I enjoyed and agreed with the first part of this article: I think the analogy of the random walk is an interesting way to think about progress in ethics. The section addressing moral relativism does raise a few questions, though.
Ethics is fundamentally subjective, but not relative.
Could you clarify what you meant by this? What is the difference between the terms, in context?
The Snowmass example has a few problems. To begin, religion =/= ethics. None of the Points of Agreement involve ethics in a meaningful way and they’re all vague, involving meaningless terms like “ultimate reality.” They’re essentially religious Barnum statements.
Finally, how can contemplation in the wilderness be an experiment in observing anything but individual human psychology? I would be more convinced by an experimental attempt at optimizing religion/ethics if it involved, for example, looking at how prevalence of certain ethical/religious beliefs in communities correlates with objective, measurable values such as happiness or wealth. Empiricism involves analyzing experimental results against a current model, not just other experiments.
By “subjective” I mean that ethics is not meaningful without an observer. There can be no meaningful ethics in a lifeless, brain-less world without actors. By “relative” I mean taking the measure of an ethical system relative to another ethical system. “Differences in degrees Celsius” is a relative measure but “degrees Kelvin” is an absolute measure.
As someone with experience meditating, I don’t think these are religious Barnum statements at all. But this is not obvious if you have not had certain experiences for yourself.
Finally, how can contemplation in the wilderness be an experiment in observing anything but individual human psychology?
It isn’t. But we are all the same species and tend to be similar to each other in the most fundamental ways. Study one mouse thoroughly enough and you will learn a lot about mice in general. I would love to see a wealth of scientific data on the effect of mystical practice on happiness and other metrics like default mode activation, but such data does not exist right now.
I enjoyed and agreed with the first part of this article: I think the analogy of the random walk is an interesting way to think about progress in ethics. The section addressing moral relativism does raise a few questions, though.
Could you clarify what you meant by this? What is the difference between the terms, in context?
The Snowmass example has a few problems. To begin, religion =/= ethics. None of the Points of Agreement involve ethics in a meaningful way and they’re all vague, involving meaningless terms like “ultimate reality.” They’re essentially religious Barnum statements.
Finally, how can contemplation in the wilderness be an experiment in observing anything but individual human psychology? I would be more convinced by an experimental attempt at optimizing religion/ethics if it involved, for example, looking at how prevalence of certain ethical/religious beliefs in communities correlates with objective, measurable values such as happiness or wealth. Empiricism involves analyzing experimental results against a current model, not just other experiments.
By “subjective” I mean that ethics is not meaningful without an observer. There can be no meaningful ethics in a lifeless, brain-less world without actors. By “relative” I mean taking the measure of an ethical system relative to another ethical system. “Differences in degrees Celsius” is a relative measure but “degrees Kelvin” is an absolute measure.
As someone with experience meditating, I don’t think these are religious Barnum statements at all. But this is not obvious if you have not had certain experiences for yourself.
It isn’t. But we are all the same species and tend to be similar to each other in the most fundamental ways. Study one mouse thoroughly enough and you will learn a lot about mice in general. I would love to see a wealth of scientific data on the effect of mystical practice on happiness and other metrics like default mode activation, but such data does not exist right now.