"Science can't address ethics"

Why maximum happiness? Why not mean happiness? Why not average happiness?

Why not something else? If it's just about happiness, the logical conclusion is to plug everyone into a dopamine-injecting machine.

Isn't ethics itself a science? Besides, many old world ethics can be reduced to scientific insights. For example, the Jewish proscription against eating shellfish derives from the fact that in their climate and relatively distant from the sea, shellfish would inevitably spoil. Hence the prohibition of shellfish.

Or take for example murder. What is murder? Murder is a socially unsanctioned killing of someone within the normative group. For example a chimpanzee who kills another chimpanzee for basically no reason other than being strong, will find itself ganged up on by other chimps who reasonably fear unprovoked aggression and will pool muscle to address the perceived threat. Social animals who kill are statistically likely to be killed themselves in turn, they have reduced fitness. (Most applicable to humans or close relatives of course)

Science allows one to understand the reason for ethics in the first place. For example, Confucian ethics are designed to provide the conditions for a general increase in the population, rendering the hypothesis statistically testable!

Those who do not believe ethics can be scientifically investigated are either implicitly biased or are only thinking of a small subset of ethics which they believe to be purely objective and infallible despite evidence to the contrary, for example: Scientologists who believe in feeding babies milk and honey, even though honey is toxic for infants.

No the logical conclusion is brave new world. A society divided in non intellectual labour that is incapable of feeling sadness and a intellectual group that can only experience joy trough it's job is the best solution for a society with limited resources. It does not matter if it's based on robots or modified Humans

Actually:

>The goal pursuit [voluntary action] with the highest degree of positive association [best] is that which elicits the highest degree of positive association [maximum happiness].

Is based on scientific fact (confirmed observations) and theory (the most plausible explanations).

>An axiom or postulate as defined in classic philosophy, is a statement (in mathematics often shown in symbolic form) that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question.

It's not an axiom, as it is arrived at via employing the scientific method(s).

It is accepted with question.

>Why maximum happiness?

Because maximum happiness is tantamount to the highest degree of positive association which is tantamount to 'best'.

Maximum happiness is defined by the term 'best'.

>Why not something else?

That is how humans evolved; it could be something else for an alien species, but not for humans.

>If it's just about happiness, the logical conclusion is to plug everyone into a dopamine-injecting machine

Down regulation of dopamine receptors renders that argument moot.

When you find the ethic particle, then you can say science addresses ethics.

>Humans rape
>Therefore humans should rape

>Humans become depressed and commit suicide
>Therefore humans should be sad

Look everyone, it's babby's first is-ought problem

Happiness is not a fact

The actual objective goal of humans is to reproduce

The actual objective goal of humans is to masturbate to underage anime traps. All human activity, including reproduction, is simply a tool to reach that goal.

There isn't a goal of evolution or life, it's just a thing that happens. Assigning purpose and intention to natural phenomena isn't very much different from saying God made humans to do such and such.

And still 'best action ' and 'most happiness ' are scientific lyrics defined like mass or speed.

Rape does not lead to maximum happiness; it lead to retribution (revenge/civil punishment) being ostracised (becoming an out-group member, which lead to a great deal of unhappiness.

Depression is a mental illness.

Reproduction is achieved via maximising inclusive fitness which is achieved via dopamine mediated goal pursuits which lead to happiness (dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin) being elicited upon completion.

That is based on scientific fact and theory.

Why is happiness good? Why is Tassie not good? These are not empirical statements and science has nothing to do with them. You are employing the naturalistic fallacy but you can't even do it consistently. If whatever humans evolved to do is good, then everything humans do is good.

>the best action is that which shields the most happiness

Yes.

Machines would be more reliable.

Lol.

>there isn't a goal

Yes, I'm sure he was just speaking metaphorically as is common when dealing with evolutionary theory.

>Veeky Forums hates philosophy
>every fucking discussion on this board is philosophy

Maybe they are. We don't know. The reason we don't know is that we can't currently do this. That's why science can't address normative statements. Because it simply can't.

Even math depends on axioms.

It can address such statements; feel free to read the thread.

And it's a good thing math isn't science then.

It's symbolic logical reasoning.

Science is the application of logical reasoning to observation/perceivable reality.

>Why is happiness good?

Why is positively associated sensation positively associated?

Because that is how we evolved.

We evolved to pursue positive association via dopamine mediated goal pursuit, as it maximises our inclusive fitness.

>Why is Tassie not good?

What is Tassie?

>These are not empirical statements and science has nothing to do with them.

They are.

>You are employing the naturalistic fallacy but you can't even do it consistently.

