(June 6, 2013 at 4:30 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: You may be able to demonstrate all of that, but that’s not the logical problem I think you’ll run into. The problem is that it’s not valid to argue from the way things are to the way things ought to be, but when you try to derive your morality from Nature that’s exactly what you are doing. Does that make sense?
I think I understand what you are saying. I think that what I consider as "ought to be" is only developed through experience and experimentation (I may have already said that). Not in the sense of determining objective moral standards as much as having our morals evolve along with us. So in that sense when I am thinking that "this is how things ought to be" I am applying a subjective standard. I can see where that contradicts; in moving from a set of absolute morals to those that develop along with society, there may not be a true "ought to be" set of morals.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
