Returning now to comment on an earlier response.
Interbane wrote:
Pain doesn't necessarily mean physical either. All our conceptual mores are founded on moral emotions. These emotions are very real, even if they're subjective. I don't take it on faith that extreme emotional pain caused to me by someone else should be met with punishment for that person. It's how I feel.
The foundation of conceptual mores is not that clear. If you do absolutely feel that someone deserves to be punished, your emotional sentiment does have a faith quality, in the sense that you will not brook any suggestion you might be wrong. That mood of certainty is what I am trying to analyse here as a scientific phenomenon. The feeling of moral certainty, as distinct from the logic of scientific confidence, does have a strong similarity to religious faith.
What you call “conceptual mores” means accepted social standards for thinking. A book that discusses this topic,
Axiology – The Science of Values by Archie Baum, says “Conceptual mores have a social reality. They exist as commonly accepted beliefs, and children or other inductees into a society learn that they already exist.”
Conceptual mores can enable us to assess the value of different axioms. This consideration is ideally a product of logical reasoning based on observation, although in practice such reasoning is unlike the mores which arise solely from moral emotion.
A typical faith axiom – for example that God deliberately created the world - arises more as a result of moral emotion than of logical observation. As a result, faith is more strongly open to doubt than more science-linked beliefs.
However, false faith is not the whole story. It is possible to examine the nature of faith at its most general and acceptable level, such as the basic faith in sense data that underpins scientific knowledge. Similarly, with moral reasoning, we can hold, to consider the most general and universal sentiment we could imagine, that it would be bad if humans went extinct.
How does this moral sentiment function in practice? In discussing this question, I would like to draw on some philosophers who have asked similar questions, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Husserl is known as the founder of phenomenology, the movement which led to
Continental Philosophy, as distinct from the Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy. Explaining the difference between continental and Anglo philosophy is quite difficult, but I think a key issue, especially in Heidegger, is that continental thought is more about developing a universal logical system, whereas Anglo approaches are more skeptical and empirical about the possibility and value of such high ideas.
Heidegger used the moods of anxiety and concern as phenomena which he said disclose our being in the world, and which he thought reveal that the meaning of being is care, a proposition which he makes the basis of a universal existential system. The existential theory of care is a moral axiom which is quite hard to work through. It has been influential as the foundation of systematic existential logic, especially with the idea that existence is fundamentally relational.
My interest is to apply the same phenomenological method that Heidegger used to analyse anxiety to look at the phenomena of faith, love and grace, looking at how they exist and how they relate to a possible systematic existential logic. Faith therefore should be analysed as a phenomenon, not dismissed with the fallacious argument that some forms of faith are defective and therefore all are.
Interbane wrote:
The consensus of morality comes from an aggregation of these feelings across society. We tease the feelings apart and figure out where someone is liable or not, and how much harm they've done. In many court cases, it can be called a "fact" that a mother feels harm for the death of her child. And that's the foundation for moral action in many cases.
I don’t see a problem with regarding such a claimed feeling by a mother as factual. Many would see the absence of such emotion as reflecting a disturbing lack of normal maternal empathy. But I think your aggregation hypothesis is just wrong. Superior morality is based on enlightened analysis of consequences.
Going back to my previous example of jails, it is clear that aggregated community feelings will often differ from policies based on analysis of evidence. If we wish to approach the ideal of basing our values on facts, deriving our views about what ought to be from what we actually observe, then dispassionate research into consequences will produce a higher morality, with greater benefit, than mere aggregation of opinion. That is not at all to downplay the difficulty of basing values on facts, since incentives around punishment and rehabilitation are notoriously complex. But it helps show that evidence-based policy should be a moral ideal.
Interbane wrote:
We might say because the preferred future will maximize happiness or wealth or peace or some other value that we hold dear. But in all these cases what our values hold in common is that they rest upon conceptual moral principles and beliefs.
However, these conceptual moral principles and beliefs in turn rest upon our emotions and desires. We wish for a future where our children can experience the most happiness with the least harm. This desire is tempered by understanding that there must exist some form of broader altruism, in the style of game theory. Otherwise happiness for our children is at odds with other children's happiness, and that's not sustainable.
So, if desire is the foundation of principle, how then do we tell if our emotions and desires are good or bad? The grounding in desire is far too arbitrary.
If we look at the evolutionary implications of the example you give of the basis of altruism in game theory, there is a strong argument that it leads directly to group selection. If our desires are good for the group they are good, and vice versa, if our desires harm the group they are bad. The desire for happiness that you cite as fundamental is actually only a support to the foundation of morality. The foundation itself arises within our vision of a good society.
