You are conflating the science as practical knowledge with its interpretation as worldview. — Janus

No, I'm saying that evidence-based theories are as good a definition of what constitutes knowledge as any other. There are evidence-based theories which suggest that free-will and the self are both illusory and are not what we think they are. Therefore, learning about them constitutes knowledge, not ignorance.

Ignoring them because we don't like their conclusions is ignorance, the clue's in the name.

Also, let it just be noted here, that Sam Harris’ purported expertise in neuroscience is based on his completion of a questionable PhD thesis written (with co-authors) on the subject of ‘neural correlates of religious belief’. The methodology and pre-suppositions of the thesis have been subject to much criticism of for example cherry-picking and confirmation bias, quite aside from the possibility of the topic itself being entirely questionable.

After finishing his PhD., Harris has never lectured in neuroscience, nor authored any scientific papers in that subject, nor been employed as a neuro-scientist. His entire career has been in popular philosophy (if you can call it that) and the ‘evangelical atheism’ on which he made his name, as one of the so-called ‘four horsemen of new atheism’. — Wayfarer

Vilayanor Ramachandran also considers there to be a neurological correlate of religion, he's a professor at the University of California, teaching and researching for 36 years.
Bruce Hood also agrees with Sam Harris's work, a doctor of Philosophy and professor of psychology teaching and researching for 27 years.
Michael Persinger is also of this view, a Neurologist actively researching, publishing and teaching for 43 years.
Robert Sapolsky takes Harris's opinion even further yet he's a neuroscientist of 47 years teaching and research experience and has won several awards for his contributions.
Michael Inzlicht, professor of psychology and neuroscience 25 years, Jordan Grafman, neuroscientist 38 years, Patricia Churchland, neuroscience teaching and research professor of 35 years.

Since we're on the subject, the Statistician who supposedly investigated Sam Harris's paper is a Gun-For-Hire self-appointed "Statistician to the stars", recently found to have misunderstood the most basic of statistics http://gregladen.com/blog/2012/02/01/william-m-briggs-has-misunders/.

Check your facts before you start engaging in your pathetic ad hominem attacks.

The causes that operate in the extensa domain ars probablistic not deterministic. — Janus

I have no problem with that. I don't agree, as quantum indeterminacy tends to resolve at a macro level, but I'll grant you its possible. Still doesn't get you to free-will though. Randomness isn't free-will.

The reasons that operate in the cogitans domain are influential, not dictatorial. — Janus

Setting aside the obvious question of how on earth you know this, if the reasons are only influential, then the state of the cogitans is not determined by prior reasons, fine. This still doesn't get you free-will. It gets you a space for free-will, the space left by the underdeterminacy of the prior reasons, but that's just a space where some other thing can cause the cogitans to become what it is in the present moment. You're claiming that the will causes it. I'm asking how, if you are not a dualist, does the will cause the cogitans to enter some other state what does it do to it?

Also, if the cogitans and the extensa are the same thing, then even if the cogitans is put into some state by the will, then how does it ensure that the extensa is put into a matching state? You've just admitted that the extensa's state is caused entirely and sufficiently by probabilistic prior causes, so how come it matches the cogitans, which is not?

What you refer to is not knowledge, but an attitude which rules out much more than it includes. It is better characterized as an ignorance than as a knowledge. — Janus

What nonsense, are you trying to claim that theories of neuroscience which have considerable empirical evidence do not even count as knowledge? Then what does?

So we have a clear separation between what is in the head, and what is not. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not suggesting that the two are literally the same thing, but that the are sufficiently similar.

There is a way that the world is, even if you're a solipsist and consider the world to be entirely a construct of the mind, then that is the way the world is.

This world is divisible into parts, if we allow the divisions to be arbitrary.

Each part of the world (a thing) will therefore have a "way it is" (its properties), because it is a part of the world, which has a "way it is".

I can either form my opinion about the way a thing is (its properties) somehow from the thing (physical properties eminating from it, or mental states caused by it), or I could make them up (by which I mean form them from stimuli which did not in any way come from the thing.

If I form my ideas about the thing the latter way, and you do too, then our ideas about the thing are unlikely to be the same because they are formed from some other source (in case I actually need to explain probability, this is because there are more things that aren't the thing in question than there are which are it).

