As an Atheist - Can I find morality through science?

[Stephen168]

As a sailor, you need all hands on the team so if a man goes over board, it is a loss and pragmatic to save him. His loss means that somebody needs to take up the slack. The loss in man hours can be quantified scientifically.
The moral obligation, the altruistic motive that comes from Natural Law to save a human is not so easy to quantify.
I am trying to remember the Jack London novel about a boat captain who does take out his vengeance on two seamen by leaving them to drown in the sea.

I was thinking the person in distress (treading water) was not a crew member but someone you came upon. Someone who could be an additional mouth to feed depending on how far from port you were.

 

[DebChris]

I was thinking the person in distress (treading water) was not a crew member but someone you came upon. Someone who could be an additional mouth to feed depending on how far from port you were.

I was looking of that idea as well. The crew is responsible for all passengers.
It is part of my understanding that it part of the seaman’s code to rescue those from other ships that may have sunk, or for any other reason found themselves lost at sea. Again, from literature, there is the example of Captain’s Courageous, the young boy who is rescued and learns about seamanship.
It is a moral imperative to save the person.
Anybody who is an EMT,lifeguard, or other First Responder is taught the first rule in any emergency is check for scene safety. Can I rescue the other person without becoming a second casualty?
C.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy states, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

“A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life.”–CK Chesterton.

Courage is a value extolled throughout history independent of religious background.

I likewise agree with Chesterton’s statement in the same work, Orthodoxy.
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason itself is a matter of faith. It is a matter of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction?..’”

Any scientific experiment begins with a hypothesis that is tested and measured. It is questioned by the scientific community, and repeated before the theory is accepted.
There have been drowning studies. Photographic evidence of how long it takes a person to drown, and the actual process of drowning. These led to changes in Lifeguard (no longer called Lifesaving) training. What motivates, moral or otherwise, a person to become a lifeguard is not so easily measured.

 

[Russell_SA]

Perhaps you could develop a morality based on science, but it wouldn’t be anything like our current morality.

Stealing is considered a crime, but scientifically it’s just the acquisition of resources.

Rape is considered a horrible crime, but being entirely logical and scientifically dispassionate about it rape is just another method of reproduction. One could study populations that did practice rape and very well find out that there was more genetic fitness combined with more population increase.

One of my pastors reminds me that we did have one of the most educated and scientifically advanced cultures in the last 70 years - and they came to the logical conclusion that some people were disposable. Godwin’s law and all that.

I believe our morality is based on first observing the human condition and then thinking about those (name removed by moderator)uts and then extrapolating from that data. Fire - hot - bad along with the human condition of empathy and our need for social cohesiveness, we came to our moral system now. Every new generation has to be taught what we have learned so far and if not, then they may repeat past mistakes and experiments that were ran.

Stealing is not logical in a society of abundant resources. Place someone in a social situation where there are limited resources then we can observe competing socially developed competitive drivers like the need to feed your own tribe first over others, the need to feed your children over the parents, and so on. This is common regardless of your society and time frame of reference. These are where sociologist and anthropologists and psychologists are able to quantify that these displays are universal to the human condition. How to implement these ideas is where culture and intelligence comes into play. It’s the old saying, violent movies don’t make murderers. They make murderers more creative. Same for this example. We all will steal food for our tribe and family first but how we go about that is where we show our cultural influence and intelligence for solving those problems.

Rape - I agree you could make a logical argument for rape if you constrain the idea of rape to very constrained parameters of the experiment. Upon peer review of that study, I would be the scientist that points out why you didn’t take in the psychological well-being of the person being raped? Why you left out the objective truth that all humans have empathy and are intelligent enough to understand that targeting one person for rape and allowing that to become the norm could come back on them at some point.

Godwin’s law is a logical conclusion when you restrict your parameters for that logical conclusion to just your tribe instead of all of humanity. That is how that logic fails then. It’s like people that use 3.14 for pi, it works, but it is more accurate to go to even further than just 3.14. That’s the peer review process. I would be the social scientists that points out that the power of one group of people over another type of morality isn’t better for the long term in human well-being because resources ebb and flow and one day their tribe may be the less of the evils in power.

