(Update: further discussion here and here.)
Sam Harris gave a TED talk, in which he claims that science can tell us what to value, or how to be moral. Unfortunately I completely disagree with his major point. (Via Jerry Coyne and 3 Quarks Daily.)
He starts by admitting that most people are skeptical that science can lead us to certain values; science can tell us what is, but not what ought to be. There is a old saying, going back to David Hume, that you can’t derive ought from is. And Hume was right! You can’t derive ought from is. Yet people insist on trying.
Harris uses an ancient strategy to slip morality into what starts out as description. He says:
Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures… If we’re more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it’s because we think they are exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering. The crucial thing to notice here is that this is a factual claim.
Let’s grant the factual nature of the claim that primates are exposed to a greater range of happiness and suffering than insects or rocks. So what? That doesn’t mean we should care about their suffering or happiness; it doesn’t imply anything at all about morality, how we ought to feel, or how to draw the line between right and wrong.
Morality and science operate in very different ways. In science, our judgments are ultimately grounded in data; when it comes to values we have no such recourse. If I believe in the Big Bang model and you believe in the Steady State cosmology, I can point to the successful predictions of the cosmic background radiation, light element nucleosynthesis, evolution of large-scale structure, and so on. Eventually you would either agree or be relegated to crackpot status. But what if I believe that the highest moral good is to be found in the autonomy of the individual, while you believe that the highest good is to maximize the utility of some societal group? What are the data we can point to in order to adjudicate this disagreement? We might use empirical means to measure whether one preference or the other leads to systems that give people more successful lives on some particular scale — but that’s presuming the answer, not deriving it. Who decides what is a successful life? It’s ultimately a personal choice, not an objective truth to be found simply by looking closely at the world. How are we to balance individual rights against the collective good? You can do all the experiments you like and never find an answer to that question.
Harris is doing exactly what Hume warned against, in a move that is at least as old as Plato: he’s noticing that most people are, as a matter of empirical fact, more concerned about the fate of primates than the fate of insects, and taking that as evidence that we ought to be more concerned about them; that it is morally correct to have those feelings. But that’s a non sequitur. After all, not everyone is all that concerned about the happiness and suffering of primates, or even of other human beings; some people take pleasure in torturing them. And even if they didn’t, again, so what? We are simply stating facts about how human beings feel, from which we have no warrant whatsoever to conclude things about how they should feel.
Attempts to derive ought from is are like attempts to reach an odd number by adding together even numbers. If someone claims that they’ve done it, you don’t have to check their math; you know that they’ve made a mistake. Or, to choose a different mathematical analogy, any particular judgment about right and wrong is like Euclid’s parallel postulate in geometry; there is not a unique choice that is compatible with the other axioms, and different choices could in principle give different interesting moral philosophies.
A big part of the temptation to insist that moral judgments are objectively true is that we would like to have justification for arguing against what we see as moral outrages when they occur. But there’s no reason why we can’t be judgmental and firm in our personal convictions, even if we are honest that those convictions don’t have the same status as objective laws of nature. In the real world, when we disagree with someone else’s moral judgments, we try to persuade them to see things our way; if that fails, we may (as a society) resort to more dramatic measures like throwing them in jail. But our ability to persuade others that they are being immoral is completely unaffected — and indeed, may even be hindered — by pretending that our version of morality is objectively true. In the end, we will always be appealing to their own moral senses, which may or may not coincide with ours.
The unfortunate part of this is that Harris says a lot of true and interesting things, and threatens to undermine the power of his argument by insisting on the objectivity of moral judgments. There are not objective moral truths (where “objective” means “existing independently of human invention”), but there are real human beings with complex sets of preferences. What we call “morality” is an outgrowth of the interplay of those preferences with the world around us, and in particular with other human beings. The project of moral philosophy is to make sense of our preferences, to try to make them logically consistent, to reconcile them with the preferences of others and the realities of our environments, and to discover how to fulfill them most efficiently. Science can be extremely helpful, even crucial, in that task. We live in a universe governed by natural laws, and it makes all the sense in the world to think that a clear understanding of those laws will be useful in helping us live our lives — for example, when it comes to abortion or gay marriage. When Harris talks about how people can reach different states of happiness, or how societies can become more successful, the relevance of science to these goals is absolutely real and worth stressing.
