Isn't a miracle just something which doesn't have a naturalistic explanation? Claiming its a fallacy to invoke god to explain something which doesn't have a naturalistic explanation seems wrong. What principle of logic/reasoning is being violated here? — dukkha

I am saying that the conclusion is not logically entailed by the premise. That is, just because we don't have a naturalistic explanation for something does not logically entail that Goddidit.

Further, if you say it's logical to conclude that Goddidit, then it's just as logical to say that the deity of any religion did it, or to say that witches did it, or the shaman's spell did it, or undertectable beams from the Andromeda galaxy did it, good vibes and positive thinking did it, etc. Thus, a conclusion that Goddidit has no more epistemic warrant than any of these others. One invisible cause would be logically as valid as another.

Note, also, that if it's logical to say that if we don't know the cause of something, then Goddidit, then it's logical to say that since we don't know the cause of cancer, then Goddidit, and if we don't know the cause of sudden infant death, then Goddidit, if we don't know the cause of x, then Goddidit. How many uncounted times throughout history was the notion that Goddidit eventually replaced with a naturalistic explanation, particularly as tigorous epistemic methods were developed and implemented?

If a conclusion is logically valid, then it is not posssible that the premises be true and the conclusion false. But, since it is entirely possible that natural processes caused the healing, but we have not been able to identify them, it is possible that the conclusdion that Goddidit is false. Thus the reasoning is logically fallacious.

That is a statement of belief, or should we say 'un-belief'; because, according to you there is no God, so there must be a 'natural explanation' which simply hasn't been found in these cases.

That nicely illustrates that it is impossible for anyone to answer your question as to how to differentiate between natural and other kinds of explanation. Your view is: there are no other kinds of explanation; the only possible kinds of explanation must be natural. If science hasn't found them yet, then it will one day. More of the 'promissory notes of materialism'. — Wayfarer

My view is that I may well be mistaken about virtually anything I say.

And I am eager to hear reasoned analyses of, and counter-arguments to, the substantive content of claims I've presented a case for. Note that reasoned analyses and counter-arguments are different form ascriptions of motive and bias, as well as your opinion of my meta-ethical stance.

Anyway, the reasoning you presented about the epistemically rigorous Devil's Advocate process seems to be this:

• A person is sick.
• People pray to some dead guy to intercede with God to heal the patient
• The patient is healed.
• There's no known naturalistic explanation for the cause of the healing.
• Therefore, God must've healed the patient when the dead guy interceded,
• Therefore, this proves that the dead guy is in heaven with God
• and therefore after three such spisodes like this, the dead guy qualifies to be canonized as a saint.

Can't imagine why anybody would object to such compelling, rigorous logic and empirical methodology.

But gotta wonder: What's the explanation when subsequently, people pray to that dead guy for other patients but they die anyway? Does the sainted guy get demoted back to being just a regular dead guy?

And, since God is omniscient, and thus already knoes about the sick patients, why does it take some dead guy interceding to effect the cure? What's God's game here? I don't understand the logic of it.

People pray to some dead guy to intercede with God to heal the patient. — BrainGlitch

The point of the book that I provided a link to, is that it documents the procedures involved in declaring supernatural intervention. Part of these procedures are to rigourously contest any such claims. To this end, an ecclesiastical panel is convened, which issues evidence such as medical and pathological reports to expert witnesses who are not associated with the case. A recent NYTimes column was where I read about this particular author. The 'devil's advocacy' role is required to be sceptical and critical of the evidence. Indeed the (atheist) author of the book in question, was surprised by the degree of apparent cynicism and willingness to discount favourable evidence:

I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

But, according to your pre-existing belief, divine intervention simply could not happen, regardless of what evidence there might be.

I am not suggesting that you ought to believe anything. This is a philosophy forum, so the philosophical approach is not to say whether or what you believe about it. The philosophical argument is that if such claims were to be validated, then it would answer the question that was asked, specifically "by what criteria are 'natural' and 'supernatural' causes differentiated?"

I'm lost for words. — Sapientia

If you can't find the words to justify your assertion then why cling so strongly to that belief?

