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Single Idea 5334
[filed under theme 1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 1. Aims of Science
]
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.
The
23 ideas
from 'The Problem of the Soul'
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5332
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People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this
[Flanagan]
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5333
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Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be
[Flanagan]
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5334
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We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom
[Flanagan]
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5335
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Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle
[Flanagan]
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5336
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Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing
[Flanagan]
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5338
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Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling
[Flanagan]
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5339
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Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them
[Flanagan]
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5340
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Explanation does not entail prediction
[Flanagan]
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5341
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Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system
[Flanagan]
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5342
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Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser
[Flanagan]
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5343
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People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free
[Flanagan]
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5344
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Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living
[Flanagan]
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5345
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We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way
[Flanagan]
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5346
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In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible
[Flanagan]
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5347
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Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation
[Flanagan]
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5348
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Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character'
[Flanagan]
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5349
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For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion
[Flanagan]
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5350
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The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE
[Flanagan]
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5351
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We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same
[Flanagan]
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5352
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The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds'
[Flanagan]
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5353
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The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography
[Flanagan]
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5354
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We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living
[Flanagan]
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5355
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Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason
[Flanagan]
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