It follows, therefore, that if you and I both have the same idea about the thing, we would naturally look for some explanation, the similarity is not what we'd expect by chance. One explanation is that we might have discussed our ideas and deliberately made them similar, but if we can rule that out, the next most plausible explanation is that our ideas both have the same cause - that they in fact reflect something about the way the thing is.

When your three-year-old is about to step into traffic, what's needed is the imperative voice. — tim wood

Agreed, any method to prevent the child walking into traffic is appropriate including force because the child cannot learn from their mistake, nor be persuaded otherwise. The child clearly does not want to be run over, they're not aware of the consequences and we can make an almost certain guess that, were they aware of the consequences, they would not take the action they're about to take. Simple.

When your twelve-year-old is at the edge with cigarets, liquor, drugs, promiscuity,criminal behaviour, & etc. the imperative voice has a place — tim wood

This is not at all like your last example. The children can learn from their mistakes, they can (theoretically) be persuaded otherwise. It's not at all clear that the child hasn't considered all the consequences and decided that they'd prefer to take the risks,and we have plenty of time to make those consequences clear as many times as we like just to be absolutely sure.

Getting run over is definitely bad, everyone in the world agrees on that, it's not cultural, there's no personal opinion, just plain bad.

Cigarettes, drink, drugs, promiscuity and criminal behaviour are not definitely bad. Almost everyone in the world disagrees on one or more aspects of each, it is entirely cultural, the law can't even agree between countries or at different points in history. To impose any of those things directly against the child's will, when they are in full knowledge of the potential consequences, is to make that child into a possession of yours, not a person in their own right.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we must often guess what another person wants, or would want if they knew what we know. This principle covers all sudden eventualities and most of a child's decisions as a baby/toddler.

At all other times we just don't have the right to impose by force what we think they ought to do without the same justification used to impose any normal restriction (demonstrable harm to society).

I always try to maintain the attitude that I might fail, in any action which I take. This attitude inspires one to proceed with care and seriously consider all one's actions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Really, so when hitting a nail in with a hammer you "seriously consider" the possibility that the force from the hammer might not deterministically cause the nail to move if it hits. What do you seriously consider might be the alternative? That the nail simply move the opposite direction of its own accord?

If they do it in the teeth of evidence contradicting their axioms, without any attempt to address the discrepancy, while attempting to silence opposition, yes. — gurugeorge

Interesting. So this absolutely incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, care to elaborate?

Also, the attempts to silence to opposition intrigues me. What is this opposition that no one has heard?

So anyone who has some axioms as a fundamental belief, admits that this is the case, and then makes rational scientific arguments extrapolating from those axioms logically, is deserving of contempt?

So who isn't?

I simply pointed out that your premise is wrong, the belief in determinism has not been prevalent for the last ten thousand years. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course it has. How do you think we do anything? Any action you take at all is dependent on a belief in determinism, that actions have prior causes. The repeated use of fire was based on a belief that rubbing sticks reliably 'causes' fire, knapping flint reliably 'causes' sharp edges. The agrarian revolution, the industrial revolution and everything you make use of from either, all rely on presuming the universe is deterministic. The only exception is our belief in our own free-will. What I'm saying is that because it is the only exception, we need a very good reason to maintain that it is, I don't see those very good reasons independent of the fact that we believe it.

I appreciate the effort, but it's still no clearer how you get unpredictability out of this. Viewed as extensa there are prior processes, viewed as cogitans there are prior reasons. In each case the prior elements lead to the current state. They do so eiher mechanistic all, or randomly, but where in that process is free-will? Where does something identifiable as 'you' get to affect things without being caused by something else?

I should know better than to tackle any proposition which has scare quotes around ‘are’ - but anyway, — Wayfarer

Wierd, that's the second time someone's commented in that way on my use of single quotations. Do they mean something different in America? In England (in academic writing anyway) they just mean that the definition of the term is contested and is being used in the specific sense. I'm acknowledging that we probably don't agree on the meaning of the term.

Who is this ‘we’? — Wayfarer

The organism involved. The limits of this organism might be hazy (do we include the bacteria on our skin?), but that haziness doesn't make any difference here.

How does what ‘we’ want come into a ‘fully objective’ description? — Wayfarer

The same way as any scientific theory, probabilistically. We can't say with certainty that the earth orbits the sun, its just our observations make it increasingly likely it does. Most people seem to want the same broad set of things, neuroscience can refine and improve on these observations making any theory based on them even more likely to be accurate. I don't see what's so magic about morality that makes it uniquely immune to scientific investigation.

