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Full Idea
The inability of science to provide ethical wisdom is partly responsible for our resistance to the scientific image.
Gist of Idea
We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom
Source
Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14)
Book Ref
Flanagan,Owen: 'The Problem of the Soul' [Basic Books 2003], p.14
A Reaction
This seems right. A.J. Ayer, for example, declared "I believe in science", and his account of ethics was vacuously nihilistic. A description of the mechanisms of moral life is not the same as ethical wisdom.
| 76 | The object of scientific knowledge is what is necessary [Aristotle] |
| 2200 | All experimental conclusions assume that the future will be like the past [Hume] |
| 6782 | Realism is the only philosophy of science that doesn't make the success of science a miracle [Putnam] |
| 6601 | Science rules the globe because of colonising power, not inherent rationality [Feyerabend] |
| 3853 | For science to be rational, we must explain scientific change rationally [Newton-Smith] |
| 3859 | We do not wish merely to predict, we also want to explain [Newton-Smith] |
| 3870 | The real problem of science is how to choose between possible explanations [Newton-Smith] |
| 3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| 4588 | There is no such thing as 'science'; there are just many different sciences [Heil] |
| 3123 | Science is in the business of carving nature at the joints [Segal] |
| 6779 | Instrumentalists say distinctions between observation and theory vanish with ostensive definition [Bird] |