Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference.
Hi Heartlander! Jeepers, that's just what evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker says: “Ethical theory,” he writes, “requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused.” Yet, “the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events.” It's all matter in its motions, according to physical laws. (Not that science has yet defined what matter is, nor has it given a plausible origin for physical laws. No matter! Smuggle in the presuppositions and just go on from there.) Pinker, too, obviously thinks that ethics cannot have a ground in traditional understandings.
Well, of course this would perhaps be true if ethics were reducible to material causes, which is what science investigates. The fallacy is to believe that the universe reduces to what science studies. There are very real things in the world that are non-phenomenal, ethics beings one of them. This is true even in the sense that Wilson gives; for he sees this non-phenomenal thing called ethics as having positive selection value for reproduction and therefore the survival of species. Yet he cannot directly observe "ethics"; it's not something you can put under a microscope, or view through a telescope. The scientific method -- which involves a subject (observer) intending an object for investigation -- is not equipped to deal with the issue, since ethics is not an object that can be "intended" in this sense.
And neither is God. Neither, in fact, is the whole of the universe, which cannot be observed in its entirety, as it is in and for itself; for observers have only perspectival views of it, given that they are bodily-located consciousnesses at given space-time coordinates within the whole, and thus can never stand outside of the whole of which they are the parts and participants, so to view it "entire," spatially and temporally.
Plus arguably that part of the universe which we do directly observe is confined to three spatial dimensions and one of time. At least, that seems to be our general expectation. But then humans are strongly visually oriented/conditioned, and so may just naturally tend to doubt the existence of things that cannot be visually detected.
Yet many mathematicians and physicists -- unlike most biologists I gather -- conjecture there are more than four dimensions in the universe. Though they show up "in the math," so to speak, they have thus far not been observed directly. (Certainly string theory advances this idea.) Such extra dimensions may possibly include dimensions that we simply cannot observe owing to the limitations of the human mind.
I am amazed at the "arrogance" of thinkers such as Wilson, Pinker, et al., who suggest we might just as well accept the "fact" that ethics is an illusion, rather than simply admit that it is something that science cannot "get at" with its method.
In short in the italicized remarks at the top and Pinker's comment, we are here dealing with a fallacy that Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness." I gather it arises because modern science assumes and then asserts that everything there is in the universe is amenable to scientific description and explanation. So in effect, with this expectation, they must shrink the universe to fit their method.
But this, of course, is an assertion not yet proved.
Only philosophy and theology have methods to deal with things that, though real, are "unseen." It takes a deliberate act of intellectual oblivion to not see the reality of non-phenomenal things has empirical validation through the the intellectual activities and products of man over the course of some three millennia of human history, at least.
I gather, however, for some modern-day scientists, the human past no longer "counts." And if they keep going on with their "ethics is an illusion" business, soon the human present and future will not "count," either.
Well, FWIW. Thanks so much for writing, Heartlander!
There can be no physical causation in the absence of space/time - of the geometry. Were it not for time, events could not occur. Were it not for space, things could not be.
And we know there was a beginning of space/time in this universe. All cosmologies (inflationary, cyclic, ekpyrotic, imaginary time, multi-verse, multi-world, hesitating, etc.) rely on geometry - i.e. there is always a beginning.
Thus there was also a beginning of physical causation, an uncaused cause. The only possible uncaused cause is God.
Given:
"might" is defined as ability to impose positive and negative consequences, immunity to reprisals, lack of needs requiring exogenous sources of fulfillment, and endurance.
Postulate:
"right" is always defined by might, and that definition's range and power is always proportionate to the might of the one making the definition.
Challenge:
Provide one case where the above is clearly not operant.
Good luck, see you in a few years.
Good post in total.. How can a human get his head around infinity.?. If the the universe ends, how can it end?.. And if its infinite, how can that be?.. Infinity is a problem.. a serious problem.. Approaching infinity flippantly is how some approach the concept of God.. They can't get their minds around it.. On the other hand those that can conceive of God as a reality seem to have little problem with the infinity problem..
That is, there are some are frogs in a well that know they are merely a frog in a well, and others are frogs in a well that think the/that well is a model of the universe.. One frog questions formulae spawned in well, yet others see those formulae as axiomatic.. This thread appears to be a conversation between two different kind of frogs.. The Frogulation of Cosmic infinity..
Cosmofrogulators.. Is that a science?.. Just asking..d;^)
I have a problem with concieving of the totality of God.. so I stopped..
The scary part is God would have no problem concieveing of the totality of US.. all of us.. Humans seem to have a problem with proper humility and gratitude.. and arrogance..
Your statements
Your reasoning
Your concepts
Even the ordering of your sentences
Are positioned with care.
Such is to be found also in a flower arrangement done in the old Japanese tradition.
Balanced.
The use of Science and its repeatable experiments, without the Unrepeatable events in life, produces an understanding that is Unbalanced.
Mathematics of a high order, using Microbiology as a map; has lead some superior scientifically inspired business men to make surprisingly good assumptions until one lone unrepeatable event upset the entire apple cart. LTCM is one such example.
Science is not able to "contain the whole".
Very Good. Well Done.
Have a good day.