RE: Why science and religious fatih need not be in conflict: It's as easy as 1-2-3!
May 10, 2017 at 2:10 pm
(May 10, 2017 at 10:31 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(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.
Facts or convenient fictions, as I read the part bolded. But why choose? I think values possess a factual status in relation to the person to whom they belong. One is forced to concede what matters to them when they try but fail to act against them, or succeed and feel dreadful about it. Why because what matters to them are, from their perspective, facts. Such facts may be mutable with difficulty or over time, but they aren't the kind of fiction one chooses arbitrarily. Perhaps they could have been otherwise given a different upbringing and different life experiences, but at any given moment they are facts with which the person must contend. In deed, they are a large part of what animates ones every effort.
Can we trust reason? We can trust reason to pursue truths relevant to our values. Truth as such is only correspondence between words and the state of the world. It far exceeds our capacity and our need. Selection is necessary. Values direct that selection. Reason, if reason does anything at all, is always motivated.