I'm employing moral/ethical realism, which renders the naturalistic fallacy moot as it has no problem deriving is from ought.

This is what I have been doing in the thread and continue to do in this post:

>If whatever humans evolved to do is good, then everything humans do is good

If good is positive association, bad is negative association, happiness (the sensation) is positively associated and humans evolved to pursue an array of goals that elicit varying degrees of positive and negative association, then pursuing goals which lead to the maximum degree of positive association is good.

Not all goals lead to positive association and many goals which do lead also to consequential negative association.

Not all things that humans do lead to the maximum degree of positive association and therefore not all things humans do are good.

I've got to go out now, but I'll be back later to reply to your inevitable counter arguments/questions

>is from ought

ought from is*

>we evolved to...

>we evolved to...

We didn't evolve for any purpose, it is something that just happened. You are assigning agency to a physical process, which is not scientific by any criterium.

The abstract formulation of ethics can be boiled down to a maximisation problem.
But the basic constraints and goals are not defined in nature, they are ideological.

Don't fall for the scientism meme.

Google "formal science"

He's not assigning agency to anything, he's telling you why he has those desires and feelings, and why most everyone does too.

Ethics only becomes a philosophical problem if you absolutely require that there has to be something more to it. But you can't justify that in the first place.

>Why is positively associated sensation positively associated?
You're begging the question.

>We evolved to pursue positive association via dopamine mediated goal pursuit, as it maximises our inclusive fitness.
Many things humans do for pleasure has nothing to do with human fitness. In fact, much of it is contradictory to human fitness. This is because evolution doesn't actually have goals. It's purely mechanistic and thus its results can be turned against whatever intent you fallaciously project into it. But anyway, you still are just repeating the naturalistic fallacy. Whether or not we evolved to do something doesn't prove it's good. You cannot escape the fact that your argument is and always will be based on an axiomatic statement of ought. Because ought is not empirical.

>I'm employing moral/ethical realism, which renders the naturalistic fallacy moot as it has no problem deriving is from ought.
Moral realism is simply a doctrine, not a method of inferring is from ought. You can't render the problem moot simply by pretending it does not exist. If you claim to be scientific, then produce a logical argument which derives ought from is. So far all you have done is assert that ought is X without derivation.

>If good is positive association
Again, how do you derive that pleasure is good? Why not say pleasure is bad? Because you feel that it's good? This is not scientific.

>You are assigning agency to a physical process, which is not scientific by any criterium

I am doing no such thing; you have failed to understand my posts.

You are applying 'magic' to ethics, as this user points out.

You are confusing reaching an arbitrary goal for ethics.

You haven't understood the argument at all.

That user explained everything you have just asked about in the very post you're questioning.

>arbitrary

Evolution isn't arbitrary, user.

here
Also I'd like to add that absolute-moralityfags literally always fail to satisfy their own criteria in the end.

Like, they ask that there should be something more, so for example they say "it's God. He's the source of moral."
So either they tell you something like "you get to go to heaven"
But that just lead to the question "why is it desirable to be in heaven then? It feels good? So your ethics is just hedonism. You just believe in an additional fact about life after death, but your philosophical viewpoint is literally just hedonism."
Or they tell "no it's not really about feeling good in heaven, it's about aligning our actions with God because it's in our nature"
But then that falls back on the question of "why should we follow our nature" which they used to reject the evolutionary explanation of morality.

No. You just can't accept that our sense of good and bad/right and wrong is resultant of evolution and is equivalent to positive and negative association.

You're apply magic to ethics like theists apply magic to consciousness.

No, he's offering a theory of ethics, i.e. something that explains the origin of moral feelings and expands upon it by showing what is and what isn't consistent with those feelings.
Basically he's telling you "ought" is a meaningless statement.

Well done, user.

You're the only person ITT that understands my argument.

Couple of problems with that formulation.

Firstly, the desires and feelings of humans don't automatically reduce to an objective concept of happines in nature. What this happiness is and why it should be maximised must be decided by some agency, because ultimately you have to carry out the ethics you derive, which means there is a decision being made somewhere. If you want to believe that your ethics (the right decision) exist in nature, you must move this agency (power to make the right decision) to an entity or process in nature; this is inescapable.

More practically, there is the problem of deciding how the maximisation problem should be set up. If your ethics is based on how happy people are, what should be maximised? Should the average global hapiness be maximised, and should we enforce this ethics on people? (or is that unethical?) Should we view it individually, and only judge personal decisions as either ethical or unethical? Should you subject yourself to this system of ethics if the net result is that you yourself become less happy but others become enormously happier. These are just a few examples, I trust you can think of other thought experiments.