Which is why it’s a shame to get the whole thing off on the wrong foot by insisting that values are simply a particular version of empirical facts. When people share values, facts can be very helpful to them in advancing their goals. But when they don’t share values, there’s no way to show that one of the parties is “objectively wrong.” And when you start thinking that there is, a whole set of dangerous mistakes begins to threaten. It’s okay to admit that values can’t be derived from facts — science is great, but it’s not the only thing in the world.
As much as I am a fan of Dr Carroll, I have do disagree.
Look at anthropogenic climate change, for instance. Those who are opposed to any action being taken (due to commercial interests or political allegiances) universally claim it doesn’t exist. It is hard to argue that many species are going to disappear, island and coastal regions are going to get flooded, tropical diseases are going to spread, and sources of fresh water will be stretched thin-and yet suggest nothing should be done. (If you ever meet any such people let me know).
PS “From eternity to here” is a great book. I am finishing it now.
Keddaw just because economics (and most of social science) isn’t nearly as clear as physics, doesn’t mean it cannot be improved. Even in economics which has crashed and burned spectacularly there is some decent work and imrovement.
There will always be some things that will not be fully explained, but the same is true for natural science. Social science has always been and probably always will be far more problematic then hard science when it comes to clear predictions, but that’s not to say that we haven’t learned a few things.
And this isn’t a problem for social science only in any case. As HosL says, most people who are against global warming are against it not because of a “value” judgment, but because they don’t believe in it.
Andrew Ryan (#62): “my answer generally echoes Sean’s sentiment: the word evil describes a concept that is useful to humans…” Andrew, if you concede this, that is, if you believe that “evil” is a useful concept, you seem to be suggesting that “evil” is at least recognizable. If so, why not use this as a basis of what behavior to condemn (i.e., “ought not’). Also, here’s a question that can be addressed scientifically: “bad” stuff like slavery, torture, the murderous exploitation of vulnerable groups, etc., are pretty much universally condemned today, i.e., regarded as “evil” in today’s world, while this was not so many generations ago. What is it about the evolution of our species that has caused this change to happen? It seems to me that the answer to this question is related to Sam Harris’s suggestion that objective “criteria” for condemning at least some types of behavior may not be a futile exercise and may in fact have actual value (in a sense perhaps yet to be determined) for the human species.
The notion that you somehow cannot, even in principle, derive an “ought” from an “is” is pimped up superstition. We all, especially scientists, derive “ought” from “is” all the time, and no one questions its legitimacy. To take an example from philosophical naturalist Richard Carrier:
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2009/11/rosenberg-on-naturalism.html
The question here is not whether or not the “is” part is true, but whether or not the “ought” part follows, given that the “is” part is true.
Morality is relative to the human conscience. Science is knowledge. Conscience is self-knowledge. All humans are born with the same self-knowledge of good and evil. Through culture or environment (learned behavior) the conscience becomes seared and distorted to suppress what an unseared conscience would condemn or reward.
The human conscience judges actions to be right or wrong and rewards itself by a good feeling or punishes itself by a nagging feeling. The conscience is a judge, jury, and executioner of our thoughts, actions, or inactions.
Every life begins with the same absolute value system. However, over time through geographic and/or social isolation, education (or lack thereof), experiences, learned behavior, etc… , we develop our own value system, or prism, through which to perceive our universe and what is good or evil–hence, moral relativism.
Everyone believes 3 things all at the same time. They believe the truth. They believe a lie. And, they believe they don’t have enough evidence to determine what is true and what is a lie. As sophisticated and scientific as we may think we are, we all believe some things without researching them–its impossible not to. I believe George Washington was our first president just because so many people (the consensuses) told me so. I never took the time, and never intend to, research if he ever existed or if he was a political invention to control the masses.
I had to put in my 2 cents. Moral relativism is a result of the distortion of absolute truth. We are too jaded through our life’s experiences to recognize it.
jtb
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Sam is trying to start an important conversation. Sean’s argument is adolescent, like much atheist discourse. Case in point:
Who decides what is a successful life? It’s ultimately a personal choice…
Most atheists flinch from taking their materialism seriously, and cling to a kind of dualism (I’m gratified that others above have pointed this out).
