I found myself in a discussion about historical materialism where I ended up saying something along the lines of “scientific progress helps us to build more ethical societies because it enables us to see through the injustices of race, religion, and capitalism.” I was kind of firing from the hip, but I couldn’t think of anything better to say. My conversation partner asked me if I thought you could do a scientific experiment or analysis on a moral problem, and I was frankly stumped.

I know we aren’t supposed to think in moral categories, but I sense every one of us thinks, and correct me if I’m wrong, that capitalism is wrong and communism is right morally speaking. With that in mind, as contradictions are resolved per historical materialism and as different peoples have socialist revolutions within their societies, do these societies become more moral in any sense?

  • DankZedong A
    4•2 years ago

    For some, the following might be a hot topic, and I hope I don’t offend anyone

    That being said:

    Morality and science can contradict eachother. Science is not necessarily moralistic in any way. Rather, it’s a tool to draw conclusions about expirements. These conclusions can be tied to society’s morals.

    Here comes the possible spicy part:

    What if we decided we wanted to examine the brains of gay people and compare them to heterosexual people (this has been done in real life)? And what if it gets past the ethics commision? And what if we somehow found that gay people have structurally different brains compared to straight people?

    This result in itself would be neither bad or good. It’s just a result. What we do with the result is what where morals enter the scene. Would we treat gay people different because they have a scientifically proven deviation in their brain? Would we try to ‘cure’ them? Or would we think that it doesn’t matter, being gay isn’t a bad thing, and just have gay people and straight people live in harmony? It all depends on societal norms. Science doesn’t have change the morals of society but it can influence our views on moralistic problems. But not always for the good.

    Scientific progress in itself does not build a more ethical society per se if the results of said sciences are used for the wrong goals. In a weird way I don’t think science alone should guide the ethics of a society, but rather a critical analysis of society as a whole. Marxism does this of course. But it needs to be done continually, even in communist societies.

    I hope I found a way to make myself clear. The example is I gave is not meant to offend, but I had to take something that seems so out there that I could get my point clear. If it’s in bad taste, let me know and I will delete it.

    • DankZedong A
      2•2 years ago

      In hindsight I probably wouldn’t have commented this but I’m going to leave it anyway. I had a very clear POV in my head that I wanted to portray in my comment, but I feel like it didn’t go too well.