These problems can't be skipped by pointing at dopamine receptors and there is no way you can solve them objectively.

I responded to every point he made. You are just asserting that some goal is good without deriving it. But you can't because good is ultimately a concept that has no connection to reality.

So then why is evolution good?

>No. You just can't accept that our sense of good and bad/right and wrong is resultant of evolution
We don't have a monolithic sense of good and bad, not to mention that your feeling something doesn't make it an empirical truth. You could have simplified your argument greatly simply by saying "I feel that X is good, therefore X is good". Which is fine, but not scientific in any way. The sooner you admit this, the clearer the entire issue will be for you.

I'm pretty sure he's talking about individuals happiness, not about a global aggregate or any other general maximization function.

>No, he's offering a theory of ethics, i.e. something that explains the origin of moral feelings and expands upon it by showing what is and what isn't consistent with those feelings.
I feel that pain is good. There, I just disproved your theory.

>Basically he's telling you "ought" is a meaningless statement.
No, that's what I'm telling him. He is saying that ought can be derived and therefore has meaning.

>We don't have a monolithic sense of good and bad
Just as if it was the result of individual random variations, weird eh?
>not to mention that your feeling something doesn't make it an empirical truth
It's an empirical truth that he's feeling it.

>You could have simplified your argument greatly simply by saying "I feel that X is good, therefore X is good".
That's not his argument. You want him to include an absolute moral injunction where he does not.

How so? Pain causes our body to release endomorphin.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't and he actually assigns "best" to personal preferences.

>Just as if it was the result of individual random variations, weird eh?
Yes it is, so what?

>It's an empirical truth that he's feeling it.
Another non-sequitur.

>That's not his argument. You want him to include an absolute moral injunction where he does not.
Then he's not addressing ethics.

>How so? Pain causes our body to release endomorphin.
So you are unaware of masochistic behavior? Anyway you seem to have missed the point. Moral feelings are not even well correlated with pleasure. If the argument has now been wittled down to "people feel that things are moral," woopdeefuckingdoo. You are saying literally nothing.

OP here.

You haven't understood the argument at all.

To address just one of the obviously confused statements you made:

>Again, how do you derive that pleasure is good?

I stated that the sensation of pleasure is positively associated.

Which is a scientific fact.

The key points that you seem to have missed are:

>If good is positive association, bad is negative association, happiness (the sensation) is positively associated and humans evolved to pursue an array of goals that elicit varying degrees of positive and negative association, then pursuing goals which lead to the maximum degree of positive association is good.

>Not all goals lead to positive association [positively associated consequences] and many goals which do lead also to consequential negative association [negatively associated consequences].

>Not all things that humans do lead to the maximum degree of positive association and therefore not all things humans do are good.

The fact that certain positively associated behaviours lead to negatively associated consequences is irrelevent to my argument.

Please actually try to understand the argument before replying.

>Moral feelings are not even well correlated with pleasure.
Yes. Which is why he's not talking about pleasure.

>Then he's not addressing ethics.
And there we have the crux of your argument. You REQUIRE ethics to include a notion of absolute morality, when it truly does not. Studying morality is enough to qualify as ethics. Ethics \= a morals lesson.

>If the argument has now been wittled down to "people feel that things are moral," woopdeefuckingdoo. You are saying literally nothing.
A shoddy argument at best. You can indeed have that kind of premise and say and research a lot of things about ethics. Their origins, their consistency, their logical consequence and so on. The same way lawyers argue law on the basis of consistency and not absolute founding principles.

Mathematicians don't spend their time discussing the foundations of math, only a minority do. Likewise ethics discussion is marginally a discussion about the foundation of ethics.

>I stated that the sensation of pleasure is positively associated.
This is just a convoluted way of saying that pleasure feels good. But this has little to do with what is moral or ethical. What people feel is morally good is often different from what people feel is pleasurable. You're just playing word association, and doing it badly.

Here is the point you continually fail to address: Positive association is a nebulous concept, and feeling that something is good is not scientifically showing that it is good. Neither is postulating some process by which we came to feel that that thing is good. That just falls into the naturalistic fallacy. All of this is a philosophical dead horse.

>The fact that certain positively associated behaviours lead to negatively associated consequences is irrelevent to my argument.
I never even talked about negative consequences.

>Yes. Which is why he's not talking about pleasure.
You're not very good at reading.

>You REQUIRE ethics to include a notion of absolute morality, when it truly does not. Studying morality is enough to qualify as ethics. Ethics \= a morals lesson.
Semantics that avoids the actual conversation being had.

You don't understand the argument of the person that you claim everyone else doesn't understand.

