This was a originally comment, but thought of posting it here too, since this is not the first time I found someone with this doubt Question usually comes during discourses on aesthetics , nature and science. “Why can’t science explain evil?” It is a very common propaganda by theists, even more popularly used by proponents of Abrahamic religions that science cannot explain ‘evil’. Because to them, evil is the opposite of God. If you cannot explain evil, by implication you cannot explain God either, which is essentially the other side of evil. In reality however, it can very well be explained . In semantics there is something called logical fallacy. One of the logical fallacies is trying to prove secondary qualities as they are. This had been pointed out by ancient scientists and philosophers such as Galileo and Descartes. Primary qualities are properties of objects independent of any observer to give examples – length speed, shape, state. They can be determined with certainty. Secondary qualities are properties experienced by observers. Taste , pain, pleasure etc a to name a few. These by nature are subjective. Attempting to deploy science on secondary qualities to explain something would be committing logical fallacy of secondary qualities. What science does is to convert it into terms of primary qualities instead. To me, winter in Dubai is cold. To Valerie, it is hot. Science certainly would not attempt to explain what is cold or hot. These are secondary qualities. It can break it down to two questions on primary qualities. Temperature and how people differ in experiencing it. Temperature in Dubai at that time of the day was say 15 degree Celsius . Science can explain how and why it was so. It can also explain why to me, a person from Kerala experience 15 as “cold” and Valerie from an extremely cold part of Russia experiences it as hot. Coming to evil, yes science can and has explained it. You just need to define it in a clear way. To many, an elephant that run amok and killed a few people in a temple was an evil elephant. To me it was not, people enslaved it and tortured it and kept in captivity so it went out of control at some point. This is the problem with secondary qualities, it is so personal and different for each observer. You need to define what is evil. Is it cruelty? Yes science can explain why some acts of cruelty happens. The most generic term to evil as acceptable in a logical or scientific way is “lack of empathy” . Science can very well explain lack of empathy. There is a book itself titled The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen explains the empathy spectrum. It is titled “Science of Evil” (I have not read that yet.) Empathy had been subject to various scientific studies too. Here is one I just googled. sciencedaily/releases/2013/09/130924174331.htm?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=neurological-basis-for-lack-of-empathy-in-psychopaths In short, science can explain secondary qualities such as why movies are hilarious (at different levels for different viewers), why there are evil acts and why we are capable of turning evil. Just define your evil with exactness.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 18:08:57 +0000
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