Science: Do we believe or do we accept?

[ScandalAndy]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

hum. I dunno about that. My dad taught me certain morals based on ecology and biology. Not all of them mind you, but a chunk. Not using the scientific method, exactly, but the results of behaviour (cause/effect type stuff). Plus physchology, though a messy science with unisolatable variables (like ecology) does make some attempt in a sideways way that one could then apply to moral "law".

for example when I was little:
"barbara, don't throw that on the ground. it's littering. You know how we share this environment with other people and other animals? if everyone put their on the ground whereever in great quanities, then it will cause people and animals to get sick and die. We wouldn't be able to farm the land and use plants for medicines and the animals that help us (ecology web explained earlier) and have their own value would disapear." kind of thing.

also I don't shit close to a river when I'm hiking/camping and I make sure it's in the top soil. I also don't shit very much in the same place and am very aware of where other people in the camping group are shitting and what kind of clime we are in. Those are moral choices (are they? not to fuck with the water supply or the environment) based on scientific knowledge.

I dunno, does that fit in to that slot? I'm not sure but it sort of does??

or maybe not. I'm on pain meds today so my thinking is a bit fuzzy.

Well, this is kind of what I was getting at in a way. If your Da didn't care about the environment (morality) and knowing the repercussions of poor ecological stewardship, your own beliefs wouldn't have been influenced the way they were. That's using morality to influence morality.

I'm saying there's no set of data you can use to measure whether something is more or less moral, more or less worthy of being enforced as a standard. I'd go so far as to say most people believe that killing is wrong, that is a moral judgment. There is no scientific data to back this up, though. That tenet of their personal beliefs is influenced only by opinion and not fact.

Conversely, depending on your beliefs you can end up on either side of the argument when it comes to something like the "gay gene" mentioned previously. Some people want to prove there is one, others don't. Some people want there to be a cure, others want to prove homosexuality is innate and therefore cannot and/or should not be "cured". You use your personal opinions to decide what you deem "important" research.