# Is there any form of ethics that can be based on evidence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 4, 2006, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038 "2006-11-04T00:14:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/1 "2006-11-04T00:14:07Z")
Or to put it another way can any form of ethics be established all the way down including it premises? I was looking at Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and he says that “a rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realized that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffereing of sentient creatures.” But why should we accept this? And why should we care what other sentient creatures feel? The answer cannot be that it will help our happiness (why should we care about that) because we could increase that by hurting other sentient creatures in some cases. Does any form of ethics have to accept its premises as axioms and not based on rationality or evidence? ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/2 "2006-11-04T00:15:24Z")
Could an ethical system just as easily be built on the idea that the ethical thing to do is that which will increase the chances of the survival of humanity )or any other group)? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/3 "2006-11-04T00:21:00Z")
I agree with Sam Harris in general, but you’re right: you have to accept as an axiom that suffering is bad and happiness is good. It all comes down to chemical reactions and electrical impulses, and there is no objective way to say that those are good or bad any more than electricity in a power cable or boiling water in a kettle are good or bad. ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/4 "2006-11-04T00:41:34Z")
I also largely agree that is a good basis for ethics. I also agree with Harris that this creates complicated issues about what sort of duty we owe to animals (since we don’t really know how sentient they are). But then I am left with questions I cannot answer. What do we do if we see a small goup of people about to be tortured and killed by large group of people and the only way to stop the large group is to use deadly force that will spread more death and pain than would the torture and killing of the small group? Or what if we are in a conflict with another society and the only way to win the conflict is by spreading massive amount of death and pain throughout the world. Can we do this in the hope (what if it only a very unlikely hope, a one in a million chance) that we will win and end up with a balance sheet with less pain and destruction than if we did not fight the other society? Is that system impossible to sustain for everybody? It seems to be an evolutionarily unstable strategy. > **[Evolutionarily stable strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy)** > > An evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is impermeable when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set of strategies) which may be novel or initially rare. Introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1972/3, it is an important concept in behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, mathematical game theory and economics, with applications in o In ga... ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/5 "2006-11-04T01:00:33Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com] It seems to be an evolutionarily unstable strategy. > **[Evolutionarily stable strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy)** > > An evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is impermeable when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set of strategies) which may be novel or initially rare. Introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1972/3, it is an important concept in behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, mathematical game theory and economics, with applications in o In ga... [/QUOTE] By which I mean, couldn’t individuals always game the system to extract benefits by defecting from the Harris system? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/6 "2006-11-04T01:29:50Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com] By which I mean, couldn’t individuals always game the system to extract benefits by defecting from the Harris system? [/QUOTE] Yeah, but then they’d be behaving unethically, wouldn’t they. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/7 "2006-11-04T01:49:44Z")
Well, theres the anthropic theory of ethics which says that only ethical systems which allow a society to survive can exist for any length of time. ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/8 "2006-11-04T03:56:33Z")
[QUOTE=Larry Borgia] Yeah, but then they’d be behaving unethically, wouldn’t they. [/QUOTE] I suppose, but does it make sense to develope an ethical that causes the ethical to be exploited at the expense of the unethical? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/9 "2006-11-04T13:01:21Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com] By which I mean, couldn’t individuals always game the system to extract benefits by defecting from the Harris system? [/QUOTE] I’m confused here. Are we talking about an ethical system or a system of law? Ethical systems obviously bind only those who follow them. ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/10 "2006-11-04T16:15:29Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] I’m confused here. Are we talking about an ethical system or a system of law? Ethical systems obviously bind only those who follow them. [/QUOTE] From what I can tell Harris is proposing this system as the best ethical system for the world to take. And I agree it would be very good for the group (humanity as a whole) but the individuals who make up this system could extract benefits by defecting from the strategy. The system would only work if individual humans were to start acting different from how they always have. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/11 "2006-11-04T16:42:37Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com] From what I can tell Harris is proposing this system as the best ethical system for the world to take. And I agree it would be very good for the group (humanity as a whole) but the individuals who make up this system could extract benefits by defecting from the strategy. The system would only work if individual humans were to start acting different from how they always have. [/QUOTE] Yeah, of course. That’s why Harris is bothering to propose it. If we already acted that way, why propose it? ---
**Author:** ![ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/12 "2006-11-04T16:54:50Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Yeah, of course. That’s why Harris is bothering to propose it. If we already acted that way, why propose it? [/QUOTE] But how could it work? It is like communism. A nice idea for another species. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/13 "2006-11-05T07:32:02Z")
I’ve read this thread all the way through (it’s short, after all) three times in the last 24 hours. I’m not clear what is the question/debate. As I read the OP, Harris (with whose work I’m not familiar) is arguing for a pragmatic theory of ethics, as distinguished from a purely logical one. If that’s the issue, I tend to agree. Ethics is a rubric we use for establishing rules for getting along with one another. If the rubric works, it’s a good one. If not, then not. Am I missing something? If so, what? ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-form-of-ethics-that-can-be-based-on-evidence/379038/14 "2006-11-05T10:59:14Z")
It is actually quite interesting. Are Ethics subject to a form of Darwinian Evolution ? - like are Ethics innate because that leads to survival - as a joke ‘The Selfish Ethic’ I did not know about Harris, but I ran into this in the lateish 1970’s, and was extremely interested. If you do a search on SD for FRDE and PARFITT you’ll find a crude explanation of what got my attention. Somehow I suspect that the ideas were evolving in the mid 1970’s and that the attributions are based on survival. To explain, it is possible that we are programmed to behave in certain ways because of evolution - this would be handy because ‘God’ only seems to want to communicate with us by musty tomes, much mis-transcribed, or some strange people with chemically dissordered brains. Crudely put, ‘I behave this way because otherwise my grandfather would have died before producing my father’ is quite a neat way of explaining things. There are interesting by products, marrying Game Theory with Evolution gives one enough of a glimpse of ‘The Meaning of Life and Everything’ to come up with a framework for despising quite a lot of assertions/assumptions that just don’t stand up. In some ways, this is all old stuff, consider the Vampire that walks in daylight - yet there is more in it, the mechanistic framework of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a simple way of demonstrating that ‘Justice is not Fairness’ - it is just the consistency of the rules that matter My opus would be ‘Why did Rawles Exist ?’