Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 12 Jul 2014 7:24:05pm
Well I struggled through this, I sincerely wish I hadn't. I suppose I should be thankful for Professor Scruton for not dumping the philosophical dictionary on us and instead using words in common use.

However, getting to the point of what Professor Scruton is trying to say, aside from his obvious dislike of the emerging fields of neuroscience is a little more challenging. I guess it comes down to why Professor Scruton doesn’t like neuroscience. Neuroscience appears to be threatening to drive his philosophy, and the existence of the human condition (which Professor Scruton neatly doesn't define) to the place in which science has placed so many other philosophical fields, the edges of worthy human endeavour. Does this really surprise anyone? Professor Lawrence Krauss put the boot into non-empirical philosophers recently, with justification, in his own field of Physics. Professor Krauss made his opinion on non-empirical philosophy (and theology) felt very clearly and Professor Scruton has fallen into this same trap of believing he has something special that science can’t somehow find. This is despite Professor Scruton (sort of) acknowledging that this is something most likely to be physical. Thus, it is just another line in this battle between those that think, postulate and write an abstract version of reality and those that think, postulate, test their reality, write, rewrite, get shredded by their fellow scientists and then finalise their findings.

I will place reliance on science to answer the questions of the human condition. Maybe the philosophers will get to the answer first, but science will likely provide the evidence of answer being correct (congruent with reality) long after the philosopher has put abstract pen to paper.