If you can't find the words to justify your assertion then why cling so strongly to that belief? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, yet again, you have misunderstood. That is one of the reasons why I just can't bear to continue this discussion with you. So, please, don't tempt me to reply, as I'm now doing, unless you can demonstrate an improvement.

I fear that if I say "black", you might just interpret that as "white" (or "yes" as "no", "up" as "down", and so and on, and so forth). Not only do you misunderstand what I'm saying, you are adamant that you have got it right. It is that part in particular which makes me averse to attempting to explain myself to you. Not to mention the fact that the difference between what I have said and what you have misinterpreted me as saying is obvious and self-explanatory, and that the former cannot logically be reduced to the latter should be clear. But perhaps logic just isn't your strong suit. Or perhaps you just can't get past your apparent desire to attack a weaker, more simplistic version of what I say.

I'm not even saying anything that is difficult to understand, or easy to misinterpret. I would bet on most other people in this discussion getting it right where you have failed.

You also seem to have a knack for failing to grasp the simple logic behind my arguments, and for conjuring up responses that miss the point.

There. You asked for it.

The point of the book that I provided a link to, is that it documents the procedures involved in declaring supernatural intervention. Part of these procedures are to rigourously contest any such claims. To this end, an ecclesiastical panel is convened, which issues evidence such as medical and pathological reports to expert witnesses who are not associated with the case. A recent NYTimes column was where I read about this particular author. The 'devil's advocacy' role is required to be sceptical and critical of the evidence. Indeed the (atheist) author of the book in question, was surprised by the degree of apparent cynicism and willingness to discount favourable evidence:

I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

But, according to your pre-existing belief, divine intervention simply could not happen, regardless of what evidence there might be.

I am not suggesting that you ought to believe anything. This is a philosophy forum, so the philosophical approach is not to say whether or what you believe about it. The philosophical argument is that if such claims were to be validated, then it would answer the question that was asked, specifically "by what criteria are 'natural' and 'supernatural' causes differentiated?" — Wayfarer

What seems to have entirely escaped your understanding is that we can analyse the logic of an argument independently of what we may believe about the truth of either the argument's premises or conclusion. Thus, our pre-existing belief or disbelief in supernatural agents and their habits is irrelevant to whether or not the reasoning is logically valid.

And it is logically fallacious to conclude that if we don't know the cause of something, then the cause therefore must be whatever card somebody pulls out of their vest pocket--or their ecclesiastical robes. (Talk about bias toward pre-existing belief!!!) Such a conclusion is logically invalid irrespective of whether it posits a naturalistic or a supernatiral cause.

As I responded to dukkha a couple of posts back, if the content of whatever card somebody pulls out of their vest pocket constitutes a valid conclusion, then you'd jave to allow that any number of other conclusions are just as logically valid as yours--including, that the cause of the healing is invisible, undetectable rays from the Andromeda Galaxy, and the like.

Furthermore, if you say it's logically valid to conclude that God must be the cause of something for which we have no naturalistic explanation, then it's just as logically valid to conclude that God is the cause of cancer, sudden infant death, and every unexplained accident and sickness, pain, and suffering in the world.

BTW, besides being a logically fallacious argument from ignorance, note that positing God as the cause for things we have no naturalistic explanation for, is just another example of invoking the infamous God of the Gaps.

If a conclusion is logically valid, then it is not posssible that the premises be true and the conclusion false. But, since it is entirely possible that natural processes caused the healing, but we have not been able to identify them, it is entirely possible that the conclusion that Goddidit is mistaken, that is, false. Thus the reasoning that concluded that Goddidit is logically fallacious.

The Devil's Advocates at best may do a rigorous job of eliminating known naturalistic causes for the healing at issue, but that's the end of their rigor. Their conclusion that therefore the dead guy must've gotten God ti do it, and therefore this proves the dead guy is in heaven, and therefore passes their test for canonization is logically fallacious, for the reasons I've given, and rather than logically and empirically rigorous as you claim, is the height of illogic and fanciful imagination.

