I think some forms of debate are improper regarding axioms. I think you should take care when debating axioms to remember that the only refutation is a contradiction. That is not to say you must accept an axiom, you are always free to reject it, but you cannot refute it without showing a contradiction. Regarding arguments as to what is or is not moral, I am afraid there may be systems without contradictions to find. Besides, when talking about moral philosophy your arguments may force your opponent to change their own position; although frustrating and sometimes smelling of an appeal to purity, the change might be sincere and you ought not be too hasty in assuming bad faith.
25% of people believe in astrology. Still. Do you think it is 25% credible?
Here’s a clue - science does not work by popular vote. Even if 55% believed in astrology, it is still bullshit. What is exactly the threshold where you are allowed to laugh at an idiotic belief?
As for vaccines, you are very naive. My wife recently published a book on the vaccine debate, which was good timing. It is in about 500 libraries already and selling quite well. So she is kind of an expert. Anti-vaccine belief has nothing to do with rational thought. There are some who do it for profit, there are some who do it for religion, and there are some who do it to make sense of the world. If a child has been vaccinated and becomes autistic, there are parents who will see a connection even where none exist. Humans are irrational, this can be proven experimentally. I can give you examples having nothing to do with vaccines. Read Thaler some time.
How to handle irrational beliefs is a real problem. Saying they are fine if enough people believe in them is stupid. And dangerous.
Not all incorrect axioms lead to contradictions. If an axiom is a statement of fact, then it can be refuted without even looking at the implications of the axiom.
The axiom “the earth is flat” does lead to some contradictions, but who cares? We have direct evidence it isn’t.
Sincerity has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of sincere and wrong people. I’d say most Bible literalists are totally sincere.
No, credibility and scientific validity (the same thing, really) are in my mind totally distinct from the best public policy. I think public policy requires some other ingredient so as to hold down the various forms of eugenics.
Would you give an example, because I take the opposite view. How can you possibly refute an axiom without showing a contradiction with some other statement? Unless the axiom is itself contradictory…
So it is okay with you that public policy be based on bad science? And eugenics is bad science. Now, people can disagree about which policy direction is based on the facts. Given the composition of the moon, we could argue whether or not a moon base makes sense. But let’s not base our decision on the position that the moon is made of green cheese.
By contradiction I assumed you meant that logical reasoning based on the axiom led to a contradiction. For instance the axiom that a tri-omni god exists can be falsified by showing that no deity can be both omniscient and omnipotent.
In this case we can’t disprove the axiom from evidence. However, the axiom that the Bible is inerrant can be falsified by showing it is factually incorrect. While I would say the Bible states contradictory things and the axiom can be shown to be untrue through this contradiction, theists have created enough workarounds that I think it is better just working from the evidence.
I’m also assuming some level of honesty in interpretation of what the Bible says. There are those who say a day in Genesis isn’t a day. I’ve read the Creation in Hebrew. It’s a day.
In my experience, some neighbors are more moral than others, on balance.
What you seem to be saying, and not for the first time, is that you don’t have a strong moral compass so you rely on philosophical concepts to guide your morality.
Hence your difficulty in choosing one set of moral values over another. Have you considered stoicism? Something tells me it would be right up your alley as a personal epistimology.
Sure. Lots of things are relative and there is no absolute position. I see no benefit in using that as an excuse in order to avoid recognizing and admitting that not all moral frameworks are created equal. Treating others as you would have them treat you seems like a better moral framework than get away with as much as you can for as long as you can.
On the contrary. Nihilism is much more the idea that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you find justification to do what you want to whomever you want, based on unsupported religious and supernatural beliefs. All you have to do is make the correct sacrifices and appropriate propitiations to the correct deity and you’re assured of an afterlife in heaven.
The opposite of nihilism is making lemonade. Which, in the absence of evidence of post life existence, is the only thing that matters.
I don’t think it’s right for public policy to be based on bad science, that is my instinct. But when I think about it, who has the right to determine whether a science is moral or good? Certainly I think eugenics is an immoral science, but if the public at large thinks otherwise do I have the right to storm the Capitol? This then begs the question as to whether public policy should be based on science at all, and I tend to think the answer is no. Rather, public policy ought to be based on morals (or ethics, but I consider ethics to be a subset of morals while you use a different definition).
And then of course I think, maybe there is no such thing as a moral or immoral science. Voyager must have meant “invalid” when writing “bad”. To this I respond that not all forms of eugenics are scientifically invalid. Consider the forced sterilization of those positively identified with Huntington’s disease along with mandatory screening for their immediate family. According to Wikipedia up to 10% of people with Huntington’s disease acquired it from a new mutation, the other 90% would inherit the disease. As a matter of science, I hypothesize that forced sterilization and mandatory screening would, over time, reduce the number of people with the disease.
Of course, I think such a scheme is wildly unethical. But why? Because people have the right to reproduce, the right to privacy, and besides, people can live a full and happy life without ever noticing they have the disease. But why do people have those rights?
