Friday, September 11, 2009

morals are a form of science

recently, i've been contemplating the ideas of morals. i realized a key component that i had omitted from a previous entry: morals are not just dependent on intentionality and the mind-body problem, for these are simply the mechanisms or vehicles for which morals are realized externally. morals, in the purest sense, are ascertaining the difference between right and wrong, good or bad; the success of one's application of this is through ethics. how do we know what is good or bad in the universe? well, here's a little brain teaser for you. pain and suffering are considered bad, right? but then, there's the axiom, "no pain, no gain." so, if gain is considered "good", then morals have an inherent substructure through which they operate, either via the channel of morals exclusively or via their interaction with other factors in creating the combinatory field known as ethics, and either way there seems to be an inherent "bad" within a larger "good". perhaps this is necessary as, according to some people, things are defined by their opposites, so perhaps the magnitude of the "bad" within a larger "good" indicates the magnitude of goodness within the entity of good.

weaving this concept back into my prior post on this topic would very monotonous, pedantic, and time-consuming without arriving at different conclusions. so, if you're smart enough, you should intuitively see how the above considerations are fully compatible with the framework i previously established. however, i would now like to make a simple point about morals using the scientific method. let's forget about the idea of "no pain, no gain." instead, assume that all pain and suffering is inherently bad. pain is perhaps a part of, or at the very least, interpreted by consciousness. consciousness, in some forms (but not all), exhibits itself through behavior. now, imagine an experiment where a person must place a body part in ice cold water and remove the body part from the water when they have reached their maximum tolerance threshold for pain. upon repeating the experiment multiple times on various subjects, it becomes quite evident that placing this body part in ice cold water causes pain and suffering for these subject, and thus scientifically, a causality can be assumed relating to all people. so, we have come to *know* and define pain via the scientific method. now, imagine a situation where two people are walking on thin ice when all of a sudden a crack breaks open a patch and one of the persons falls into ice cold water. now, of course it would be "common sense" to know that the person in the water is in pain and the other person should attempt to pull the person in the water out of it. however, let's compare the certainty of *knowing* what the other person is feeling.

quoting a previous blog entry (to know vs to be (notes)):
to know as part of collective consciousness: to know how to know; since can't be done without pure abstraction (in practice), 3rd person ontology is required for being as translator between two 1st person epistemologies

to translate what i have written above and apply it to the current situation, the scientific method is an acquisition of knowledge of the first-order: simply *to know*; for this situation, the conclusion that placing people in ice cold water results in them consciously feeling pain and suffering has been arrived at through the scientific method. for the situation where a person accidentally falls into ice cold water, there are two ways that a person can attempt to understand the other person's pain and suffering. the first is to assume that the situation, were it to occur the same way multiple times, would result in the same outcome -- the person in the ice cold water being in pain and suffering and exhibiting this behaviorally through some form of communication, such as screaming. the second way is to know as part of a collective consciousness, or in as it relates to this situation, is better known as empathy. this, however, is "knowing how to know", which is an acquisition of knowledge of the second-order. as such, it would be more justifiable to attempt to rescue the person in the ice cold water using first-order knowledge than second-order knowledge, and between the two types of first-order knowledge, the kind obtained through science, being done through rigorous practice, is more certain than the kind obtained through assuming a situation to be scientifically reproducible, being done in theory and not through rigorous practice.

now, we can relate the understanding gained through these examples to more subjective situations regarding pain and suffering. unlike placing people in ice cold water, definitions of pain and suffering are much harder to determine via the scientific method for other types of situations. for example, how does one measure the pain someone suffers through a lifetime of trauma after witnessing one comrade after another die before his eyes on the battlefield in war? how does one measure the pain someone suffers from being homesick? (this is an example to which "no pain, no gain" might be applicable, but let's postpone that discussion for another day). after a certain point, one realizes that science becomes less and less useful in determining pain to where it simply has no bearing on the subject at all anymore. at this point, the other person verbally and/or physically communicating and empathy are the only ways one can attempt to determine the pain and suffering another person is feeling. returning to points a and b in my post "to know vs to be (notes)", both of these methods are "knowing how to know", thus being of the second-order of knowledge. so, in situations where science is not applicable, determining how much pain and suffering another person is in is based on second-order knowledge. because science is not applicable, the part of science that relates to ethics regarding the realization of one's morals is rendered ineffective. as a result, the best moral decision one can make is the determining of good within the context of the collective consciousness: the person making the decision, the person who is in pain and suffering, and everyone else. if one is a product of genes and environment, then his/her definition of what is good is predetermined by cultural, societal, and historical standards; in more analytic terms, the consciousness of the decision maker being the sum output of all previous and present metaphysical and epistemological inputs realized in the decision maker's first-person ontology. however, if the idea of free will is applied, then this means there is something additional to all previous and present metaphysical and epistemological inputs realized in the decision maker's first-person ontology, and furthermore, that this additional something is controlled by that person independent of any external input. as such, the definition of what is good is in the mind of the beholder. either way, the idea of a person committing a moral action is nullified. without free will, a person is simply an input-output conduit through which everything else operates, and while people and society can in their own minds decide whether or not the action taken was good or bad, the person is absolved of any responsibility and the opinions of everyone else is purely subjective. when free will is involved...please read my next post.

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