Why should ‘our’ convictions have any bearing on what ‘we’ are going to do? Surely ‘what we are going to do’ can be predicted by a third party, according to your own argument. — Wayfarer

Yes, given a complete set of a person's 'convictions' and details of the environmental influences, a third party could predict my actions. Advertising agencies are already remarkably good at predict people's reactions to stimuli and we're only at the very beginning of modern neuroscience.

But if the outcome depends on ‘what we want’ or ‘how convinced we are’ - then how is science going to predict that? — Wayfarer

Because 'what we want' just isn't that much of a mystery. Why do you think advertising works so well, why are there only two main political parties in most democracies, why is it that if you landed in a high street in any developed country in the world you won't even be able to tell where you were (other than by meaningless differences like language).

Again, the more we investigate, the more we know about the things, I really don't understand what you are finding so hard to grasp about that concept.

I hope this doesn't seem to impersonal, but my reply to Erik above also addresses the example you raise here, would it be OK to just ask that you read that as a response, to save me rewriting it?

One thing that often crops up in these discussions is this problem of competing influences that you highlight here. The issue I think simply boils down to what we really mean by autonomy and the freedom to learn.

If we are in a world where there are strong negative cultural influences, then learning how to deal with them is a skill that kids must obtain. Like any other skill it must be learnt by practice, making mistakes and learning from them.

Kids still need the freedom to do this.

I sometimes express this as a thought experiment. Imagine if we banned children from learning anything about numbers, they weren't even allowed to count and all books with numbers in were unavailable to children. In such a world, the idea that a 15 year old could solve a quadratic equation would seem ludicrous. No-one would even countenance the idea, and people would cite examples of 15 year olds they know, trying to even add up and getting it horribly wrong. But we know, in a world of numbers a 15 year old can be highly competent, even the least numerate can count and do basic arithmetic by then. It's the same with teaching responsibility. It's a skill like any other. Practice it and you'll get good at it, don't practice it and you'll be rubbish.

Could you explain this a bit further? I'm not sure what UDHR stands for — Erik

The UDHR is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The only use of the term 'compulsory' in the entire document (which is otherwise very careful with it's wording) in in the phrase "Elementary education shall be compulsory." (Article 26). There is no right contained in the declaration that children should be allowed tme to play, that they should have their wishes considered (though there is in the European Convention on the Rights of the Child), but the Declaration, in an unprecedented use of the term, makes primary education 'Compulsory'.

It just strikes me as indicative of the extent to which the idea that children must be forcibly 'educated' as if this was something done to them, rather than by them, has become ingrained in our culture.

it's been one of my pet projects to try to articulate a position which aligns a form of cultural conservatism (anti-consumerist, pro-environmental, artistically-inclined, pro-family and community, etc.) with a progressive social and economic agenda. I think there are possible areas of overlap worth exploring that could eventually lead to a significant grassroots movement, although this would likely be way down the line. — Erik

Sounds a lot like my philosophy. I agree with the autonomy of conservatism, but the egalitarianism of socialism. There doesn't seem to be a term for it, but I believe it is our natural state and that's why there's such a left/right split. No-one can decide who is right because they both are. It's the socioeconomic mechanism that doesn't allow the two to co-exist hence the arguments about which one we're going to have.

I'm open to any suggestions on books, articles, etc. that you think I may benefit from. — Erik

The place to start is Peter Gray's book "Free to Learn". He also writes a lot for 'Psychology Today' website, so Googling him will give you some outlines of his thinking.

Sergio Pellis's "The Playful Brain" gives a good technical account of the psychological basis.

Sugata Mitra describes a fascinating experiment in self education where he put a computer in a wall in Rural India, no teachers, no instructions. Within hours the local children had found it and were already surfing the Web. Days later, many of them had email accounts!

As you can probably guess, this is my area of academic interest (as well as personal) and we're already way off topic for a thread supposed to be about a specific ethical problem, perhaps this should be a thread of its own? @Michael

Interesting, since 16 year olds are not allowed to vote we're basically saying that a 16 year old having managed to pass standard tests in mathematics, probably multiple languages, having a grasp of our modern history and more scientific knowledge than most of the population when voting was first considered, has a potential contribution to democracy lower than someone detained in a mental institution.

