HAN
I don't think we're going to find agreement on this, but here goes...
Gertie
I'd like to clarify an important distinction - science and empiricism can't explain conscious experience itself, but can give a (so far very broad and incomplete) explanation for why we evolved the way we did, ie the character of our phenomenal experience. For example the evolutionary utility of suffering, of altruism, our social/moral predispositions along with our selfish instincts. Strip away the mystique of the language, the awe of existence itself, and a coherent, compelling and easily comprehended story is available. And for now, I'd say that's the best we can do. We can speculate beyond that of course, but not with any authority.
Look at it like this: an artist has a variety of physical media at her disposal, and she chooses, say, marble, then proceeds to sculpt a statue. We can describe the statue in terms what she put into it, we can examine the technique, the way the tool's chiseling surface was applied; we can examine the verisimilitude of the rendering, the symmetry of the eyes, and so forth. But logically prior to all of this there is the stone with its specific nature that has possibilities and limitations that are there providing what can and cannot be done at all with a stone medium. Evolution is the sculptor, and the question of suffering goes to the stone itself. The point is clear: it is out of Being that evolution, as we call it, brought forth suffering, presumably as an advantage of avoidance, but evolution did not determine the possibilities logically or dispositionally there, prior, such that suffering could arise at all.
The same argument could be applied to anything, but here it is critical to understanding suffering and joy not as evolutionary contingencies, but possibilities embedded in Being prior to the first muddy swamp thing with DNA. If you would like to keep the matter about physical science, you could say even at that extraordinary Big Bang moment, ethical value was among the possibilities of the Being unleashed.
It is not with evolution that our mystery lies, it is within the Being itself, that it can DO this thing called the human condition.
If by 'Being' you mean the existence of conscious critters like ourselves, it's self-evident that the potential for us to exist, um existed. If you mean something other than consciousness by 'Being', please explain what as clearly as you can. For instance what qualities belong to 'Being' which aren't covered by consciousness? Any?
As I said, we don't know how the marble/consciousness (by which I mean experiential mental states) arises. Philosophy of mind has come up with some hypotheses, perhaps it's an emergent property of certain states of matter, perhaps it's a fundamental property of the universe and everything within it, or something else. Nobody knows. Including you and me. Nowt wrong with just saying 'I don't know'.
But I don't look at the matter like this so much, because evolution is an empirical science, and this does not deal with absolutes.
Can you define what you mean by 'absolutes'?
I'd agree that empirical science deals with material 'stuff' and forces, and struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential mental states/consciousness. I'm with Chambers in that I believe this is the Hard Problem, and there is a genuine explanatory gap. I don't know what, if anything, you mean in addition to that by using the term 'absolutes'.
Evolution is not a theory that is a mirror of nature; no theory is.
Agreed, and I gave many qualifiers in terms of it being a limited broad account of how consciousness has been molded by evolutionary factors. But once you accept the principle, you have an explanatory model of why human nature is the way it is. Including suffering, moral social predispositions and so on.
I look elusively at the phenomenon and ask: what is this? I take value as an absolute.
I can get a general feeling of what you're talking about here, and guess, but it would be really helpful if used clearer language, or define your terms for me.
I'd say that conscious experience is inherently qualiative, conscious critters such as ourselves experience a quality of life (unlike say a plant or rock as far as we know), which can be fulfilling or awful, and everything in between, from moment to moment. The explanation for the character of our conscious experiential states being rooted in evolutionary utility. Nevertheless it's this inherently qualiative nature of experiential states which brings meaning and value into a universe of dead rocks, and makes our lives valuable. Hence it
matters (to use Goldstein's framing) whether we suffer or are happy, live or die. And hence Oughts.
Strip away the mystique of language, and there is no story. The language IS the story, and it is a pragmatic story, not one that reveals some absolute.
As for the evolutionary 'story', of course it's a rough model, we can't capture reality itself in an explanation. That doesn't mean we can't learn something about reality from an explanation.
But I was suggesting that we try to go for clarity in our language here. It's a difficult topic, and sometimes it's easy to get lost in vague, abstract language which feels appropriately elusive or profound, but perhaps loses some of its sway when pinned down. Of course the counter argument is that some things can't be properly conveyed in precise, mundane language, rather evocative and ambiguous language conveys the sense better. But I'd suggest that's what art is for, where-as philosophical discussion benefits from rigour and clarity.
The only absolute that I accept is very difficult to say. So I just point:there, that gangrenous leg and the agony it makes!But it is not to be said.
I disagree. Everyone understands the feelings you refer to, but a medic can study and use the language of biology to get an understanding of the physical processes, the science, and alleviate that suffering, perhaps by manipulating the action of chemical nerve blockers or somesuch. Morality in action. And if we can understand our evolved biases, it can help us treat others more equitably, morally. I gave the example of our tribal predispositions which evolved when we lived in small groups, when our neurobiological bonding mechanisms developed to work up close and personal,and strangers were a possible threat or competitor for resources. The way our tribalism plays out in our modern globalised world results in no end of conflict and suffering. Understanding it might help alleviate some of the dire consequences of our evolutionary history.
Yes, the explanatory task of understanding why we are the way we are is exactly what evolution is up to. Our evolved reward system is a startlingly obvious explanation for suffering, for example. Our evolved sociality is the obvious basis for the caring and cooperative aspects of human nature, which have become codified into notions of morality. Our knowledge is still crude, but it's getting more detailed as we speak, and the onus is on those who choose to ignore the evidence in favour of speculative alternatives.
