Vitruvius wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:16 pm
So now you're endorsing the naturalistic fallacy that, because it's natural, it's right?
Not even a bit. I don't believe that, even if we could define uncontroversially what was "natural," that that would automatically be "right." Murdering each other seems to be something we do rather naturally. So does taking other people's spouses, desiring other people's possessions, and so on. These all seem to be quite "natural" to us, and you and I know they're not "right."
But anybody who might say, "Evolution warrants morals" would surely be practicing the Naturalistic Fallacy. I'm pointing that out.
If we all agreed that science is true - what would divide us?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say "science is true." So I have to be careful here.
I'm a supporter of science, at least for the kinds of questions science can, and proposes to, reasonably address. Those are material and empirical concerns. But morality is not one of those questions that science can answer for us. It doesn't even aim to.
So you don't think the Catholic Church - threatened by the Protestant revolution, England breaking away, and rumblings from the Ottoman's - didn't react to Galileo's proof the earth orbits the sun as a threat to their authority?
Well, I know some of the facts surrounding that incident. And don't get me wrong: I'm not going to defend the Catholic Church's behaviour on that occasion. But when you look at the actual historical data on that, you realize that the story of Galileo the good guy versus the evil clergy is really an oversimplification at best, and dishonest at worst.
Did you know, for example, about Galileo's many "church" supporters, like Cardinal Barberini (Later Pope Urban VIII)? Did you know that Galileo's cantankerous personality often made political situations worse, when they didn't need to be? Did you know that at the time Galileo faced off against the Inquisition, the Copernican model was just a hypothesis, and one for which Galileo himself had neither sufficient evidence nor even a working mathematical model -- and that, ironically, it was the Church that was demanding Galileo provide the evidence, and Galileo who was insisting his model should be believed on blind assent? Did you know that Galileo's favourite "proof" was premised on the tides, and was completely scientifically wrong? Did you know that Galileo's really battle was not with the Church
per se, but with the Aristotelean tradition that had long had a stranglehold on cosmology and "science"? And did you know that, after the trial, Galileo was allowed to retire in luxurious comfort, not burned at the stake? And did you know that not only Kepler and Newton, but even Galileo himself were Theists and "churchmen"?
You can verify all that. But if you didn't know these things until now, ask yourself why you weren't told them when the story was first told to you.
...it's for scientific method to determine what's true, not the Church.
About gravity? Sure, I agree. About hydrodynamics? Absolutely. About engineering, medicine, cosmology and chemistry? You bet.
In history or literature or aesthetics, science starts to struggle. It can still contribute, but is clearly not the whole story. It has relevant data, but not comprehensive data anymore. We're entering the human sphere, the sphere of mind: and there, science, which deals so well with materials, starts to wobble.
But what about morals? What about meaning? What about teleology? What is the scientific procedure for detecting
that kind of truth? If you look, you'll find there is none: and science, real science, never wanders into such territory; because in those areas, it would be totally unequipped and ovewhelmed.
I don't know if God exists or not. Do you? Does anyone?
I do. And I'm not the only one. It's a thing we all should know, and it's discernable even from nature, for a start. But beyond that, God has intervened in history and revealed Himself.
Can anybody produce God on command? No. Is He a subject to be studied by dispassionate investigators? No. Does He bow to a Vernier caliper, crawl into a beaker or sit in magesterial pose at the end of a telescope or microscope? No, of course not. But it there sufficient evidence to warrant belief in the existence of God? Absolutely. In fact, I would maintain it's very hard to sustain the opposite.
I've been looking for a rationale that can allow a purely secular perspective to warrant morality for a few decades now. So have a whole lot of people. In fact, if somebody could achieve such a thing, then in terms of moral philosophy, I suggest he would deserve the Nobel Prize. But so far, that prize goes unclaimed.
I could explain it to you, but if you're approaching my every utterance with 'no, no, no, no' preloaded and ready to go - then you're not trying to understand. Okay, this is a debate forum and you have your own beliefs, as is your right, but you're not giving me a fair hearing.
Au contraire: I'm eager to hear. It's been a very long while since I saw anybody try anything fresh or interesting in regard to this sort of thing. I would consider it a huge favour if you were to spell out to me your understanding, and I'm all ears.
I'm saying, evolution in a tribal context gave us a moral sense; a sensitivity to moral implication.
Okay, let's start there. Let's say that Evolution did that. It made people think (erroneously, obviously) that there was something called "morals" around, and that they should follow it.
Which "morals" was that? And given that nothing in nature itself actually
warranted this belief, why
should people hold it?
Evolution is not indifferent in the way you think. It's a truth relation to reality. The organism must be correct to reality, or die out....
Let's work on that, too.
"Evolution" you say, is not "indifferent." Well, it doesn't have a will or a personality, so it must be indifferent to morality, surely. But I get what you're aiming at: that somehow, being good is going to turn out to be the same as "that which causes survival."
But that is empirically not at all what morality says. For example, it says that we ought not to have as many sexual partners as gazelles or chimpanzees have. But procreation is surely conducive to survival...at least of the species, though not of the individual. Why would morality forbid us to maximize our chances of reproduction?
Or, take theft. Theft increases the resources available to one organism, at the expense of another. There's no question that's a survival advantage for the thief. Yet morality tells us not to do that.
You see the problem, I'm sure. And we can multiply examples. There's clearly no easy or obvious relationship between morals and survival. The world's just not that simple.
Why do you suppose that philosophers have been trying to define morality since the dawn of time, and still haven't produced a moral system that works all the time? I can answer that; can you?
Absolutely. But I'd be interested in your answer, too. Do you want to go first?
Morality is not a delusion because individuals are imbued with a moral sense by evolution.
No, that doesn't follow at all. Even if it were true that the source of morality were "evolution," it would not give us reason to think morality was not a delusion. There are such things as survival-adaptive delusions.
Take the old belief that the world was flat, and people would die by sailing off it, or by being eaten by dragons. Doubtless that thought saved many a timid mariner from drowning at sea, starving on a desert island, or dying of scurvy in the bowels of a sailing ship. But one could hardly call that "not a delusion."
Chimpanzees have a moral sense as a consequence of the structural relations of the troop. They share food and groom each other, and further, they remember who reciprocates such favours, and withhold their favours in turn. They fight together against other troops of chimps; and drive out or kill those who fail to defend the troop.
Do you have any idea how absolutely brutal chimp life actually is? In the first place, unlike humans, chimps are completely promiscuous; the females are utterly indiscriminate in taking on the attentions of as many males are are available. Chimps kill and eat other monkeys all the time, and sometimes their own young as well. The head chimp lives in a state of continual peril, often beaten up by a stronger or torn to shreds by a cabal of weaker but more devious chimps. In fact, all the chimps you will have ever seen outside a zoo are young; because mature chimps are violent and incredibly powerful, and cannot be taught to behave in a way not extremely dangerous to humans and other creatures.
If you want to see a colony of vicious animals with
no morals, go look at chimps. Yes, they have a few exchanges of mutuality, when advantages are to be had by both sides; but these are so far from being "morals," I can't tell you.