Update and reboot: Sam Harris has responded to my blog post reacting to his TED talk. In the initial version of this response-to-the-response-to-the-response-to-the-talk, I let myself get carried away with irritation at this tweet, and thereby contributed to the distraction from substantive conversation. Bad blogger.
In any event, Sam elaborates his position in some detail, so I encourage you to have a look if you are interested, although it didn’t change my mind on any issue of consequence. There are a number of posts out there by people who know what they are talking about and surely articulate it better than I do, including Russell Blackford and Julian Sanchez (who, one must admit, has a flair for titles), and I should add Chris Schoen.
But I wanted to try to clarify my own view on two particular points, so I put them below the fold. I went on longer than I intended to (funny how that happens). The whole thing was written in a matter of minutes — have to get back to real work — so grains of salt are prescribed.
First, the role of consensus. In formal reasoning, we all recognize the difference between axioms and deductions. We start by assuming some axioms, and the laws of logic allow us to draw certain conclusions from them. It’s not helpful to argue that the axioms are “wrong” — all we are saying is that if these assumptions hold, then we can safely draw certain conclusions.
A similar (although not precisely analogous) situation holds in other areas of human reason, including both science and morality. Within a certain community of like-minded reasoners, a set of assumptions is taken for granted, from which we can draw conclusions. When we do natural science, we assume that our sense data is more or less reliable, that we are not being misled by an evil demon, that simpler theories are preferable to complicated theories when all else is equal, and so forth. Given those assumptions, we can go ahead and do science, and when we disagree — which scientists certainly do — we can usually assume that the disagreements will ultimately be overcome by appeal to phenomena in the natural world, since as like-minded reasoners we share common criteria for adjudicating disputes. Of course there might be some people who refuse to accept those assumptions, and become believers in astrology or creationism or radical epistemological skepticism or what have you. We can’t persuade those people that they’re wrong by using the standards of conventional science, because they don’t accept those standards (even when they say they do). Nevertheless, we science-lovers can get on with our lives, pleased that we have a system that works by our lights, and in particular one that is pragmatically successful at helping us deal with the world we live in.
When it comes to morality, we indeed have a very similar situation. If we all agree on a set of starting moral assumptions, then we constitute a functioning community that can set about figuring out how to pass moral judgments. And, as I emphasized in the original post, the methods and results of science can be extremely helpful in that project, which is the important and interesting thing that we all agree on, which is why it’s a shame to muddy the waters by denying the fact/value distinction or stooping to insults. But I digress.
The problem, obviously, is that we don’t all agree on the assumptions, as far as morality is concerned. Saying that everyone, or at least all right-thinking people, really want to increase human well-being seems pretty reasonable, but when you take the real world seriously it falls to pieces. And to see that, we don’t have to contrast the values of fine upstanding bourgeois Americans with those of Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer. There are plenty of fine upstanding people — you can easily find them on the internet! — who think that human well-being is maximized by an absolute respect for individual autonomy, where people have equal access to primary goods but are given the chance to succeed or fail in life on their own. Other people think that a more collective approach is called for, and it is appropriate for some people to cede part of their personal autonomy — for example, by paying higher taxes — in the name of the greater good.
Now, we might choose to marshall arguments in favor of one or another of these viewpoints. But those arguments would not reduce to simple facts about the world that we could in principle point to; they would be appeals to the underlying moral sentiments of the individuals, which may very well end up being radically incompatible. Let’s say that killing a seventy-year-old person (against their will) and transplanting their heart into the body of a twenty-year old patient might add more years to the young person’s life than the older person might be expected to have left. Despite the fact that a naive utility-counting would argue in favor of the operation, most people (not all) would judge that not to be moral. But what if a deadly virus threatened to wipe out all of humanity, and (somehow) the cure required killing an unwilling victim? Most people (not all) would argue that we should reluctantly take that step. (Think of how many people are in favor of involuntary conscription.) Does anyone think that empirical research, in neuroscience or anywhere else, is going to produce a quantitative answer to the question of exactly how much harm would need to be averted to justify sacrificing someone’s life? “I have scientifically proven that if we can save the life of 1,634 people, it’s morally right to sacrifice this one victim; but if it’s only 1,633, we shouldn’t do it.”