Or is this logic wrong somewhere? I seem to be reading a lot of people’s responses about morality but dismissing the works by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc. as (name removed by moderator)ut to the morality questions. Why is that science being dismissed for solving these issues?

 

[Russell_SA]

While you were schooling me about my poor substandard understanding of faith and hope, you changed it to reason is checked by science. Which is what we have been saying all along.

I’ll appeal to the fair-mindedness of the readers - did I ever imply or state that this person’s use of faith and hope were substandard or dismissed their position as wrong or invalid or belittled anyone’s process of understanding morality, ethics, or anything in this line of dialog?

Sorry that my attempt to tell you about my conclusions and thought processes are looked at as “schooling” you. See this is the problem. Based on this conversation you would get mad at anyone that is knowledgeable about their own process of thought and are able to articulate why their process of thought works for the scenarios that you put forth. I’d better be able to communicate and educate people about my specific lens of how I see the world or else you’d never be able to understand it correctly. If you found fault with my methods, then point that out but getting mad because I’m able to use my tools correctly in all the scenarios you wanted to discuss is not something that will ever bother me. I’m fine if your method works for you but not fine that you’re getting upset that my method works too.

 

[Russell_SA]

“Actions intended to inflict harm on a person are immoral.”

Is that empirically falsifiable? How so?

I believe that with all the data that we use to predict human behavior, we have concluded that, as a rule, harming people with intent to cause as much psychological damage and physical harm as the assailant deems is justified in their reasoning is immoral. This is falsifiable by running these same events and attempting to study the psychological well-being of the victims afterwards. As far as I understand it, as humans, we never respond with an increase in psychological well-being after these events take place. This is quantifiably true to a statistical probability of certainty that, to me, falls in line with an absolute truth of the human condition.

 

[Russell_SA]

Science and Faith do not contradict each other.
I recommend that you read John Newton.
Both John Newton and Chesterfield show how Evolution, which will always be a theory since it can never be scientifically proven, is compatible with Christian Faith. Evolution is a workable theory accepted by scientists that allows continued research. An item can be carbon dated. Genetics can be used in the medical field.

Why would an atheist want to go into medicine? Can he quantify natural law? Yet he does want to heal, which is a moral desire.

There are many men of faith who are also scientists. The first college I attended was a Catholic College with a Chemistry professor, a monk who was actually rated at the time fourth in his field. Biochemists came to the small campus during the summer for seminars from this man.

St. Paul was able to debate the Greek philosophers.using logic as shown in his epistles.

You may lead a moral life an atheist, doing all the right things. What are those quantified? St. Paul talks about the fruit of Spirit, the observable presence that God is working in a person’s life. If there is no God, how can that be measured?

Mathematics deals in proofs, equations and such. Science deals in repeatable modeling of scenarios that help to justify your conclusions of predicting outcomes. They never say that it is 100% true in every tests in the future about an idea that the results will be the same. Just that after enough examination, the predictability becomes statistically no different than X level of certainty. Like how using 3.14 to solve a problem would give no statistically significant change in results if you changed the model to use 22/7 instead. The theory of evolution is the theory of how evolution works, not that it works. We are more sure that evolution works than we are about the idea that gravity works. That’s how I understand it so far.
Yes you can be spiritual and scientific, but you can’t bring spiritually into the lab. Newton was an alchemist by the way and messed himself up on lead a bit. If you are going to help move our understanding of reality further, you have to stop where you can not falsify the conclusions under testing. You can leave you ideas up on the chalk board on where to go further, but until we have the tools and testing processes to falsify it, then it stays on the “idea board”. Look at gravitational waves example. Einstein mathematically concluded that they should be there, but we couldn’t test for them until this year when we found them. This year is when we will begin to teach them as a truth of reality, not a moment before.

