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theartificialkid t1_ivc6puo wrote

This is the same error that Sam Harris pursued in The Mora Landscape. It’s obviously a Roach Motel for slightly smart public intellectuals. But clearly science has no way to dispute the claims of someone who says “it is inherently good to make others suffer”.

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StrayMoggie t1_ivd06v1 wrote

Suffering is a tricky one to know where the lines are drawn. Being tough on someone so that they can learn and adapt can sometimes be thought of causing suffering. Debate is where we are able to make choices. But those debates at also timely and need to be reviewed from time to time.

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theartificialkid t1_ivd27rz wrote

I think we are at cross purposes.

If an alien says “making others suffer, just for its own sake, is morally good” there is no scientific disproof of that. I’m not saying “maybe suffering can lead to better things”, I’m saying the idea that causing unalloyed suffering for no reason is “bad” is at best an axiom not amenable to proof.

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dmarchall491 t1_ivevobb wrote

> But clearly science has no way to dispute the claims of someone who says “it is inherently good to make others suffer”.

The crux there is that the claim is already non-scientific to begin with. "Good" or "bad" are meaningless terms without context. Good/bad for what and for whom? What might be bad for the slave, might be good for the owner.

You can very much do science on morality, but you can't do it in generic unspecific good or bad terms. That not only doesn't work, it completely overlooks that morality is group behavior, not some overarching absolute value system. What's good for some, is bad for others. And how people treat group members will be completely different to how they treat strangers.

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RonDJockefeller t1_ivdp3pt wrote

Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad, after which it follows neatly that we can make epistemological claims about morality using scientific evidence, because we can make objective claims about the misery of conscious creatures and its causes. If that's not a ground level assumption able to be taken as obvious, prima facia, I don't know what could possibly compel anyone to make a claim about, and I mean this literally, any detail about their conscious experience with more than 0% confidence. All hard sciences rely on assumptions, for example that a shared, observable physical reality exists. Without that claim there is no basis for pooled scientific knowledge, but it is self-evident despite the counter-claim being nonfalsifiable. Much like we assume, from the nature of our own consciousness, that reality exists and can be observed, we can assume that the maximum conscious misery, as evident through the nature of our own consciousness, is objectively bad.

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theartificialkid t1_ive2kb9 wrote

> Harris's concept of a moral landscape relies on an axiomatic claim (as all sciences do) that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad

Ah see here’s your misconception. The actual moral truth is that the worst possible misery for everyone is good.

In answer to you saying “the counter claim is unfalsifiable”: both claims are unfalsifiable. There is no scientific truth about morality, only extrapolation from unfounded axioms.

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RonDJockefeller t1_ivenbda wrote

I'm laughing at the idea of you playing devil's advocate in a state of maximum suffering and still sticking to the line that's it's a good thing. Your argument has the same character of solipsism - you're going to have to make the right assumption about the existence of consciousness in other people to engage with reality in a meaningful way, but I can't disprove you of thinking you're the only locus of consciousness in the universe.

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theartificialkid t1_iveqw65 wrote

I’m laughing at the idea that you think your earth human bullshit has anything to do with absolute truth.

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