It’s discouraging that I try to tell people that studying science won’t destroy your moral sense, that it won’t turn you into a Hollywood Rationalist, but then encounter someone to whom its done precisely that.
Can you expand on your reasons for believing that studying science was causal to what you categorize here as the destruction of Tim’s moral sense? (I’m not asking why you believe his moral sense has been destroyed; I think I understand your reasoning there. I’m asking why you believe studying science was the cause.)
Because he constantly uses scientific research to justify his moral positions, and then when I challenge them he accuses me of just not understanding the science well enough. He switches back and forth between statements about science and normative statements about what would make the future of humanity good without seeming to notice. Learning about evolutionary science seems to have put him in an Affective Death Spiral around evolution. (I know the symptoms, I used to be in one around capitalism after I started studying economics) It’s one of the more extreme examples of the naturalistic fallacy I’ve ever seen.
Now, since you’ve read some of my other posts you know that I don’t necessarily accept the strong naturalistic fallacy, the idea that ethical statements cannot be reduced to naturalistic ones at all. But I definitely believe in the weaker form of the naturalistic fallacy, the idea that things that are common in nature are not necessarily good. And that is the form of the fallacy Tim makes when he says absurd things like our civilization maximizes entropy or that our values are not precious things that need to be preserved if they get in evolution’s way.
Studying the science of evolution certainly wasn’t sole cause, maybe not even the main cause, of Tim’s ethical confusion, but it certainly contributed to it.
Can you expand on your reasons for believing that studying science was causal to what you categorize here as the destruction of Tim’s moral sense? (I’m not asking why you believe his moral sense has been destroyed; I think I understand your reasoning there. I’m asking why you believe studying science was the cause.)
Because he constantly uses scientific research to justify his moral positions, and then when I challenge them he accuses me of just not understanding the science well enough. He switches back and forth between statements about science and normative statements about what would make the future of humanity good without seeming to notice. Learning about evolutionary science seems to have put him in an Affective Death Spiral around evolution. (I know the symptoms, I used to be in one around capitalism after I started studying economics) It’s one of the more extreme examples of the naturalistic fallacy I’ve ever seen.
Now, since you’ve read some of my other posts you know that I don’t necessarily accept the strong naturalistic fallacy, the idea that ethical statements cannot be reduced to naturalistic ones at all. But I definitely believe in the weaker form of the naturalistic fallacy, the idea that things that are common in nature are not necessarily good. And that is the form of the fallacy Tim makes when he says absurd things like our civilization maximizes entropy or that our values are not precious things that need to be preserved if they get in evolution’s way.
Studying the science of evolution certainly wasn’t sole cause, maybe not even the main cause, of Tim’s ethical confusion, but it certainly contributed to it.