So, it seems to me that it's not only that religious experiences are not epistemically on the same level as other regular experiences, but there's also a gradation of testability among the religious experiences themselves

Quite, there is no way to establish the presence of God even when you are the one experiencing the epiphany. However having experienced epiphany of various kinds myself, it is clear to me that some such experiences are utterly transformative, transformative to an unnatural degree(I do realise that there can be the same transformation in the development of mental illness). Also the nature, or content of the message can be considered. For example in the case of St Francis, the nature of the epiphany resulted in Christ like behaviour (following the epiphany) and the gift of communion with animals. The content can often contain information which is beyond human conception. An example of this is an experience I have had of a transcendence of time, time becoming viewed like a landscape, in which as I turned to look, I was looking into the past, or future. Such phenomena imply the existence in some unknown way of differing mental and experiential states, to what are provided in the world of the senses.

Thanks for your appreciation of Robbie Basho, I came across his music many years ago, through a chance and fortuitous event.

↪Brainglitch

It's worse. "God did it" is a "natural" explanation. If (unobserved or not) God changed the world, then God is causal. Causality cannot function outside itself. "Supernatural explanations" are incoherent by definition. If present theories do not describe how an event occurred, then how it happened has another description. Something else happened in reality. If "God did it," then that's what the world does.

Miracles and magic are entirely possible, but they are always only "nature": the world acting how it does. What logically follows is that if a "naturalistic"explanation is not accurate (e.g. it's a hallucination), then a different "naturalistic" explanation will be (e.g. an experience which is an ad hoc reduction of the world to a concept of "God," an entity of God speaking to someone, etc., etc.). — TheWillowOfDarkness

The defining distinction that differentiates naturalistic from supernatural explanations is that supernatural explanations posit a supernatural agent as the cause, and naturaliistic explanations don't.

heir conclusion that therefore the dead guy must've gotten God ti do it, and therefore this proves the dead guy is in heaven, and therefore passes their test for canonization is logically fallacious, for the reasons I've given, and rather than logically and empirically rigorous as you claim, is the height of illogic and fanciful imagination. — Brainglitch

It's not logically fallacious, you're just saying that as far as you're concerned, it's unbelievable. You have a 'will not to believe'. Incidentally, the point about theistic belief systems is that the saints are not dead, and are spiritually efficacious.

There's no airtight argument here — Πετροκότσυφας

Of course not, but I still answered the question.

"supernatural explanation" seem to be an incoherent concept since, in the end, it is always a natural explanation at play. — "Πετροκότσυφας

That's a belief system at work right there. You presume that 'science' knows enough about nature to say what is 'super' to it.

As regards what is natural and what is not - 'naturalism' nowadays is bounded by physicalist explanations. But there is an approach called 'religious naturalism' - that religious phenomena, such as prophecy, esctacy and the like, are naturally-occurring states, albeit rare. However they reveal other realms or domains of being which the ordinary intelligence doesn't see. In which case, religious traditions are simply the records of those who have encountered or happened on those 'higher states of being'. It depends on what you regard as the scope of 'natural law'. Presently 'natural law' is strongly identified with the so-called 'laws of physics', hence physicalism, which is the basis of the 'religion of scientism', so called. But what if there are mental fields and biological fields of fields of an unknown kind, in addition to the electrical and magnetic fields which current sciences recognise?

What kind of test can we pass someone through when he says that God spoke to him though? At best he will fit our criteria for some kind of mental illness but we cannot, not even in principle, test his actual claim. — Πετροκότσυφας

That is true, but note the quotation I provided upthread about the nature and origin of 'charisma'. Besides such things have often occured with the context of a 'domain of discourse' which provides an intepretive framework. Obviously, there is scope for misjudgement, delusion, chicanery, and the like but as the old saying has it 'there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold'.

The defining distinction that differentiates naturalistic from supernatural explanations is that supernatural explanations posit a supernatural agent as the cause, and naturaliistic explanations don't. — Brainglitch

No kidding! Here's the thing - you put all explanations of a particular kind in a box, and put a big rubber stamp on it, saying Religion, or something equivalent. Then whatever explanation you are inclined to, won't include anything in that box.

