RE: Why science and religious fatih need not be in conflict: It's as easy as 1-2-3!
May 10, 2017 at 10:31 am
Mister Agenda, I’m not seeing a clear dispute here. I agree with much of what you say.
If feelings are, as you say, shorthand for our values, then it can still agree with my position. Transcendent values can be known by means of feelings in the same way that sensations allow us to perceive physical objects. Nor do I deny the power of cultural influence. Repeated exposure to atrocities can dull our sympathies. A good analogy would be the ability of a beer snob to cultivate his discernment of hops varieties or the subtle influence of roasted malt. Another is the acquired knowledge of a engineer that allows him to spot dangerous structural deficiencies.
Internal facts are still facts. The question remains as to whether those facts are universally applicable. Perhaps it would help to think about the similarities between recognition of moral facts and recognition of universals, i.e. the idea that there are actually kinds of things and real distinctions between particular things. Of course that only works if one is some kind of realist; no nominalist would find this comparison useful.
Of course that depends on whether axioms are actually true or convenient fictions - or to put it another way, can we trust reason. Should everyone accept that other people’s lives are equally valuable as their own? I don’t think that can be rationally justified based on observations from nature (and you have already dismissed conscience as a guide). The book of nature suggests that when resources are scarce the survival of the group will be increased by abandoning its weak and unproductive members.
(May 9, 2017 at 5:16 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Hmm. Feelings are indeed about something. They are reactions to input from either the sensory world or our imaginations or memories. They seem to act as an unconscious shorthand for our values, and how we react and what we react to with emotion is heavily culturally influenced.
If feelings are, as you say, shorthand for our values, then it can still agree with my position. Transcendent values can be known by means of feelings in the same way that sensations allow us to perceive physical objects. Nor do I deny the power of cultural influence. Repeated exposure to atrocities can dull our sympathies. A good analogy would be the ability of a beer snob to cultivate his discernment of hops varieties or the subtle influence of roasted malt. Another is the acquired knowledge of a engineer that allows him to spot dangerous structural deficiencies.
(May 9, 2017 at 5:16 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Unlike our sensory perception, they are not a registering of some fact about our environment, but some fact about ourselves in combination with a particular kind of stimulus, which can be internal. We don't register revulsion the way we register a bird flying by, we learn to feel revulsion in response to certain stimuli.
Internal facts are still facts. The question remains as to whether those facts are universally applicable. Perhaps it would help to think about the similarities between recognition of moral facts and recognition of universals, i.e. the idea that there are actually kinds of things and real distinctions between particular things. Of course that only works if one is some kind of realist; no nominalist would find this comparison useful.
(May 9, 2017 at 5:16 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: I'm not against an objective component to morality, but a moral system is ultimately grounded on axioms, and if we disagree on the axioms, we may not agree on the morality. If we accept as an axiom that human lives are valuable...
Of course that depends on whether axioms are actually true or convenient fictions - or to put it another way, can we trust reason. Should everyone accept that other people’s lives are equally valuable as their own? I don’t think that can be rationally justified based on observations from nature (and you have already dismissed conscience as a guide). The book of nature suggests that when resources are scarce the survival of the group will be increased by abandoning its weak and unproductive members.
