Can natural science provide an ethics?

[Gori the Grey]

Can natural science provide an ethics?

Please note well two things I am NOT asking:
1) I am not asking whether scientific discoveries can bear meaningfully on ethical debates.
2) I am not asking whether or not (those darned atheistical) scientists can be ethical people.

I’m asking whether you believe that an enterprise devoted to figuring out how things ARE can ever tell us how things SHOULD BE.

If so, how does science make that cross-over? For example, even if super-refined brain scans could show us to a certainty the kinds of circumstances that maximize human happiness, would even that constitute scientific grounds for a utilitarian effort premised on the notion that we should set about creating those circumstances for people? Would our move to creating those circumstances be motivated by science? Or by a not-itself-empirically-verifiable belief (utilitarianism) about what to do with scientific knowledge?

My own starting answer is “no; science cannot provide an ethics.” That’s not a knock on science; it’s just my best understanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise. Science deals only with how things are, not with how we should act in light of how things are.

Thoughts?

 

[Borachio]

Can Ethics, itself, be a science?

Is ethics, or can it ever be, in some sense of the word, a ‘science’? This question has been debated at length by ethical theorists, and tends to divide them into two broad camps. According to the ‘continuity’ position, science and ethics share basic similarities, and even if ethics may not really be a science, there are many more points of congruence between the two than popularly acknowledged. The ‘discontinuity’ camp, on the other hand, assert that ethics and science are fundamentally different kinds of activity, and the two shall never meet.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/55/Is_Ethics_a_Science

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm not a subscriber, so I can only see the first two paragraphs.

Also, don't subvert my thread before it even gets going.

Also, answer my question rather than asking a different question.

Also, start your own thread if you have a very different question that interests you more than my question does.

 

[Borachio]

Well, pardon me I'm sure!

You asked for my thoughts and I gave you some. If you deem they don't follow on from your OP, I beg to differ.

Ethics could be a natural science.

Or. OR. One could examine ethical issues scientifically.

 

[Gori the Grey]

You're right. I did ask for your thoughts. So pardon me.

But I hope you see that the two are different questions. And I would like reflections on the first question.

Now I suppose that anyone who answers that ethics can be a science would correspondingly answer my question by saying, "yes, of course; the natural science of ethics can provide an ethics." So I'll have to learn about these "continuity" people.

But what I meant was the traditional natural sciences: physics, chemistry, etc. Can they yield an ethics?

 

[Borachio]

Biology might. But I don't see how maths, physics, or chemistry (in that order) could, no. I don't see how engineering, or bricklaying, could either.

Ethics is all to do with how human beings flourish, isn't it? In the broadest sense.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If you posit that there is an ethics it could then be examined, leading as noted to a science of ethics. That makes for another question; whether there is some inevitable and real such thing as ethics. Given the pervasive nature of the right/wrong dichotomy, I suspect the human mind is incapable of existence without an 'ethics', but I wouldn't want to try to prove that.

While this may appear to be branching of into another question, it is actually framing my answer to the base question.

In my opinion, natural science cannot provide an ethics, as ethics is already existent within the human mind. It is possible to examine ethics, just like it is possible to examine other phenomenon, but science doesn't actually provide anything.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Biology might. But I don't see how maths, physics, or chemistry (in that order) could, no. I don't see how engineering, or bricklaying, could either.

Ethics is all to do with how human beings flourish, isn't it? In the broadest sense.

Well, maybe it's on me to provide a definition of ethics, but I'd start by tweaking what you've proposed and least say "a system of guidelines for behavior aimed at insuring that human beings flourish."

But your highlighting biology brings me back to my question. If we could figure out, from biology, the best conditions for human flourishing, wouldn't resolving to create those conditions be a step that was outside the discipline of biology per se?*

*(per se is a Latin expression meaning "as such")**

Spoiler :

**I can't even stay serious in my own dang RD thread

@Tim, well, I might consider rephrasing my question to get rid of the "provide," because I see what you're driving at. Though we would at least say, wouldn't we, that science "provides" explanations for the workings of the natural world? Can it similarly provide guidelines for living, or the second we take the facts that it uncovers and employ them as guidelines for living are we doing something fundamentally outside the limits of the scientific enterprise?

 

[Borachio]

Staying serious can be difficult. But feeling humorous, now and again, isn't a grievous fault, imo.

As for:

wouldn't resolving to create those conditions be a step that was outside the discipline of biology per se?

