Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

In Scientific American October issue 2006 page 3:
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Scientific research delas in what is measurable and definable; it cannot begin to study what might lie beyond the physical realm or to offer a comprehensive moral philosophy.

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The first sentence is obviously correct but what would lie beyond the physical realm? To me everything lies within the physical realm, if something would come up (witches with magical power for instance), then this would be incorporated into science (I don't see exactly how in that case but still).
This is however somewhat besides the point. My question (see title) is about the last statement. If a society sets up clear-cut goals, would it not be possible for a theory of humans to come up with an optimal moral philosophy?

Reasonable goals could be:
Everybody should feel safe.
Everybody should be able to have an interesting job.
etc.

This is of course not a complete list but you get the point. So, is it possible? If not, why?

I understand this might disturb religious readers, but please do not reply. Keep this thread non-religious, only science comments please!

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

It's way too complex for nowadays' science.

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

Yes, of course. It is a theoretical question. But one always start with the most simple case. That is, simple rules and simple humans. Maybe not too far away?

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

Darth,

[ QUOTE ]
If a society sets up clear-cut goals…

[/ QUOTE ]

Then yes, to this:

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…would it not be possible for a theory of humans to come up with an optimal moral philosophy?

[/ QUOTE ]

Otherwise (without the first quote), the answer is no (to the second quote).

(Btw, I assume you mean to ask whether it is theoretically possible, not “for a theory of humans”.)

For the record, I ignored this:

[ QUOTE ]
I understand this might disturb religious readers, but please do not reply. Keep this thread non-religious, only science comments please!

[/ QUOTE ]

Not because it offends me as a “religious reader”, but it offends me logically.

RJT

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

I mean having model of simplified humans and with given rules, construct an optimal moral philosophy. It should be possible to refine the model desired accuracy.

I'm sorry you were offended. It just seemed to me that many threads here are littered with religious discussions and I didn't want that.

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

It might be possible, but you'd have to come up with a name for it, like Secular Humanism

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

I wasn’t really offended, I just phrased it that way because of the way you phrased your sentence. Also, I was kind of paraphrasing Seinfeld when he said, “ I am not offended as a Jew, I am offended as a comedian.”

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

the short answer is yes - science can offer.
however, would such an offer be widely embraced?

if you were to couch this in dawkins style terminology, you might ask:

"can science design a morality 'meme'?"

yes they can.

"will humans agree to host that 'meme'?"

i think it depends on what the meme can do for the host.

seeing that about 80% of the worlds population are godists, i would suggest that any such 'meme', that did not include a definition of god, would have low chances of survival in the collective mind jungle.

if we replace the word god with meme and reference jesus' prime directive we get:

"love your meme"

any such scientific body attempting such a task would do well to understand what jesus meant when he said:

"love your god"

if the scientific meme did not allow for the existence of god then i think that would pretty much guarantee that the meme would not be loved any time soon (i.e. the next 100 years).

so if i were one of the members of the group of scientists designing such a meme, i'd point to jesus' desgin criteria as the starting point:

love your god/meme
love your neighbor

most of the worlds problems throughout history have been due to a given culture not being able to love the meme of another culture.

memes are very willing to fight each other and they use humans to do it.

ray

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

[ QUOTE ]
In Scientific American October issue 2006 page 3:

Quote:
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Scientific research delas in what is measurable and definable; it cannot begin to study what might lie beyond the physical realm or to offer a comprehensive moral philosophy.



[/ QUOTE ]

To go from the other end;science, as we understand it in our age, mandates a disassociation of the human being from it's work. The scientist sits outside the universe and observes its workings. From this, it presents its findings.

Morality as evidenced in our age, is human, and therefore science does not allow this disassociation.

If a scientist were to observe the universal morality he would likewise have to interpose the human being in this study and see the human being as a moral tone poem(as is the universe) in structure and dynamic.

If he decides(present science) to lay down moral commandments then we have politics/powerand its benefits and destructiveness.

Re: Can science offer moral philosophy?
 

There are smart people on both sides of the issue in moral philosophy. The view that you can discover moral truths by investigating the natural world is called "moral naturalism". I wrote a paper arguing that the argument against moral naturalism generally assumes a notion of "facts" and "truth" that not even natural science can live up to. That is, we can never obtain objective scientific facts through investigating the natural world, so why should we expect to obtain objective moral facts?

Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition by William Casebeer is a decent, short book arguing for moral naturalism. I don't think he quite gets there, but it's close.

Popular scientific magazines and literature are sort of stuck in a 1950's-60's Popperian view of science that nobody in the field (of philosophy of science) really believes any more.