Conclusion:
An
exaggerated concern for morality can impede scientific progress.
“Yet
in more ways than one an exaggerated regard for morality is unfavourable to
scientific progress. I shall present only one of those ways.” (44)
Premises:
1.
A system of morals is the traditional wisdom of the experiences of past ages.
a. Men are raised to behave
according to this tradition.
2.
If a man behaves in a way that is counter to this, his conscience troubles him.
a. As a result
it is not safe for him to question his morals and we see that morality is
essentially conservative, leading him to be imbued with conservatism (44).
3.
This conservatism is a habit, and it a property of habits that they tend to
spread to other areas of a person’s life (44).
a. As such, moral conservatism can
lead to conservatism about any opinions of a speculative kind.
4.
This way of thinking is detrimental to scientific advancement and thus morality
can be unfavorable for science.
If science helps mankind in a considerable way, then it will trump morality in the end. Once stem cell research saves live on a massive scale, for example, then people will start to appreciate it as much as they appreciate modern medicine. Sure, there will be some who still ascribe to faith healing, but these people will be marginalized as extremists, even by most Christians.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that morality has some incompatibility with scientific advancements, maybe also because it's more convoluted in actually carrying out. Whereas the success of science can be most easily seen in experience, obtained by a "single-mindedness" (47) of experimental inquiry, morality cannot be sustained purely by looking to see what the consequences of an action are. With morality as a guide of conduct, action is not performed haphazardly, but is being self-controlled (47). In this way, morality can lead to different branches of reasoning, while a science can swiftly either affirm or refute the beliefs about it through experimental results.
ReplyDeleteWhile Pierce does have legitimate arguments regarding morality's effect on the progress of science, I ask myself whether scientific progress is necessarily always a positive thing. For example, advancement in the field of nuclear technology can harm as well as benefit people. The development of such technology can be used to benefit people through morality. Morality seems to be less of a hindrance and more of a channel to harness the positive potential of science while steering from destructive potential.
ReplyDeleteTony, I do not see the relationship between Pierce being a fallibilist and the fact that he believed that an excessive regard to morality can obstruct scientific progress. In one hand, Fabillism claims that humans can be wrong; specifically in terms of mathematics because they believe is an ever growing field. On the other hand, I think what Pierce is expressing is that if we do not go beyond the bounds of morality, science would never move forward. Morality stands in the way of new discoveries and thinking. Morality impede as you said scientific progress. But I do not think that he believes that all scientific discoveries are fallible.
ReplyDeleteThe key word here is exaggerated. A moderate amount of morality is actually necessary when 'advancing' science. Just looking back in history at the horrible things done to people (and horrible things still being done to animals)in the name of 'advancing' with apparently very little morality in mind. However, when in excess I have to agree with Peirce and say that if we are 'wrong' in our morality advancement in science could potentially come to a halt.
ReplyDeleteThis topic could sway in so many direction. It is true that morality serves a purpose in life as a whole not just science. However, I think that another issue is whose morality. In todays day in age people have so many different views on things especially scientific experiments, however who is to say what is right and wrong in human advancements or in science.
ReplyDeleteI think Zac has a point, how many advancements do we have today that someone at somepoint though was wrong. Stem cell research is so experimental right now but what will happen to ones morality when they actually see the benits this may bring, or when they themselves are in a predicument that requires them to need said thing.
Peirce, as a fallibilist, stresses that we have no reason to believe that any of our opinions whether it is mathematical or perceptual may not involve error. Peirce is a moderate fallibilist and believes that even though we cannot have absolute or metaphysical certainty about any of our beliefs, we may obtain fallible beliefs if we are careful and responsible in our scientific practice. If there is no certainty, then there is no truth. What we left with is beliefs, not even true beliefs as Plato takes them to be: true beliefs are equivalent to knowledge. For Peirce, beliefs do not. Thus, verification is crucial to scientific process. In this sense, a fallibilist scientific view could be like morality because both of them “evolve.” Morality evolves and changes from one epoch to another, and so does science. However, if both of them do evolve, scientific practice does evolve on a much faster rate than morality. In this sense, morality only slows down scientific process slightly. It could be a good thing.
ReplyDelete