An argument against scientistic morality

[hannahgirardy]

According to scientistic belief, what is known as morality is the result of evolutionary processes. Alex Rosenberg, a subscriber to scientism, claims that what is seen currently as core morality is the product of past environments. Due to these moral ideas leading to the successful reproduction and safety of the current society, it became evolutionary prudent to maintain these ideals. Rosenberg further rejects the idea of morals that are true across all times and societies. Therefore, any one moral cannot be objectively “correct”. It would follow that the past, present, and future morals of any society are simply the result of what worked in the past to further society and therefore has no objective truth. However, should scientism prove to be true, then all truth would be considered relative and thus nothing can be known about morality. In other words, since scientism proposes that moral beliefs are adaptive and not able to be believed as true, then nothing can be known about morals. Yet, some things can be known about morals. Rational intuitions of morality are evidence of such knowledge. For example, rape is widely accepted to be innately immoral. Its obvious immoral nature can be compared to something as matter of fact as how people know that trees are plants. However, according to scientism, rape promotes successful reproduction and would therefore be seen as a moral course of action. Inversely, things that are seen as moral by conventional morality are seen as immoral by scientism’s standards because they do not benefit successful reproduction. For example, a person with children giving money to those in need causes detriment to said person and their children because now they no longer have as much money to support their direct lineage. Because scientism cannot explain these innately true morals and does not have an absolute truth, it cannot be regarded as a valid course of thought. Rather than morals coming from evolutionary adaptations, a much more defendable argument is that there is absolute truth and innate morals that originate from a god who created them. This would explain why morals that are contradictory to what would be favorable in evolution are seen as virtuous.

[Jabberwock]

The presented view of evolution is rather naive. The fact that rape can end in reproduction has little relation to whether that reproduction is successful, as that depends on the ability to nurture the child, which in turn depends on providing sufficient care, which for humans is typically provided by couples: a rapist is not interested in the well-being of the child and neither is the possible victim's partner.

Also, the claim that 'rape is widely accepted to be innately immoral' is ahistorical, to put it mildly. France has criminalised marital rape as late as 1994, so obviously it was not 'widely accepted' to be immoral. The biblical views on the rape are also quite far from modern standards (punishing the victim, forced marriage to the rapist, marrying captive women etc.).

[jayceeii]

Objective morality can be sourced from the universal joy-state. In other words a person would act only in such ways that would add to joy, and lessen sorrow, in the people around him or her. Though simply stated, this depends that the people would rejoice in the joy of another, which is to say that they would be made happy knowing they had contributed to joy and lessened sorrow. If an individual was instead jealous of joy in others and wanted to lessen it, they could not apply the principle and enter objective morality. The morality springs from a consideration of the optimization of all of creation.

The morality is called objective because its effects are always good, like Kant said people have a duty to be beneficent. The morality does not call down God, instead relying on local observations and individual wisdom. But it seems nature has not endowed man with an urge to such goodness, or to understand it as a standard. It seems the spiritual must enter it somehow, from above. Rosenberg’s perspective denies the value of living others.