Everybody. No, really. Not everybody’s opinion will be informed, but literally anybody can opine and judge on a case by case basis, as well as science as a whole. Because, unlike religion, nobody is the ultimate authority on “science”. There is no Pope, Rabbi or Imam of Science. Science is self regulating if scientists are free to follow the scientific methods that have been established to date and refuse to become dogmatic, like theocrats.
Again, yes. Based on the constitution that you so vehemently defend, you have that right. Have fun storming the Capitol!
Not it doesn’t. Morals are based on knowledge. Based on knowledge and early science, people have largely stopped believing in curses placed by witches. Therefore, there are no longer public burnings. Science in ethics and public policy at work. QED.
Calling Dr. Josef Mengele…
Maybe don’t put words in Voyager’s mouth.
OR, you could leave it to medical science to find a treatment or cure in due time and not implement unethical morality on a population in the meantime.
Because, per the US constitution (which you love) and, more importantly, humanist ethics & morality, people are born with inalienable rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness… etc…etc…etc…
I was using “bad” in the sense the Bad Astronomer uses it. Not immoral astronomer, just bad.
Science is amoral. Good science is supported by evidence and experimentation. Bad science is fraudulent, or misunderstood, or made up.
Bad science with regard to eugenics would be the assumption that two eugenically correct people would always have eugenically correct children.
Which reminds me of this story about George Bernard Shaw where when asked by a beautiful actress to give her a baby who would have her beauty and his brains, Shaw responded “but what if it had my beauty and your brains.”
The fallacy of eugenics right there.
Your example is an ethical question. Whatever your opinion of the answer, isn’t it better to base it on the real data and not made up data?
Remember when some people thought the CERN Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole and destroy the world? That would definitely be an immoral thing to do, I think we could agree. If you ignore that it is bad science to think that this would happen, you’d have no recourse but to shut it down. So, bad science in both meanings of the word, but the immoral science meaning is irrelevant science the science is bad in the technical accurate meaning.
Mengele’s actions would be immoral no matter whether he did them for “science” or he did them for amusement. And they’d be immoral even if his science was good.
Experimental subject review boards don’t only look at the quality of science in the experiment (not sure they look at that at all) but they look at the ethics of what is going to be done to the subjects. That’s an example of how these things are separated in the real world.
I’m not sure if you answered my question. If the vast majority of your neighbors say (with sincerity) an act is moral does not that constitute evidence that the act is moral in the eyes of your neighbors?
I have a strong moral compass, but I suppress it because I cannot justify my own beliefs. Besides, even my belief system is incomplete as I am quite indifferent on many issues for no reason but pure ignorance. While I am a fan of propositional logic, Stoic mysticism (which underlies their physics and morals) is beyond me yet.
What exactly do you mean when you say “not all moral frameworks are created equal”? By what standard are you measuring moral frameworks?
Then you and I have been arguing over Pratchett when we should have been arguing over the meanings of words. What you call nihilism I call religion[1]; what you call the opposite of nihilism, I call existential nihilism[2]. I usually adopt others definitions but yours seem so out of touch that I politely request you adopt mine, unless you think this will hamper your ability to continue debate.
Now that we’ve sorted that out, I’ve lost track of whatever point was being made with Pratchett to begin with.
~Max
[1] “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.”
Religion. (n.d.). Lexico. Retrieved from Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words on June 25, 2019.
[2] “Existential nihilism is the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and it is, no doubt, the most commonly used and understood sense of the word today.” (emph. mine)
Pratt, A. (n.d.). Nihilism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on June 25, 2019
Of course, I agree instinctively. I can’t back it up to my satisfaction. But if everybody has the right to determine whether a science is moral or immoral, who has the right to prohibit the exercise of that science with the threat of force?
The public at large could write eugenics directly into the constitution, invalidating your argument.
Therefore there are no longer public burnings, you didn’t explicitly say anything about whether public policy should be based on science. I tried and failed. If you try and do so, I suspect your argument will assume the conclusion.
I could have waited and asked him, but I have been told (by others) this comes off as Socratic and annoying. So I didn’t.
I do not find your implication convincing: potential future technology does not make currently available science any less valid now. Even if we had a magic wand which would cure a person of Huntington’s disease in an instant, this does nothing to actually invalidate my hypothesis.
As I said before, the Constitution is subject to amendment. Anyways, the Constitution does not mention inalienable rights, the Declaration of Independence does. To assume humanist ethics and morality can justify my rejecting a democratic policy by force or fiat, however inhumane you think it is, is no different than assuming a religion can do the same.
Didn’t want to leave you hanging, Max. Just wanted to admit to making some poor arguments and careless errors. You’ve provided some interesting challenges for me to consider. I will have to abandon (concede?) the debate because I can offer little in the way of rebuttal without conjecture, except to reiterate that secular moral frameworks hold far more appeal for me than any religion based moral frameworks due to the inherent flaws of the latter, which are well catalogued by now.
Sterilization is not science, it is a policy. The science there would be the studies showing the how many would inherit the disease. I agree it is unethical, and bad policy since if one can tell if a fetus has inherited the disease abortion is an option.
Where is the science here, besides the statistics and genetics?
BTW, science indicating unpleasant things is still good science if done properly.