>You don't understand the argument of the person that you claim everyone else doesn't understand.
I very much doubt that.
>What people feel is morally good is often different from what people feel is pleasurable.
I beg to differ, guilt is very unpleasurable. Your rebuttal is only directed at a strawman that he would claim people only research instant gratification.

>This is just a convoluted way of saying that pleasure feels good.

Ok, maybe I haven't made myself clear here.

The sensation of pleasure which arises from the engagement and completion of dopamine mediated goal pursuit programs and is resultant of a particular cascade of neurotransmitters, is positively associated in relation to the positive and negative association circuitry of the brain.

It isn't postively associated because it feels good; it is positively associated because the positive association circuitry of the brain is activated in response to it.

Which is entirely objective.

>I never even talked about negative consequences.

Well if this wasn't you:

>I feel that pain is good. There, I just disproved your theory.

Then I take that back.

>What people feel is morally good is often different from what people feel is pleasurable.

Pleasure is not being put forward as the marker for goodness: positive association is.

Pleasure is positively associated, as is satisfaction, comfort, etc.

You have misunderstood yet again.

Throughout the thread he has claimed that positively associated things are good. This includes pleasure. He is claiming that what we feel is good is good, not simply that we feel things are good and those feelings can be studied.

>I beg to differ, guilt is very unpleasurable.
Another non-sequitur. If I told you that not all men are construction workers and not all construction workers are men, would you respond that you know a woman who is a secretary?

Epic b8 m8

>It isn't postively associated because it feels good; it is positively associated because the positive association circuitry of the brain is activated in response to it.
You're just running in circles now. The circuitry which produces feelings that something is good is what you call the positive association circuitry. How do you know dopamine is "positively associated"? Because it feels good. That's it. There is nothing inherent to the chemical dopamine which makes it "good".

>Which is entirely objective.
Entirely objective in the sense that your subjective feelings are objectively your subjective feelings. Which is saying nothing.

>Well if this (You) wasn't you:
It was. But saying that pain feels good has nothing to do with it being a negative consequence. My point is that basing what is good on what you feel to be good is entirely subjective.

>What people feel is morally good is often different from what people feel is pleasurable.

Pleasure is not being put forward as the marker for goodness: positive association is.

Pleasure is positively associated, as is satisfaction, comfort, etc.

It has nothing to do with subjective experience/feelings as explained here You have misunderstood yet again.

>Another non-sequitur. If I told you that not all men are construction workers and not all construction workers are men, would you respond that you know a woman who is a secretary?
How is that rebuttal? I differ with the idea that what we estimate moral is different from what we estimate better for ourselves. We are weighing the potential guilt versus the rest.

>He is claiming that what we feel is good is good, not simply that we feel things are good and those feelings can be studied.
A simple semantic difference.

>The circuitry which produces feelings that something is good is what you call the positive association circuitry.

It's what everyone in neuroscience calls the positive and negative association circuitry and has been experimentally verified to activate in conjunction with the experience of pleasure.

>How do you know dopamine is "positively associated"?

For exactly the same reason: dopamine release activates the positive association circuitry of the brain.

This is scientific fact.

But _why_ should ethics be looked at individually? This is not an emperical result and you completely gloss over all the problems you get when implementing a system of ethics. So let's look at individualist ethics.

Suppose I am a viking and I get the greatest hapiness possible from raping and pilaging. My buddies are also vikings and therefore approve of my actions (and join in on the fun). We only attack weak villages rhat can't defend themselves and we never face any negative consequences for our actions. I have had a great life. Does this mean my actions are ethical?

Now suppose I'm not a viking but someone living 21st century America and I want to rape and pillage. My environment does not approve of these actions and will lock me up in prison and destroy my life. These actions are then unethical because I cannot become happy by carrying them out.

This shows that ethics are either dependent on the society we live in (which means the ethical decisions we have to make can't be dictated by preceding evolutionary selection) or that societies can be inherently unethical (in which case the ethics stops being individualistic).

>Pleasure is not being put forward as the marker for goodness: positive association is.
This doesn't respond to the point. What is "positively associated" is often different from what is felt to be morally good as well. They often conflict. If they were not then being "moral" would be the easiest thing in the world. It would be eminently natural. Yet much of human art and philosophy is focused on the problem that it is not.

So which is it, is what is moral what we feel to be moral, or whatever action we "positively associate"? You keep jumping around between dopamine/pleasure, morality and "positive association". This just falls into the point that "positive association" is a nebulous term. I don't think you even know what you're arguing at this point.

>How is that rebuttal? I differ with the idea that what we estimate moral is different from what we estimate better for ourselves. We are weighing the potential guilt versus the rest.
Then which is positive association and which is not?