Case in point. Popular physicists now routinely employ the speculation that perhaps the entire universe is 'a simulation' that has been generated by some super-advanced species, in which we're all artificial creations. They say, of course, we may never know whether it's true, but it is felt to be a 'scientific' kind of thing to say. You might object to it on various grounds, but not because it sounds 'religious'. But if you spoke instead in terms of a 'higher intelligence' which is the source of the universe, then that is a no-go because it sounds too much like religion.

That's why naturalism has developed by defining what kinds of understanding it will reject; it is defined by what it denies.

What is a miracle according to the CC and why would they exhaust the scientific criteria before they declare a "miracle" if it's not "supernatural"? — Πετροκότσυφας

They have protocols. The 'Lives of Saints' provide an archive of such materials, what criteria they use to make judgements, and so on, going back hundreds of years. The author I referred to, Jacalyn Duffin, is a Canadian hemotologist who was sent pathology reports for her judgement; she says, she couldn't provide a scientific reason for why this relapse had occurred, that's what she reported. She also points out the clerics are very sceptical, they set the bar high.

My feeling is about all these things: I don't rule them out. As I'm not a materialist, then I don't regard them as impossible in principle. It doesn't mean I am going to be impressed by stories of weeping icons.

it's not just science but philosophy as well...

Recall Kant's saying that he had to declare a limit to knowledge to make room for faith. I see it like that. Naturalism as we know it is a product of an historical epoch, the European Enlightenment. It prepared the broad outlines of what is to be considered natural and what is not. Catholic Church is virtually the definition of 'what is not to be considered scientific', from the positivist's point of view. The Vienna Circle, behaviourism, scientific materialism, logical positivism, Marxism, evolutionary materialism - all of these intellectual movements are profoundly hostile to anything religious. We're sorrounded by that, materialism is the de facto attitude in the secular academy. But I've never accepted it.

It's not logically fallacious, you're just saying that as far as you're concerned, it's unbelievable. You have a 'will not to believe'. Incidentally, the point about theistic belief systems is that the saints are not dead, and are spiritually efficacious. — Wayfarer

I have very distinctly said that the reasoning is logically fallacious and explained this in detail. And I explained that my belief or unbelief in the truth of the premises or conclusion is entirrely irrelevant to whethr or not the reasoning is logically valid.

What is logically fallaious--as I explained in detail--is the conclusion that since there's no known naturalistic explanation, therefore, the cause must be x. In your particular case, x is Goddidit in the somewhat convoluted way via prayer to the dead guy, but the particulars of what's on the card you pulled out of your vest pocket are irrelevant to what renders the logic invalid. I explained why the logic is invalid.

OK, I can concede that point. Say it's something akin to the placebo effect on a large scale; the power of belief to affect medical outcomes. We you might consider that a naturalistic explanation. But the point of all the cases is, the medical data don't provide an explanation, as far as medical science is concerned, the recovery can't be accounted for, and thus seems, in ordinary language, 'miraculous'.

In your particular case, x is Goddidit in the somewhat convoluted way via prayer to the dead guy — BrainGlitch

You cynicism speaks louder than your logic. But in any case I didn't actually invent the Catholic Church, or write the book I'm referring to - just so long as we're clear on that.

My understanding now (and it constantly evolves) is that the insights preserved in the great philosophical and spiritual traditions represent profound truths, not simply superseded mythology. Of course then it is a matter of interpretation, what this actually means in day-to-day life - 'praxis', in the old terminology. We are in some sense people of our time but I also believe there is a timeless dimension, Nirvāṇa.

My view is that Western secularism as an ideological movement is caught up in a centuries-long reaction against its previous religious history. That plays out over centuries as an Hegelian dialectic. The thesis was the classical theological tradition, the anti-thesis is scientific materialism. A new synthesis is emerging - biosemiotics and 'the new physics', and other diverse movements which are neither classically theistic, nor materialistic. That is visibly happening. But we also have to have a broad enough vision to re-interpret and re-integrate the traditions, otherwise we're 'marooned in the present'.

