Hardcore Ethics

Why and how Ethics can be, and already is, a science

Moral Psychology uses scientific methods to research matters of concern to Ethics. It requires confirmation of its hypotheses. And it requires evidence. It produces facts, empirical facts. Moral Psychology is a science; and it is the experimental and/or the evidentiary branch of Ethics.
As an example of Ethics research, note the Yale University empirical studies on ethics in babies done by Moral Psychologists.
Do watch the first two videos at each of these links, if you wish to become more-educated!

youtube.com/watch?v=T_KKrdK1cJY

youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU

Be sure to check out and view this video by Sam Harris. HERE:
youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

The theme of it is that science can tell us about human values and about questions of morality. He argues, well and convincingly, along these lines: Science can get us what we value. Science also can answer moral questions….questions about good and bad, right and wrong. Science can give us a foundation for morality.

Note that we don’t have ethical obligations toward rocks. We do have them, though, with regard to human beings. Human beings are creatures who can suffer.

Values, he points out, are special kinds of facts; they are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures. This includes human beings. Our experience is the product of our brain. We can now with Brain Science measure the brain states of humans at different stages of consciousness. While it is true that we do not have compassion for rocks we do, in general, have compassion for creatures who can suffer.

Ethics is concerned with the question: How do human beings flourish? Science informs us that there are right and wrong paths to flourishing. Yes, “well-being” is a concept in flux, exactly the same as the concept “health.” These are evolving notions as we learn more. At one time people lived to the age of 30; now they live to the age of 80. In the area of physical health ignorance has been displaced by understanding. Why can’t this occur in the field of morality? It can.
Given the reality that it is always easier to break things than to fix them, the sciences can offer answers to the crucial question as to how human beings flourish. With regard to the treatment of women, the ideal lies somewhere in between a culture that forces women we wear full burkas and a culture that sees females as merely attractive bodies for men to gain pleasure – displayed on magazine covers at every newsstand.

We need a universal consensus on human values. Ethics and morality help us to explore important matters such as What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? Science informs us about what we can do. It is simply not the case that it has nothing to say about what we ought to do! If we want to experience the peaks in life rather than the sorrowful valleys, science can show us how to get there. It can clearly indicate when we are on a path to well-being, to peak experiences and when we are not.
—Sam Harris [size=85](in a TED talk he gave in California.)[/size]

Your comments?

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How many of you, reading this, agree with promethean75 who argues that there cannot be a science of ethics, because science is a logical rational activity; and ethics is merely a case of emoting, like sneezing, or shouting" Rah rah," or saying “Boo,” or “Hooray!” It is non-cognitive.

Instead, do you agree with me that there can be a science named Ethics, on a par with the science named Physics. Do you have the vision? Did the previous post carry any weight with you?

This lends further support for the thesis: See
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29869131

which refers to a British Journal article by a writer named M. Menapace, M.D., Ph.D.

and for an extensive Bibliography, see:

link.springer.com/article/10.10 … 018-0050-4

Are any of you familiar with this book, or are you reading it now?:

M. C. Katz - Ethics as Science.
wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ … CIENCE.pdf

Let us hear you views…on this current topic. Please contribute your opinions or analyses about Ethics.

Is that really a fair summation of his position? Perhaps those are his descriptions, I’d have to go back and check. In any case, I agree that there is not a science of ethics because we cannot differentiate between the axioms of ethics scientifically. We cannot experiment our way to the core values. Once we agree on core values, one can then build rationally, but differing priorities and evaluations will keep ethics from ever being something like Physics. In physics you can measure and measure. But we cannot measure anything to determine if, for example, deontologists are better than consequentialists in their starting points. Nor can we resolve the abortion issue by measuring something. Nor can we use science to resolve the differences between those who think that everyone should be supported and those who take a more social darwinian approach. Why? because these people measure different things. And we cannot prove either side is wrong. We cannot, as in science, falsify various opposed positions.

This doesn’t mean ethics is like sneezing.

why i think that’s a fine summary of my position. you did great, doc. thank you.

look alls i’m trying to say is that ethics does not, and cannot, belong in epistemology. i have no qualm with a prescriptive ethics which has as its purpose to establish imperatives… but i cannot accept that moral propositions express anything other than attitudes and preferences. such propositions are generically different from inductive and deductive statements of fact. its time for us to grow some hare on our chests, gentlemen, and accept that we cannot appeal to such silly notions as objective values of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that are out there in the world waiting to be discovered. we must build morality ourselves, and this requires that one philosophizes with a hammer.