 

[Russell_SA]

I don’t see how science could tells us what we “ought” to do.

Among sailors it is a moral imperative to help others in distress. You would not sail past someone treading water.

How would science prove we should help? Or does it?

Human empathy and psychology is what I would use to explain why we ought to try to help that person because we can identify what it would be like if we were that person and would want to be in a society where the norm is to help out someone in need because we may become that person one day. It is a drain on our resources to always have to prepare to only take care of ourselves in every scenario instead of relying on the resources of the group. We’ve evolved to require a social life to keep our sanity. The people that didn’t died out and we flourished because we were able to spread the amount of energy it took to survive around and then have enough energy left over to learn more things like farming, medicine, etc.
Or is my logic wrong here?

 

[benjohnson]

I seem to be reading a lot of people’s responses about morality but dismissing the works by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc. as (name removed by moderator)ut to the morality questions. Why is that science being dismissed for solving these issues?

In my opinion, you’ve voiced the the root question - is the Scientific Method really useful for moral questions?

My gut reaction is no - but that the Scientific Method It’s great for observing the physical universe, formulating theories, and making predictions.

For example, in rape, the victim typically is distressed.

Scientific theory would tell you that you should expect a distressed reaction 99.99% of time and be able to then make accurate prediction. But Science doesn’t tell you that the distress is a bad thing necessarily (giving birth is also distressful) - Science would point out that the tears of the distressed rape victim are in fact a good thing as they flush out debris from the eye.

Science is great for measuring the physical world - but morality is generally invisible and not exactly quantifiable.

For example - can science answer the question: Is stealing 5601 Apples the same as 1 rape? 5602 apples?

Ad I understand it, what make science so powerful is it’s limitation - by limiting the realm of science to the measurable physical universe we can have logical agreement and logical explications.

I’m my opinion, once you push the Scientific Method beyond that limitation, it’s no longer Science.

 

[Russell_SA]

In my opinion, you’ve voiced the the root question - is the Scientific Method really useful for moral questions?

My gut reaction is no - but that the Scientific Method It’s great for observing the physical universe, formulating theories, and making predictions.

For example, in rape, the victim typically is distressed.

Scientific theory would tell you that you should expect a distressed reaction 99.99% of time and be able to then make accurate prediction. But Science doesn’t tell you that the distress is a bad thing necessarily (giving birth is also distressful) - Science would point out that the tears of the distressed rape victim are in fact a good thing as they flush out debris from the eye.

Science is great for measuring the physical world - but morality is generally invisible and not exactly quantifiable.

For example - can science answer the question: Is stealing 5601 Apples the same as 1 rape? 5602 apples?

Ad I understand it, what make science so powerful is it’s limitation - by limiting the realm of science to the measurable physical universe we can have logical agreement and logical explications.

I’m my opinion, once you push the Scientific Method beyond that limitation, it’s no longer Science.

How is he telling your that he didn’t want to be raped not enough and that he can’t wrap his head around any form of justification for what happened to him. Like a child can get upset about being stabbed by an injection, but later you can explain to them why it was needed. Then they are ok with it. We have more data on examining the rape event that just the physical actions, we have the visible emotional responses, we can ask the person how they took the event, we can study how their behavior changed after the event, all these (name removed by moderator)uts into the damage to this person’s psyche and then conclude that those things are were immoral actions land, statistically anyways. There are instances where conflicts of morality come into play like stealing someone’s limited resources because you also have limited resources, etc. But those are just no win situations and we try to build laws that minimize those events from coming about.

Science can look at the level of psychological damage someone took by one action and another action and another. That’s how we learn that some actions are more or less immoral. No amount of stealing apples would equate to the same psychological damage as a rape as I understand things. People in my world would rather starve to death than be raped. It’s about the results of the actions, not the actions themselves that makes the difference.

 

[Russell_SA]

I likewise agree with Chesterton’s statement in the same work, Orthodoxy.
“It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason itself is a matter of faith. It is a matter of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction?..’”

