The Science of Ethics

Kwame Anthony Appiah , professor of philosophy at Princeton University and the author of Experiments in Ethics, talks about the evolving relationship of science and morality with WNYC's Brian Lehrer.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/02/14/segments/93599

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ethics
• morality
• brian
• lehrer
• wnyc
• public
• radio
• philosophy
• kwame
• anthony
• appiah

[michaelretriever]

What Mr. Appiah attempts to explain here is not that ethics is science; but that science is useful to ethics or to ethical pursuits, including saving lives.

[stevechavura]

No. The word science comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. The word science still has numerous meanings, for it is applied to things such as social, political,ethical, mathematical, gemetrical and natural. These are all considered sciences because they have their foundations yet are built upon in a methodical way. In natural science this method involves things like experimentation and falsification. There is nothing improper about talking about ethical science.

[ZombieLincoln666]

The latest book by Derek Parfit called "On What Matters" supposedly makes a strong case for objective ethics.

[michaelretriever]

Ethics is not science, it's philosophy. Studying ethics as a scientific discipline is as successful as studying science as a theological discipline: rarely successful. "It is ethically good to blink", "Life is valuable", "We ought to save lives", have deep meanings (with which many of us agree) that go beyond the scientific.

What really isn't useful is to attempt to use the scientific method in all instances, or to classify (like you do) some knowledge as useless.

[TangomanX2008]

@borntokill

what about logic and mathematics? Scientists use these all the time,but the knowledge of these don't depend on scientific experiment.Your use of the verification principle and logical positivism is obsolete,its bad philosophy, not good science.I would agree that ethics and metaphysics(and I would also include logic and mathematics)are issues that are not part of what we refer to as science, but that just means that scientists are outside their area of expertise(as scientists) .

[TalmaPai]

and the whole usa and europe together are only a minority to the rest of the world - count the ppl - count the square kilometers but nevertheless most inhabitants in the minority get the impression to be in the centre of the world lol -

[maureenOWW]

Problem is, he's completely (and quite obviously) wrong. Charlemagnes empire at it's height was 1.2 million square kilometres. The 48 continental united states (not including alaska etc) are over 8 million square kilometres. That's almost SEVEN times the size. Even if he had conquered all of europe up the the borders of russia he would still only be halfway to the size of the US.

So this 'brilliant' man has no actual grasp of basic things like the size of countries, or how to check 'facts'.

[maureenOWW]

This HALFWIT should have studied geography rather than philosophy, because he knows nothing of the former.

In his article entitled 'How Muslims Made Europe' he states the following:

'Charlemagne's rule included at its high point most of France, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, the west of Germany, Italy as far south as Rome, a strip in the north of Spain, and parts of Hungary....at nearly three and a half million square miles, it was larger than the continental United States.'

[bampaz]

cocksucker loud voice on the phone

[saveourcar]

oh fuck

[JoeyFudd]

Good point, born. I'd add that when someone in the humanities uses the word "science" to describe their field, they are usually dressing up their knowledge in the borrowed and ill-fitting plumes of the natural sciences to add heft to their theory, which lacks a criterion of correctness and is immune from falsification. So armchair speculation can pass for truth more easily.