I know. My point is that's incoherent. Any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another. The "supernatural cause" is only ever a state of the world which does something. With respect to curing a disease, for example, a drug is no less "magic" or "miraculous" than the command of God to be healed. Both are states of the world which result in the disease being cured. If it's true, the "supernatural" is just the world.

That's the exact problem. If God is going to be coherent as a force or presence, they must make a difference. The world of God must be different than the world without. To make sense God must be worldly, else the God makes no difference. Unless God is worldly, we are just calling the same place different names-- the "miraculous cure" would only be a different name for something a person's body did. God would not be there at all.

When God is not worldly, the inability to give any sort of answer on their existence is not a coincidence. Since the presence of such a God makes no difference to the world, there is nothing to know about it as a presence or force. Evidence and knowledge of it, in this sense, are impossible.

Asking the question of whether this God exists or not doesn't makes sense. If God is Real (infinite) rather than illusion (finite), then God cannot exist and so makes no difference to the world (finite).

To take the existence of this God on faith doesn't even make sense. Since God is infinite, we know God isn't troubled by existing or not. We know God to be necessary regardless of whatever the world does-- just as such a God makes no difference to the world, the world can make no difference to God, meaning God is beyond any change, restriction or controlling force. There is nothing to doubt about God.

If God is Real (infinite-i.e. not an illusionary finite state), we know the atheists are right.

So, please, don't tempt me to reply, as I'm now doing, unless you can demonstrate an improvement. — Sapientia

Ok, let me try again. You said that something which is demonstrated scientifically has a better chance of being objective, than ethics. You say that "because" it is demonstrated scientifically, it has a better chance of being objective than ethics, which is not demonstrated scientifically. You imply that it is the scientific demonstration which causes objectivity.

So I ask, can you justify this? Can you demonstrate to me why a scientific demonstration would cause something to be more objective than ethical principles are?

Hey Metaphysician Undercover - I know this discussion is between yourself and Sapientia, but I did try and address that very point in this post, referring to Hume's 'is/ought' problem.

Following from my earlier response on ethics, Hume's is ought/is problem is a call to moral knowledge. An understanding of ethics which discards the idea morally is given by observing of listening to some part of the world. It discards the idea of ethical nihilism, that the world is absent ethical significance, such that some force (e.g. God, nature) has to introduce it.

Hume's is/ought problem is not moral scepticism. It's a call to recognise ethical significance itself. That the ethical is not given by the empirical we "objectively" observe (e.g. someone's command, the text of a book, the exist hence of some state), but rather by ethical significance itself.

Ok, let me try again. You said that something which is demonstrated scientifically has a better chance of being objective, than ethics. You say that "because" it is demonstrated scientifically, it has a better chance of being objective than ethics, which is not demonstrated scientifically. You imply that it is the scientific demonstration which causes objectivity.

So I ask, can you justify this? Can you demonstrate to me why a scientific demonstration would cause something to be more objective than ethical principles are? — Metaphysician Undercover

For a proposition, hypothesis, etc. to be demonstrated scientifically typically means something along the lines of presenting logically rigorous argument (possibly incuding the math) and methodologically robust empirical data from which any independent observer can judge for themselves whether or not the propositions, hypotheses, etc. are sound. It is this, more or less, that people mean by "objective."

On the other hand, the proposition, hypothesis, etc. that some prescription for behavior is an ethical principle cannot be demonstrated in such a way.

Any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another. The "supernatural cause" is only ever a state of the world which does something. With respect to curing a disease, for example, a drug is no less "magic" or "miraculous" than the command of God to be healed. Both are states of the world which result in the disease being cured. If it's true, the "supernatural" is just the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think this is very simplistic and all wrong. Nature is conceived by modern science as a law-governed causal nexus. The nature of causality is understood to be either rigidly deterministic or more loosely probabilistically emergent.

If it is the latter then the standard understanding is that there is a virtual acausal world out of which the probabilistically causal world somehow emerges.