Any scientific experiment begins with a hypothesis that is tested and measured. It is questioned by the scientific community, and repeated before the theory is accepted.
There have been drowning studies. Photographic evidence of how long it takes a person to drown, and the actual process of drowning. These led to changes in Lifeguard (no longer called Lifesaving) training. What motivates, moral or otherwise, a person to become a lifeguard is not so easily measured.

I believe that scientific experiments begin with observing reality first, then attempting to create a model that will repeat that observation. They come up with a falsifiable hypothesis that may be the reason for the event or not. They care about learning how that process worked not that their hypothesis was correct or not and then testing to support their hypothesis. They are attempting to nullify their hypothesis, to run the test that breaks it. If it didn’t break it, then they took what they learned and then create a new test to attempt to break their hypothesis. If they can’t get it to break and no one else can, then it becomes a theory for how that observation in reality works.

Scientists are all people as well with morals and ethics they personally live by. So you could come up with an experiment that would be outrageous and you would be hard pressed to find a scientist that would actually attempt it. It’s easier to find these scientists though in communities where they have dehumanized another group, like Jews, blacks, LGBT, etc. It’s also been the case that the most terrible human rights violations in science were typically funded and directed by some messed up politician. Want to remove blacks from voting and human rights, first dehumanize them socially and then fund a scientist to conclude the black’s genetics and cranial spaces are subhuman in development. Science is a tool but used the wrong way or in the wrong hands, then yes the public can be taken advantage of because of the level of responsibility and trust we put on their community.

I’m curious, what is your definition of the word faith? I have seen it used as, “the hope of what is to come”, “the absolute belief in something”, “the belief in something without justifiable evidence”, and so on.

 

[Wesrock]

I believe that with all the data that we use to predict human behavior, we have concluded that, as a rule, harming people with intent to cause as much psychological damage and physical harm as the assailant deems is justified in their reasoning is immoral. This is falsifiable by running these same events and attempting to study the psychological well-being of the victims afterwards. As far as I understand it, as humans, we never respond with an increase in psychological well-being after these events take place. This is quantifiably true to a statistical probability of certainty that, to me, falls in line with an absolute truth of the human condition.

You’re taking psychological/physical harm being bad as a rational conclusion, not a scientifically verified fact.

I’ve essentially stated that you can measure psychological harm. You can measure psychological well being. The issue is assigning these moral value.

Please explain how “Psychological and physical harm are bad” is falsifiable.

 

[Stephen168]

How is observing the emotional response of a woman going through an abortion not observable by science? If her response is detrimental to her psyche then that experience is detrimental to her well-being and as such falls in to the idea of a moral dilemma. Observing human behavior in situations is always observable in science. This is how we ground our ideas of what is moral or not by understanding how certain choices and actions improve or remove from the well-being of the human experience. I link the idea of human well-being with morality. That is how we know that actions that cause a belly laugh are typically not immoral and actions that cause anguish are typically immoral. This feed back is given to us from the humans that are affected by the actions. Their feedback is what informs us of promoting their well-being and as such is moral or immoral from their reference point. The soft sciences of sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc. are were sciences begin to study the subjectivity of actions that promote human well-being. I’ll reference my example of nutrition again. It is objectively true that good nutrition promotes human well-being but it is subjective to pick apples over pears for nutrition. But objectively bad to drink battery acid. This analogy is the same with social practices that the softer-sciences discuss for human well-being. What social practices are subjectively better for human well-being? But they do know that it is objectively bad to rape another human being, to kill their family members, etc.

The virtue of justice would also say it is objectively bad to murder.

From my world view, the argument for the pro-birth side is that we can empathize with what it would be to be a human who’s entire future is in the hands of someone else and by their actions, not yours, that it put you in this position. If you are able to remove basic human rights to one group of humans, then this could come around to your group.

Yes, justice would say the most innocent would be the last people you should kill.

I can not logically get around the idea that a fetus is a human, just at an earlier stage of development; just as a child is to an adolescent is to a teenager is to an adult.