We can all see that happiness for the individual at the expense of unjust suffering of others is not moral. That in turn indicates that an ethical sense of the good of the group is hardwired in our genetic understanding. This broad moral sense emerges in the framework of faith, which is intimately connected to our moral intuition. Again, this point of the inherent group framework of morality is a theme that Junger explores in
Tribe.
Interbane wrote:
In assessing the relation between faith and reason, a purely scientific worldview can totally ignore all faith, in a pure factual worldview with no faith.
I'd say there's a need for faith in the consistency of sense datum, that what we're seeing is real. Beyond that I don't disagree with you. A purely scientific worldview isn't realistic. Anyone who claims they subscribe to one is using philosophy whether they realize it or not. They follow a sort of metaphysical naturalism.
This problem of the limits of a scientific worldview is a point that for me has been influenced by discussions on the philosophy of reality at the Cosmoquest Astronomy discussion forum, in a rather long and frustrating
thread on arguments about reality. Evangelical scientists (pardon my mockery there) maintain that reality is totally mind-dependent, a construct of scientific models. I have raised in these discussions the idea that reduction of reality to models is not realistic. Where we agree is that only models produce testable knowledge, and any belief in a reality independent of our scientific models is purely a matter of faith, since by definition if we believe something we cannot test then we are relying on faith.
Once we claim to be able to step outside the method of testing, we rely only on faith. That gives rise to axioms such as the theme you mention of the consistency of sense datum, which again is a feature of the cosmos which appears to be a condition of our experience, but is not itself testable.
Interbane wrote:
Our belief that causality is universal can only be a matter of faith in a proposition we consider to be a self-evident axiom.
You believe causality is universal? That beyond the edge of the known universe, causation works the same as it does here on Earth? That back before time began, causation worked as it does now? Your statements are good on the surface, but I think you're sticking with general statements to prove a point that isn't supported when you dig deeper.
Yes, I do in fact hold those beliefs about causality, based on induction from the observed consistency of the laws of physics. I consider it far more elegant and parsimonious to assume universal consistency than to entertain fanciful speculation about the laws of physics varying, when we have no evidence whatsoever to support such a view.
Strictly speaking we do not know anything we can’t test, but there is a reasonable question as to whether we think reality is more likely to be consistent or inconsistent. I go for consistency as a basic moral principle, which extrapolates from personal honesty through to a vision of ultimate reality. So in fact I see this as a faith issue, that the principle of consistency has a valuable social function in demonstrating the unethical consequences of inconsistency.
Simplifying the argument to one of rival faiths – consistency versus inconsistency - means that consistency is good while inconsistency is evil. My faith would be shattered by proof that reality is inconsistent, just as a creationist faith should be shattered by proof of evolution. I just think my faith in consistency is true, and provides moral religious support for a scientific world view.
Interbane wrote:
The belief that such simple ideas are absolutely true is a matter of faith.
Sure. But why would anyone believe something is absolutely true? I don't think that's wise.
This gets back to our debate about social versus epistemic logic. There is no purely epistemic basis for absolute belief, given the uncertainties of scientific testing considered in isolation. However, pure epistemic logic, as Hume showed, leads to absurd and dangerous ideas such as doubt about existence, causality and moral reasoning. Therefore, in terms of social logic, it is important to simplify the abstract ideas of epistemology to validate efforts to reform society towards a better social consensus. Socially speaking, it is absurd to say we are confident but not certain that the sun will rise tomorrow. That principle of faith in the orderly predictability of reality is an important moral foundation, in my view.
This whole topic of confidence versus certainty is a bit like integration in calculus. Asymptotic logic enables us to add infinitely small units to get a finite unit, resolving
Zeno’s paradox of the continuity of time. Continuity may seem logically impossible at first glance, except that integration works in practice to measure the area under a curve and support all engineering, including how an arrow moves from infinitesimal point to point in space and instant to instant in time.
Your doubt about the wisdom of absolute belief may seem logically coherent, like Zeno's argument that motion is impossible, but unfortunately, without absolute belief it is very difficult to engage in any real moral debate in society. A lack of confidence in a position results in a failure to persuade. The only things that actually move mountains in practice are either acts of God, through plate tectonics, or human faith, through ability to coordinate a group to achieve a shared goal based on mutual confidence, trust and loyalty.
