COULD THE LONG-HELD BELIEF THAT SCIENCE CANNOT SOLVE ETHICAL/MORAL PROBLEMS BE WRONG?

| Objective | The Nature and practical consequences of Moral or Ethical Problems | Previously Attempted Solutions |

| A Different Approach | An Unchallenged Assumption | The Assumption Challenged | Implications of the Challenge |

!A Scientific Solution to Ethical/Moral Problems|

Objective:

To propose a conclusive, universal and scientifically testable solution to problems of a moral or ethical nature.

The Nature and practical consequences of Moral or Ethical Problems:

Moral or ethical problems arise from questions of how people should or should not behave, either in particular situations or in general. They become problems when people arrive at different answers and have difficulty reaching agreement about which is right.

This difficulty affects us personally when something, such as someone else appearing more successful than us, for example, leads us to wonder whether we have been making the right choices in life. When we try to address this question we need to know what we are making our choices to achieve. We need to identify a lifetime objective, a “meaning of life”. When we look for one we discover a multitude of possibilities with no objective means of deciding which would be best to pursue.

Given that we are already concerned about our ability to make the right choices, this lack of objective criteria is unhelpful. We may be led to question whether we are in some way less capable than others at decision-making, or become reluctant to make any at all in case they turn out to be wrong.

The difficulty affects our interactions with other people when they and we have different perceptions of what people should or should not do; and one of us wants to do something that the other thinks they should not.

Unfortunately, to use reason to reach an agreement about which of us is right, we need to decide between our different perceptions of what we should be trying to achieve with our choices. When we try to do this, we again come up against a lack of objective criteria of measurement. Unable to reason our way to agreement, we may resort to heated argument or even the threat or application of physical force to settle the issue in our favour.

It affects our societies by underpinning our ideas about how to organise them. Whether we should distribute resources according to people’s need for them or according to the contribution they make to their production is an ethical question at the heart of different economic systems. Whether the members of a society should decide what their government does or vice versa is an ethical question at the root of different political systems. Whether people should be permitted to behave in particular ways or should incur penalties if they do is the ethical question that is the basis of our laws. The difficulty arises between different people’s answers to these questions. When societies with different answers to them clash with each other, the result may be war.

Previously Attempted Solutions:

Science: none – value judgements about what people should do cannot be induced from observations of natural behaviour.

Philosophy: most philosophers since Thales of Miletus (c.625-545 BC). No conclusive solution as opposing positions always possible and no demonstrable evidence available to weigh one against another.

Religion: many moral doctrines, some ancient, none conclusive for same reason.

A Different Approach:

Does not attempt theory of what people should or should not do. Instead, arrives at a solution by challenging a previously overlooked assumption inherent in all questions of a moral or ethical nature.

An Unchallenged Assumption:

All such questions have the form: should a person choose these changes of experience or those? What these and those changes of experiences would be is already defined before the issue of which should be preferred is addressed. This assumes people are capable of varying how much they are attracted to performing different abilities without changing their perceptions of how performing them would change their experiences.

The Assumption Challenged:

There is no evidence to support this assumption. Whenever we switch our attraction for having one set of experiences to having another, we always do so having changed our perception of what those experiences would be in some way.

Example 1:
Someone who has habitually mugged little old ladies stops doing so having been shown how his actions have affected his victims.
Example 2: Someone who has habitually mugged little old ladies stops doing so having become convinced that they should not do so.

In each example, the person’s anticipation of the outcome of mugging little old ladies has changed. In the first, they have added the effects on their victim to their perception of the outcome. In the second, they have added the perception that they would be doing something they should not.

In every instance of switching our attraction between different changes of experience, the switch is always preceded by a change in our perception of what those experiences would be. That we cannot do otherwise strongly suggests that we cannot vary what we are attracted to in experiences because, if we could, we would be able to identify an example of switching our attraction between them without altering our perception of them.

Implications of the Challenge:

If we cannot vary what we are attracted to in experiences, we are always attracted to the same quality in them. We are most attracted to doing whatever has preceded the experiences during which what this quality has been present in the greatest degree.

If this imperative accounts for how we discriminate between all alternative abilities, even different thoughts, it is responsible for everything we do, whether selected by forethought, ‘instinctively’ or physiologically (e.g. whether we breathe in or out).

A Scientific Solution to Ethical/Moral Problems:

A single quality in our experiences responsible for how we discriminate between all our abilities would have to be something very easy to both identify and quantify. The only quality that meets these requirements and can account for which abilities we select is the number of ways we have been able to change experiences and, therefore, the number of different things we have been able to do in them.

Therefore: We always do whatever has preceded the experiences in which we have had the most abilities available. This solution to the problem is achieved, therefore, not by any theory of what we should or should not do when discriminating between alternatives but by observation of how we actually do discriminate between them.

As it addresses what is the case, it can be tested by scientific method, either examining human behaviour or that of other species. For, if this is the single imperative of our species, it is likely to be that of all other species as well. If so, one could go on to speculate that it is also the single imperative governing the behaviour of that of which all species consists. In which case, matter/energy always adopts the next available form from which it has changed to the most different forms.

Although the further one goes with this, the more speculative it becomes, it nevertheless suggests a considerable potential for investigation. The more science tries and fails to falsify an hypothesis, the more persuasive it becomes. The more persuasive this solution becomes, the more the practical consequences of moral conflict will diminish with the decline in irreconcilable moral theories.