Relativity of Wrong - Asimov

Well I did ask if you could prove it, I didn't ask you to make giant assumptions about the moral codes of children raised in isolation/by chimps.

juvenissun said:

For example: murder (planned kill) is wrong.

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Only because murder is defined to be the bad types of killing. Depending on when and where you live, planned killing in times of war, for criminal executions, human sacrifices and so on are just fine.

If you collect all versions of so-called "moral code", then the intersection of them is what I said. They make the core value system of human and need no further study.

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Please give examples that exists at this alleged intersection. I'd imagine we can find a culture that differs on all of these proposed core values and the intersection will end up being the null set.

juvenissun said:

I believe this type of experiment has been done many times in recent history.

Is it moral to conduct this type of experiment? I think >95% of human would say NO. And this is another example of common moral code, which needs no philosophical study.

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You evaded the question. The question isn't about experiments. It's about whether humans have the same understanding of what a "wrongful killing" is.

juvenissun said:

For example: murder (planned kill) is wrong. If you debate about it,

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Nobody debates it, just like nobody debates that exceeding the speed limit is a traffic rule violation. It´s tautologous.
People (philosophers, scientists and peasants) however disagree which killings must be considered murder.

underpressure said:

Well I did ask if you could prove it, I didn't ask you to make giant assumptions about the moral codes of children raised in isolation/by chimps.

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This.

quatona said:

Nobody debates it, just like nobody debates that exceeding the speed limit is a traffic rule violation. It´s tautologous.
People (philosophers, scientists and peasants) however disagree which killings must be considered murder.

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Exactly. You said it all.

KCfromNC said:

Only because murder is defined to be the bad types of killing. Depending on when and where you live, planned killing in times of war, for criminal executions, human sacrifices and so on are just fine.



Please give examples that exists at this alleged intersection. I'd imagine we can find a culture that differs on all of these proposed core values and the intersection will end up being the null set.

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I don't think so. But I am not a sociologist. I don't have data or reference at hand.

Sorry for my interruption of a good and interesting philosophical conversation. I should shut up and continue to listen.

Truth is that which corresponds to its predicate.
It is what it is; it is not relative.
There is no relativity to truth only to error.

juvenissun said:

I don't think so. But I am not a sociologist. I don't have data or reference at hand.

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So you're just making this up as you go along?

KCfromNC said:

Keep in mind that while Kuhn's work was often cited by others in the humanities, it had much less of an impact on people actually doing science. But this is typical of the field - the influence of philosophy of science work on scientists is vastly overstated.

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Yes and no. Its influence might be overstated in the sense that scientists don't have an alternative to the scientific method so they keep using it whether it can be philosophically justified as true or not. And the method works extremely well ... for encoding nature into models.

But it is not overstated in another sense. Scientists rarely talk of having "proven" a theory anymore. It's only laity and the media that do that. They never consider a problem finally settled. So, there is always an unspoken subtext tagged onto scientific announcements. "WE HAVE DISCOVERED X ... or maybe not."

Further, it has had a major impact on the social aspects of science (which was one of Popper's objectives, given how he came from the enviroment of the Nazi "master race.") At one time, people accepted Social Darwinism simply because it was science. They accepted Marxism because his dialectical materialism was scientific and so his socialist predictions for history were a foregone conclusion. Socialism nearly became a self fulfilling prophecy.

Not so much anymore.

Resha Caner said:

But it is not overstated in another sense. Scientists rarely talk of having "proven" a theory anymore. It's only laity and the media that do that. They never consider a problem finally settled. So, there is always an unspoken subtext tagged onto scientific announcements. "WE HAVE DISCOVERED X ... or maybe not."

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But did this change from from philosophers of science, or from the development GR and QM intruding on what scientists thought was basically a solved problem in the late 1800s through mid 1900s?

Further, it has had a major impact on the social aspects of science (which was one of Popper's objectives, given how he came from the enviroment of the Nazi "master race.") At one time, people accepted Social Darwinism simply because it was science. They accepted Marxism because his dialectical materialism was scientific and so his socialist predictions for history were a foregone conclusion. Socialism nearly became a self fulfilling prophecy.

Not so much anymore.

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I'm not sure I see these as social aspects of science any more than I see legislators trying to pass bills mandating teaching creationism as a social aspect of science. If these guys are spreading the message against politicians who will make up whatever they need to stay in power, then I appreciate the work. But it's pretty far removed from the actual work that scientists are doing.

KCfromNC said:

But did this change from from philosophers of science, or from the development GR and QM intruding on what scientists thought was basically a solved problem in the late 1800s through mid 1900s?

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Calling it the "development" of GR & QM is an interesting choice of words. Do you disagree with Kuhn then? If Newtonian mechanics had continued to be successful, GR & QM would never have gained any traction. It was the mounting evidence that Newton failed to explain certain phenomena that triggered subsequent events.

Anyway, that's why I'm agreeing with you that the role of philosophy is sometimes overstated. Were it not for the failure of what was considered established science, no one would have listened to the philosophers of science. In fact, many of those who became philosophers would never have taken that direction (Popper, Duhem, Mach, Nagel, etc. started as scientists ... and probably always considered themselves scientists rather than philosophers). Note: On the flip side, people like Bohr gave the impression that they hated the intrusion of philosophy into science ... but they still answered philosophical questions (e.g. the Copenhagen Interpretation).

Anyway to reiterate, without the events, no one would have listened to philosophy. Because of the events, the philosopers gained credibility and people listened, and it had an effect on what subsequent scientists did.

If you disagree, I guess we'll need to start asking what would be convincing in establishing one opinion vs. another.

KCfromNC said:

I'm not sure I see these as social aspects of science ...

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Then you miss the point. It doesn't matter what you think of it. What matters is that the people of that time considered it to be science. The people doing that work called themselves scientists. Whether you consider it science is irrelevant to what was considered science in the past. The fact is, people's social agenda was justified by what, at the time, was considered to be science.