When atheism advances from the “Yippee-Ai-Oh-Kayay! I’m free! I get to choose whatever I wanna do (as long as it’s legal)!” stage, to one of reflection about the basis and consequences of such choices, only then could the cellular machines that rely on supernatural notions (to obtain the brain chemicals they need) begin to trust and practice the skills that naturalists demonstrate to be effective. It sure isn’t going to come from mere rational arguments that debunk supernaturalism.
@Mordin
The examples you gave are not ought from is:
Take the doctor one:
A doctor not sterilising is more likely to have his patient die.
A doctor who sterilises is more likely to have his patient live.
“and it is a fact that the surgeon doesn’t want his patient to die from infection”
Not necessarily. And not always.
Even if it was true you are then redefining doctor, you are simply moving the ought one level back to say:
“Doctors ought not to want their patients to die.”
Which is not necessarily true.
And therein lies the problem in every example I have heard where someone claims to have sorted the is/ought problem, they have simply moved it one level back.
Which is exactly what Sam Harris has done here. He says science can help us to maximise well-being of conscious creatures, but doesn’t really address why we ought to.
@Piero
“desires are the only reasons for action that exist”
I’d suggest people slipping on ice did not do so out of a desire to fall onto the pavement, car drivers rarely desire to crash etc. etc.
And not all our desires are rigid like you claim. Buddhist monks have intentionally starved themselves to death to be nearer one-ness. And all desires can be changed, even hunger, thirst and sexual attraction, all it takes is a big enough carrot or stick, or a brain injury.
Sam Harris has now revealed his underlying bigoted self and his hope of replacing existing authoritative theological doctrine with another designed and built by one Sam Harris. In his condemnation of violence he has appealed to other’s violent tendencies and as typical of most bigots, he has chosen to cherry-pick the evidence to only find those events that support his personal agenda of narcissistic vanity. He is no different than those members of the “advocacy journalism” set that choose to exploit the weaknesses of the many for the gratification of the few.
One can’t objectify morality without defining it. Sam Harris has defined morality as “the well-being and flourishing of humans”. Of course, not everyone will agree with that definition. However, once he defines morality as such, then data CAN be used to hold one action against another and say which supports well-being or flourishing. Well-being and flourishing of course need to be defined too, and this is vague because individuals have different ideas of what these mean as well. However, most individuals would like to be healthy physically and emotionally, avoid suffering, and seek happiness.
I enjoyed the presentation, I haven’t seen Sam Harris speak before and was impressed by his reasoning, and was relieved that he is not a flamboyant speaker with insults against religion just for the sake of it.
Basically, by my lights this disagreement can be reduced to a couple statements:
Sam is proposing that sicence can guide us on how we shuold live our lives by giving us the facts which are necessary if – and this is his underlying assumption- we are to increase the happiness and reduce the suffering of sentient creatures. I don’t see how this is wrong or invlalid.
Now, the opposing comments I have rad here and elsewhere seem to have a problem with this question: “Ok yes..that’s fine but science cannot tell us why we should regard the well-being of sentient beings as GOOD”. Here, we hit bedrock. But if science can’t answer this NOTHING else can either. In other words it’s like asking “Why is it moral to be moral?” One cannot answer this question without being thrown into an infinite regress.
On a different note, moral relativism might be in a way analogous to materialistic deterministm. It might by ultimately true, but it would be absurd to live our lives under this assumption. After all, once we accept moral relativism as a sound and valid position, other propositions follow, e.g. Tolerance for diversity is a good idea. This is an absolute claim, not a relative one. Indeed, if moral relativism is correct, then this is an absolute claim, not a relative one.
@Keddaw
“Buddhist monks have intentionally starved themselves to death to be nearer one-ness”
Precisely. They desired to be nearer one-ness, so they acted accordingly.
I’m not saying that desires are immutable impulses that control our lives. Desires can be malleable. What I am saying is that whenever we act, we act because a desire is pushing us: falling on slippery ice is not an action.
@keddaw
I refuted that particular argument in my comment. It is not, I repeat, not, about whether or not the “is” part is true, but whether or not the ought part follows given that the is part is true. It is completely irrelevant if the doctor does not want his patients to get infected or not, but given that this is so, an ought follows.
