Yeah morality is more complex than that, for instance you could eat a lot of food for pleasure, except it would bring harm/suffering later in the form of diabetes and bad knees. Generally there are short-term choices and long-term choices. Religions tend to make long-term choices.

Sure!

Here's a fact:

It is raining.

SO

I ought to wear galoshes.

OR

I ought to take my shoes off and jump in puddles.

OR

Who cares? I'm not changing my routine.

One fact, three entirely opposing decisions. Facts may have bearing on decisions, they do not dictate them. In the first two cases, the fact informs two opposite decisions - keep your feet dry, go jump in puddles. In the third case, the fact exists, but holds no influence and in this way, is the opposite of the first two decisions.

I think Science is flawless here.

Scientists can be heroic but they can certainly be flawed. Even people with high cognitive abilities might be unaware of a whole discipline of thought and may be unaware of their lack of knowledge. They may hold values that they are utterly unaware may be doubtable. They might in some cases have personality issues. Their remarkable success in their own domain may explain their eminence despite their deficiencies. Public media often takes an "either expert or not-expert" attitude that is black and white where the reality is complex.

The value of Science itself is not in question here.

This sounds like an argument where if you take it literally, then there is nobody opposing it

Because of course once you define an objective function like "maximize wellbeing" then science (and the humanities, which in Germany would just be called sciences btw) can give lots of input about how to achieve that.

If you take the argument more like it was meant, then it becomes a bit more controversial, because what it really says is

>It's a no-brainer that wellbeing is the objective of ethics/morality, it's just defined like this. Everybody is consequentialist, some people just don't admit it.
>
>And because that point, which philosophers deem to be the heart of the debate, is trivially solved, then the real debate about how to reach wellbeing is to a large part answered by science.

People disagreeing on something doesn't get you to there being no facts about it though. This seems like a non-sequitur to me.

I'm not sure you've really addressed my question. Perhaps you could give an example?

I'm not sure what an ought is in this context then. I thought an ought statement would be something like "you ought not drink sea water".

Could you give me a better example?

I would use reason to determine what I accept as evidence.

I don't think so. I think the question is the exact opposite.

Thanks for sharing this podcast. Listened to a couple episodes now and it's quickly becoming a favourite

This is precisely what I am contesting - the proposition that science is the measure of all things is not itself a scientific proposition.

As for sociology, I would hardly describe it as science itself, but even if I did bite on that one, I would say sociology is concerned with what 'is' - it can make claims about how human societies develop and organize themselves and so forth. But as soon as you delve into the question of how a society ought to organize itself, you have (at the very least) a couple of choices:

1. You could go into political philosophy (ie. not science); or
2. you could make the normative and unscientific claim that societies ought to organize themselves by reference to past behaviour that sociologists have uncovered or have claimed is more beneficial to human happiness/existence etc (which of itself is another normative and unscientific rabbithole that broadly smacks of utilitarianism for the most part - another unscientific moral framework).

But regardless of which choice you make, in the end analysis, you are not making recommendations on the basis of science - you are either making a moral determination to defer decision making to science by reference to what is likely a utilitarian framework (and then science just fills in the blanks) or you are properly considering moral questions in the realm of philosophy and not simply ignoring that trusting science with moral questions is of itself a moral judgment.

It just means that we are not to ponder whether there is a ready ethical code somewhere in historical texts, in nature or religious texts that wait for our discovery. Ethics are constructed as a social contract although Kant is sometimes seen as a proponent of moral realism, that there is ready moral principle for all and you just need to *understand it correctly*, which leads to circularism and fideism.

It just means that philosophy is aporematic, that is, it starts from the discovery of a conflict and attempts to resolve that conflict, not from bibliophilic motives for example. Specific fields of study, like that of theology, can be a mere hobby, but philosophy can not be a hobby I think.

Hey I can’t be operated on because the surgeon is operating on other people

> Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad

Ah see here’s your misconception. The actual moral truth is that the worst possible misery for everyone is good.

In answer to you saying “the counter claim is unfalsifiable”: both claims are unfalsifiable. There is no scientific truth about morality, only extrapolation from unfounded axioms.

Shermer is a Trumper. No surprise.

>What scientific claim supports that determining human interests is a scientific endeavor?

In the general, the Modernist understanding of science is that it is the measure of all things. In the specific, the field of sociology (and several others) is explicitly concerned with understanding human interests

Yeah I just wrote what came to my mind reading the title I am definitely off topic. My bad

To be honest, I wouldn't even call Shermer a philosopher, other than maybe a "pop philosopher". He doesn't have a degree in philosophy or have any ties to any philosophy department and I've never seen his political views discussed by any philosophers. He's just not a significant political thinker in general, except for a popular audience, and so I wouldn't take anything he says to be indicative of liberalism as a serious area of thought. At minimum, if you're forming a negative opinion of liberalism because of him or other pop philosophers, including because of how they present the history of liberal thought, I'd encourage you to withhold judgement instead.

Now, I have no clue if Shermer's individualism looks anything like what any major liberal philosopher accepts. But one difference from serious liberalism that is relevant to this thread is his commitment to scientism. That's just incidentally part of his broader collection of views and not at all a part of liberalism itself (along with his atheism). In fact, I can't think of any liberal philosophers who defend scientism or defend any connection between liberalism and scientism (notably for such a modern topic as scientism, it would be nonsense to attribute scientism to Hayek, Nozick, or Rawls). This connection seems like an invention of non-philosophical, "pop" discourse about liberalism. Where are you getting the idea that scientism isn't an orthogonal question from liberalism?

Science is a tool we use to know the universe. Philosophy is a tool we use to know ourselves.

Etichs science etc are just concepts created by us to ubderstand the world and so not objective. I belive we are not capable of a true objective perspective. Art and such is maybe closer to objectivity than science. Bear🐻 with me. When we use words we use concepts. If we say leaf 🌿 we are we are refering to the concept of leaf in reality there are no 2 leaves alike. The leaf 🌿 It's a information we obtained with all our senses than converted by our mind in thoughts than we converted it into words (into concepts). So clearly there cant be an objective information transmitted through words and reason. Instead when observing art 🎨 🎭 the information is transimted through your senses it doesn't suffer from so many "translations".

#HellIsChildAbuse #ProveSouls #ChristsThugs 🙏🏼🔪🪓⛓

Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad, after which it follows neatly that we can make epistemological claims about morality using scientific evidence, because we can make objective claims about the misery of conscious creatures and its causes. If that's not a ground level assumption able to be taken as obvious, prima facia, I don't know what could possibly compel anyone to make a claim about, and I mean this literally, any detail about their conscious experience with more than 0% confidence. All hard sciences rely on assumptions, for example that a shared, observable physical reality exists. Without that claim there is no basis for pooled scientific knowledge, but it is self-evident despite the counter-claim being nonfalsifiable. Much like we assume, from the nature of our own consciousness, that reality exists and can be observed, we can assume that the maximum conscious misery, as evident through the nature of our own consciousness, is objectively bad.

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Not going to take advice on morality from a man with multiple sexual assault allegations.

I could take that compromise. I want to agree that they are not sufficient, but I can't seem to think of any knowledge that isn't merely a description of reality. Even prescriptive statements are descriptive.

Neat line of inquiry tho.

That's so cute. Science is intentionally valueless. Only people can define harm, decide which desires are good and bad.