At bottom, the issue is this: there exist real moral questions that no amount of empirical research alone will help us solve. If you think that it’s immoral to eat meat, and I think it’s perfectly okay, neither one of us is making a mistake, in the sense that Fred Hoyle was making a mistake when he believed that conditions in the universe have been essentially unchanging over time. We’re just starting from different premises.
The crucial point is that the difference between sets of incompatible moral assumptions is not analogous to the difference between believing in the Big Bang vs. believing in the Steady State model; but it is analogous to believing in science vs. being a radical epistemological skeptic who claims not to trust their sense data. In the cosmological-models case, we trust that we agree on the underlying norms of science and together we form a functioning community; in the epistemological case, we don’t agree on the underlying assumptions, and we have to hope to agree to disagree and work out social structures that let us live together in peace. None of which means that those of us who do share common moral assumptions shouldn’t set about the hard work of articulating those assumptions and figuring out how to maximize their realization, a project of which science is undoubtedly going to be an important part. Which is what we should be talking about all along.
The second point I wanted to mention was the justification we might have for passing moral judgments over others. Not to be uncharitable, but it seems that the biggest motivation most people have for insisting that morals can be grounded in facts is that they want it to be true — because if it’s not true, how can we say the Taliban are bad people?
That’s easy: the same way I can say radical epistemological skepticism is wrong. Even if there is no metaphysically certain grounding from which I can rationally argue with a hard-core skeptic or a Taliban supporter, nothing stops me from using the fundamental assumptions that I do accept, and acting accordingly. There is a weird sort of backwards-logic that gets deployed at this juncture: “if you don’t believe that morals are objectively true, you can’t condemn the morality of the Taliban.” Why not? Watch me: “the morality of the Taliban is loathsome and should be resisted.” See? I did it!
The only difference is that I can only present logical reasons to support that conclusion to other members of my morality community who proceed from similar assumptions. For people who don’t, I can’t prove that the Taliban is immoral. But so what? What exactly is the advantage of being in possession of a rigorous empirical argument that the Taliban is immoral? Does anyone think they will be persuaded? How we actually act in the world in the face of things we perceive to be immoral seems to depend in absolutely no way on whether I pretend that morality is grounded in facts about Nature. (Of course there exist people who will argue that the Taliban should be left alone because we shouldn’t pass our parochial Western judgment on their way of life — and I disagree with those people, because we clearly do not share underlying moral assumptions.)
Needless to say, it doesn’t matter what the advantage of a hypothetical objective morality would be — even if the world would be a better place if morals were objective, that doesn’t make it true. That’s the most disappointing part of the whole discussion, to see people purportedly devoted to reason try to concoct arguments in favor of a state of affairs because they want it to be true, rather than because it is.
man i’m missing Ahmed in here.. 😀
Well, to put it very simply, Harris’s fallacy is in assuming that because a bunch of people happen to feel the same way about something, that makes them Right. There have been innumerable situations throughout history where people in groups have committed acts most people today would find horrific, under the firm conviction that everyone who mattered felt the same way. Because everyone (everyone who counted, that is) felt it was obvious that black people were primitive and animalistic, of course it was moral to treat them like other domestic animals. Because everyone who counted felt that women were obviously emotional and irrational, it was moral to deny them voting rights and education.
Ultimately, our moral feelings are just feelings. I’m sure you could use statistical information about prevalent human values to design a system that works better for most humans – at least within a particular culture. And most people would probably advocate that. I would. But that is completely different from saying that because humans in general happen to feel the same way about something, the generally prevalent feeling is the Right one.
