I tend to agree but only to an extent. To our best understanding, cognition is a process of predictive modelling. Prediction is an intrinsic property of the brain that never stops. A misprediction (usually) causes you to attend to the error and update your model.
Suppose we define science as any process that achieves better map-territory convergence (i.e. minimise predictive error). In that case, it is uncontroversial to say that we are all, necessarily, engaged in the scientific process at all times, whether we like it or not. Defining science this way, it is reasonable to say that no claim about reality is, in principle, outside the purview of science.
Moral Uncertainty claims that even with perfect epistemic and ontological certainty, we still have to deal with uncertainty about what to do. However, I’ve always struggled to see how the above claim about map-territory convergence applies to goal selection and morality. I am not claiming that goal selection and morality are necessarily outside the purview of science. I am just puzzled by this.
How can we make scientific claims about selecting goals? Can we derive an ought from an is? Is it nonsensical to try and apply science to goal selection and morality? I subscribe to physicalism, and I thus believe that goals, decisions and purposes are absurd notions when we boil them down to physics. My puzzlement could be pure illusory but, still, I am puzzled.
Right, something like “Some objective truths are outside of science’s purview” might have been a slightly better phrasing, but as the goal is to stay at the commonsense level, trying to parse this more precisely is probably out of scope anyway, so can as well stay concise...
I tend to agree but only to an extent. To our best understanding, cognition is a process of predictive modelling. Prediction is an intrinsic property of the brain that never stops. A misprediction (usually) causes you to attend to the error and update your model.
Suppose we define science as any process that achieves better map-territory convergence (i.e. minimise predictive error). In that case, it is uncontroversial to say that we are all, necessarily, engaged in the scientific process at all times, whether we like it or not. Defining science this way, it is reasonable to say that no claim about reality is, in principle, outside the purview of science.
Moral Uncertainty claims that even with perfect epistemic and ontological certainty, we still have to deal with uncertainty about what to do. However, I’ve always struggled to see how the above claim about map-territory convergence applies to goal selection and morality. I am not claiming that goal selection and morality are necessarily outside the purview of science. I am just puzzled by this.
How can we make scientific claims about selecting goals? Can we derive an ought from an is? Is it nonsensical to try and apply science to goal selection and morality? I subscribe to physicalism, and I thus believe that goals, decisions and purposes are absurd notions when we boil them down to physics. My puzzlement could be pure illusory but, still, I am puzzled.
Right, something like “Some objective truths are outside of science’s purview” might have been a slightly better phrasing, but as the goal is to stay at the commonsense level, trying to parse this more precisely is probably out of scope anyway, so can as well stay concise...