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There is distinction between investigating how people’s moral intuitions work, which science can do, and answering the question “what is actually Good.” Many ma

There is distinction between investigating how people’s moral intuitions work, which science can do, and answering the question “what is actually Good.” Many materialists would say the latter question doesn’t have an answer, because there is no such thing as morality outside of human opinion.

UnFleshedOne 7y ago
I generally agree with that, but would extend it to hypothetical other sentient beings, artificial or otherwise. With every species having potentially distinct moral frameworks that can have different answer to that question. You could say I'm a species-level moral relativist. :) Still, answering "what is actually Good" is not a trivial question because self-contradicting moral intuitions are too easily confused. Here is where science works better than other approaches (most of which involve just intuiting harder or relying on sloppy intuitions of ancients) -- if for example you value individual rights and have to decide if mandatory vaccinations are a Good or a Bad thing, there is no substitute to using a scientific approach, investigating outcomes as fully as possible and then morally intuiting at those much more fleshed out scenarios. Let say you found out that mandatory vaxxing everybody would save X number of people, kill Y number with side-effects that would otherwise survive, cause Z amount of secondary goodness (ie some members of public becoming less selfish) and Ω amount of secondary badness (ie other members of public becoming paranoid and state authoritarian). Now you can look at those projected outcomes and weigh them using your conflicting intuitions and decide which parts you care more about. And if numbers change, maybe your judgement also changes.
- dabbledash 7y ago
  I think we may be talking past each other. You can certainly use the scientific method to help you maximize utility, but it can’t tell you that maximizing utility is Good.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    What I'm trying to say is that "Good" is what your moral intuitions (however you got them) tell you is Good. There is no goodness without a conscious being it would apply to. There is no way to consider something as Good if all your nature screams at you that this is evil. (I will leave Christian concept of Good God running Hell for eternity out of the picture for now). A separate claim is that those intuitions are a result of long evolution and are a bunch of heuristics that tend to increase gene survival and propagation, plus a bunch of accidental not too detrimental for that purpose rules. Most likely not an absolute optimum set too. A meteor smashing into a mountain on the moon is neither good nor bad. What's good for a human and what's good for an octopus and what's good for our upcoming robot overlords can be completely different.

UnFleshedOne 7y ago

I generally agree with that, but would extend it to hypothetical other sentient beings, artificial or otherwise. With every species having potentially distinct moral frameworks that can have different answer to that question. You could say I'm a species-level moral relativist. :) Still, answering "what is actually Good" is not a trivial question because self-contradicting moral intuitions are too easily confused. Here is where science works better than other approaches (most of which involve just intuiting harder or relying on sloppy intuitions of ancients) -- if for example you value individual rights and have to decide if mandatory vaccinations are a Good or a Bad thing, there is no substitute to using a scientific approach, investigating outcomes as fully as possible and then morally intuiting at those much more fleshed out scenarios. Let say you found out that mandatory vaxxing everybody would save X number of people, kill Y number with side-effects that would otherwise survive, cause Z amount of secondary goodness (ie some members of public becoming less selfish) and Ω amount of secondary badness (ie other members of public becoming paranoid and state authoritarian). Now you can look at those projected outcomes and weigh them using your conflicting intuitions and decide which parts you care more about. And if numbers change, maybe your judgement also changes.

dabbledash 7y ago
I think we may be talking past each other. You can certainly use the scientific method to help you maximize utility, but it can’t tell you that maximizing utility is Good.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  What I'm trying to say is that "Good" is what your moral intuitions (however you got them) tell you is Good. There is no goodness without a conscious being it would apply to. There is no way to consider something as Good if all your nature screams at you that this is evil. (I will leave Christian concept of Good God running Hell for eternity out of the picture for now). A separate claim is that those intuitions are a result of long evolution and are a bunch of heuristics that tend to increase gene survival and propagation, plus a bunch of accidental not too detrimental for that purpose rules. Most likely not an absolute optimum set too. A meteor smashing into a mountain on the moon is neither good nor bad. What's good for a human and what's good for an octopus and what's good for our upcoming robot overlords can be completely different.