Let’s be clear, too, that the main reason we discuss morals at all is to condemn people we think are immoral. When everyone agrees – when morality is truly universal – systems are simply designed to conform to human morals as common sense. We only need moral rules when somebody wants to break them. Therefore, what Harris is advocating can only amount to imposing every moral that is held by a majority on every minority that disagrees. Since one of the most universal moral intuitions is the existence of a jealous deity and the righteousness of punishing infidels, atheists should be very, very worried by this suggestion.
Whew ! 127 mostly intelligent people & Sean, who’s more intelligent than most of us,
spending all this time X Energy = Action to hash out a TED talk…??
Does’nt anybody have anything better to do ?
How does one do Science, blogging this much ?
There are only so many hours left in the day, man,
and all this existential HS does not amount to a hill of beans anyway.
A couple of questions I’m wondering about:
1. Sam Harris assumes, very early on, that ‘human flourishing’ (or sometimes ‘wellbeing’) is an objective, absolute good. Is it possible to back this up, or even to define those terms explicitly?
2. When he points out things that are ‘bad’, he generally mentions actions where there is already a consensus in the West, like honour killings and domestic violence, so it’s easy to say, “that’s just bad” and have everyone agree. How would you apply this morality to questions where there is less consensus like in, say, genetic engineering or human cloning?
@Cosmonut (46) says that given the possibility that blinding every 3rd child makes the blinded child to lead successful life etc and at the same time prevents calamities caused by God’s anger if not done so, we have the moral right to blind children.
I think that argument has many flaws. Does it also mean we have the right to determine who will marry whom given we can determine the best outcome for every man and women that want to marry? Not really. We are trying to minimize individual suffering rather than maximize well being otherwise you completely take away the right to choose. We should try to maximize individual freedom of choice at the same time. Therefore, children have the right to decide themselves whether they want to become blind and the anger of Gods is not their problem. Society has to deal with that because God’s anger is morally wrong in the first place and children should not pay for it.
@PJM (94) says having a child is a journey filled with suffering, danger etc. Yes and the exactly same reasoning can be applied to life. You could argue who would wants to live? Same as with life, children give us more than suffering and they are our purpose in life. No need to include religion in this at all. Where is your proof there are no atheists with 10 year-old kids?
@R33 (105) says that “history clearly shows that most human males will keep raping and murdering as long as there are no negative consequences for them.” Look around you. Would you say most men in developed nations (places that I am most familiar with) do not kill or rape because of negative consequences or because it is considered morally wrong? Your claims have no evidence.
@Dennisca: your comment about rape made me think of a study I read about:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/11/12/rapists-who-dont-think-theyre-rapists/
I’m not sure who it gives evidence to, but I think the issue is much more murky than “men in the west don’t do it because they know it’s wrong.” That certainly doesn’t jive with the statistic that 1 in 6 American women will experience an attempted or completed rape. So clearly, plenty of men in the west do it and they get away with it. (This number jumps by 4 times when we look at college-educated women.) If you spend some time learning about the issue, the horrifying reality is that all of us probably know at least one aggressor, if not more. We just may not know who they are.
I do appreciate that this discussion has gone in the direction of trying to understand how these ideas are applied when evaluating real-world situations.
What exactly is the advantage of being in possession of a rigorous empirical argument that the Taliban is immoral? Does anyone think they will be persuaded?
Apparently this was written before reading (carefully?) Sam’s response.
The answer is, of course, the same that Sean applies to the astrologers: “We can’t persuade those people that they’re wrong by using the standards of conventional [morality], because they don’t accept those standards (even when they say they do).”
Sean completely misses the larger point that meat-eating, etc., are questions of how (best to), not whether (we agree to) maximize the welfare of conscious beings.
“Sam Harris did not offer an adequate response to Carroll. His argument rests on the whole idea that “morality is a matter of well-being” is as fundamental a truth as, say “1+1=2″ or something of that nature. It’s not. Take Harris’ world-view, delete moral realism, and you still have a perfectly consistent and informed world-view.” – Joey Frantz
That’s not a very accurate representation of Harris’s argument. There are two primary propositions at stake.