And we wonder why youth are disaffected?

Which is why discussion is pointless - because if that is true then there is no means of ‘persuasion by rational argument’. You can’t change someone’s mind if there’s no mind to be changed. — Wayfarer

Why does the conclusion that the self and free-will are illusions lead to the conclusion that discussion has not impact on beliefs?

When did I say there was no mind?

What a sadly impoverished worldview! — Janus

How does the addition of knowledge make a world view more impoverished. Personally, I think the rejection of knowledge in favour of dwelling on what we want to be the case is impoverished, but if you want to reverse the enlightenment you carry on.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Between cogitans and extensa there is a parallelism; it is incoherent to talk of causation between the two because they are the same thing looked at in two incommensurably different ways. — Janus

Right, so how does something occur without a cause? If cogitans and extensa are the same thing, then that which causes changes in cogitans must also cause changes in extensa and vice versa, so we have not got anywhere with the question of how cogitans/extensa can be 'changed' in any way without a prior cause.

I agree that science does not make such claims concerning "objectivity", as I said, that's what philosophy does — Metaphysician Undercover

So how does philosophy do it then?

But you had made the contrary claim. "Scientists certainly do not consult philosophers to check whether their results are objective. They already know whether their results are objective by the confirmation of others." So that's one thing I objected to, and I'm glad you now realize that what you said wasn't really correct. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, fair enough I was being inaccurate for brevity, what I should have said was that ""Scientists certainly do not consult philosophers to check whether their results are approaching objective"

Why do you think that one is "closer to being likely to be a property of the object"? Each is a description, and as such it is subjective, of the subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

Because if two descriptions match the probability that the descriptions describe properties of the object increase. The probability of two descriptions which entirely made up in the head (ie have no reference to properties of the object) matching are no better than random as there is no reason why they would match. The more they match, therefore, the less likely it is that their matching is a random coincidence, thus is requires an explanation. The theory is that the reason they match is because they describe some property of the object. That theory becomes more and more likely the more people match because it become increasingly unlikely that the match is coincidence.

To gain knowledge about the object, we need to go beyond this, and ask what does it mean to be an object, to exist as an object, and these are the question which ontology and metaphysics are concerned with. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read my posts, I'm talking specifically about what it is that something meaningful can be said about. Talking about the questions metaphysics "asks" is irrelevant. Theology "asks" questions about religious texts, it doesn't mean their answers are meaningful. The question is not what better techniques do we have than science for 'asking' questions, it is what better techniques do we have than science for answering them.

What evidence? — Pseudonym


The whole legal system is designed around intention and free will. — Metaphysician Undercover

Surely you can see how this is circular? The fact that we think we have free-will (and so have developed a legal system based on it) cannot possibly be used as evidence that we do have free-will, how on earth are you concluding that? We used to think the sun the went round the earth, we used to think that Zeus ruled the world with thunderbolts as weapons, we used to think that the world was determined by Newtonian laws at whatever scale.

I think we know our own actions better than we know "the whole rest of the universe". ... And, it is quite evident that we do not understand the rest of the universe very well, .... — Metaphysician Undercover

I would have thought pretty much the whole of psychology is evidence that we do not know our own actions well at all. I'm not going to list studies because it is literally all of them, you will not find a single psychological study which concludes that what we thought was the case in our minds is spot on and we got it right first time intuitively.

That we have the capacity to consciously prevent a caused physical action from occurring, until the desired time, indicates the existence of free will. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, the Libet experiments did not show that, they showed a consistent pattern of pre-formation, as have subsequent experiments to test the theory, it's not a 'chosen' time, there's not widely varying element in the delay, it's consistently within a similar small time-scale before the action.

I don't see how placing an individual in a hypnotic trance is relevant to the issue of conscious free will. That's like arguing that a person has no conscious free will within one's dreams. — Metaphysician Undercover

It demonstrates that the stories we tell ourselves about what motivated us to act can be so convincing as to seem unquestionably real and yet still be completely false. There have been countless other psychological experiment which show the same thing - we do not know our own minds at all.