I know from science that a sperm is not a human being and an egg is not a human being. What is the science that would tell you a fetus is not a human being (a being that is human)?

However, we have determined that the bodily rights of an individual supersedes the life of another. That is why we do not force drunk drivers to give up their organs for the people they hit.

This is a false analogy to carrying a child to term. Nobody is going to died.

Also, this issue appears to be only about women and children because men can just walk away from their responsibilities in this. Imagine how this issue would be addressed in society if men were forced into the situation that women are. It’s like a man and a woman are both in a car that hits someone, but the guy gets to get out and walk away while the woman is forced to be hooked up to the injured person till they recover in 9 months. How messed up is that.

Are you saying the woman should be able to kill the injured person? Is there science to support your answer? Or is there a scientifically proven minimal amount of time we should be inconvenienced to save a live?

Human empathy and psychology is what I would use to explain why we ought to try to help that person because we can identify what it would be like if we were that person and would want to be in a society where the norm is to help out someone in need because we may become that person one day.

Empathy is an emotion which can propel us to altruism.
I find it interesting that the same person to create the philosophy of positivism coined the word altruism as part of his philosophy. It seemed he wanted his Catholicism without the Christianity. He knew more than science was needed for morals.

If 9 months is too long to be inconvenienced to save a live, I can assume that 30 minutes to stop and take a person aboard is a scientifically proven amount of time. If it was only men having to take the person aboard, would it be moral to just leave him in the water?

 

[benjohnson]

How is he telling your that he didn’t want to be raped not enough and that he can’t wrap his head around any form of justification for what happened to him

Scientifically, the creature is indicating it’s displeasure - but you don’t know if should believe it. It very well be lying as far as science is concerned.

Here’s a good overview of the limitations of the Scientific Method:

web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/uarch/commencement/SC1020_1899.pdf

But here’s the quote that we need from it: “First-In collecting carefully authenticated facts as the basis of all generalization;”

You can’t collect authenticated moral facts by any measuring device. Hence, the Scientific Method can’t apply to moral facts.

 

[Russell_SA]

Scientifically, the creature is indicating it’s displeasure - but you don’t know if should believe it. It very well be lying as far as science is concerned.

Here’s a good overview of the limitations of the Scientific Method:

web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/uarch/commencement/SC1020_1899.pdf

But here’s the quote that we need from it: “First-In collecting carefully authenticated facts as the basis of all generalization;”

You can’t collect authenticated moral facts by any measuring device. Hence, the Scientific Method can’t apply to moral facts.

Yes science would take into account the idea that the person may be lying and then factor in a way to account for that. They would not leave out obvious understandings of human behavior. So when they conclude that the person is not lying, wouldn’t they be more justified in backing that position up than just assuming they are lying or not?

I think you are not using facts as I use facts. Facts, to me and as I understand it science as well, facts are just (name removed by moderator)uts of data. The person telling you that they are in pain is a fact, it is the (name removed by moderator)ut of data for that scenario. The conclusions as to what lead up to that observed fact is where the extrapolation of events leads to theories in science. The fact that evolution does exist, but the theory as to what lead up to, aka how evolution works is where we get the title, The Theory of Evolution. You’re coming across to me as swapping out the word theory with fact. It sounds like you are using fact to describe a process instead of the data.
Again to clarify my point for the conversation, I am not here to tell people they are wrong or correct. The above paragraph is how I am pointing out a miss of communication only. An attempt to point out how words are used differently in culture A and culture B. I don’t care what words your use, but I do care if the idea presented was not communicated. That’s where people seem to get upset over.
So back to the example that this point was addressing. In my world view, if a person gives feedback on an event they experienced as detrimental to their psyche and well-being, then that is my reference point for what is moral to them. This is where the gold rule fails, do on to others as you would like to be treated is culturally ignorant. It assumes that everyone wants to eat apples for nutrition because your culture likes apples. No healthy culture ever argues that poison is good for nutrition. You can find cultures now that allow for the rape of women in prison before administering their punishment because of some cultural rule stating that a virgin is not to be punished in that manor. But no one could argue that is a healthy culture. These are the cultures that are arguing that poison is a healthy option for nutrition. That’s soo obvious that I’ll leave it at that.