1. Ethical propositions should be treated with the same scientific rigour that non-ethical propositions are granted. This can be done by giving ethics the same sort of underlying presuppositions that we grant empiricism.
2. That underlying presupposition should be “wellbeing”.
Even if “wellbeing” does not hold, proposition one still can. Sean has not given any reason why the first proposition should not hold except to say the he thinks ethical pluralism is more likely than ethical monism. He may be right, but that is all that has been said. Harris’ response is that ethical monism is necessary. Sean has not offered a rebuttal specifying why he thinks ethical monism is not necessary, nor has he offered an argument specifying why he thinks ethical pluralism is necessary.
Sean’s position is currently in the “failed” state.
James Allen:
In order for ethical propositions to be treated with the same degree of scientific rigor as non-ethical propositions are, ethical propositions would have to have the same sort of clarity and investigability that non-ethical propositions often have. This is where ethical propositions fall short: “it is wrong to lie” is not clear and investigable. Redefining morality so that it is not obligatory to be moral (that is, defining morality as “the maximization of happiness” rather than as “the doing of what one must do”) is no good.
You, like Harris, are skirting the issue with regards to moral truth. Harris simply has not, despite what you suggest, provided logical reasons to believe that there is some sort of moral truth out there. He’s just pulled one axiom out of his Utilitarian rear (“morality is a matter of happiness and suffering” or something like that) and acted as though it were obviously true. He has not given a convincing argument for it.
Carroll is the skeptic and Harris is the believer. Harris can’t support his position, so I really can’t say that Carroll’s position is “failed”.
@Joey Frantz
“Harris simply has not, despite what you suggest, provided logical reasons to believe that there is some sort of moral truth out there.” – Joey Frantz
Why? Because you say so? You have provided no logical argument against my previous propositions. I’m not even convinced you understand the argument. In fact, I’m fairly certain you have not. If you had, you would not be asking for proof of “some sort of moral truth out there”. But, as a rejoinder, can you provide logical reasons to believe there is some sort of empirical truth out there? Philosophers and scientists everywhere will be deeply impressed if you can.
Carroll’s position has failed because empiricism itself fails under the same radical skepticism that he is applying to ethics. If he isn’t willing to be radically skeptical of empiricism, then I’m skeptical of his move to be so of ethics. As should you.
Also, I’ve already argued that there are two positions at stake (see above). The form of the argument is that the second proposition is dependent on the first, not the other way around, which is what you seem to want to think. Said simply: neither proving nor disproving the viability of “wellbeing” (proposition two) will have any effect on proposition one. Proposition one is what Carroll needs to get past in order for his skepticism to survive a charge of arbitrariness (or he needs to abandon empiricism). He simply can’t have it both ways.
Now, read very carefully and give it some thought before you respond.
James Allen:
You act as though Proposition 1 has some sort of importance or meaning outside of proposition 2. Look at it:
“1. Ethical propositions should be treated with the same scientific rigour that non-ethical propositions are granted. This can be done by giving ethics the same sort of underlying presuppositions that we grant empiricism.”
Exactly how are ethical propositions to be treated scientifically? If I suppose that the sun is composed of cheese, there are scientific ways of dealing with my supposition. On the other hand, if I suppose that it is morally good to wear moleskin hats to work every day, how are we to morally analyze the proposition? Hm?
The second part of proposition 1 states that ethical propositions can be analyzed scientifically if we “give ethics the same sort of underlying presuppositions that we grant empiricism”. Such as, what? That there is an external universe governed by physical laws? That these laws can be discerned by observation of phenomena?
One could, as Sam suggests, just assume that it is good to make people happy. But this is not an assumption of empiricism; it is an assumption of Utilitarianism. Utilitarians accept your second proposition.
This is what I’m saying: Proposition 1 is useless on its own, since ethical propositions just can’t be treated scientifically under the standard methods of modern science. Proposition 2 would indeed remedy this problem, but it has not been rationally argued for.
