Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system. I agree. The next step is the extrapolation of interpersonal ethics to large group ethics, which is politics. Again, the objective facts of humanity should also serve as a basis for the design of public policies that could be applicable to all humans. That’s what I’d like to see discussed.
Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system
Only after certain values like “happiness” or “optimal functioning” or “health” are nailed down.
For example one thing that trips me up is that I see ethics as “what I respect” and that is mainly aesthethical. I like acts of heroism, they are beautiful. Therefore I consider courage a moral virtue. It is irrelevant if it was necessary or not. If in a certain future everything risky is done by machines and humans would become extremely timid as a perfectly rational strategy, I would want to prevent that future, because that is ugly, disrespectable, repulsive, disgusting.
I know that it is all an evolved bias, a heuristic that makes me respect those virtues that used to be useful in an ancestral environment. Still. Why cannot I still make things we find instinctively beautiful and respectable into terminal values? Why should only happiness, functioning or health be terminal values?
I thought the word politics was used to mean not the design of ethics or policies, but the process of making other humans agree with the policies you have already selected.
Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system. I agree. The next step is the extrapolation of interpersonal ethics to large group ethics, which is politics. Again, the objective facts of humanity should also serve as a basis for the design of public policies that could be applicable to all humans. That’s what I’d like to see discussed.
Only after certain values like “happiness” or “optimal functioning” or “health” are nailed down.
For example one thing that trips me up is that I see ethics as “what I respect” and that is mainly aesthethical. I like acts of heroism, they are beautiful. Therefore I consider courage a moral virtue. It is irrelevant if it was necessary or not. If in a certain future everything risky is done by machines and humans would become extremely timid as a perfectly rational strategy, I would want to prevent that future, because that is ugly, disrespectable, repulsive, disgusting.
I know that it is all an evolved bias, a heuristic that makes me respect those virtues that used to be useful in an ancestral environment. Still. Why cannot I still make things we find instinctively beautiful and respectable into terminal values? Why should only happiness, functioning or health be terminal values?
I thought the word politics was used to mean not the design of ethics or policies, but the process of making other humans agree with the policies you have already selected.