I'd truly be interested in any evidence that you have to support that last sentence. If it is true, I wonder how causality is determined. l'd like to see comparisons to other small, inclusive communities such as the Amish. — Tree Falls

I've no web links, but you might want to start with the work of anthropologist James Suzman who works with the Kalahari Bushmen.
For an account of the disaster of the agrarian revolution see James Scott's "Against the Grain", or Jared Diamond's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee"
Marshall Sahlins's paper "The Original Affluent Society" id the most famous account and contains a considerable number of links
You might also like Daniel Everett's investigation with the Piraha, in which he found no evidence or even notion of psychological disorders, but I don't have a link to the paper.
Maryanski and Turner's book "The social cage, human nature, and the evolution of society" gives a good overview of the changes wrought by societal changes during the agricultural revolution.

For balance
http://www.academia.edu/6409883/HAPPINESS_IN_EVOLUTIONARY_PERSPECTIVE Give s agood account of some of the difficulties of measuring happiness
And The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice edited by Jacqueline S. Solway if you can find a copy gives a balanced account of the perspectives, both from supporters and critics of the position.

Who said consciousness is non-physical? Think of Spinoza's cogitans and extensa being one thing understood two ways. — Janus

I don't see how cogitans helps. It's still got to cause some action in the brain and so we still can't answer the question of what causes it to act if not some other thing. How does it do something but not be caused to do it by some other thing?

So agreement between us, though it does make "objectivity" in the sense of "inter-subjective", it does not make "objectivity" in the sense of "of the object" because it still might be wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Science does not claim to achieve objectivity any more than it claims to achieve truth, its about methods which approach those things.

If you and I both think the sun goes around the earth, that is a good deal closer to being likely to be a property of the object than my personal opinion that the sun is held up by the moon on strings, which no one else seems to share.

Its not that the scientific method is a guarantee of objectivity and truth, it's a far cry from that. But it's the best system we have, nothing else is going to get closer to true knowledge 'about the object'.

But my guess is that you didn't give him a skill saw at age 4. — Tree Falls

The situation never arose, he never even so much as picked up my circular saw, he asked me if my chainsaw would hurt if it 'bit' him when he was younger, I said it would, he never touched my chainsaw after that either. Why would he?

The brain's risk assessment capacity doesn't seem to fully develop until the mid-20s. — Tree Falls

I don't know where you're getting this from, but I'm presuming it's the studies done on recklessness in teenagers. Actually, more tightly controlled studies have shown that; a) the effect disappears when the teenagers are alone (so it's more peer pressure than inability) and b) that in scenarios where they're asked to judge the risk objectively, they are no less capable than adults.

What's more, the growth and plasticity of the young brain continues until about 25. The peak child-bearing age in most hunter-gatherer tribes is 22. I know evolutionary theory is not popular here, but it seems unlikely to me that we could have evolved a type of brain incapable of responsibility at the time when we're most likely to be responsible for the next generation.

I'd truly be interested in any evidence that you have to support that last sentence. If it is true, I wonder how causality is determined. l'd like to see comparisons to other small, inclusive communities such as the Amish. — Tree Falls

I don't have any comparisons to the Amish (or similar), but I'd be happy to collect a few papers for you when I'm back in the office tomorrow.

Never? — tim wood

No as far as I can remember, no. I recall a few occasions when I've had to be quite vocal about what I saw as being the likely consequences of some action they were considering that I thought was a bad idea, but in the end the choice has always been theirs when it is theirs to make. Kids aren't stupid.

was (e.g.) a mediocre student when I could have been exceptional, a slightly better than average athlete when I could have been much better, etc. If I had someone behind me pushing me I think the trajectory of my life may have been much different, probably even much better. — Erik

This is certainly something that is often on my mind, especially if the kids are choosing to spend their day climbing trees instead of studying (they don't go to school obviously) but I think it's too easy to think that a push will, or would have, had an overall good impact. One only needs to look at your average high achiever to see that things are rarely all sweetness and light for them. The 'push' they received had its negative impact too.

What I've personally found to be really important is setting a good example and providing a positive environment. Given those two things, kids tend to make the right choices.

I find it perennially mystifying that parents will shout at their children, demand they do as they're told and spend all their free time watching TV and are then surprised when their children shout a lot, try to make others do what they want them to and spend their days watching TV.

With regards to your 'bad' choices, a lot of what this thread has been about is the ability (right, I would say) for kids to make some poor choices and see how they turn out, they've got to stand on their own two feet someday and the ability to know a good choice from a bad one doesn't magically arrive at 16,18 or whenever. I wouldn't presume to comment on your own experience, but I suspect you learned some important lessons from those early choices and I doubt you would have the motivation to be who you are now without having discovered for yourself what happens.