I take this issue seriously. Don’t act like I don’t carefully consider my opinions on this topic. You may not have presented the arguments that you think you have; Harris may not have either.
The article on the brain and moral judgement isn’t really relevant to the issue, unless someone is arguing that moral truth (whatever that is) is somehow hardwired into our brains and can therefore be discovered experimentally by disrupting specific areas that account for moral behavior. I don’t think that’s what anyone is proposing here.
At that point you give people the ability to dismiss arguements by saying “oh, he’s just genetically predisposed to believe that” without judging the merits of the arguements.
In a way, the experiment is also one that’s been run since the advent of alcohol. But I’ll refrain from mocking it until I know more about their line of inquerie.
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I don’t get the solid difference between the normativity of different ethical schemes and different epistemological schemes..
Those of us who believe scientific reasoning is the most effective way of determining truth can’t disprove people who use different underlying assumptions without merely asserting ours. (I.E. If Jimmy thinks that scriptures are the best way of discovering truth, then showing empirical evidence to the contrary of the Bible account won’t persuade him. Likewise, if someone believes morality comes from God, showing that Biblical morality causes undue suffering won’t persuade them.)
Sean:
” There are plenty of fine upstanding people — you can easily find them on the internet! — who think that human well-being is maximized by an absolute respect for individual autonomy, where people have equal access to primary goods but are given the chance to succeed or fail in life on their own. Other people think that a more collective approach is called for, and it is appropriate for some people to cede part of their personal autonomy — for example, by paying higher taxes — in the name of the greater good.”
That’s an empirical question. Libertarians and liberals think that they both represent the way to get to the greatest welfare for the greatest number – but (at least) one of them is wrong.
That’s not really a disagreement with Sam Harris’ position. He thinks there’s an answer in principle, not that we know the answer. (Just like two scientists might have a disagreement on the facts, while agreeing with each other on their assumptions.)
@Chanda:
The article you referenced says:
“That’s six percent of the survey’s respondents who copped to either rape or attempted rape.”
So we are talking about a small number of men. Most likely none I personally know falls into that 6%.
Chanda, you say that:
“That certainly doesn’t jive with the statistic that 1 in 6 American women will experience an attempted or completed rape. So clearly, plenty of men in the west do it and they get away with it.”
Number of raped women does not give you the number of rapists and the article confirms this:
“a) The vast majority of acquaintance rapes are committed by the same people”
In conclusion, I see only minority of men committing murders and rapes. Education (and early childhood education) is the key to ensuring these numbers will stay as low as possible.
Hi Sean. It’s nice to see such an articulate summary of the problems with Sam’s original talk. I think the disagreement is kind of ridiculous, though. I was initially very confused by his talk, but went through it a bit more, to see if I could understand his position. I’m pretty sure he acknowledges all of these things, and — as you say — wants to downplay their relevance by refusing to discuss them at all. But maybe that’s defensible; the objections, though philosophically very relevant, don’t actually amount to much in practice. As you point out, it’s still perfectly fine to say the Taliban is morally wrong, so the distinction is kind of pedantic.
The problem as I see it is that Harris is polluting the already well-established namespace in this discussion. He talks about the moral landscape, and this concept is very coherent, and potentially useful. But then, he goes and says he’s getting ‘ought’ out of it. Well, no he’s not. Not the way that it’s been spoken about since Hume right up until before his talk. But he *is* getting at something right. He’s helping derive a litmus test for ‘oughts’, which is really the only part that matters on a practical level. This explains why anyone who’s thought about this sort of thing before is hell-ass confused by his seemingly outrageous claims, and anyone who hasn’t is so excited by his talk. He’s *is* right, he’s just severely abusing the established jargon.
