Putting up a philosophical argument about moral relativism just degrades the discussion into nothing, because your line of reasoning is this: if you don't
know everything, then you can't talk about anything!
This makes any argument about anything invalid, and you might as well kill every social program that promote anything, because it's all relative.
know everything, then you can't talk about anything!
This makes any argument about anything invalid, and you might as well kill every social program that promote anything, because it's all relative.
I don't want to dive in and steer to an off-topic discussion, but that argument confuses descriptive statements with normative ones. You can gather knowledge about what you value, what other people value and use scientific reasoning to maximize your benefit based on this knowledge. Science helps you find out what you need to do to achieve a set goal. Which metrics (values) you use to measure benefit is outside the scope of science, and epistemology in general.
Just because something changes over time or in different contexts, it doesn't you can't talk about it in scientific terms.
Morals are contingent upon the culture of your time (your zeitgeist). That being said, you can act accordingly, with a scientific approach. What other approach would you use instead?
Morals are contingent upon the culture of your time (your zeitgeist). That being said, you can act accordingly, with a scientific approach. What other approach would you use instead?
Exactly.
In any case, we have fundamental needs that need to be satisfied, and that isn't based on somebody's opinion. We can start from there and build up the rest, bit by bit.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs? There isn't much scientific evidence to back it up, or any kind of proposed fundamental needs for that matter. If you get down to the science of it, we do everything to produce some types of neurotransmitters. Even eating is to achieve that "goal". You then end up with the brave new world.
Sam Harris puts it well on his TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
What Sam Harris does isn't science, he's just presenting his own intuition, which happens to be politically correct (or contingent upon TEDgeist
). I suggest you read Scott Atran's responses in detail (debate goes bottom to top), I'm sure you will see where scientific approach clashes with moral absolutism.