Howdy!
So its essay time again! its actually technically been essay time for some time but it has taken me a little while to come to terms with this... I've done that silly thing again of coming up with an argument before doing any background reading! This isn't quite as ignorant a thing to do as it sounds, I think I have a reasonable grasp of the concepts I want to work with, and I have discussed them in lectures at length and done a lot of valuable introspection regarding my position, what i have not done is prepared myself to fulfill the necessarily quota for academic name dropping set out by the university.
My chosen topic- Teleology and science! which I was pretty excited about until i started searching blindly for academic literature on the subject! The point that I want t make is that, whilst scientific endeavors are usually undertaken with some purpose in mind, the selection of this purpose will most likely be unable to be shown to have a sound scientific justification. This position, I believe, has all sorts of exciting implications, for one thing it puts an interesting slant on certain religiously oriented discussions pertaining to science, it also has a whole lot of impact in the field of scientific ethics.
Whilst not religious myself I do have some sympathy for those who do believe in God and do not trust the morality of those who do not. Where does morality come from if it is not something woven into the universe at creation? In a religious picture the value of everything is written onto it like washing instructions on a garment of clothing; dry clean only, do not murder and saw limbs off, Simple! If we accept a commonly held view of God and his role in forming reality then we accept that there is some purpose manifested in nature and the condemnation of actions which defy that purpose might seem understandable. If however we see our existence, and the existence of everything we encounter, as something in no way governed by some wonder-being then where on earth do the 'shoulds' and 'should nots' that we all throw around get their authority from! Is there some empirical method of discovering why I shouldn't harvest the organs of my housemates whilst they sleep? Can such a conclusion be reached through logical deduction from uncontroversial premises? I am unconvinced that either of those questions can be answered positively yet I desperately hope that this unfounded imperative of not slicing up those you live with is strong enough to keep my housemates away from my kidneys!
Sleeping with the door locked from now on!
L
xxx
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