I find myself almost ready to be convinced by your argument, Sean (admittedly I was in Harris’ camp before stumbling upon this post), but I get caught up trying to scale the argument. Clearly, for a society of one (ie, yourself) whatever moral principles you take as axiomatic are, de facto, “morality”. This scales fine if you expand to a “society of like-minded individuals,” where everyone in your community shares the same axiomatic beliefs. And I agree, there is still nothing wrong about saying “the Taliban is wrong and misguided in the way they treat women”; under the axioms of western morality, we conclude that women ought to be treated equal to men. We probably can’t convince the Taliban of their mistakes (because reasoned argument fails when our axioms are incompatible), but we can still pass judgement. And this even works ok on a global scale, because we are here in our own country with laws that reflect our values, and they are in their country (or were) with laws that reflect their values. But there is bound to be a clash of values on a more local level, which you don’t explain how to deal with. The appeal of empirically derived axioms is that anyone can point to them and say “these are true” and let reason carry on from there. To say otherwise would be to directly contradict experience, and that person would end up on the losing end of a bet if they attempted to make predictions based on their axioms (the true test). Take the issue of gay marriage. There is an unfortunately large faction in our society that believes gay marriage is wrong and immoral, and impose their will on the rest of us. We can say “they are wrong” all we like, but if they don’t change their axioms, we won’t succeed in convincing them otherwise. So while there is no *need* (in any necessary sense) to have empirical justification for morals, I don’t see any good way of coexisting when one group’s moral axioms contradict another’s– the more powerful group passes judgement, and the less powerful group suffers. An empirically based axiomatic framework would (theoretically) avoid this, because any two rational beings should agree on empirically necessary facts.
How do you propose coexisting alongside people who’s moral framework sanctions stripping you of your rights? It seems you will have an easier time convincing them they are wrong if you can rigorously back up your claims from principles everyone agrees on. (Although, granted the epistemological skeptic is a lost cause from the beginning.)
I think “radical empirical skepticism” IS how science should be done actually. Science is a process for maintaining an appropriate balance between rationality and intuition, with the ultimate goal of explaining phenomena, and morality is a process for maintaining an appropriate balance between action and inaction, with the ultimate goal of minimizing harm; it is doubtful that science or morality will ever be more than imperfect approximations, but that says nothing of science’s usefulness:
http://www.theinductive.com/articles/2010/3/30/an-uncertain-defense-of-deboer.html
You may have legitimate objections to Harris’ views, but cockeyed high-school ethical hypotheticals are not among them.
Harris describes the motivating principle for an objective morality to be wellbeing. Hence, the way to resolve your dilemma would be to study how would it impact the wellbeing of the people involved:
Clearly, the sacrificed person is not better off, because he was killed against his will.
Your assumption is that the beneficiaries of the organ harvesting have an improved wellbeing, however, is faulty. If, as you suggest, most people would disapprove of a society that killed a person against his will in order to harvest his organs, then I would suggest that the wellbeing of everyone in such a society would be harmed, because the functioning of that society would go against their will. Even if the individual beneficiaries of the organs did have an increased wellbeing, they would be vastly outnumbered by the people who did not get any organs, but yet find themselves living in a world where the government can decide to harvest your organs.
The alternative case differs insofar as people’s opinion on whether the action is acceptable for society or not. That is something that can be studied. Why in one case might people not be willing to live in a society that forcibly harvests organs while in another case (an existential threat), they would be willing to live in a society that sacrifices an individual to protect the species from annihilation? Clearly, there is a neurological processes going on there that allows the same person to reach two different conclusions based on the different circumstances you’ve described.
Not everyone will reach the same conclusions, but everyone’s conclusion will have a basis in what’s going on inside their head, and that, in principle at least, can be studied and reported. Wouldn’t it be better if we could do those studies and make those reports in order to inform our policies, rather than just make assumptions about how the world should be run for the better of society? If my government is going to reserve the power to sacrifice the few for the many, then I’d rather they have an idea of where the moral line is drawn in most people’s minds than to cede all decision-making to a single executive (this is the same reason I don’t want the president to have the power to label anyone a terrorist subject to detention and torture).
