Jim Lippard wrote: I don't think you can reasonably question the coherence and adequacy of those intertheoretic reductions without learning the science involved. It's not clear to me whether or not you agree.
It seems to me that if one proposes reducing normative ethics to evolutionary biology, I can pretty well tell from the outset that such a project is doomed, and I can do so with a general, but not detailed knowledge of evolutionary biology. It seems to me that one can have arguments to the effect that a certain set of categories simply will not and can not reduce to another set. In particular, I consider all normative-to-descriptive reductions inherently suspect.
A lot of reductive analyses in the philosophy of mind wave a lot of science around which conceals a profound incoherence, sliding from one set of categories to another without making clear and adequate distinctions. Or so it seems to me. I don't think I should be intimidated by scientific gnositicism, the idea that I have to be one of the scientific initiates in order to understand the mysteries.
3 comments:
" I don't think I should be intimidated by scientific gnositicism, the idea that I have to be one of the scientific initiates in order to understand the mysteries."
The religious analogy is inapplicable here. It's not gnosticism. It's specialization.
t.
Conceptual differences don't imply ontological differences. The 'is/ought' distinction may be a semantic difference on the order of 'water/H20'. (This is Brink's line in his book on moral realism).
Is and ought could be as different from each other as facts about kidneys and facts about renal systems.
I never find semantic-based ontology compelling. Show me the evidence that there are different types of things in the world, don't show me meanings.
But there is the "open question argument," the idea that we can pile up descriptive facts and still be left with an open question as to whether or not something is right. Entailment really does look impossible.
Of course, you can be a subjectivist about these sorts of norms, but I think there is a serious price to be paid for that.
Yes, probably the gnosticism analogy is limited. However, I just don't see the progress toward the resolution of fundamental philosophical problems like intentionality, qualia, consciousness, free will, sense of self, etc. These are part of my speicalization, philosophy.
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