It's refreshing to hear someone else thinking there's more to an upbringing than acquiring knowledge. Children actually have a 'right' to an education under the UDHR, they do not have a right to play time. Does that sound right to you?

Personally I couldn't agree more with your definition of sucess. Like you it's one of the few things I feel I know is right (although there's lots of things I think I know are wrong).

I agree that some kids need more guidance than others, but I really can't see any justification for this constant need society seems to have to insist it knows best to such an extent as to actually ban them from certain activities and make others mandatory. Even so much as a cursory glance at the adult world will tell anyone that what modern culture thinks is best for everyone, most assuredly is not.

But what we (or specifically I or you) should seek as oppose to what we tend to seek does not seem to be in that domain. I can't think what it would mean to test an 'ought.' — foo

This is probably a question for a thread of its own, but to give you a brief reply, although there are a number of responses, I will outline my personal approach.

Basically I consider the evidence from neuroscience to be sufficient to consider that the self and free-will are both illusions. They are ad hoc stories our brain tells us to reconcile our actions into a coherent teleology.

As such there is no 'ought', there is only what we 'are' going to do.

Science can therefore make predictions (which is its job) about what we 'are' going to do and how we 'are' going to feel in certain circumstances. Therefore, given that we definitely 'are' going to want to bring those circumstances about, science can make statements about what courses of action are most likely to succeed. There's no further debate about whether we 'ought' to do these things because we just will, or will not depending on how convinced we are of them.

some prominent and perfectly rational neuroscientists think that morality contains kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. — Pseudonym


Such as...? — Wayfarer

Patricia Churchland, Sam Harris, for example.

some people think it is. — Pseudonym


Such as...? — Wayfarer

See above

You can't win an argument just by repeatedly stating what you think is the case — Pseudonym


Right, so I suggest you desist. — Wayfarer

If you can't tell the difference between constructing an argument and repeating statements as if they were fact then I'm not sure I can help you, but let me try.

"Science can talk meaningfully about an increasingly wide range of subjects because it can demonstrate the remarkable predictive power of its theories, and thereby show a remarkable justification for it's metaphysical presumptions in terms of utility." - An argument, note the key use of the word 'because'. One thing I claim is the case 'because' of another which I think logically causes it.

"...in respect of ‘the meaning of ethical statements’, then that is plainly not a concern of science as such." - A statement, not an argument. No "X is because of Y".

I don't want to make presumptions about your upbringing so I'm going to stick to hypotheticals and leave you to correct me if you have personal experience to the contrary you'd like to share.

The thing with free parenting is that it treats good decision making like any other skill, it needs practice. I would be reluctant myself to give most 16 year olds any important decisions, but I'd be reluctant to give most 40 year olds important decisions because I think kids are not trained in how to make decisions and they don't get much better in adulthood either.

Right from the start, children are told "don't touch that", "don't go there", cupboards are locked, dangerous things are put out of reach. Children grow up thinking that anything that is a danger to them has either been ruled on already or removed from their environment.

So by the age of 16, they still have no idea how to make a sound judgement because they've never practiced. It's like expecting someone to ride a bike without ever falling off.

My boy had his first knife when he was 4, he's now quite an accomplished carver and makes most of his own toys, but I wouldn't give a knife to most 16 year olds I meet, because they weren't given one when young, they just don't know how to handle it.

The brain gets less plastic as we get older, so new skills become harder to learn, including how to make good decisions.

We avoid the chance for children to learn these skills by experience when their brains are most amenable to learning, and then expect them to learn the whole lot in the space of a few years, just when they've got everything else going on. It's no wonder we get the poor decision making ability of the adult society we've ended up with.

Popper (as I explained yesterday) devised the criterion of falsifiability specifically for the kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. — Wayfarer

Yes, and some prominent and perfectly rational neuroscientists think that morality contains kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. You're acting as if the matter was settled and all you need to do is point out that it isn't so without any argument to support that claim.

but in respect of ‘the meaning of ethical statements’, then that is plainly not a concern of science as such. — Wayfarer

Again, some people think it is. You have to actually construct an argument if you want to dispute their claim, and if more people agree with their claim than agree with yours then that is the direction rational society will take. You can't win an argument just by repeatedly stating what you think is the case and whining when others don't agree.