>He is claiming that what we feel is good is good, not simply that we feel things are good and those feelings can be studied.
>A simple semantic difference.
You just spent the last few posts trying to tell me that he was arguing the latter and not the former, but now it's a semantic difference? Make up your mind.

>It's what everyone in neuroscience calls the positive and negative association circuitry and has been experimentally verified to activate in conjunction with the experience of pleasure.
That's what I just said. We only know of it because of the correlation with pleasure. That's it. There is nothing inherently positive about it.

>For exactly the same reason: dopamine release activates the positive association circuitry of the brain.
That's what I just said, you're running in circles.

Last two parts of are in response

The user you're replying to isn't OP.

I'm sure you know that.

>This shows that ethics are either dependent on the society we live in (which means the ethical decisions we have to make can't be dictated by preceding evolutionary selection) or that societies can be inherently unethical (in which case the ethics stops being individualistic).

Ethics:

Good/bad, right/wrong, god/satan, black/white, 1/0, positive and negative association are dependent on the environment in which we live as they are heavily dependent on learning.

This circuitry is intrinsic to human learning.

Also, I'm not dealing with individualistic ethics so yes societies can be inherently unethical.

How so? Let's say faggyMcFullEdge ethical rule is "burn and rape if you can get away with it".
He will do it as a viking and won't do it today. His ethical rule is the same, only his conditions have changed.

>You just spent the last few posts trying to tell me that he was arguing the latter and not the former
No because you keep including the unspoken word "universal" in front of his "good".

ethics is a bunch of bullshit.
literally a bunch of assholes spreading shit all over as if it were fact. this universe is evil. you have no choice but to comply, whether you are consciously awre of it or not.

>a set of positive ones
... is insufficient for closure under a group operation.

>What is "positively associated" is often different from what is felt to be morally good as well.

Please do provide an example, as I think I see what you are getting at and have an explaination.

>So which is it, is what is moral what we feel to be moral, or whatever action we "positively associate"?

What is moral in this paradigm is that which leads to the highest degree of positive association, which is tantamount to saying that which leads to the maximum amount of happiness/comfort/satisfaction/etc.

OP is the one who claimed he follows moral/ethical realism.

How do you quantify "positive association"? What is the relationship between X units of happiness and X units of comfort? And you still haven't even proven that happiness is good. This is just an immature form of utilitarianism. It's not scientific.

I'm having dinner now and this does not seem to be going anywhere, so bye.

Happiness = positive association.

That's already verified.

>And you still haven't even proven that happiness is good.

What humans refer to as good is that which is positively associated, which is proven.

Happiness = positive association = good.

>What is the relationship between X units of happiness and X units of comfort?

X amount of endorphins and X amount of oxytocin, the relaese of which is positively associated.

The relationship and quantity will vary in relation to each positively associated experience.

However, there is no need to quantify that.

All that you need to do is empirically identify that which provides the highest degree of positive association/happiness for humans and then you can form normative statements based on it.

The naturalistic fallacy is bunk.

>The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words 'good' and, say, 'pleasant' necessarily describe the same objects, they must attribute the same quality to them

In the model that the OP is attempting to translate, our sense of good and bad is resultant of specific neural networks dedicated to poisitve and negative association.

So, that which is pleasing is good; not because it is pleasing and pleasing is identical to good, but because it is pleasing and a pleasing experience (as produced by other areas of the brain) is positively associated.

It's really very simple to understand if you have any understanding of neuroscience.

yuuup. ideas of reproductive fitness are one of the best ways to examine ethics, and these ideas are developed by the (young) scientific field of evolutionary psychology

Than your notion of what is good depends on what makes that person feel good. ISIS soldiers find raping and killing other people good, so your theory is entirely subjective; therefore, there is nothing scientific about it.

No sausage, you've misunderstood again.

It's not what simply makes you feel good, it's what maximises happiness as explained here >If good is positive association, bad is negative association, happiness (the sensation) is positively associated and humans evolved to pursue an array of goals that elicit varying degrees of positive and negative association, then pursuing goals which lead to the maximum degree of positive association is good.

>Not all goals lead to positive association and many goals which do lead also to consequential negative association.

>Not all things that humans do lead to the maximum degree of positive association and therefore not all things humans do are good

The sort of argument that you've just raised has already been refuted here >Rape does not lead to maximum happiness; it leads to retribution (revenge/civil punishment) being ostracised (becoming an out-group member, which leads to a great deal of unhappiness.

Don't get me wrong, I'm already skeptical of my own idea but that's why I'm here; to hear counterarguments.

There's no need to be overly skeptical. You're perfectly correct.