Thank you, bro, for your clarity.

Here is how a system of prescriptive ethics ties into the empirical world and becomes exactly measurable with precision:

The time and duration a person gives to something or someone in the form of focused attention is measurable. In Value Science this is known as Intrinsic Valuation. {In Behavioral Economics it is known as the Pareto function.}

There are two logicians to whom special attention ought be given: Nicholas Rescher and Robert S. Hartman. Look each of them up in Wikipedia. Rescher has written a book on The Logic of Preferences. It is filled with symbolic logic and arrives at some surprising conclusions with regard to preferences. Hartman devised Value Science which includes the Algebra of Value. It shows that some attention is positive (which results in greater value than originally) and some attention is negative; and by the math involved it results in far lesser value as a result. He speaks of the former as Value Composition and the latter as Value Transposition. [I will be glad to go into greater detail upon request.]

The result is that when we speak of a valuation we are to also speak of Judge J and of Time t. Value science directs us to be specific and precise. This dispels ambiguity and vagueness.

Formal Axiology spells out, among many other findings, how value-judgments can be mistaken and how they can be accurate. It logically defines its terms well, as it goes along. Time spent on focused attention ties it in with the empirical world of recognized science.

That’s enough for now. Your relevant comments and questions are most-welcome.

Notice that he appreciated you for defending his summation of your position, but did not respond to your position. He simply restates his own position. Presumably he considers this ethical behavior. Me, I don’t see anything like a demonstration that there is objective ethics in what he or the others write.

Greetings, Karpel Tunnel

I agree with you. Not from what they write can anyone conclude that Ethics is objective. That does not mean that Ethics cannot be taught in classes and by tutors all over the the planet ( much like Euclidean geometry is n ow taught.) For, as you read it over, when you studied The Structure booklet, did it seem to you purely subjective? When it gave facts about ethical behavior, or it presented Dr. Apiah’s argument for cosmopolitanism, did it seem like the author, Dr. Katz, was being subjective. …or was it more objective? I think the latter is the case.

Of course, it would help if we defined our terms. Ethics as science is researched by humans. Humans are subjective.
I take “objectivity” to mean: inter-subjective consensus. This applies even to topics like falling rocks, or gravitational attraction between galaxies.

On a related matter, Sam Harris holds that Ethics is concerned with human well-being, and that this state can be described and gain wide agreement: free choice, free expression, a certain degree of material comfort, a clean environment, etc., etc
{Perhaps someone in the middle-class came closest to it living in the United States between 1950 and 1970.}

Isn’t “the abortion issue” made moot by the availability of birth-control measures, morning-after pills, and education: as to how to use these, as well as the importance of doing so? Work to make this technology widely available everywhere and abortion becomes less of a dilemma. It never was an issue for rich women: they merely flew out of state to obtain their abortion. Let’s work to eliminate poverty.

Your views, K. T.?
What do other readers think?

You are correct that " Once we agree on core values, one can then build rationally." If the core values are obtained non-controversially from the meta-langue for Ethics, namely Formal Axiology - which precisely defines terms such as value, good, better, approval, bad, no-good; and which provides via logic various dimensions of value that are pre-ranked, by definition and observation - then, in general, within such a frame-of-reference Moral Psychologists [like Dr. Paul Bloom - who didn’t wait for my Unified Theory to do his research] can go ahead and do controlled studies of babies and get significant statistical results.

He uses scientific methods, but does not experiment upon his young subjects. View the two videos to which I offered links, and you will understand: In my earlier post in this thread, the post of August 13, 2019, two links to the You Tube videos were presented. Did you overlook them? If so, be sure to take them in now. They show science in action. Yet they are definitely in the context of ethics!!!

Furthermore, I strongly recommend you read pp. 9-12 of Living Well, the third selection referred to below in the signature. They do explain why Consequentialism is better for us than Deontology, though we do need the best concepts from both. Ethics is a synthesis of the good ideas from all existing moral philosophies; yet the Unified Theory of Ethics is a transition into a science of Ethics that is quite capable of falsifying opposed positions!

Formal Axiology, among many other functions, serves as the meta-ethics for the Unified Theory of Ethics.

Although this is an over-simplified explanation of Formal Axiology, it may prove helpful: click on this link, safe to open –
cleardirection.com/docs/formalaxiology.asp

Also see this account simplified for the layperson: valueinsights.com/axiology/the- … -axiology/

And check out this insightful discussion HERE: valueinsights.com/axiology/meas … tangibles/

To see the original text, by the philosopher who inspired it all, read this book: Robert S. Hartman – The Structure of Value.(1967).
Ask your local library to get it for you from the nearest university.

Your impressions, reflections, queries?

It would be interesting to learn whether any one of you followed up on the resources listed in the previous post – and if so, did you, as a result get to Know Thyself better? Did you learn something from your studies of value theory? Did you take a values inventory? Are you now more aware of your capacities, value-insight scores, etc.?

Let’s hear some feedback !

Okay?

Most branches of Philosophy are about conceptual analysis and other thought processes, about the search for truth, about extracting the wisdom from a scenario or piece of writing, about the joy of exercising one’s mind, about offering a new fresh perspective. One branch, however, is exceptional

Ethics is not only about all of the above but it also has a practical side; it is meant to be applied to daily life, to set a shining example of ethical living. For if people are going to learn to be more-ethical it is by seeing a role-model or example. …since that speaks “louder than words.” Ethics is oriented toward practice as well as it is toward theory.

That is why I was thrilled to discover a non-profit organization, headquartered in Silicon Valley = San Jose to be specific – which is putting Ethics and human development into practice. It has marvelous values and it translates them into policies and activities. It does not merely think deeply about values such as democracy and sustainability; it engages in advocacy; it works out the agenda, the practice – which is an integral part of Ethics. It spells out “how to get from here to there.” Most ethical theories fail in that respect. This website exemplifies hardcore ethics!

Visit humanagenda.net/policy-agenda

And see especially the first paragraph here to learn the core values guiding the moral applications: humanagenda.net/claro

What do you think?
Is this ethics in action? Does it solve problems? Is it worth it? Could it contribute to making progress?

Well worth watching!!!

When Ethics is applied to Economics we get this significant knowledge (in a brief talk) that a businessman - who also is a pretty-good teacher of Economics – provides for us. Be sure to view this insightful video in order to gain the new knowledge. youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs

It gives a capitalist’s perspective on why Neo-liberalism is a faulty ideology based on unsound ideas; and we are informed as to what we can do to counteract such misleading doctrines.

We can choose to fix the prevailing economic arrangements that aren’t working well. We can consciously choose to make things better, and this capitalist explains clearly how.

The capitalist giving the Ted Talk is named Nick Hanauer, and, incidentally, he is a billionaire. {Again, here is that link:}
youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs

Please tell us what you thought of this presentation. Did you note how it applied concepts from Ethics? Did you detect the ethical principles and ideals that served as its basic foundation? Is Nick H. making workable proposals? Would those proposals he makes be more-properly be labeled ‘Reforms’ or 'as ‘Radical changes’ …or neither?
What are your views as to what would result if Ethics theory were applied to Economics?

Great video, doc!

A capitalist comes clean. This is like a black swan event. I can hardly believe my ears.

LOL. Thanks for some positive reinforcement !!

And I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Did anyone else view that “black swan”? What were your impressions?

In case you never got around to viewing the TED Talk on You Tube, here are some of the points made by Nick Hanauer, the successful businessman.

Readers: Do you agree that his approach to business and to economics is
applied Ethics? From your understanding of the new paradigm, Ethics, can it absorb within itself everything that Nick is teaching about Economics? I believe
it can, but I’d like to hear from you.

.
THIS IS A SURVEY:
Do you hold that ethics is learned:

A. Only at “your mother’s knee,” that is, at home when you are young

B. In a classroom when one is either a senior in high-school and/or it can be taught to a college student

C. Both of the above A and B

D. Neither A nor B, because it is genetic

E. All of the above

F. None of the above.

Please let us know how you vote in this survey.
Which option do you choose?

.
Well, let’s forget about the survey. No one wants to vote, it seems.

One bright young philosopher, writing at a forum, argues that “morality is about removing trolley problems from every-day life for as many people as possible. He claims that Ethics is a study that removes having to choose – as we go about our daily lives - between the well-being of you-versus-other-individuals.
It’s us vs. them!
But then he clarifies his position when he writes: “Due to food shortages people are resorting to violence. Therefore, in order to decrease violence, it is morally right to ensure an increase in food supply/production.” He offers statistics, and a bell-curve diagram, to back up his claim.

Do you agree that that’s all there is to ethics-theory

Alternatively, another claim the young man made, is that ethics is only concerned with negotiating what is “harm” and how to minimize it?

Are his efforts at reductionism credible? Can you accept that these are the only concerns of a good Ethics theory?

If not, why not?