Empirical theories tell us nothing of value as such. Value is invisible, so to speak, and yet, there is nothing more striking or profound; indeed, it IS the profundity. This Tikka Masala I made for dinner is amazingly good. What dos this mean? Yes, the spices are well blended and balanced, and the chiken, so tender,and so on; and if you observe my brain enjoying the dish you will see the pleasure centers light up; and you can hear me make yummy noises; and so on. But where is the good??? The good of it, the valuative good of it is simply not observable. This is why Wittgenstein said that in the book of all facts that are the case, there would be no fact of ethical value. Such things are transcendental (my conclusion).
As I said above the qualiative nature of consciousness experience is where value comes in. We care about our quality of life, it has value to each of us. And when I die, the thing I lose of value is that qualiative experience (as far as we know). So if I was on life support but had irreversible brain death, nothing of value would be lost if the machine was turned off and my body died.
Morality comes into the picture if we accept that this confers duties ('oughts') upon us to treat each other well, with consideration for each other's well-being, and our own too. As Harris tidily nails it - 'the well-being of conscious creatures'.
This understanding of ourselves affords us the opportunity to re-think our approach to morality, perhaps create a new consensus rooted in understanding ourselves better.
Once you accept the link between consciousness and materialism, as implied by neural correlation, and once you accept that we are material creatures which evolved, the rest falls into place. It doesn't spill the bounds of the theory. Suffering has evolutionary utilitarian purpose, abhorrence at terrible behaviour too, in the context of living in mutually dependent cooperative group, as do notions of fairness and caring for others. It also explains why we care most for the well-being of our kin and those we know well, less so for strangers, and our in-group tribal tendencies. Of course the reality is incredibly complex and messy, but the broad explanatory picture is clear. Morality is no longer a mystery at odds with evolution, it's a key part of it in the story of our species.
This is very hard to say and be understood. Materialism and the seamless neuronal production of consciousness obviates the need for any terms of distinction. I think it is all of a piece, and the ontology I am trying to focus on is ethical or valuative ontology. I want to ask, not the question of how ethical value is taken up in observation based theory, I want to address the matter at the level of basic assumptions, not unlike asking a question about, say, spatial direction, and not being satisfied until the questions run awash into eternity. The Being of ethical value is the where the transcendental argument begins.
And that's fine. We can each muse on what feels right to us about the fundamental nature of reality based on our experiential states. But doesn't it leave us open to follow our biases without any touchstone to check back to? And if one aspect of us is that our way of thinking evolved for utility, then we're chocka with bias and limitations, and being a human means you're a messy kludge of quick fixes to past problems. The problems you point out with approaches like empiricism don't just disappear.
What evolution does offer is a shared story about a shared humanity, a shared explanation of things we can agree are real (if only knowable in a limited way). It's always possible to question any assumption, you can rightly question the assumption that we know anything is real except our own experiential states. But then there is no common ground for us to share or discuss, shared public territory where can communicate relies on us making some shared assumptions.
I hope, at least, you see that, given that evolution is the current be an end all in popular secularsim, evolution in no way serves up an answer to the explanatory vacuum of ethics. It gives form to ethics, you might say, but cannot say why we are born to suffer and die. It merely accepts this as an assumption. But again, this is where the question begins, not ends.
Science offers material explanations of why we suffer and die, that's its currency. And the one Big clue we now have in linking the material with the mental/experiential, is neural correlation. We don't understand the relationship between the two, but we can observe that correlation. Think about what correlation means. It's the reason we can create an explanation for the nature of our mental states (that we suffer, hate this love that, etc) by looking at how evolutionary change sculpted the physical neuronal part of the mind/body correlation. That's why it's important. If we knew every last neuronal detail of you and I, we'd probably understand why we this differently
.
These do not explain the phenomenonal experience (consciousness) itself - where it comes from, why it manifests in certain physical entities but apparently not others, etc, nobody knows that. But they do broadly explain why we are the way we are, the nature of the experience. Would you agree with that?
Science and the rest are not of a nature to explain things at the level of basic assumptions. They assume what is given. Here, we do not. We question the given, as we should, when the given, so to speak, has thrown us under the bus.
Okay, but if you're going to be consistent in questioning the given assumptions, then as I say, what common ground are we left with to discuss anything? And don't you in fact pick and choose your own assumptions? That I exist, that when I say suffering and joy you roughly know what I mean, and not the opposite. That if I point to an apple and say it's green, you know what that means, and if I say it always falls downwards because of something we call gravity, you know what that means to me? And if you agree with even those assumptions, you're in the world od empiricism, observation and science and evolution. The difference between objective and subjective, is when I point to an an apple and you agree it's green, that we share a reality we can agree we know things (roughly) about. Our shared agreed ground of assumptions, where we can have coherent communication.
No you misunderstood, that's one of the ways we put our values into practice in our daily 'getting on with life'. Understanding ourselves better through studying our evolved biases (such as the tribalism which is clearly not 'designed' by evolution to work well in our modern globalised, inter-connected world of strangers) must be a good thing.
But the matter is not how to put things into practice.
It is a question gives the human condition its religious dimension. What is ethical value?
In a nutshell I'd say morality is a concept we created to understand our evolved social and altruistic predispositions. Now we understand the actual evolved source of those predispositions, we need a new approach. I outlined my thoughts on what that could be above.
Well that turned out really long and probably repetitive, but I'm too fed up of hearing myself think about it now to proofread it, so sorry if it's a bit messy.