Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
It's always worth a post to highlight good reasoning. Here are the two fallacies: "The naturalistic fallacy... is the leap from is to ought - that is, the tendency to believe that what is natural is good; that what is, ought to be." And "The moralistic fallacy... refers to the leap from ought to is, the claim that the way things should be is the way they are. This is the tendency to believe that what is good is natural; that what ought to be, is."

Fair enough, but this doesn't follow, does it? "Scientists - real scientists - do not draw moral conclusions and implications from the empirical observations they make, and they are not guided in their observations by moral and political principles. Real scientists only care about what is, and do not at all care about what ought to be."

No, it doesn't follow. Science is concerned with what ought to be on a day to day basis - the principles of good reason, for example, of scientific methodology, and of practice and good behaviour.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 07:55 a.m.

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