“Non-overlapping magisteria” no longer, I suppose

And this is just one approach.

People that think metaphysical reality cannot be measured with any objectivity are way too pessimistic.

> Someone has a meaning X for their lives. How do you test it? What do you test it against?

People who work in Facebook, Google, Twitter, {CorporationX} in the AI / user profiling department may know a thing or two about that topic.

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It's revealing that Shermer and others on one hand say that science (as opposed to philosophy) can prescribe human values, and on the other don't say which science they're talking about.

Shermer can't answer the question because such science doesn't exist. No current branch of scientific inquiry does this. He can't really shoehorn morality into a random science's field either. If he would claim that it was one of the 'hard' sciences, like physics or chemistry, he would lose the audience that would instantly recognize the foolishness of such a proposition. If he would claim that it was one of the 'soft' sciences, like sociology or psychology, he would lose his "skeptic" audience who value hard data and numbers.

He has to vaguely gesture towards empiricism, being evidence based and doing some field work (asking people what they prefer), and call that "science".

The assertion of "philosophy hasn't solved the moral problems but science can!" arises from a outdated and fundamentally incomplete understanding of what moral philosophers have been doing all these years. Shermer can be so certain of his positions because he doesn't understand what he's talking about.

Not every philosopher has been pondering the meaning of good in an ivory tower. There are ancient moral philosophers, like Epicurus, who had a well-grounded ideas about how our morality arose and how we can determine our moral values. In more modern times consequentialists have also been engaged in scientific inquiry into morality.

Philosophers have been doing the "science of morals" for literally thousands of years. Not even Shermer's idea of asking people their preferences is an original idea. Socrates did that.

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I say, we need Thales to re-do democracy. LOL. It's such a bloody stupid cycle, as far as the betterment of man. But it's needed now, with the Abrahamic ordeal. It started well with Alexander The Great, or slightly before through the great Greek minds... but Christianity was never meant to control this thing. That's probably Aristotle on stupid people in a society summed up.

What scientific claim supports the starting proposition that 'morality is aimed at protecting human interests'?

What scientific claim supports that determining human interests is a scientific endeavour?

It seems Shermer is taking normative 'ought' propositions without acknowledging them or dressing them up as scientific 'is' propositions and then using those propositions to further propose that science OUGHT to resolve moral issues.

>(science_fiction)

Your link answered your question. We don't become wireheads because it's impossible.

Many people use mind altering substances to stimulate their brains. It doesn't (usually) end well.

I think we are at cross purposes.

If an alien says “making others suffer, just for its own sake, is morally good” there is no scientific disproof of that. I’m not saying “maybe suffering can lead to better things”, I’m saying the idea that causing unalloyed suffering for no reason is “bad” is at best an axiom not amenable to proof.

Suffering is a tricky one to know where the lines are drawn. Being tough on someone so that they can learn and adapt can sometimes be thought of causing suffering. Debate is where we are able to make choices. But those debates at also timely and need to be reviewed from time to time.

I'd rather not get brain surgery from a dental surgeon.

Do his beliefs w/r/t Liberalism differ from the norm in any great respect?

He's a philosopher, and extremely bright, so his explication of those beliefs is definitely more nuanced than say, a layperson's, but the beliefs themselves do not depart from bog-standard Liberalism. His defenses of various subjects all come from an extremely (nay, extremist) brand of individualism, which is endemic to Liberalism as a whole.

Edit: Scientism isn't orthogonal to Liberalism. It's usually used (badly, imo) as a defense of it.

You've misunderstood me. I'm not asking where you got the idea that Shermer is or calls himself a liberal from. I'm asking where you got the idea that he is representative of liberalism and I'm asking where you got this dismissive generalization of liberalism from. I mean that as a legitimate question; I've never seen anyone treat Shermer as a major liberal philosopher (emphasis here on "major"), so I'm genuinely wondering where someone could get that idea.

Not unrelatedly, none of the major liberal philosophers that I know of are tied to scientism or anything that seems fair to call "the Brain Worms", if anything major liberal philosophers and even libertarian philosophers (most relevantly and evidently, Nozick and Hayek) are opposed to scientism, so I'm also unsure where you got this impression from independently of Shermer and of other cultural commentators/pop philosophers who profess being "classical liberals".

I'm willing to accept that descriptive statements may be necessary in deciding moral action if you're willing to admit that descriptive statements are not sufficient for deciding moral action. I'm not even sure they are necessary but it's also secondary to the primary point of contention.

Uhhh... Because he is a Philosophical Liberal? Has he suddenly abandoned Kant, Rawls, or more likely, Nozick? Is he somehow against Capitalism, of which Philosophical Liberalism is the defense?

No. He is not. He's a Transactionalist to the core - He's staunchly for these things. To the level of ranting against their opposite. His entire oeuvre is a defense of 'Individualism'.

But the 'should' act, is in relationship to the 'description' of pain is it not? What is your decision based on if not the description?

That's what I mean by saying all our ought statements can only derive from is statements. And to the degree that science and knowledge generally can tell us about is statements, it can tell us about ought statements.

> ...Philosophical Liberalism...

Huh? Shermer and this kind of scientism are hardly representative of liberalism. Where are you getting this generalization from?

I have tried to read that first sentence over and over again and it's just not working...

I didn't say pain in others does not compel me to act. I said the mere description of pain in others does not compel me to act. I am only compelled to act when I decide that I should. Whether that is to placate the uncomfortable feeling of watching someone suffer or simply because I believe it is right, nothing intrinsic to the description itself prescribes a course of action.

I always assume Shermer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Makes it much easier to handle his suggestions.

> On what grounds are you establishing that preferences are representative of morality? Why, on the grounds that our preferences are often moral!

Completely off-base and made-up. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I believe our preferences are part of the basis of morality for a variety of reasons which are beyond the scope of a discussion of the original post. I'm not going to get roped into a discussion of irrelevant minutiae. My suggestion was that if preferences are part of the basis of morality, the process of uncovering preferences is essential to morality. This is undoubtedly a true syllogism.

I don't necessarily think that the answer people give to a question is correlated with the factual answer to that question, but I do think there may be value in looking for those questions for which consistent answer profiles are given across human populations. In other words: killing is thought of as a taboo basically everywhere you go, which implies that there may be some scientific underpinning to that taboo. Eating pork or beef is thought of as very taboo to some, but very normal to others, implying that the taboo is less scientific than particular.

In the latter scenario, when there is wide variance in the answers across individuals and populations, I think this method is useless in trying to ascertain truth. Another example is one someone else pointed out, the perceived morality of gay marriage. That is very much something that varies across locale and time, which means just asking people whether it's moral cannot answer the question of the truth of its morality.

My thought was that it could be an interesting idea to understand where there are seeming convergences to moral questions in many populations and use those to delve for where there may be certain moral truths. But it sounds like the author would rather apply the method of asking people what they want for basically everything, and that doesn't seem robust at all.

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