So, nature just is the causal nexus; where every event has a cause. Where there is no cause there is no nature, because the very idea of being or having a nature just is the idea of regularity or invariance.

If there is a spiritual order or a God that influences or even manifests the world of nature, that order or God cannot coherently be said to be merely a part of the causal nexus which is nature. Rather nature itself is a manifestation or a symbol of the higher order. The posited relationship between a purported spiritual order or God cannot itself ever be modeled in terms of efficient causality.

I know. My point is that's incoherent. Any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another. The "supernatural cause" is only ever a state of the world which does something. With respect to curing a disease, for example, a drug is no less "magic" or "miraculous" than the command of God to be healed. Both are states of the world which result in the disease being cured. If it's true, the "supernatural" is just the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I disagree that any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another.

So-called supernatural causes are outside of nature by definition. Operationally, they are equivalemnt to magic. They can impact the natrual world, but they are not subject to the ordinary rules and constraints of the naturlal world, and are not "states" of the natural world.

Now, if you want to deny that there are such things as supernatural causes, and explain all so-called supernatural causes as actually natural causes we just haven't identified, then sure--by your own definition, all causes are natural.

If it is the latter then the standard understanding is that there is a virtual acausal world out of which the probabilistically causal world somehow emerges. — John

This is an attempt to bring laws into the possibility of the caused world. You want to say that, when a casual relationship occurs, it happened because virtual acausal world forced it to happen. Emergence turned from a lawless possibility back into the a rigid predeterministic relationship.

Instead of understanding causality as an expression of freedom, that there is no reason any particular casual relationships occurs (which is why it is possibility), you still want to treat causality like a predetermined nexus, constrained to perform what ever is set out by the virtual acasual world.

Nature is not just a casual nexus. Causality doesn't have a cause. There is no state, rule or constraint which means one set of causes emerges over another. Every single state of causality is, in this sense, acasual. It's not there by some logical constraint. It was only caused because it exists. Nature not just a model, regularity or invariance. It means "to be part of what exists."-- to be something which emerged out of the lawless possibility of casuality.

The "spiritual order," the acausal logical nature of every state, is expressed by causality itself, an expression of the states which play out the lawless freedom of causality. There is no "higher order" because nature is the only (and highest) order. Every state is an emergence out of possibility. All states emerge without the action of a (pre)determining constraining law or force-- that's why states are but one of many possibilities; there is no "reason" dictating they are necessary. The acasual is not casual.

Hey Metaphysician Undercover - I know this discussion is between yourself and Sapientia, but I did try and address that very point in this post, referring to Hume's 'is/ought' problem. — Wayfarer

That discussion is between myself, Metaphysician Undercover, and whoever else wants to get involved. No one is unwelcome.

Hey Metaphysician Undercover - I know this discussion is between yourself and Sapientia, but I did try and address that very point in this post, referring to Hume's 'is/ought' problem. — Wayfarer

Yeah thanks, I saw your post. What I'm wondering is how knowledge of what is is supposed to be more "objective" than knowledge of ought.

For a proposition, hypothesis, etc. to be demonstrated scientifically typically means something along the lines of presenting logically rigorous argument (possibly incuding the math) and methodologically robust empirical data from which any independent observer can judge for themselves whether or not the propositions, hypotheses, etc. are sound. It is this, more or less, that people mean by "objective." — Brainglitch

I don't think that this is at all what people mean by "objective". I think Sapientia, and now you, are trying to create a new definition of "objective", one that suits the purpose of the claim that science is more objective than ethics. "Objective" generally means of the object, the external, as opposed to of the subjective, the internal. Ethics deals with how we ought to behave in relation to others, within the community, so it is clearly something external to the individual subject, and therefore objective.

ob·jec·tive

adjective
1.
(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
"historians try to be objective and impartial"
synonyms: impartial, unbiased, unprejudiced, nonpartisan, disinterested, neutral, uninvolved, even-handed, equitable, fair, fair-minded, just, open-minded, dispassionate, detached, neutral

Right, moral ethics are not supposed to be "influenced by personal feelings or opinions", they are supposed to be objective. Do you think that scientific theories are less influenced by personal feelings than ethics? If so, can you justify this claim, which I think is just a personal opinion itself, and therefore not objective?

