The Authority Of Instinct In Moral Decision-making

Imagine, for a moment, that Abraham has killed Isaac. On returning home to his wife Sarah, Abraham decides to tell her everything – that he killed their beloved son and burnt his body, leaving his ashes to the wind. Naturally, Sarah is very upset and demands to know why Abraham would so such a thing. Looking uncomfortable, he answers that God came to him and said:

“Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering…”

God commanded Abraham to obey. Yet, He is also supposed to have given him free will – there is no reason Abraham could not have disobeyed God and saved his son’s life. In a later Holocaust, the perpetrators were said to excuse themselves with: “I was only following orders.” They were forced to murder; had they not, their families would have been punished, even killed. Assuming a vengeful God, is Abraham then justified in saying: had I been godfearing and done as He said, then I would watch my wife, my servants and all my people die. Or, as the original story is intended to be read, should we applaud Abraham for putting his trust in a moral authority who knows what’s best.

We begin by distinguishing between the role of authority through coercion and authority through wisdom in our moral decision-making. My aim in this essay is to infiltrate the minds of our hypothetical Abraham and try to understand the role of reason and sentiment in moral decision-making, relating them to both forms of authority.

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With the first of three Hobbit documentaries being released this year, it seems an appropriate time to announce the new revolution in the study of origins: Tolkien Science. Though evolution, with all its associated irony may well be the more appropriate word…

Tolkien Science has been brewing in the firey Mount Doom of scientific enquiry for decades and is now as indestructible as the One Ring itself. Yet it is still untaught in our schools, dismissed as mere science fiction, when it is in fact fantasy of the old sort: an imaginative conceptualization. Like Einstein who imagined himself riding on a beam of light and so discovered relativity, JRR Tolkien – an Oxford Professor and founder of our field – imagined himself on a quest to Mordor and, in doing so, discovered the origins of the universe. Between 1937 and 1955 he published a series of monographs synthesising knowledge from many fields into a coherent and, as I shall show, accurate account of the origins of the world. His his papers took the form of epic fantasy novels – befitting a man of such penetrating and creative intellect – but they were appended by detailed notes providing the data underlying the theory, much of which was only published after his death. It is a cause of celebration that his monographs are more widely read than either Darwin or Dawkins, and in the early years of the 21^st century were made into a trilogy of powerful documentary films by the renowned New Zealand Tolkien Scientist Peter Jackson, which brought to the world’s attention this exciting new paradigm.

Unlike Darwin, whose theories were invented during the luxury of a round the world cruise, Tolkien’s quest to understand the history of the universe began on the battlefields of World War One. In the same way that humanity’s ego had rent Flanders’ Fields apart, Tolkien surmised that the world was once flat, but that the arrogance of men had caused it to have become round. The evidence for this came from the discoveries of German scientist Albert Einstein – that, when events of such gravity as the Doom of Numenor occurred, space could actually become curved. The stories of Atlantis, Mu and Hy-Brasil – all island nations flooded in a great cataclysm – passed down unchanged over the generations, give the theory that nice, convincing human element that allows it to transcend the Popperian planes to the level of scientific truth. Bearing in mind that geologists have never actually been under the earth’s crust to see if their tectonic plates really do float, the idea that the all-powerful Valar simply caused the shape of the world to change is a far more convincing explanation of continental drift.

Tolkien’s theories, which emphasize the effect of Valinor-based Powers, let us throw out the implausible geological yarns of mainstream science. Ice-ages in the Northern Hemisphere are more parsimoniously explained by the evil wrought by the cold-hearted Morgoth in the First Age and by the Witch King of Angmar in the Third. Nonetheless, like all true sciences, Tolkien science has its controversies. Another hypothesis claims Ice Ages are a figment of geologist imagination. Erratics are rocks found far away from home, usually said to have got there by hitching a lift on a passing glacier. Some Tolkien scientists, however blame erratics on trolls getting caught out in the sunlight. The strength of the theory is in its predictions: trolls are social creatures – as evidenced by Tom, Bert and Bill Huggins, who turned to stone together around a campfire. We would therefore expect to find tall rocks scattered in clusters around the landscape where trolls have frozen together. A visit to Stonehenge should suffice to convert the world’s geologists.

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source: http://io9.com/5887189/10-science-policies-i-wish-the-government-would-institute

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how science is defined and who does it best. I don’t much care to follow that, because it makes me stomp around my room shouting at the walls, and that’s a waste of time. I’d rather discuss science in a way that makes other people shout at the walls. So here are the ten things I would enforce, in the science department, if I ran a country. Any country at all.

10. Creationism is Only Discussed Publicly if it Involves a Randomly Selected Creation Story

This goes for all debates, articles, and talking heads on TV news shows. Anyone can talk about teaching Creationism as a scientific theory or advocate for it. The catch would be that, before they go into the debate, the city hall meeting, or the tv show, they would head to a computer, press a button, and one of the many creation stories would pop up on screen for them to use. So on any given day, or television set, you would see people advocate for teaching kids that the world was created by Odin and the human race emerged from between his toes, or that the Titans are trapped in Tartarus and the human race was created when Gaea the Earth banged Uranus the Sky, and so on. Not only would it add a great deal of variety and novelty to the debate, it would neatly separate out those who think Creationism has scientific merit and those who just want to teach their own religion.

9. Companies That Do Health Research on Their Own Products Must Disclose the Results to the Government

Hi tobacco companies! Hi! Companies do internal studies on their own products all the time. They use what they learn to find better ways to market their substance, and better areas of research. From time to time, though, those studies seem to indicate something sinister. Obviously, companies can’t be forced to outright publish their results or their hard-earned data might be used by their competitors. It seems, though, that someone needs to be watching. And that someone watching, if they see something really troubling, needs to then turn the study over to the actual public.

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8. Every Study That Uses Public Funds is Published Publicly

This is as much to help scientists as to help everyone else. A lot of public money is spent on a lot of scientific studies. Those studies, if they are judged (often by people who volunteer their time) to be worthy of publication, are published in journals far less widely read than the people who do the work, or the people who need the work, would like. Scientific journal subscriptions can be massively expensive, and a barrier to people having the scientific information they, kind of, paid for.

7. Scientists Must Come Up With A Different Word for “Theory” When Used in a Scientific Sense

Look, it’s obvious that people simply can’t handle this one. Oh, they’re okay with gravity. Some start taking issue with relativity. And then? Then we get into other theories and people start saying, “Well, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion, man.” No. No it is not. I like the way ‘theory’ trips off the tongue, and I like, generally, when scientific terminology has everyday applications as well, because it lends richness to the language of both the scientific and the everyday. But this one’s caused enough grief. Just make up a word and use that.

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6. The Government Shall Always Be Building One “City of the Future”

Every few years in a magazine, or every time Disney builds a new theme park, people start showing off a ‘City of the Future.’ It’s stylish and minimalist, sometimes with innovative new public transportation systems, sometimes with extraordinary vertical farms, sometimes with inspiring or insane cooperative ways to power the city, and always with building that look like soaring groups of white wings. None of those cities actually happened, did they? And why? Because no one built them. America has a growing population that has to live somewhere. It’s time to just build one. Pick a place and really do it right. It could be a boon to research and a goad for other cities to modernize. If nothing else, it will make for a fascinating documentary in a few decades.

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