The Science Thread

[Rigor Mortis]

And you reminded me somehow of a paper by Haight and Hersch called Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail. It's about human moral judgements, and it's a bit hard to read, not because of its language, but due to what it discusses. They basically had a set of stories where people do things everyone agrees is morally wrong. The trick is, in their examples, nobody was harmed and nobody else knows what that person did. The tamest one involves a guy disposing of his old torn American flag. He burns it in secret. This elicits a pretty strong negative emotion in you know what people. They get asked why it is wrong, and struggle to give any example of real harm caused. In spite of being shown there was no harm done, they still cannot accept it as anything but immoral. But, yeah, skip reading that if you can.

I might just say, you're not selling that book.

The point here is we are full of vestiges of our crocodile and caveman brains. Like being all horrible racists. If caveman you comes across another cave human that looks different from you and your tribe, you better kill him before he kills you. You don't really have time to sit and philosophise about it. Game theory tells us that's the best course of action. Payoff of maybe trading for a seashell (0.5) v the payoff of being dead (infinity). So maybe that's why 'civilisation' evolved. We'd trade part of our autonomy for protection against stronger people wielding theirs. Which leads to 'politics' - how much of this autonomy do we give up. And how much 'protection' do we get in return? We started running the numbers for ourselves, now and then. Well that's my hot take.

Happily enough, we've all learned to get along like a house ablaze, and live in the most peaceful time in the history of our species by far.

​

Way back when I was too young to be educated, I was exposed to social theory and the like. Bits have clung to memory, though I'd not even try to cite references. Some of those experiments to see how willing participants were to inflict injury on others were interesting, as were the factors that either diminished or escalated that willingness. Another one was looking at the behaviour of college students set the task of being either wardens or prisoners in a simulated prison environment. I'd go back to check them out only now I'm too old to be educated.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Similar to a point made earlier about nature being indifferent.

I think nature can be indifferent and good at the same time. It is indifferent in that it doesn't respond to individual wants and needs, but operates based on a set of natural laws. It is good in that it exists and is a source of great wonder.

This kind of sums up the philosophy of scientific pantheism - a "spirituality of nature and the universe" - which sees all of the universe as God

Its basic principles:

• Reverence, awe, wonder and a feeling of belonging to Nature and the wider Universe.
• Celebration of our lives in our bodies on this beautiful earth as a joy and a privilege.
• Respect and active care for the rights of all humans and other living beings.
• Promotion of non-discrimination, religious tolerance, freedom of and from religion and complete separation of state and religion.
• Realism – belief in a real external world that exists independent of human consciousness.
• Strong naturalism – without belief in supernatural realms, afterlives, beings or forces.
• Respect for reason, evidence and the scientific method as our best ways of understanding nature and the Cosmos.

Does science have any contribution to make in moral judgement?

I think we need to differentiate between science and scientists here. Science, no. Scientists, yes.

 

[Louanne Learning]

a paper by Haight and Hersch called Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail.

I think you mean Jonathan Haidt. I read his book:

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion​

- about moral judgements

The trick is, in their examples, nobody was harmed and nobody else knows what that person did.

Haidt's book opens with examples like that - where some will say it's immoral and some will say it's not

(Rigor - you may remember from a previous thread the example of the man who buys a chicken and has sexual intercourse with it)

Is disgust alone a basis for immorality?

 

[Louanne Learning]

buys a chicken

Not a live one! One from the grocery store

 

[DLC]

Yeah, the chicken. Thats a good one.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

This kind of sums up the philosophy of scientific pantheism - a "spirituality of nature and the universe" - which sees all of the universe as God

Unfortunately, perhaps, we've reached a point where people see the wonder of nature and picture the golf course or condo development.

I think we need to differentiate between science and scientists here. Science, no. Scientists, yes.

Are we making progress? Scientists may collate and examine data based on a range of factors, including previous research, areas of experise, yada yada, but within all that, they also distill through personal bias, inclinations, cultural exposure, etc. Social scientists, if that's a term that has meaning in this context, are often left with a lot of head scratching because outcomes don't correspond with expecations based on data.

(Rigor - you may remember from a previous thread the example of the man who buys a chicken and has sexual intercourse with it)

Thanks for bringing that back up! Going back to DLC's point of evolutionary psychology, the chimp picks the fleas off family members because they will do the same from them, thereby removing potentially dangerous parasites and improving chances of survival. Morality comes into question, what's good/bad, right/wrong, when this principle is extended to behaviours that don't relate back to personal or species survival in the same mechanical sense.

I found this amazing:

 

[Louanne Learning]

I found this amazing:

Omg, that is amazing, thanks for sharing. We're not really that different, are we?

 

[Louanne Learning]

The earliest mention of qualia came from philosophers – and it was supposed to be something that scientists couldn’t test.

The assumption was that another’s consciousness was inaccessible.

As Nagel said, “Qualia is the private, subjective side of experience that can’t be captured by physical descriptions.”

Now, scientists say it is possible to measure qualia, or at least compare them in meaningful ways.

“Your red is the same as my red.”

How does experience happen?

Research is starting to show that our brains work on a prediction and correction process.

“Subjective experience comes from our brains trying to constantly make predictions about what it expects to perceive based on past experiences. Then, it compares these predictions to the actual sensory input. Where there is a difference, the brain updates its model to better match reality.”

 

[Homer Potvin]

Research is starting to show that our brains work on a prediction and correction process.

Makes sense. It wouldn't be efficient enough without some kind of shortcut.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Makes sense. It wouldn't be efficient enough without some kind of shortcut.

Yes, the brain is very efficient! Remarkable output for little energy input (although it does use more energy than anything else in our body).