I don't think that this is at all what people mean by "objective". I think Sapientia, and now you, are trying to create a new definition of "objective", one that suits the purpose of the claim that science is more objective than ethics. "Objective" generally means of the object, the external, as opposed to of the subjective, the internal. Ethics deals with how we ought to behave in relation to others, within the community, so it is clearly something external to the individual subject, and therefore objective. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that objective refers to the external vs. internal, and this is consistent with what I said about the scientific argument and data being put on the table so that any independent observer can judge for themselves.

People's behavior is indeed external, but any claim that behavior is or is not ethical is a value judgment. And value judgments are decidedly internal. We can express our value judgments in language and share them with others, but we cannot show them any entity that they can observe for themselves. They can only observe the behavior and make their own internal value judgement about whether that behavior is ethical or not.

Ok, let me try again. You said that something which is demonstrated scientifically has a better chance of being objective, than ethics. You say that "because" it is demonstrated scientifically, it has a better chance of being objective than ethics, which is not demonstrated scientifically. You imply that it is the scientific demonstration which causes objectivity. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know why you feel the need to reword it. What was wrong with the way that I put it? But anyway, yes, that is more or less correct, and is certainly much less objectionable than your original attempt.

So I ask, can you justify this? Can you demonstrate to me why a scientific demonstration would cause something to be more objective than ethical principles are? — Metaphysician Undercover

The normal boiling point for various substances has been scientifically tested to such a high standard that we can objectively predict at what temperature a particular substance, under normal conditions, will boil. We know, for example, that the normal boiling point of water is 100°C. It is objective because it doesn't depend on how you feel about it or what you think about it and so on. If you disagree, it can be put to the test, and you will be proven wrong. That is arguably not the case with ethical principles. If it is, then do you have any analogous method or basis for making the case for objectivity? If so, please explain. If not, perhaps it is because, as I said, the case for objectivity is stronger with regards to things such as temperature than with regards to things such as ethics.

Note that I have not said at any point in this discussion that ethics is not objective. Nor even that is has a lesser chance of being so. Rather, my point is about the strength of the case for objectivity for each respective claim.

"Objective" means what it says, i.e. pertaining to or inherent in an object or object of analysis. Colloquially, you might say that a persons objectivity is compromised if they were judging an event in which they were also participants, because they also have a subjective interest.

But the reason this is such an important issue in current ethical theory, is because of how objectiivity is held to be normative with respect to judgements of facts. What kinds of facts? one might ask. Well, there's facts which are amenable to precise objective measurement - the distance from the Sun to the Earth, the boiling point of water at sea level. But are the facts of such a kind when it comes to moral and ethical judgements? That is where the difficulty resides.

the worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated person today is the worldview given to us by science. Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values, they certainly hem in the possibilities. — Steve Pinker

source

Hence, we seek to explain ethical judgements, etc, in terms of evolutionary theory, which purportedly provides an objective reference frame. So within this attitude, there is the belief, implicit or explicit, that the scientifically-disclosed body of facts - 'natural explanations' - are the agreed basis for objective judgements.

Within that, we have some latitude, in the form of 'freedom of conscience'. But there is no real scientific criterion for ethical judgements inherent in that framework. So by default, it seems that ethical judgements are a matter of private opinion; which is the basis of ethical relativism. Or there are various forms of utilitarianism, 'the greatest good for the greatest number', human flourishing, etc.

In that absence of an agreed moral framework, like that provided by the Judeo-Christian tradition, then that is about the best we can do.

In science, there most typically are universally agreed upon, clearly defined criteria that the judgments are based on. Everybody understands how much counts as a cm, or a volt, or a newton, etc. And any dispute about whether or not a given object, say, weighs 50 kilos, is objectively resolvable. But there is no way even in principle to resolve dispute about whether or not a given behavior really is ethical, because there is no universal agreement about the criteria, or about mitigating factors, or exceptions, or degrees, and the like