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> I think we can defend investigating the latter subjects as a consequence of science's inability to answer normative questions -- science can only tell us what

• woodruffw 8y ago
  > Science is illegitimate to lay down these axioms, but so are philosophy, spirituality, religion, or any other justifications. Where do you we propose that we get our moral axioms from, then? I don't mean that as a dismissal, just to observe that rejecting "any other justifications" seems to leave us incapable of producing real/universal moral axioms. That spells trouble for domains like science, which are generally in the business of distinguishing the real things in the world from the fake ones. > Can you deduce humanism from purely utilitarian axioms? Does it lead to similar systems? How about when one adds bounded rationality? These are scientifically answerable questions as well as questions that I would consider philosophical. I agree that they're philosophical, but I don't think they're scientific as posed: "deduce" suggests a sort of logical proof, one that we'd probably accept a priori (i.e., without needing to experiment or develop any sort of knowledge of the world). Similarly, "similar" in what sense? I don't think science has (so far) given us good answers to the problems of universals/categories/platonic forms, and I think that doing any sort of moral science would require that we first tackle that. > The fact that modern academic philosophy feels unbound to scientific rigor in fields when it does not have to be so is totally unjustified IMO. I think it's worth noting that scientific rigor is not the only sort of rigor out there -- philosophers, especially analyticists, pride themselves on developing clear definitions and using formal logical systems for argumentation. The vast majority of philosophers would not accept gut feeling as a substitute for sound argumentation, nor would they shy away from scientific results as inductive evidence for a claim. I think that is the sort of rigor we should demand from philosophy, not that of science.
  • Iv 8y ago
    Our moral axioms are totally arbitrary and subjective. We do not chose moral axioms that are correct, we chose those that we like. Science car merely explore the consequences of those choices and point possible contradictions but not make that choice for you. In the same way that science can tell you how to create chocolate or vanilla aromas but can't tell you which one tastes better. > "deduce" suggests a sort of logical proof, one that we'd probably accept a priori Indeed, there is a lot of work to do to translate the tools of logic into the domain of morality, define the conditions and limitations of the methodology, and possibly at some point do experiments or observation to check if the model matches reality. Thing is, we can totally approach these questions scientifically and the fact that philosophers do not focus on making the tools to unleash the full power of science over these questions is hard to justify.
    • woodruffw 8y ago
      > Our moral axioms are totally arbitrary and subjective. I don't agree with this, but I'll go with it for the sake of argument. So: if we think that moral axioms are subjective, where does science enter into it? How could we even begin to do science, the field most invested in picking out real things in the world, on a set of axioms that we concede don't map to any objective truth? > Indeed, there is a lot of work to do to translate the tools of logic into the domain of morality, define the conditions and limitations of the methodology, and possibly at some point do experiments or observation to check if the model matches reality. Reasonable. But what epistemic principle tells us that affirming or disaffirming observations are important at all? How can we derive that principle, if it indeed exists? If we're modeling some system of morally relevant actions, what metric are we using, and where did we get it from? You mention "reality," but we haven't overcome the tension between subjective moral axioms and an objective, scientific, decision procedure for moral choice.
      • Iv 8y ago
        > if we think that moral axioms are subjective, where does science enter into it? In the same way that science enters into the making of pink or blue paint. It does not say which color is the prettiest, just how to manufacture them and the characteristics they have. Similarly, science can tell how morality systems appear, are transmitted, what their consequences and eventual contradictions are: You think we should have equality of chances? Here are the likely outcomes given our current society. You think we should have equality of outcomes? Here are the factors to adjust for. Right now, deep learning programmers are having very interesting philosophical discussions on ethics because their models, trained on real datasets, end up acquiring the bias of the real world. E.g. a CEO is more likely to be a man and a nurse more likely to be a woman. They are struggling with how and when correct the biases and when leaving them. We are now rushing laying the theoretical groundworks for a practical theory of ethics because we are the one who will be blame for what our models learn and because, quite frankly, philosophers have not done their jobs there. > But what epistemic principle tells us that affirming or disaffirming observations are important at all? How can we derive that principle, if it indeed exists? That's another conversation altogether, and in our case irrelevant: we are doing science here, even on a philosophical subject. The whole point of science is to build a predictive model of the world that is coherent with observations. If you are doing science, you care about reality matching your model. I know philosophers like to ponder this question a lot instead of thinking about harder practical problems but really, this is a distraction. I find it very reasonable to assume that we care about reality and to ignore solipsism for now. > If we're modeling some system of morally relevant actions, what metric are we using, and where did we get it from? The question of metrics is indeed very important, and economics and sociology have that discussion. They use imperfect metrics and build a model using them, while in the same time trying to get better ones. Specifying a moral system in terms of objective metrics is indeed a first step. Why has there been so little work on this? Things like life expectancy, likelihood of violent death, reported happiness or freedom, HDI, are all metrics that can be used to evaluate if a model is succeeding at its goals. > You mention "reality," but we haven't overcome the tension between subjective moral axioms and an objective, scientific, decision procedure for moral choice. I think this one is simple, (assuming I understand correctly what disturbs you). Do as in math: state what is true, given some explicitly given assumptions. "If we consider only positive integers, then a^3+b^3=c^3 has no solution". "If we consider only numbers in Z2 then 1+1=0"