 

[Russell_SA]

This conversation has devolved into only the religious community playing the devils advocate for my attempt to have a conversation about a different world view than theirs. I’m fine with that, but I’m not fine with how it’s coming across as only wanting to point out the flaws that the other group perceives, but are not really flaws for me. It’s like we are arguing over the 15th decimal place of pi when in real application, any values beyond the 5th decimal place are irrelevant twaddle. Arguing for argument sake is just tribalism and its pointless to continue that line of conversation for me. I’m fine pointing out the differences in the cultural views, but I’m not fine with the conversation only being about that when no one is presenting a bridge to the idea that as long as everyone is a well-balanced health individual in their psyche and socially, I don’t care what world view you take. Sorry but I think that’s really messed up and I’m sorry to bring out that side of everyone.

 

[Stephen168]

This conversation has devolved into only the religious community playing the devils advocate for my attempt to have a conversation about a different world view than theirs. I’m fine with that, but I’m not fine with how it’s coming across as only wanting to point out the flaws that the other group perceives, but are not really flaws for me.

The Advocatus Diaboli purpose was to present an opposing case for which there was a good chance he did not personally support. By calling us devil’s advocates you are saying we really don’t believe what we are claiming. Au contraire. I most defiantly believe science has nothing to say about morals.

It’s like we are arguing over the 15th decimal place of pi when in real application, any values beyond the 5th decimal place are irrelevant twaddle.

I would claim that we have made our case using the whole number and you want to use the 5th decimal place to change the result.

Arguing for argument sake is just tribalism and its pointless to continue that line of conversation for me. I’m fine pointing out the differences in the cultural views, but I’m not fine with the conversation only being about that when no one is presenting a bridge to the idea that as long as everyone is a well-balanced health individual in their psyche and socially, I don’t care what world view you take.

I don’t know of a single philosopher of any weight, atheist or religious, who believes science has anything to say about morals. As I said, the same person to create the philosophy of positivism coined the word altruism as part of his philosophy. He knew more than science was needed for morals, as if he wanted a synonym for Christian charity but without the Christian. The Secular humanist/skeptic crowd has adopted utilitarianism as their ethic, because they know you can’t get morals directly from science. Granted, a minority of them try to claim utilitarianism as a science; which is what I see you doing at times.

I can understand taking a different world view, but in the world of ethics, science isn’t one of them. Unless you are playing devil’s advocate.

Sorry but I think that’s really messed up and I’m sorry to bring out that side of everyone.

Name calling doesn’t help your claim.

 

[truthseeker32]

Morality cannot be determined by science alone. This is agreed upon even by most atheist ethicists. Scientific observation can inform one regarding how things are in the physical world, but not how things ought to be or how actors ought to behave. These are value judgments, which are outside the scope of science. That said, science can certainly inform our ethical systems. For example, if one holds as a moral principle that it is wrong to kill a creature that can feel pain, science can provide such information.

 

[DebChris]

Morality cannot be determined by science alone. This is agreed upon even by most atheist ethicists. Scientific observation can inform one regarding how things are in the physical world, but not how things ought to be or how actors ought to behave. These are value judgments, which are outside the scope of science. That said, science can certainly inform our ethical systems. For example, if one holds as a moral principle that it is wrong to kill a creature that can feel pain, science can provide such information.

This gets to the crux of the matter. Science deals with the observable, the measurable, the repeatable.
An atheist can indeed lead an upright and moral life. Nobody is disputing that fact. The motivation lies in the realm of philosophy or sociology, not science.
Psychological studies have shown the negative effects of isolation, for example.
Positive psychology has shown reduced recidivism resulting from employing hotel greeting techniques and avoiding negative conversations in hospital settings.
Those scientific studies merely show the practical effects which may lead to positive behavior or the avoidance of negative behavior.
It does not however account for altruistic behavior, which as stated lies outside physical science.
Science has a difficult time explaining outliers, those who do not fit within the normal statistical bounds of their studies. They are part of the reason that scientists are loath to say they have proved anything. Indeed, studies merely point to certain conclusions until shown otherwise.

