We need to define morality-proper.Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 8:09 amI don't think that empathy has anything to do with morality.Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 2:12 am Take the case of empathy which is one very critical element of morality.
I define morality & ethics as the management and modulation of evil to enable its related good.
Thus the focus is to cultivate and develop moral competence that flow naturally and spontaneously rather than having to make moral judgments.
I am not incline towards morality that is focused on right and wrong, because what is right/wrong is too loose and subjective.
True at times, one may have to make moral judgments but relying on judgment is not effective morality.The critical element of morality is judgement about what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. This is applied to actions, happenings, events. Once you do something that is judged morally good, it doesn't matter if you did it with or without empathy. Even if science finds neurons of empathy, actually empathy can be radically criticised as a fundamental source of hypocrisy, because it causes selective choices that are deeply unjust. In the world of empathy those who are more successful in causing feelings of empathy get more help and resources, compared to those who are less clever in the art of raising empathy.
It is likely, for critical issues, when one comes up with a decision, it could be too late.
The ultimate for morality is to enable one to be in a natural state of being naturally and spontaneously moral.
If for now, judgments may be necessary, the objective should be focused on preventing the dilemma from arising in the future that require a moral judgment to made.
Empathy is just one element of morality and it has its pros and cons [e.g. in blind empathy], so we need to deal with it with knowledge of its limitations.
How empathy works as a pro within morality is, the potential consequences of any evil acts are triggered in the evil doers and as such deter the evil doer from committing the act because he will suffer the same pain as his victim.
Surely in this case empathy [with awareness of its cons] is a good thing, it is not the most effective as compared to preventing the roots causes of immorality from arising.
As understood science is double-sided sword, so we need to make intelligent and wise use of science for optimal gains to the well-being of the individual[s] and humanity.The essence of the question, as I said, is that nothing is scientifically good or bad, moral or immoral. On the contrary, science can destroy any concept of morality because it can reveal how morality is actually one of the many clever mechanisms of competition among living beings. Since competition is connected with self imposition, you are liable to be accused of trying to impose your culture, your framework, yourself, the moment you try to exploit science to find a ground to what is completely subjective, completely belonging to your personal subjective ideas.
It has already happened in history that, whenever science has been used to justify moral choices, it has been used to oppress people: we can think, for example, of the ancient idea that women have not soul, the idea of human races, some of them inferior to other ones. I can't recall any historical fact where science has been able to support morality. It can be used to deny the supposed scientific foundations of racist theories, but, once you have demolished them, you cannot go on doing the opposite, which is, using science to found a morality, otherwise you are going back again to make exactly the same mistake made by racists.
Even, for example, when science says that human races do not exist, or that there is no scientific ground to establish who has a soul and who doesn't, just because the idea of soul itself has nothing to do with science, this cannot and shouldn't be used positively to build a morality.
Science is able to destroy, to deny wrong theories, but it is completely unable to give the fundamental motivational ground for anything humanly positive. The fundamentals of science is Maths. The moment you try to say that 2+2=4 is morally good, you are trying to build your dictatorship.
You cannot even say that 2+2=4 is good and 2+2=5 is bad. Mathematically they are just true or false, but being true or false has nothing to do with being mathematically good or bad. It is us humans who establish that a non working machine based on 2+2=5 is not good. Scientifically it is just a non working machine, that scientifically has nothing worse than a working one.
The plus side of science is, with its advance knowledge[s] science [IT and AI] can facilitate to expedite the unfoldment the inherent moral potential and competence of the individual in the future [not now] to the extent that the moral state of each individual is natural and spontaneous where there is no need for moral judgments [if there is, a minimum].
Note it took 10,000[?] years since slavery first emerged to reach its current state where all sovereign nations has made chattel slavery illegal. We can infer there is some elements of moral progress in this moral element.
Instead of waiting for next 200, 500 or 1000 years, science, IT and AI could shorten the time by 10x.