You’re simply seeing the argument through a perspective which simply assumes that science is the only real source of knowledge. Your approach is textbook positivism: science is the only source of real knowledge, if it can’t obtain knowledge of ethics, then neither can anything else. Oh sure, people can like opera, or religion, or ski-ing, but that’s just their personal stuff. When it comes to what really counts, that’s the knowledge ‘in the public square’, and only science can deliver it. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's pretty much it, when it comes to knowledge about physical things (including people), and your opposing argument is....?

Ok. :groan: — TimeLine

Oh, devastating philosophical argument, I'm sunk, I don't know how I could ever have been so foolish as to not agree with you entirely from the start.

But in claiming that science 'provides us with a method of obtaining morals, etc', he is making the exact claim that you said that 'nobody seriously is making'. — Wayfarer

I don't get why you can't see the difference between someone claiming that science can make falsifiable statements about morals and someone claiming that science can decide everything in the world that is meaningful.

Are you suggesting that morals constitute 'everything that is meaningful'? If not then how do you get from someone claiming science can say something about morality to science is claiming to be able to decide what is meaningful? If a scientists claims to be able to say something about gravity, are they not also making some kind of statement that their theory says something about what is meaningful?

It sounds like you're just opposed to science making any claims at all that you don't personally approve of, and you're opposing that, not by presenting arguments against those particular claims, but by invoking some false 'slippery slope' argument that because scientists claim to be able to make falsifiable statements about morality they're suddenly claiming authority over everything that's meaningful.

the one, to have - to possess - that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be - to share, to give, to sacrifice - that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one's isolation by oneness with others." — TimeLine

This is exactly the kind of gross misrepresentation of nature that justifies the continued destruction of our ecosystems and presides over what is becoming the next mass extinction event. "It's OK to kill as many animals as we like because they're all brutal savages who deserve it, not like the angelic humans with their desire to share, give and sacrifice".

Remind me, which species is it that wiping the others out, the sharing, giving, sacrificing one, or the ones driven by nothing but the desire for survival?

I had been saying that I take issue with the idea of science as the ‘arbiter of what is meaningful and important’. And I do maintain that science often occupies that role in modern culture, and that a lot of it is grounded in evolutionary theory. — Wayfarer

Yes, we know you maintain that position, we (or I at least) have been asking for some evidence to back up that claim, some quote or activity of 'modern culture' where science is acting as the arbiter of what is meaningful All you've so far provided is areas where science acts as the arbiter of what is objectively the case and what can be objectively said about the existence of things in the physical world, which is exactly the role of science. Just give me one example of a thing that you think is meaningful that 'modern culture' has arbitrated is not 'meaningful' (not "unlikely to exist", not "not a theory that can be justifiably adopted in a secular democracy", actually "not meaningful").

there have been a large number of popular philosophy books published in the last decade, which appeal to evolutionary science, to argue on the basis of the science to ‘show there probably is no God’. And that is the kind of thinking I’m responding to. — Wayfarer

How are you 'responding to' it? By denying their right to make such arguments? I don't understand what your position is on this at all. Lots of people think your metaphysical is wrong, enough people to constitute the mass of society. It's not a conspiracy, or some kind of mass delusion perpetuated by mysterious powers, it's just that more people think you're wrong than think you're right.

But note that this then relegates beliefs to the domain of individual, the private - tantamount to, if not exactly the same as, a matter of opinion. — Wayfarer

Yes, that is where private beliefs belong, you can discuss them with others, shout them from the rooftops if you want to but what else do you expect people who hold a broadly physicalist metaphysics to do with your private beliefs?

I did not devise the idea that scientific materialism is generally antagonistic to philosophies of those kinds, and that evolutionary theory is often used in support of that. The whole tendency of positivism, of various kinds, and various forms of economic and scientific materialism, is to undermine or attack belief in the spiritual aspect of the human being. So here I’m calling it out, and I willl continue to do so. — Wayfarer

It's not "antagonism", there's no "undermining" and "attacking", we just don't agree with you. Some even think that such ideas as your can be harmful in some way and so are vocal in their disagreement, that's entirely to be expected if they think some harm might result from thinking that way.