 

[Russell_SA]

Morality cannot be determined by science alone. This is agreed upon even by most atheist ethicists. Scientific observation can inform one regarding how things are in the physical world, but not how things ought to be or how actors ought to behave. These are value judgments, which are outside the scope of science. That said, science can certainly inform our ethical systems. For example, if one holds as a moral principle that it is wrong to kill a creature that can feel pain, science can provide such information.

I disagree because of how I understand the application of my world view. I look at the world for data first and then use that data to make logical conclusions. I equate the amount of psychological and physical joy, pain, angst, etc that someone communicates to me as data into my understanding of universal norms for this creature. That is how I come to understand what actions are benign, better, worse, etc. for the well-being of that creature. Those concluded actions that I apply toward that creature are grounded in my understanding of that creature and I equate that as the reference point for what is morally good or not for it. I have to apply my strongly evolved ability to infer, empathize, the betterment of the community, etc. that are my evolved social drivers as a reference point and filter. I can not help but do this because that is an essence of what I am as this biological creature. That is where I would say I am applying science to come to moral truths about a sentient being. I extrapolate data, look for the common, overlapping norms and then come to justified conclusions about predictive models for how to socially engage that creature. For instance, as a human we all react with “Fire - Hot - Bad” and come to the logical conclusion that burning me is bad, aka immoral. Once I joined a group, we had to take in my feed back for when I accept being burned or not as a moral reference point as well. I could be ok with social branding as an identity label but not ok with burning me against my consent. I don’t see how I can apply logical conclusions first without first experiencing reality as a reference point of what makes logical sense in that reality. That, as I understand it, is how my world view works. You’re group has a different process for looking at the world, but this is mine. I haven’t heard any arguments through this whole thread as to why this process is wrong. I have read where people are applying the same words in different meanings than I would, but we don’t communicate in words, we communicate through ideas.

 

[DebChris]

I disagree because of how I understand the application of my world view. I look at the world for data first and then use that data to make logical conclusions. I equate the amount of psychological and physical joy, pain, angst, etc that someone communicates to me as data into my understanding of universal norms for this creature. That is how I come to understand what actions are benign, better, worse, etc. for the well-being of that creature. Those concluded actions that I apply toward that creature are grounded in my understanding of that creature and I equate that as the reference point for what is morally good or not for it. I have to apply my strongly evolved ability to infer, empathize, the betterment of the community, etc. that are my evolved social drivers as a reference point and filter. I can not help but do this because that is an essence of what I am as this biological creature. That is where I would say I am applying science to come to moral truths about a sentient being. I extrapolate data, look for the common, overlapping norms and then come to justified conclusions about predictive models for how to socially engage that creature. For instance, as a human we all react with “Fire - Hot - Bad” and come to the logical conclusion that burning me is bad, aka immoral. Once I joined a group, we had to take in my feed back for when I accept being burned or not as a moral reference point as well. I could be ok with social branding as an identity label but not ok with burning me against my consent. I don’t see how I can apply logical conclusions first without first experiencing reality as a reference point of what makes logical sense in that reality. That, as I understand it, is how my world view works. You’re group has a different process for looking at the world, but this is mine. I haven’t heard any arguments through this whole thread as to why this process is wrong. I have read where people are applying the same words in different meanings than I would, but we don’t communicate in words, we communicate through ideas.

This is still a matter of positive vs. negative outcomes rather than a question of morality which falls into the sphere of philosophy and natural law.
Social norms do determine what a society codifies into law. Those laws are generally less stringent than those set by the society in which an individual lives. Some individuals may choose to live by norms more stringent than the social norms. Thus you have polygamist societies and those in which being a bigamist is a crime.