Human Values and Ethics - What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know :: Philosophy Essays

Human Valuse and Ethics - What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot KnowThose who maintain the insufficiency of science, as we have seen in the last two chapters, draw to the fact that science has nothing to say some values. This I admit but when it is inferred that ethics contains truths which cannot be proved or disproved by science, I disagree. The issuance is one on which it is not altogether easy to think clearly, and my suffer views on it are quite different from what they were thirty years ago. But it is inevitable to be clear about it if we are to appraise such arguments as those in support of Cosmic Purpose. As there is no consensus of opinion about ethics, it must be understood that what follows is my personal belief, not the dictum of science. The study of ethics, traditionally, consists of two parts, one concerned with moral rules, the other with what is good on its own account. Rules of conduct, many of which have a ritual origin, play a great part in the lives o f savages and primitive peoples. It is forbidden to eat out of the chiefs dish, or to boil the kid in its mothers milk it is commanded to offer sacrifices to the gods, which, at a certain stage of development, are thought most acceptable if they are human beings. separate moral rules, such as the prohibition of murder and theft, have a more obvious social utility, and survive the decay of the primitive theological systems with which they were earlier associated. But as men grow more reflective there is a tendency to lay less stress on rules and more on states of mind. This comes from two sources - philosophy and mystical religion. We are all familiar with passages in the prophets and the gospels, in which purity of heart is set above meticulous observance of the integrity and St. Pauls famous praise of charity, or love, teaches the same principle. The same thing will be found in all great mystics, Christian and non-Christian what they values is a state of mind, out of which, as they hold, right conduct must ensue rules seem to them external, and insufficiently adaptable to circumstances.One of the ways in which the need of kindly to external rules of conduct has been avoided has been the belief in conscience, which has been especially important in Protestant ethics.