{"id":3599,"date":"2013-11-18T06:37:33","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T06:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=3599"},"modified":"2013-11-17T07:46:48","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T07:46:48","slug":"can-an-is-be-an-ought-mike-d-on-the-science-of-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2013\/11\/18\/can-an-is-be-an-ought-mike-d-on-the-science-of-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Can an &#8216;is&#8217; be an &#8216;ought&#8217;? Mike D on the science of morality."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Mike D&#8217;s excellent blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaunicornist.com\/\">The A-Unicornist<\/a> has some real gems, and if only I had more time I would hang out there more often (I am trying to get a sidebar widget to link to offsite blogs). His latest post concerns the is\/ought debate, especially dealing with Sam Harris\/Richard Carrier and the great philosopher of science, Massimo Pigliucci.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, as Mike puts it, is that people see morality as scientifically derivable:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The big question up for debate is whether moral questions are scientific questions. If they are, then questions like this&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In a crisis that causes a hospital to overflow with patients, how should patients be prioritized, and how many resources ought to be devoted to each person?<\/li>\n<li>Is it right for me to pursue my career to ensure greater financial stability for my family, but in doing so sacrifice the amount of time I will be able to spend with them?<\/li>\n<li>Is collateral damage justified in war, and to what extent?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;. all have objectively correct answers that can be answered empirically.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But, as he continues, the issue is:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The main reason, as I see it, why ethics cannot be a science is that while I acknowledge that moral values exist (as abstractions, at least), objective moral truths do not exist independently of the concern of conscious creatures. So while one can draw a perfectly sensible analogy like the old &#8220;surgeon&#8221; one (which I am paraphrasing) repeated by both Harris and Carrier \u2013 which simply states that a surgeon concerned with maximizing the well-being of their patients ought to sterilize their equipment \u2013 it doesn&#8217;t follow that we should assume that the surgeon ought to be concerned with the well-being of their patients. And I&#8217;m not raising that objection because of the possibility that the surgeon in question is a Nazi doctor or some such thought experiment \u2013 I think Harris pretty well tackled those type of objections in his book. Rather, I&#8217;m raising that objection because there is no empirically discoverable ought in nature. It&#8217;s not a part of our external reality. Moral proscriptions, or &#8216;how we ought to behave&#8217;, only arise from the interrelated concerns of conscious creatures living in cooperative social hierarchies in which the moral behavior is seen as an end to some other goal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Check out his whole post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaunicornist.com\/2013\/11\/toward-science-of-morality.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike D&#8217;s excellent blog The A-Unicornist has some real gems, and if only I had more time I would hang out there more often (I am trying to get a sidebar widget to link to offsite blogs). His latest post concerns the is\/ought debate, especially dealing with Sam Harris\/Richard Carrier and the great philosopher of science, Massimo Pigliucci. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,212],"tags":[1070,1067,1068,75,214,99,102,1069],"class_list":["post-3599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality","category-general-philosophy","tag-isought","tag-massimo-pigliucci","tag-mik-d","tag-morality-2","tag-oughts","tag-richard-carrier","tag-sam-harris","tag-the-a-unicornist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}