok, we live in a pretty big universe, right?  And we have no knowledge of
any life in the universe outside of our planet.  But if extra-terrestrial
life did exist, and such beings were found to have a moral code of their
own, that jived in many ways with human ones, would that obviate Carroll's
bold assertion of there being no moral truths existent independent of human
invention?

He doesn't seem to be a very deep thinker, this guy you're championing.


> What we call "morality" is an outgrowth of the interplay of those
> preferences with the world around us, and in particular with other human
> beings. The project of moral philosophy is to make sense of our preferences,
> to try to make them logically consistent, to reconcile them with the
> preferences of others and the realities of our environments, and to discover
> how to fulfill them most efficiently. ...Which is why it's a shame to get
> the whole thing off on the wrong foot by insisting that values are simply a
> particular version of empirical facts."
>
>

But, splutters John.  That's exactly what he is doing right there!

Starting with his "morality" defined as interactions with other humans...and
all the rest?   Its  nothing but insisting that values are nuthin' but
empirical facts.

Puh-leaze.  How 'bout a little logic, once in a while?


 John