(Personally, I am more of an absolutist: it is never morally acceptable to sacrifice one against their will for the good of the many. I’m sure there are neurological reasons that I feel that way.)
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Some excellent posts!..I must agree at this juncture Sean is most correct..The discussion is more existential; Can the human mind/brain ever understand itself and if so, what then has it become?…Causality begets Determinism as inquiry of nature unfolds. Morality etc., cannot be explained until we are able to look from the outside in and we just ain’t there yet. This does not preclude suppositions. But they are, regardless of our scientific/philosophical position(s) du jour,(not, “de jure”), just that, suppositions.
The problems with all of these circular discussions on morality is that they focus on the personal realm, when really most decisions that affect the greatest number of people are for the most part made at a distance by corporate, military, or state actors. Moreover, these decisions are made with deceptive claims to certain morality that has nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with power and greed.
Take for example the issue of the suicide bomber who kills himself while in all probability causing civilian casualties. Then take the drone that is remotely piloted, and where a push of the button takes out even more civilians. How is morality factored here? Then take the fact that the suicide bomber is in his own country fighting for what he understands is freedom, while the drone is piloted by the invading army from across the globe. Things get pretty dicey very quickly.
I wonder if Sam has even contemplated this moral quandary. From what I’ve seen, Harris’ biases move him to talk up allegedly religious motivated acts of suicide bombing, without even one iota of historical or political context (namely, suicide bombing is a weapon of the weak, whereas imperial armies have plenty of cruise missiles, drones, helicopters, etc. at their disposal, and where martyrdom has also been a secular tool of political mobilization for centuries). Indeed, if he were to objectively and scientifically run the numbers of people killed, maimed, and tortured in the world, he wouldn’t sit so comfortably condemning others and using loaded examples to provoke, while reaping the benefits of a system built on so much human misery.
Indeed, Sam by his very arguments reveals the dangerous possibilities inherent in such a absolutist drive for allegedly objective moral values. This drive reveals a fundamentalist crusading atheism far more similar to the fundamentalist theism that the new atheists decry. While universal values are a noble goals as embodied in various UN conventions, ignoring the very real power structures to force a particular moral outlook has always done more harm than good, especially when they serve to justify the acts of the rich and powerful at the expense of the desperate and hopeless.
I’m rather inclined to agree with Harris’ argument. I think it should be fairly obvious to a scientist like yourself that although the system that needs to be studied in order to answer questions about morality ( presumably all human beings and their environments/experiences) is incredibly complex and well beyond our current ability to study empirically, there must still be certain truths that could in principle be deduced if we start with the goal of maximising human wellbeing and minimising suffering.
If we could find a way to empirically measure happiness, wellbeing and the like (through very complex neuroscience and social studies probably), then why couldn’t we come up with answers to questions about morality? The answers probably wouldn’t put every human being on the planet into a state of bliss if properly implemented, as this isn’t how Harris’ “moral landscape” proposal works. In a world with so many people of conflicting experiences and environments, why would we expect one correct answer, or a perfect state of being. However it seems reasonable to assert that with a logical and objective study of reality, we could find ways to raise the wellbeing and dignity of human beings.
Ceti, your argument makes a lot of sense even though I don’t personally see this coming through in his talk. He does make an example of the violence done in the name of gods, probably simply because these are the kind of atrocities that still occur today and still in the name of (or at least under the mask of) religion. Presumably these kinds of moral problems are ones that his idea of objective morality should in principle be able to understand. Your suicide bombing dilemma is very potent, but surely both nations in your example are at fault; one for convincing a man to kill himself and many civilians, and the other for sending a remote controlled drone to also kill civilians. It isn’t very helpful to look at these as black and white situations and conclude that in one reality the suicide bomber is right, and in another the country that sent the drone is. Surely a fully developed scientific study of morality would be able to pick up on these nuances.
Ahmed’s dislike for Sam Harris probably springs from Harris’s antipathy towards Islam. Just saying.