If you think that physicalism is wrong, or that evolutionary theory does not apply to the areas others think it does, then make an argument to that effect and present it publicly, but don't expect that it won't get shot down by the people who think it's nonsense, and if that happens to be most people then you're going to have to face a lot of criticism, so I suggest some tougher skin might be in order.

Huh? You think that free will has been consistently denied in favour of determinism for the last ten thousand years? Are you blind to the evidence? — Metaphysician Undercover

What evidence?

I'm saying that the whole rest of the universe apart from our personal experience is demonstrably deterministic so the simplest theory that does not require us to invent new realms is that we too are deterministic and any impressions of ourselves to the contrary are wrong.

The evidence that would be required to falsify that theory would be evidence that it is not possible, that there is no mechanism by which our actions could be predetermined. I see no such evidence, so I continue with the simplest theory, that's the scientific method that has proven so successful thus far.

There is, however, a great deal of evidence in support of the fact that our actions are not the result of 'free-will'. The Libet experiments for example, showing that the sub-concious brain prepares to take physical action before the concious part of the brain is aware of the decision to. Experiments on hypnotic suggestion which have shown that when subjects have an hypnotic suggestion implanted, say to crawl on the floor when the hypnotist clicks their fingers, they will invariable come up with some justification for their desire to do so in terms of a free choice "I'm just going to check if I've dropped something" or "what a fascinating floor tiles, I'm just going to take a closer look", all the while the experimenter knows full well that these are post hoc stories and the real driver of the action is the hypnotic suggestion, yet to the subject the feeling is entirely that they are checking if they've dropped something, or interested in the floor tile.

So the simplest theory is that our actions are entirely deterministic and our feeling of free-will is mistaken, and we have considerable evidence that what we think is us choosing something is actually just a post hoc story.

First off, as I said, I wasn't making an argument at all. I was expressing a personal preference. — T Clark

I think either you or I have misunderstood the nature of a discussion forum. I wasn't under the impression that this was a space for us to just post "stuff we prefer" and then... well what exactly? What kind of response did you expect to a statement that you don't even think makes rational sense and is just a personal preference?

My favourite colour is green. What do we do with that?

Consciousness enables animals to perform unpredictable acts, and to an even greater degree, it enables humans, to perform not only unpredictable acts, but completely unpredictable kinds of acts. — Janus

I asked how, you've simply re-asserted your belief that it does, not how it does it.

They are organically determined. — Janus

How? What is the actual mechanism by which something no-physical causes a physical action? Where in the causal chain does it intercept?

I don't really care to discuss my personal circumstances on a public forum, but, yes, suffice to say that I have never told my children what they can and cannot do, they are perfectly capable of making rational decisions for themselves, the idea that children cannot decide what is in their own best interests is a myth perpetuated so that adults can justify forcibly moulding their children into an image they, or their culture, prefer. Adults treat them like dolls they can dress up and make behave in whatever way suits their little games. It's nothing to do with their best interests.

Epistemologists sometimes say that knowledge is "objective" if there is agreement amongst individuals concerning the thing known. Generally, when people say that scientific knowledge is "objective", it is in this sense that they use the word, peer reviewed or something. It doesn't mean "objective" in the sense of "of the object, because knowledge is property of the human beings, not the objects which are known. Nor is it really "objective" in the sense of an aim or a goal of a subject, because it is common to many subjects. It is a sense of "objective" which means "inter-subjective". We must be careful not to confuse this sense of "objective" which is inter-subjective, with "objective" in the sense of "of the object". — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is exactly what it does mean. It means that, if my knowledge of the object is exactly the same as your knowledge of the object in some meaningful way, then our knowledge must be truly "of the object" because it is unaffected by our own subjectivity, It is related purely to the object. To the extent that my knowledge of the object contradicts yours, then that knowledge cannot truly be "of the object" because the object cannot be both things, our knowledge must therefore be subjective.

The latter form of "objective" is proper to the subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

So this can be true but only if you carefully circumscribe what it is you're referring to. So take God, for example. If we are to say something objective about God in this second sense, then we are specifically talking about your God, the one in your head, not some general God in the public sphere, because only this former type is an 'object' about which something positive can be said objectively. If my God differs from your God, then 'God' is clearly not an 'object' about which we can speak because it cannot have both those contradictory properties. 'My God' and 'Your God' are the only objects which exist in the sense you've defined the term about which we can talk objectively.