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by TimTheTinker
2030 days ago
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She does that, but she goes further: > reason and compassion over superstition and tradition The problem is, both reason and compassion (at least as the author wishes to use them) ultimately rest on ethical and moral systems that science itself is incapable of addressing, hence falling into the “superstition and tradition” bucket she derides. In other words, objective moral values and duties, if they exist, must have a philosophical basis to be real, and that basis is inaccessible to science and reason alone. It requires a worldview that answers basic questions like origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. It seems she wishes to cut off the legs on which she would seek to stand. |
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In the sense that science can't tell you which states of the world are "better" or "worse" than others, yes, I agree. Richard Feynman put it this way: science can only answer questions of the form "If I do this, what will happen?" Science cannot answer questions of the form "Do I want that to happen?"
> hence falling into the “superstition and tradition” bucket she derides
I don't think the author is using "superstition and tradition" to refer to ethical and moral beliefs. I think she's using it to refer to erroneous factual beliefs, or methods of addressing problems that don't work. For example, for millennia people tried to prevent disease using various superstitious rituals, none of which worked. Science discovered vaccination, which did. Both views agreed that preventing disease was a good thing; there was no ethical or moral difference there. The difference was between superstitious methods which didn't work, and scientific methods which did.