@Moridin
I agree, but all you have done is pushed the argument one step further back – OUGHT a doctor want to infect his patients or not?
You (okay, not you but Richard Carrier) are trying to get round the ought by redefining what a doctor is – someone who wants to not infect his patients.
That is a radical redefinition of surgeon…
Given that surgeons all want to kill their patients all surgeons OUGHT NOT to sterilise their equipment.
That is no more false than what was said before, it follows logically, but misses the key point which is OUGHT surgeons want to harm their patients?
piero: “Matt, I see one problem with your proposed imperative, namely the definition of “freedom”. For instance, ist it OK for Bill Gates to possess 50 billion dollars and for a single mother in New Orleans to earn 5000 a year?”
Hi Piero. The suggested freedom imperative would only apply to the +physical actions of conscious beings. To take two of the simplest examples:
The right to live (so murder is wrong)
The right to not be physically assaulted (so bodily harm/ sexual assault etc is wrong)
What you’re talking about is the ownership of a social construct – i.e. money.
Any objective morality that is real would have to be tied into the working of the universe with laws. These would be laws that apply to consciousness and free will, and therefore of a different nature than the laws that govern physical matter*
However, since dualism is a dubious position when it comes to the nature of matter and mind, some kind of monistic panexperientialism (where physical properties and experiential properties are the flipsides of the same coin) is required.
If this is the case then both the laws of physics AND the proposed laws of consciousness would still apply to the same elementary objects in the universe (particles, strings, or whatever). Thus, the laws can only be applied to actual sapient consciousnesses and their relations to each other via physically real objects (a person’s body, a weapon, a prison etc).
I would think that social constructs like money – though vital in everyday life – couldn’t count in regards to objective morality because of it’s definition. That’s best left to sociology and ethics.
*For a start, unlike the laws of physics, they would no +have+ to be followed (since in governing free will that would make no sense). Such rigidity in causation is not actually required. All that is required is that following or breaking a rule has some differing or opposing consequences that follow a pattern.
Just to remind people of the classic example of social ethics confronting morality:
A doctor has a cure that will save your partner’s life. He will only part with it for $1m. You don’t have $1m so you steal the cure.
Was the action right or wrong?
It was right because he right to life trumps the social rules regarding property. Hence that shows that stealing cannot fall under any objective morality. An objective moral imperative has to be logically flawless, without cases of contradiction.
I think that, like language, morality is “built-in” (i.e., has a strong if not dominant genetic component). I don’t think we will understand it in any scientific sense unless and until we have independent samples, say alien intelligences, or we develop the ability to communicate with intelligent animals.
@matt
I don’t think I follow you.
First, hard and fast rules like “murder is wrong” can always be refuted by constructing situations where murder would be the right thing to do.
Second, I don´t see how money is a social construct: you cannot socially agree to bring money into existence unless there is wealth behind it. But even if it were so, why would that impinge upon the ethics of hoarding and greed? The consequences of inequality are quite real; they are certainly not social constructs.
Concerning free will, I didn’t undesrtand whether you meant “laws” as in “laws of nature” or as in “prescription”. If the former, I don’t see why free will should be exempt from scientific scrutiny just as any other phenomenon. If the latter, don’t we do it all the time through rewards and punishments?
Matt: “A doctor has a cure that will save your partner’s life. He will only part with it for $1m. You don’t have $1m so you steal the cure.
Was the action right or wrong?
It was right because he right to life trumps the social rules regarding property.”
Not so fast. What if 100 people worked for months gathering rare herbs for this cure and they need the money to feed themselves and their families and will starve to death otherwise?
What if the company who developed the cure will go broke as a result of the theft and no one else will be willing to produce the cure meaning hundreds of deaths a year from the disease?
What if some of the people who won’t get paid as a result of theft won’t be able to afford their medicines and die prematurely?
Those examples show that its certainly not as simple as “the right to life trumps the social rules regarding property” because property is often crucial to survival.
Thank you for the objectivity.
Dawkins on Sam Harris’ website: “I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me.”
Does Richard Dawkins now believe there is objective moral truth?
Does he now believe in a ‘real’ good?
