It is interesting to me that you would indict a form which you exploit so well. Reason is the one thread that holds our, indeed all, society together. To be very socially reasonable is to throw such a caveat in your statement as you have (about moderation) . Your disseration to somehow limit reason is overtly filled with what you sought to moderate.
Perhaps I misss the point.
No, you shouldn’t accept it as an equally valid ethic to your own; you should fight against such actions as strenuously as you can, in accordance with your system of ethics. Just like I know that some people hold beliefs over somewhat more controversial matters than I do, but I still fight believing in the truth of my beliefs. Just because other people have different opinions doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to your own or that you shouldn’t fight for what you believe in. I do every day. There’s nothing wrong with believing that your ethical beliefs more closely approach truth than other people’s, as long as you’re open to doubt. Frankly, if you think your beliefs aren’t the closest to the truth, why don’t you believe differently?
I don’t indict reason. Reason, as I have been at pains to say and as I said in the very paragraph you cite, is very important and is a mode of human sentience. However, it is not the only mode, and treating it as the only valid way for humans to think and as a philosopher’s stone that turns base metals into gold is a recipe for the irrational.
As I’ve been at pains to point out, science and reason have no ethical content. They are a consistent basis for negotiation, but they cannot be the origins of ethical belief. The only way for society to come up with ethics with any real ethical content is through humanist discourse. Otherwise they are nothing more than amoral physical laws or determinist dogma.
matt_mcl:
On what basis should we fight? Pistols at sunrise? No, I claim that if our ethics differ, we should resolve those differences in the field of reason.
I hold my ethical beliefs closest to the truth because they seem reasonable: I have reasons for holding them, and those reasons appear valid. I’m subservient to rationality in the same way that I’m subservient to the law of gravity. Neither hampers my will, they merely provide the field on which my will operates.
No, you’ve asserted that fact, not yet proven it.
On what basis should we engage in discourse? Discourse is usually concerned with reasonable debate. You say yourself that “they are a consistent basis for negotiation” (i.e. discourse). Is there another form of discourse to which you are referring?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
That makes no sense. If, as you claim, ethics are derived from reason, they ought not to differ, since the same facts are being treated. On the other hand, if ethics do differ and therefore differ on grounds other than rational ones, then reason is of limited utility (not ‘no utility’) in discussions about ethics.
No, you’ve asserted that fact, not yet proven it.
You seem to have missed where I wrote this. I’d appreciate it if you could respond to it at some point.
Whoops. Sorry. This
should have been in quotes in my message above; it’s a quotation from singledad.
–Singledad
It’s funny, I never thought a pragmatic person such as you would ever say that.
That’s a statement some (aghast) philosopher would say.
Also,
I agree/disagree. Science gives us the truth according to us.
Taking the assumption that our observations are limited, we will never know the REAL truth, whatever that is.
Actually, I take back that back. Philosophers should agree that there is such a thing as TRUTH. We’ve defined it, therefore it must exist. Huh?
There’s always another beer.
matt_mcl:
Rationality is more than just physics and mathematics. It’s about evaluating creative ideas on the basis of logical deduction. Utilitarianism is a perfectly good basis for the rational discussion of ethics. It’s not “grounds other rational ones” (emphasis added), it’s one of many rational grounds.
[quote]
You are fooling yourself. All you can do with reason and the sciences is bring up a list of facts. You need something else to give those facts ethical weight.
[quote]
I would agree that science does not accept ethics as a presumption, but it can deal with ethics as a consequence of observations of psychology.
It is true indeed that facts have no ethical weight. Of course they don’t. They are true regardless of our ethical opinion of them. For instance it is a fact that I will almost certainly die of disease, accident or old age. Whether I ethically agree with that fact has no bearing on its truth.
But real ethics derive from facts.
Fact: human beings are substantially similar to each other.
Logical deduction: What is intolerable to one should be intolerable to all.
Fact: One human being is powerless, many humans cooperating are powerful.
Deduction: It is useful for an individual to trade some of his freedom for the power of cooperation.
Fact: Human beings feel pain; they almost always find such a feeling highly undesirable.
Deduction: (including fact 1), One should not cause another pain.
The fact are the facts. Like them or not, they are true of their own accord, and their truth is verified by consistent observation. Our deductions create our ethics. The quality of our interpretation of the facts and the correctness of our deductions are experimentally verified, for example, by observations of the longevity of a particular society.
That’s a rational deduction from a factual observation. I’m not sure what your objection is here.
Animal behaviorism does not contain ethical deductions. It doesn’t use QM, or thermodynamics either. So what?
Social Darwinism is appalling because it ignores an seemingly obvious fact: human beings are substantially similar to each other. Even so, it is indeed a system of ethics (albeit a flawed one): rationally deduced rules of social behavior.
Beeruser:
I’m a pragmatic person because I’ve determined philosophically that the TRUTH (according to the OP) can’t be reliably distinguished. Or is it the other way around? 
The REAL truth (supposing such a thing exists, which I deny) is what the OP asks for.
Defining something is not proof of its existence, it’s not even proof of its determinability. I can define the statement in system S: “This statement cannot be proved in system S”, but that doesn’t mean that its either true or even determinable (in fact, Godel proved it is indeed non-determinable).
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Just because you’ve proven that you’d find something intolerable if it was done to you doesn’t mean that you’ve proven you ought not to do it to someone else. You could use it to support such a claim, but it doesn’t follow logically. I’m sorry, you cannot take facts, add reason, and derive ethics. You have to add some ethical content somewhere in the mix, and you have to do that by exercising your sentience.
Clarification: So ethics derive from facts. Well, obviously. It would be stupid to come up with a set of ethics that have no relation to the real world. But they do not derive ONLY from facts. You have to add ethical weight by yourself! That’s my entire point. If your only cognitive faculty were a faculty of reason, you could not derive any ethics from that.