That seems like an epistemological question to me. I don't the answer to it.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

As someone who is a strong science fan, I would also say no. I would further say that it shouldn't. Science should remain focused on telling us what is true, and leave interpreting what that truth means for us a species to politicians and philosophers. Science should remain focused, like a laser, on the truth, not muddy itself with subjective philosophical questions that have no definite objective answer. Science can and should inform ethics, but ethics are too subjective and fluid to be part of science themselves.

 

[Lohrenswald]

If we could figure out, from biology, the best conditions for human flourishing, wouldn't resolving to create those conditions be a step that was outside the discipline of biology per se?

Biology as a cohesive discipline is arbitrarily define, so I don't really think this is an issue.

I'm not a 100 % sure on this issue, but I have some faith in natural science being able to provide ethics, in that I think the material world following physical laws is all that exists.

But again, I'm uncertain.
I might post more later.

 

[warpus]

I’m asking whether you believe that an enterprise devoted to figuring out how things ARE can ever tell us how things SHOULD BE.

Well, no, because people can't really agree on how things should be. So scientists wouldn't agree on "how things should be", even if they agreed on all the results from all their studies and stuff.

Scientist A would say: "Look, this liquid turned red, that means that abortion is right".. "Nuh uh", scientist B would say, "It means that abortion is wrong".

But I don't really think "how things should be" is really what ethics is. Let's see what wikipedia says about ethics (always a good place to start, even if it's not very scientific to just go with whatever definition comes up...)

Ethics, sometimes known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.

Scientific theories do not recommend or defend.

For ethics you need people making decisions - making choices on what is right and what is wrong. Science can't do that for you.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@Tim, well, I might consider rephrasing my question to get rid of the "provide," because I see what you're driving at. Though we would at least say, wouldn't we, that science "provides" explanations for the workings of the natural world? Can it similarly provide guidelines for living, or the second we take the facts that it uncovers and employ them as guidelines for living are we doing something fundamentally outside the limits of the scientific enterprise?

Ah, guidelines for living. My problem with the direction you are going here is that 'guidelines for living' is distinctly not the same as 'ethics'.

For example, there is a television series called How to get away with murder, and an element in the plot is a college course (criminal law ###) which is commonly known by faculty and students by the same name. Certain people may consider what is taught in such a course to indeed be 'guidelines for living', but clearly that isn't ethics.

The study of health and nutrition may lead to developing 'guidelines for living' in regards to diet and exercise practices, but that also isn't ethics.

I think the direction science goes, ie understanding of physical existence, does not lead in the same direction as where ethics is to be found. There may be something to the idea that some sort of quantification of ethics may be possible, such that the study of ethics can produce guidelines for ethical living. But this directly acknowledges that ethics do exist in the first place, with or without science or study. If this is presupposed there is some question as to whether science is the ideal tool for examining the subject, as this ethics, while extant, does not exist physically.

 

[Perfection]

It's probably the other way around, ethics provides a natural science.

 

[FriendlyFire]

It's probably the other way around, ethics provides a natural science.

My sentiments exactly.
Nature is not a good guide for ethical human behavior

- Homosexual behavior by animals
- Promiscuous sexual behavior by animals
- Cannibalism behavior by animals
- Right is Might behavior by animals

 

[warpus]

- oxygen atoms frequently bonding with 2 hydrogen atoms each
- lighting kills people without remorse
- rain makes it easier to see through clothing

 

[duckstab]

Biology as a cohesive discipline is arbitrarily define, so I don't really think this is an issue.

I'm not a 100 % sure on this issue, but I have some faith in natural science being able to provide ethics, in that I think the material world following physical laws is all that exists.

But again, I'm uncertain.
I might post more later.

I'm a materialist as well, yet I don't believe science can ever provide a basis for ethics. Or to put it another way, "good and bad" can't be reduced to "true and false" -- the concepts are orthogonal. Science can certainly provide theoretical explanations for how ethical systems arise and evolve. Sociobiology, as espoused by folks like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, is a prime example. But such theories are, like all science, ethically neutral. They may offer insight as to how and why we behave towards each other in certain ways, but not as to whether we should.

Of course, the converse is also true. Ethics can (and should) guide scientific inquiry. The facts are ethically neutral, but the choice of which experiments to perform and how to apply scientific knowledge are obviously not.

 

[Perfection]

How do you tell if a theory is true?
How do you tell if an action is moral?
How do you tell if a artwork is beautiful?

Are these are all completely different questions or does a greater similarity underlie?

 

[Borachio]

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Keats

 

[Tahuti]

Obviously, natural sciences can't: Natural sciences describe the hows, though never the whys. The latter is rather important to ethics. 'How do we not just kill a person' is not an ethical question but replace 'how' with 'why' and suddenly, it is.