Maryann Spikes
San Francisco Apologetics Examiner
@piero
Remember that what we’re doing here +isn’t+ trying to find a valid concept of what’s right and wrong in life. I agree with your sentiments regarding money and it’s ethics, but that’s irrelevant. Rather, from the vast pool of moral and ethical ideas we’re trying to identify a subset that are +candidates+ for being part of an objective moral ontology by virtue of their being able to be referenced in the workings of the universe.
An obvious analogy is to stop talking about Objective Moral Laws of the Universe and return to the more familiar realm of the Objective Physical Laws of the Universe. Take gravity. For the law of gravity to be realised in the physical world, it requires that a) a fixed law applies that is the same for everyone everywhere without exception, and b) The objects or properties that are affected causally by the law are a part of the realm in which the law operates (i.e. physical objects or properties).
Thus, this discounts the following two applications of the law of gravity:
1. A conscious being makes a cartoon film of a person on the edge of a cliff. The cliff is not subject to the law of gravity since it has no physical components for the law to act upon. The cliff only has meaning by virtue of it’s symbolic value to conscious beings. It is a subjective conscious construct.
2. Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love (Albert Einstein). Tehe.
Money IS a subjective conscious construct. There is no property of a particle, or even emergent macroscopic property of a collection of particles, that can be called “wealth” or “worth”. Objects only have subjective worth or wealth. Like the film reel of the cartoon showing the cliff, there is a physical substrate in which the information “cliff” is +embedded+, but the information is only has meaning for – and is therefore only accessible to – subjective conscious beings. The cliff is NOT accessible to the objective universe and therefore cannot be subject to objective laws like proposed objective moral laws.
This also covers P’s objections in the following post. Ideas like:
“What if the company who developed the cure will go broke as a result of the theft and no one else will be willing to produce the cure meaning hundreds of deaths a year from the disease?”
…are concerned with social constructs, not physical reality. Wealth is something that has no intrinsic meaning, so how can an objective rule of the universe act out if there is nothing to act out upon?
In fact, the statement above itself only has any truth based on the assumption that all conscious beings will follow the constructed rules of the system of economics and society. Theoretically, the protagonist could choose to ignore the rules, steal a billion dollars and develop the cure themselves. To asses onbjectivity, these argments have to be stripped down to base level, by leaving out the constructions of society and consciousness. The only way of the protagonist being truly +prevented+ from getting the cure is for them to be physically or mentally stopped from doing so (murder, imprisonment, brainwashing etc). This +would+ count as a breach of the moral imperative, because the means of prevention entail real physical or mental events that the universe can work with, rather than only representations of events that it cannot.
So, economics is a subjective construct that relies on subjective rules to function. By definition, it can no more be part of objective laws of consciousness than it can be part of the objective laws of physics.
The only relevant interactions of objects that qualify as being part of an objective ontology are:
1. Consciousness -> Physical -> Consciousness
The influence of one conscious being on another’s freedom by use of physical tools (i.e. the body or extensions thereof). For example, assault, imprisonment.
2. Consciousness -> Consciousness
Direct influence on another’s freedom by use of brainwashing or restriction of withholding of information, or any other means of purposefully affecting that consciousnesses ability to make it’s own uninfluenced free will decisions. For example, indoctrination, infidelity.
On your first point regarding situations where murder is the right thing to do, I presume you mean for example, where one murder directly prevents another or more. Like any example, it needs to be stripped down. Here you have Person A in a booth with Button 1 that they know will start a 10 second countdown after which lethal gas will kill 10 innocent people in the next booth. Once Button 1 is pressed, Person A cannot stop the countdown. You are outside with Button 2 that will stop the countdown, but will also – you know – immediately kill Person A. Person A presses Button 1. Do you press Button 2?
I think all such cases you talk of boil down to the situation above. And according the the idea I’m talking about, the answer is yes, because of the caveat in the long version of the suggested Objective Moral Imperative:
1. All sapient conscious beings are free to do as they please, unless that freedom impinges upon the freedom of another sapient conscious being.
2. A sapient conscious being that impinges on the freedom of another loses the right to not have their freedom impinged in the same way.
For something to be a law or a rule, it must have consequences. This is one that I’d propose.
Sean said:
>It’s okay to admit that values can’t be derived from facts — science is great,
>but it’s not the only thing in the world.
Sounds like non-overlapping magisteria to me…. 🙂
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