One tricky area is deciding what is greed. Also earlier in the quote ‘effective’ is not defined, here at least. Effective at what. Unfortunately greedy companies are quite effective at some things.

(it’s tangential but I dislike the metaphors. Gardens are good because they are cooperative, jungles are bad because they are not. In a garden one could argue that the home owner/gardener is deciding what life is valuable using purely selfish criteria. A jungle, while obviously having a lot of competetion, also has a lot of symbiosis. There is some of this in a garden of course, but always related to the desire of the king. A jungle has hierarchies but also horizontal relationships. Anyway I could go far along on my issues with this metaphor, but it really does relate to all sorts of fallacies about civilization vs. nature, ideas of nature as primarily competitive and the blind spot of humanism as a kind of speciesism, all being ironic in context)

we end on this ‘being rapacious is psychopathic’

but that’s more or less cheating. You have a pejorative word ‘rapacious’ being defined by another pejorative term psychopathic.

Right off that simply alienates anyone who thinks competition is or can be good and also thinks that competition need not be rapacious. the whole quote seems to assume that cooperation and competition are mutually exclusive. Perhaps he tried to demonstrate this elsewhere.

I guess my take on it is that it is propaganda and not really much of an argument.

and hey I am critical of corporations and tend to think of them as regions of fascism as they are currently protected and conceived under the law, with rights and reduced responsibilities compared to how they were first conceived.

The trick is to show, to my mind how competition, desire and cooperation come to some balance.

Hi, Karpel

Nice to hear from you again! Thank you for responding, and for keeping the dialogue going. I shall take up your points one at a time.

Greed is an obsessive-compulsive neurosis; this neurosis is usually seen when persons collects old magazines, or newspapers, and when you enter their room you note that these papers are piled right up to the ceiling. In the case of greed the urge is to collect MONEY.
[How can a person be expected to scrape by on only one-hundred-million?! He has to become a billionaire!]

When I use the word “effective” I mean by it: beneficial to enhancing quality-of-life, applying Intrinsic valuation to the situation.
Greedy individuals and companies are quite efficient at some things. {In my writings I have made this distinction between the concepts “efficient” and “effective.” The former is Extrinsic value, while the lattter is Intrinsic value. I-value is worth uncountably-more than E-value. (This is another-- a more academic - way of saying that love is more valuable than savoir-faire.)

Yes, I believe Nick Hanauer intended those words (rapaciousness is pathology) to be perjorative. It was not so much a definition as it was an attribution. He was describing greed as sociopathic, and used the word ‘psychopathic’ instead. The point is he was emotional about other businessmen having that neurosis called ‘greed.’ He feels it gives business a bad name.

Nowhere in his ten-minute talk did he give (me, at least) the impression he is against competition.

In the booklet, THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS, the first link in the signature below, the final pages are devoted to the topic: competition. It discusses contests, bees, and rivalry of various sorts. It distinguishes ruthless rivalry from healthy competition, and gives an example, in the form of a story, of a healthy competition. That is one where everyone wins.

It recommends that we innovate new contests which, as a result of such competition, the world is better off afterwards.

And I am all for getting into balance, as a glance at my writings would show.

Comments? Questions? Analysis? Discussion?

I’m with you here, however when we look out at society competition and greed and cooperation can mix be separate, overlap.

Efficient usually means getting things done with low expense, quickly, low resource use. Effective usually means how much you can count on it working. A bulldozer is extremely effective at getting through a doorway, but not so efficient.

A greedy company can generally point at their products and services. Some greedy companies even make very good products and employ a bunch of people.

Sure.

OK but then this seems implicit when greed is being defined as opposed to cooperation. Though I did reread the quote and it seems like he is viewing competition positively. Which means he is not seeing them as mutually exclusive. Good.

But we need to get under the generalities. One can be greedy and also cooperate. In fact a corporation pretty much has to. With its suppliers, customers, employees, the state and so on. We might argue that there is coercion or imbalance in what they are calling cooperation.

How do we distinguish between cooperation that is fair and not. And even with greedy people, some of them actually can be quite fair. This may fit their business model. They may think it works. Or works in many areas of their corporation.

IN a sense I am saying that it seems to me there is a category error, or several, in what you quoted.

Even greed and cooperation are not mutually exclusive. In fact to be effectively greedy you have to cooperate with people, some of them perhaps greedy.

We have a compulsion (Greed)

and we have a pattern of interaction (Cooperation).

They aren’t opposed. They are in different categories.

And then there will be a strong subjective element in what different people consider the drive of a CEO or shareholder.