Talk:Science of morality

A-priori Axiom of Morality that is Arbritrary
"The Flourishing of Conscious Creature" is an A-Priori Axiom that is both unscientific and arbitrary. It seems to be crafted solely to fit "Human" without mentioning human.

First, why consciousness is scientifically more valuable than non consciousness? If we are going to pick arbitrary axiom of what is the most precious in morality, why would consciousness be scientifically more important than anything else? Is consciousness more important than Life? Is Life more important than non living creatures when they are identical on Chemical and Atomic level? If one day computers achieved AI level, are we responsible to ensure that it flourished? (i.e. make sure that it propagates and replicates and have freedom to do whatever it want and ensure it never run out of battery?). If someone is brain dead from accident and lost their consciousness, temporarily or permanently, does it mean that he or she is less important morally that we are allowed to do whatever we want to it? Does it mean we can desecrate corpses since they are scientifically only meat anyway?

Second, why do we need scientific basis for morality? Philosophy has covered this SUBJECTIVE topic for centuries. To get a bland, Neo Utilitarian version based on Scientific method is ... just unnecessary at best and totally misleading at worst. From a evolutionary biology point of view, if we see our teleological purpose as vehicle for our replicating DNA is to survive and propagate, and that is all that we ever care about from Scientific method point of view, then EUGENICS, RAPE, MURDER of people who does not share the same DNA should be scientifically sound EXCEPT for the ARBITRARY axiom of Flourishing of conscious creature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.125.131.62 (talk) 09:22, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * All of science necessarily depends on a priori axioms. In the physical sciences these include "what we experience is real" and "there is an objective physical reality," and in psychology and social sciences "other people have conscious experiences that resemble mine." Just because a field of science depends on a particular a priori axiom doesn't make it unscientific. Meletao (talk) 23:16, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Attempt to generally improve the quality of the article
When I first looked at this article, it kind of looked like the paragraphs were shuffled up and placed almost randomly. I’ve already (today and yesterday) reorganized it a bit. I've also removed a lot of paragraphs that didn't seem to contribute to any main point. I think there's quite a bit of such work to be done on this article. So I just wanted to explain myself here, because I've never made such extensive changes to an article before. I really do think it's necessary. BrianPansky (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your efforts. There continues to be a great deal to do. For one thing, this is far too long and diffuse in its current form; I wonder if some of the very short sections could be combined into larger sections, and some of the less central points left for articles on particular philosophers. HGilbert (talk) 00:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

See also links
Some of these are only vaguely related. Not every ethical topic should be listed here.

I have tried to perform an initial clean-up, removing articles in whose text I could not find sufficient related content. Please feel free to add/subtract. HGilbert (talk) 03:00, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Missing Section
At some point, the section that this link "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_morality#Causes_of_flourishing" linked to was removed. It appears twice in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics76.4.107.74 (talk) 10:35, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Moral physical education
Meaning of morality 2409:4063:419E:7FE1:F530:61CB:807D:391E (talk) 13:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)