balisongsong

Ernest,your throwing out alot of redherrings

Secular Pinoy

And you're doing a lot of evasions and straw-man fallacies, kabayan.

balisongsong

Ok,lets recapitulate.
I question the claim that the natural world is all there is. Most of you have been saying that the natural world is all we have evidence of. Ive been saying there are other dimensions of life besides objects to be studied in the natural world, ethical questions for example, and someone said ethics are ultimately part of the natural world. If this is true then science should be able to study ethical questions and supply answers .
Given that, how can science tell us Why people should do good and not evil,if doing evil is to our advantage? What empirical study could we perform to decide this question?

MadMordigan

Given that, how can science tell us Why people should do good and not evil,if doing evil is to our advantage? What empirical study could we perform to decide this question?


<a href="http://www.howardri.org/dilemmas_1_robert-axerod.htm" target="_blank">Game Theory</a>

Corona688

It all comes down to this: Show us something beyond the natural world. All the word games in the universe don't mean squat, if you can't put your money where your mouth is.

Ah, but you're making the assumption that doing evil IS to our advantage.

This is not the forum for that, however. If you want to discuss this, go to the Morality forum and have at it. You'll need to define evil and good as something other than 'stuff I think is bad' and 'stuff I think is good', however.

[edited to fix an embarrasing word swap]

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Corona688 ]</p>

DarkDruid

I think you missunderstand what science is. You're probibly thinking of a bunch of staunchy old men in lab coats gathering around and scoffing at the common man.

Nay... what you should be thinkng of when science is mentioned is more along the lines of the scientific method... which, btw, isn't some recent western trend. You're also missapplying science. Science doesn't tell you what to do... it only tells you what is. You get to decide what to do with your own brain.

balisongsong

Corona,Im speaking hypothetically,ie lets just for the sake of the example Ive given that in this situation it would be to our advantage to do evil,and we wouldnt get caught. Then why shouldnt we?
I know what science is. The point being that this is an issue that does NOT occur in the natural world,empirical methods wont help us,science cant examine it,its beyond the scope,beyond the limits and is inappropriate for science because it something that is not an object"in the natural world", it is something that is a Qualitative part of life,not quantitative,hence it is something that gives an example that there is something,something qualitative,that is more than the natural world,it is an example that contradicts the claim that the natural world is all there is.
Ive given an example of something that is inconsistent with the claim of the secular web that the natural world is all there is.The secular web has been shown to be wrong
But instead of addressing this issue,your telling me to post it on another forum.

Corey Hammer

That would be correct. The only evidence we have is for the existance of the natural world.

This implies that you think they are not part of the natural world. Why would they not be part of the natural world?

This is a logical fallacy. You assume that science must be the only way to study the natural world. Science may be used to empirically study the natural world. However, the sciences are ultimately subfields of philosophy. Ethical questions are ultimately philosophical (i.e., they may not be amenable to study scientifically), but the answers for these questions can be informed by science.

Think of scientists as engineers. All they really care about is seeing what works. Philosophers on the other hand are more like architects. They can be informed of what works and what doesn't, but they are not as bounded by it as scientists.

In addition, ethical questions, if you remember your grade school English, are non-concrete objects, just like love, cognition, and mental models. They can be studied by operationalizing them.

I take it you have never heard of qualitative research. In fact, social psychology studies morals and moral development quite well. Any good social psychology textbook will touch on some of the issues. A development psychology textbook would serve well too for developmental aspects.

Jamie_L

Some possible reasons (to name a few):
* In the real world, you can't KNOW you won't get caught.
* Moral frameworks protect society as a whole and individuals. Furthering these systems and maintining their consistency improves the liklihood that these frameworks will do their jobs.
* Most of us have been programmed from birth with empathy and guilt mechanisms. Saving ourselves the pain of these responses can make our lives easier.

Hold it right there. What world does this occur in? We are in the natural world discussing events that would hypothetically happen in the natural world. That puts the whole discussion squarely in the natural world.

I think you are mis-representing science on two counts. First, you claim science only deals with objects. That's false. Psychiatry and even to some extent psychology employ the scientific method, even if only in a simple form as "trial and error". It is more difficult to set up experiments to examine these things because human behavior can't be measured with a guage, but it can be observed, and outcomes can be documented.

Of course, setting up the kinds of strict scientific trials of human behavior that would be required for rigorous study of this type of thing is often not possible because there would be ethical issues involved. For instance, one could, in theory, conduct trials wherein people committed evil acts that they seemed likely to get away with. The impact on the individual as well as society could be observed. But no ethical scientist would ever propose such a trial.


Here is the second mis-representation of science and/or of the natural world. Science does not define define the natural world. Qualitative and/or subjective aspects of the natural world are part of the natural world. Just because I can't measure my wife's level of affection for me on a meter does not mean that it's super-natural. Her brain is part of the natural world. It generates feelings and her body reacts to those feelings. All natural.

Jamie

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

Corey Hammer

As an experimental psychologist, I think I'm insulted.