What if all truth IS relative and we can't ever really know anything? Do you still object?
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What if all truth IS relative and we can't ever really know anything? Do you still object?
Just because you can't know anything doesn't mean that you can't have a good reason for believing the way you do. I don't know the sun's going to rise in the east tomorrow 100%, but I have a pretty firm belief that it will, and for a good reason.
But lets just go back to the original question for a second and think about this in terms of the ends justifying the means. We currently do not understand everything about the human genome, not even close. So we are not yet able to engineer ourselves in terms of happiness, intelligence, beauty, etc. We may have that capability in the future, but that is not certain. Even if it were, tampering with evolution would be extremely risky, for obvious reasons. Right now, what we are able to do, is eliminate some of the actual CAUSES of suffering. MOST of the suffering in the world today is caused by environmental and cultural factors such as poverty and war, rather than genetically low levels of serotonin in the brain. Lets take obesity for example. America has a problem with obesity, in large (no pun intended), because capitalism and our culture tells people they need foods which are not healthy for them. So right now, we can try to change that perception and educate people about making healthy food choices. It would be a mistake to assume that one day we will be able to just wave a wand, and 'poof,' problems like obesity are gone. Nothing is that simple. All actions have repercussions, and engineering the human genome will as well. Plus, people having an obesity gene would be less succeptible to starvation, which is still a problem, even in first world nations. So we need to deal with that first, then worry about eliminating the gene for obesity.
So my point is, it is okay to talk about ethical repercussions of changing the genome, for when that time comes. However, we are still expending energy in investigating how to do that. And we must consider that tampering with life on such a basic level is extremely risky, simply in that it has never been done before. I just think that we could focus more on changing socioeconomic factors that impact quality of life, rather than one day creating human beings without flaws. We may be able to eliminate some of these problems through other means, and not have to remove a gene from the species which could be advantageous in some situations.
Hm. So we ask the question: do the ends justify the means? What about the antithetical question: do the means justify the ends?
The problem with these kinds of thought experiments is that they polarize people and place them into either consequentialist and deontological camps. Both have their criticisms that seem incorrigible, and in many instances both are morally counter-intuitive (my favorite example is Phillipa Foot's trolley-problem and variations thereof). I beg to ask, if a moral theory tells you to do what seems obviously wrong, what is that theory really worth, should it not be rectified? In the end, our moral theories are based on our intuitions and will end with our intuitions.
Consequentialism and deontology are in limbo between being theories of practical ethics and metaethics. Not only do they fail to guide us through every situation, relatively few people actually apply them in daily life.
In the end, these kinds of thought experiments are quite unanswerable because they do not grant any kind of situational appreciation. They do not let the agent practice any kind of "wisdom" she has.
So who decides how many virtue points are assigned to the ends and to the means? It's still measured by intuitions, which vary from person to person. Seems like you're just trying to use numbers as "virtue points" to give your "virtue" facile or ostensible objectivity, which you have not established. Of course you can assert that there is objective goodness, but without adequately defining it and giving a sufficient proof for it, what you've said is meaningless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baudolina
I think this debate about postmodernism can be remedied with a healthy dose of Kant.
We cannot have a universal test of truth, because then we would have to test it against itself, which would be circular and thus an inconsistent argument.
Logic is the negative form of the truth. What is illogical cannot be true. What is logical might be true. But since we can never know objects in themselves (following transcendental idealism) we can never be certain of our premises, that is, we can never have well grounded facts about things, unless these things are revealed to us a priori (that is, necessarily true). To function sensibly, we must assume or imagine (through induction) that our sense impressions and the conceptions that we surmise from them correspond to real things, notwithstanding the (a priori) fact that we cannot prove their existence.
As for the defense of the existence of a priori knowledge, we may be brains in a vat, yet the laws that govern mathematics would be the same unconditionally. That is, math would be the same if we were or if we were not. Same goes for the laws of logic. The reason for this, according to Kant, is because they are presented to us in space and time, without which experience is impossible.
Unfortunately one would be hard pressed to reject Kant on this. Those who feel the need to give reasons to denounce logic fall into a patent hypocrisy.
Hopefully not. Our intuitions evolved in order to make us survive and reproduce, not in order to perfectly judge ethical situations. Trolley problem surveys have shown that things like 'race of the to-be-killed' affects the choices, so much for intuition..Quote:
Originally Posted by Cunninglinguist
Our moral intuitions are probably a result of our genes and our conditioning, not just our genes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dodo25
At any rate, there is no measure to determine whether or not something is unconditionally good. This is for the same reason that there is no test to determine positive truth. We must subject the test to itself, which renders it circular, logically inconsistent and thus meaningless.
Since there is no measure of unconditional goodness, goodness (and therefore morality) must be measured by subjective intuitions. Of course, one can define an objective measure, such as "the overall well-being of the human race," but this definition is only assumed because it conforms with ones prescribed intuition of goodness. In other words, the objective measure is still contingent on intuitions. One can suppose that if an alien race came to our planet, they might not share the same measure of goodness that we do.
With that said, I do think one can argue that one intuition is more consistent (not logically but with the rest of the intuitions one has) than another, and assuming that we all share a base set of intuitions, in this way the human race can achieve some level of moral unification. But nevertheless, morals and goodness still start with intuitions and end with them.
Dodo25 have you read the Moral Landscape by Sam Harris?
Some of your ideas remind me of it.
I also wonder if there's any definite answers about morality that we can find through neuroscientific research. Personally, I think we can.
Like Harris says, there is no ONE right food, but that doesn't mean that the question of nutrition is purely subjective.
I was using numbers to draw a parallel with the concept of expected value in probability. By virtue points I mean the "amount of utility." Of course it is somewhat silly to make this quantitative and do calculations, and of course the assessment of utility is subjective. My only point is to emphasize that any bad things occuring as part of the "means" phase of some project need to be taken into account in deciding whether it is the right thing to do. For example, what if killing 1 million animals would ultimately result in the perfection of lipstick? Lipstick that lasted all day, looked great, etc. If the ends justified the means, then we should embark on this project. Saying "The ends justify the means" without qualification is effectively saying that, provided the end has even marginal utility, any means are justified, even ones with tremendous negative utility.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cunninglinguist
Good point. Yeah I've read it, I think I even recommended it somewhere in this thread. I like Harris' approach a lot. Yet the most important book on ethics still remains Singer's 'Practical Ethics', mostly because it makes a lot of actual suggestions, unlike Harris' book which is quite general and doesn't really tell you 'what to do' after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberbob