What is the appeal of "objective morality"

[Leumas]

Harris' "Worst Possible Misery For Everyone" is not an argument about genetics or evolution. I don't know where you got that idea.

I got it right from his mouth/pen

• The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

I think you ought to read the book... but here are some excerpts from the Q&A session on the Amazon Page

Q: Are you saying that science can answer such questions?

Harris: Yes, in principle. Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors—ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can act so as to have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.

Q: But can’t moral claims be in conflict? Aren’t there many situations in which one person’s happiness means another’s suffering?

Harris: There as some circumstances like this, and we call these contests ?zero-sum.? Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc.—these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so—which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience.

Q: What if some people simply have different notions about what is truly important in life? How could science tell us that the actions of the Taliban are in fact immoral, when the Taliban think they are behaving morally?

Harris: As I discuss in my book, there may be different ways for people to thrive, but there are clearly many more ways for them not to thrive. The Taliban are a perfect example of a group of people who are struggling to build a society that is obviously less good than many of the other societies on offer. Afghan women have a 12% literacy rate and a life expectancy of 44 years. Afghanistan has nearly the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. It also has one of the highest birthrates. Consequently, it is one of the best places on earth to watch women and infants die. And Afghanistan’s GDP is currently lower than the world’s average was in the year 1820. It is safe to say that the optimal response to this dire situation—that is to say, the most moral response—is not to throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for the crime of learning to read. This may seem like common sense to us—and it is—but I am saying that it is also, at bottom, a claim about biology, psychology, sociology, and economics. It is not, therefore, unscientific to say that the Taliban are wrong about morality. In fact, we must say this, the moment we admit that we know anything at all about human well-being.

....

Q: How could science guide us on the moral landscape?

Harris: Insofar as we can understand human wellbeing, we will understand the conditions that best secure it. Some are obvious, of course. Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I’m not sure we do. Are there genes that make certain people more compassionate than others? What social systems and institutions could maximize our sense of connectedness to the rest of humanity? These questions have answers, and only a science of morality could deliver them.

...

Q: How will admitting that there are right and wrong answers to issues of human and animal flourishing transform the way we think and talk about morality?

Harris: What I’ve tried to do in my book is give a framework in which we can think about human values in universal terms. Currently, the most important questions in human life—questions about what constitutes a good life, which wars we should fight or not fight, which diseases should be cured first, etc.—are thought to lie outside the purview of science, in principle. Therefore, we have divorced the most important questions in human life from the context in which our most rigorous and intellectually honest thinking gets done.
Moral truth entirely depends on actual and potential changes in the well-being of conscious creatures. As such, there are things to be discovered about it through careful observation and honest reasoning. It seems to me that the only way we are going to build a global civilization based on shared values—allowing us to converge on the same political, economic, and environmental goals—is to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way the questions about human health do.

 

[abaddon]

If it isn’t faith, then provide an empirical scientific explanation for how you know the most insignificant piece of knowledge that you possess (let alone anything else).

First your a solipsist...

Last I checked, there does not exist any science on this planet that has the slightest clue how your brain generates even the simplest higher order cognitive event.

Then you are wrong.

Feel entirely free to prove me wrong.

Then you appeal to logical fallacy.

…that means you don’t either.

Then you appeal to the childhood schoolyard argument.

You have some variety of ‘understanding’ of how you do things, but it sure isn’t science. Cause science doesn’t know how you do things.

Piling Pelion upon Ossa back to solipsism we go.

This is an indisputable fact.

I am disputing it. By definition, it is not therefore undisputed even if I happen to be wrong.

For example…how do you ‘create’ a thought?

By thinking. You should try it sometime.

How do make your fingers type the letters and words of your post.

It's called neurology. Look it up.

You haven’t a clue…and neither does any variety of science. It is exactly as David Fincher said: “You’re not in control, you’re in charge. Anyone who thinks they’re in control is nuts.”

Good grief, you are actually citing Hollywood as an authority.

IOW…faith.

Kindly do not project your ideology on others.

…of course there’s an objective morality. It’s just impossible to prove and irrelevant anyway since it’s all adjudicated through subjective experience

There might very well be, but it will never be found so long as god botherers keep doing their very best to obfuscate it. There is no woo which can be shovelled in to replace knowledge, much as the woo-slingers might wish it were so. No soup for you.

That’s why we have free will. We have the immeasurable honor of making our own choices. How impressive is that????

Except you have no free will no matter which way you slice it. Nor do I. Nor does anyone. Or so you would have it.

 

[Leumas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Of-IT1ug5w
I remember liking this one a lot, though I haven't seen it in a while. I'll probably watch it again if I have a chance.

Of course, he also wrote the book. I haven't read it, though.

I have not seen the video... I will watch it now... but I think you ought to read the book.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2:

Many people imagine that the theory of evolution entails selfishness as a biological imperative. This popular misconception has been very harmful to the reputation of science. In truth, human cooperation and its attendant moral emotions are fully compatible with biological evolution. Selection pressure at the level of “selfish” genes would surely incline creatures like ourselves to make sacrifices for our relatives, for the simple reason that one’s relatives can be counted on to share one’s genes: while this truth might not be obvious through introspection, your brother’s or sister’s reproductive success is, in part, your own. This phenomenon, known as kin selection, was not given a formal analysis until the 1960s in the work of William Hamilton, but it was at least implicit in the understanding of earlier biologists. Legend has it that J. B. S. Haldane was once asked if he would risk his life to save a drowning brother, to which he quipped, “No, but I would save two brothers or eight cousins.”

The work of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers on reciprocal altruism has gone a long way toward explaining cooperation among unrelated friends and strangers. Trivers’s model incorporates many of the psychological and social factors related to altruism and reciprocity, including: friendship, moralistic aggression (i.e., the punishment of cheaters), guilt, sympathy, and gratitude, along with a tendency to deceive others by mimicking these states. As first suggested by Darwin, and recently elaborated by the psychologist Geoffrey Miller, sexual selection may have further encouraged the development of moral behavior. Because moral virtue is attractive to both sexes, it might function as a kind of peacock’s tail: costly to produce and maintain, but beneficial to one’s genes in the end.

Clearly, our selfish and selfless interests do not always conflict. In fact, the wellbeing of others, especially those closest to us, is one of our primary (and, indeed, most selfish) interests. While much remains to be understood about the biology of our moral impulses, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection explain how we have evolved to be, not merely atomized selves in thrall to our self-interest, but social selves disposed to serve a common interest with others.

Certain biological traits appear to have been shaped by, and to have further enhanced, the human capacity for cooperation. For instance, unlike the rest of the earth’s creatures, including our fellow primates, the sclera of our eyes (the region surrounding the colored iris) is white and exposed. This makes the direction of the human gaze very easy to detect, allowing us to notice even the subtlest shifts in one another’s visual attention. The psychologist Michael Tomasello suggests the following adaptive logic:

If I am, in effect, advertising the direction of my eyes, I must be in a social environment full of others who are not often inclined to take advantage of this to my detriment—by, say, beating me to the food or escaping aggression before me. Indeed, I must be in a cooperative social environment in which others following the direction of my eyes somehow benefits me.​

 

[annnnoid]

Then you are wrong.

I won’t waste my time expecting you to support this conclusion. You can’t. The following is a direct quote from the people in the

neurology

department at University College London:

“We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain.”

Or, to give you some idea how much is actually understood about how the brain works, we have Jeff Lichtman from the

neurology

department at Harvard:

“Lichtman likens neuroscience on the whole to a staircase with a million stairs. At the top is a complete one-to-one mapping of the human brain. "We maybe have gone one step,"

Those quotes come from neuroscientists…but what do they know! You’re abbadon. When you shut down your internet connection at the end of a long day, you rock! You’ve won every argument, you’ve vanquished every foe. You are triumphant!

…you’re also completely wrong about everything. But that’s a minor detail.

 

[marplots]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Of-IT1ug5w
I remember liking this one a lot, though I haven't seen it in a while. I'll probably watch it again if I have a chance.

Of course, he also wrote the book. I haven't read it, though.

I'm about 20 minutes in and he's making the case about the scale from the (imagined) "worst possible state, where everyone is suffering maximally" (paraphrased). I'm having problems with this premise and it looks like I'm expected to agree with it, as well as the scalar movement away from this state. So, I'm not going to get much further.

It's a crucial step - the mathematization of "good." It's also essential to establish that an objective morality will have to spring from some concept we all agree on and then use that to leverage in the rest of the argument.

I'll keep listening, but I don't think I will end up in the Harris' camp.

 

[I Am The Scum]

I have not seen the video... I will watch it now... but I think you ought to read the book.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2:

Many people imagine that the theory of evolution entails selfishness as a biological imperative. This popular misconception has been very harmful to the reputation of science. In truth, human cooperation and its attendant moral emotions are fully compatible with biological evolution. Selection pressure at the level of “selfish” genes would surely incline creatures like ourselves to make sacrifices for our relatives, for the simple reason that one’s relatives can be counted on to share one’s genes: while this truth might not be obvious through introspection, your brother’s or sister’s reproductive success is, in part, your own. This phenomenon, known as kin selection, was not given a formal analysis until the 1960s in the work of William Hamilton, but it was at least implicit in the understanding of earlier biologists. Legend has it that J. B. S. Haldane was once asked if he would risk his life to save a drowning brother, to which he quipped, “No, but I would save two brothers or eight cousins.”

The work of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers on reciprocal altruism has gone a long way toward explaining cooperation among unrelated friends and strangers. Trivers’s model incorporates many of the psychological and social factors related to altruism and reciprocity, including: friendship, moralistic aggression (i.e., the punishment of cheaters), guilt, sympathy, and gratitude, along with a tendency to deceive others by mimicking these states. As first suggested by Darwin, and recently elaborated by the psychologist Geoffrey Miller, sexual selection may have further encouraged the development of moral behavior. Because moral virtue is attractive to both sexes, it might function as a kind of peacock’s tail: costly to produce and maintain, but beneficial to one’s genes in the end.

Clearly, our selfish and selfless interests do not always conflict. In fact, the wellbeing of others, especially those closest to us, is one of our primary (and, indeed, most selfish) interests. While much remains to be understood about the biology of our moral impulses, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection explain how we have evolved to be, not merely atomized selves in thrall to our self-interest, but social selves disposed to serve a common interest with others.

Certain biological traits appear to have been shaped by, and to have further enhanced, the human capacity for cooperation. For instance, unlike the rest of the earth’s creatures, including our fellow primates, the sclera of our eyes (the region surrounding the colored iris) is white and exposed. This makes the direction of the human gaze very easy to detect, allowing us to notice even the subtlest shifts in one another’s visual attention. The psychologist Michael Tomasello suggests the following adaptive logic:

If I am, in effect, advertising the direction of my eyes, I must be in a social environment full of others who are not often inclined to take advantage of this to my detriment—by, say, beating me to the food or escaping aggression before me. Indeed, I must be in a cooperative social environment in which others following the direction of my eyes somehow benefits me.​

Honestly, I just don't see why this is relevant. Everything I said in post #378 works just fine even in the absence of any biological knowledge. Harris even acknowledges this, in your own post:

There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so—which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone.

But now I'm curious. Seeing as how you're more familiar with Harris' argument than I am, why do you continue to associate objective morality with divine commands or supernatural forces? Do you think Harris secretly believes in God?

 

[abaddon]

I won’t waste my time expecting you to support this conclusion. You can’t. The following is a direct quote from the people in the



department at University College London:

“We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain.”

Or, to give you some idea how much is actually understood about how the brain works, we have Jeff Lichtman from the



department at Harvard:

“Lichtman likens neuroscience on the whole to a staircase with a million stairs. At the top is a complete one-to-one mapping of the human brain. "We maybe have gone one step,"

Those quotes come from neuroscientists…but what do they know! You’re abbadon. When you shut down your internet connection at the end of a long day, you rock! You’ve won every argument, you’ve vanquished every foe. You are triumphant!

…you’re also completely wrong about everything. But that’s a minor detail.

I will bow out at this point.

When one encounters a frothing loon who has not the self awareness to even spell the name of their interlocuters correctly, well, one must either disengage or be honest. Honesty is not an option. Were I to speak my mind, I would buy a ban in very short order.

 

[tsig]

I won’t waste my time expecting you to support this conclusion. You can’t. The following is a direct quote from the people in the



department at University College London:

“We have no idea how consciousness emerges from the physical activity of the brain.”

Or, to give you some idea how much is actually understood about how the brain works, we have Jeff Lichtman from the



department at Harvard:

“Lichtman likens neuroscience on the whole to a staircase with a million stairs. At the top is a complete one-to-one mapping of the human brain. "We maybe have gone one step,"

Those quotes come from neuroscientists…but what do they know! You’re abbadon. When you shut down your internet connection at the end of a long day, you rock! You’ve won every argument, you’ve vanquished every foe. You are triumphant!

…you’re also completely wrong about everything. But that’s a minor detail.

Can you explain what you think those quotes prove?

 

[abaddon]

Can you explain what you think those quotes prove?

Of course not.

 

[tuco]

So let me get this straight. S. Harris with his "moral landscape" does not argue for "objective" morality but for "subjective" where "subjective' refers to humans? In other words, his morality is not objective because other species exist. You know what? lol That is on par with Sky Daddy, Mr Harris.

 

[Leumas]

So let me get this straight. S. Harris with his "moral landscape" does not argue for "objective" morality but for "subjective" where "subjective' refers to humans? In other words, his morality is not objective because other species exist. You know what? lol That is on par with Sky Daddy, Mr Harris.

What is even more LOL is that some are arguing that this subjective morality is in fact objective after all and science cannot have any purview over it.



LOL indeed!!!

 

[tuco]

Well yes, page 11 on topic where conclusion is clear before it starts. Still, S. Harris is respected(?) thinker and "moral landscape" is his blunder. Science does not and cannot answer moral questions. Because how? Demonstrate S. Harris. He cannot, he can only talk.

 

[marplots]

I hope Harris' attempt at solving a philosophical dilemma doesn't go down the path of Ayn Rand and her spin on morality. No cult-spawning, please.

 

[BadBoy]

If it isn’t faith, then provide an empirical scientific explanation for how you know the most insignificant piece of knowledge that you possess (let alone anything else).

Last I checked, there does not exist any science on this planet that has the slightest clue how your brain generates even the simplest higher order cognitive event. Feel entirely free to prove me wrong.

…that means you don’t either. You have some variety of ‘understanding’ of how you do things, but it sure isn’t science. Cause science doesn’t know how you do things. This is an indisputable fact.

For example…how do you ‘create’ a thought? How do make your fingers type the letters and words of your post. You haven’t a clue…and neither does any variety of science. It is exactly as David Fincher said: “You’re not in control, you’re in charge. Anyone who thinks they’re in control is nuts.”

IOW…faith.




…of course there’s an objective morality. It’s just impossible to prove and irrelevant anyway since it’s all adjudicated through subjective experience. That’s why we have free will. We have the immeasurable honor of making our own choices. How impressive is that????

Yes yes yes, and we thought the Sun was a God and the earth was flat, now we know otherwise.

It is ok to say we don't know, yet. However to say we will never know is to know more that you can possible know.

To try an link mental cognition to gods and religion is just playing god of the gaps, as another poster has just said.

You say we have choice. If we don't know where a thought comes from, how can you assert that. For all you know our thoughts are injected into us from a higher being that enjoys puppetry.

What about the thoughts of a lunatic. Schizophrenia is generally understood to be a brain disease. Sometimes they make odd moral choices. Are they being judged?

You are grasping at straws. There is absolutely no evidence at all for a universal objective morality and certainly none that could be attributed to a higher being.

 

[Leumas]

Yes yes yes, and we thought the Sun was a God and the earth was flat, now we know otherwise.

It is ok to say we don't know, yet. However to say we will never know is to know more that you can possible know.

To try an link mental cognition to gods and religion is just playing god of the gaps, as another poster has just said.

You say we have choice. If we don't know where a thought comes from, how can you assert that. For all you know our thoughts are injected into us from a higher being that enjoys puppetry.

What about the thoughts of a lunatic. Schizophrenia is generally understood to be a brain disease. Sometimes they make odd moral choices. Are they being judged?

You are grasping at straws. There is absolutely no evidence at all for a universal objective morality and certainly none that could be attributed to a higher being.

A few decades ago they were able to burn people who tried to science humanity into reason.

Now they can no longer do that they want to "delimit" science and bamboozle people that science cannot answer some magical stuff they materialize out of puffs of word smoke and hide behind semantic mirrors and shove onto the debate stage through sophistic trap doors of legerdemain and sleight of tongue.

People who claim that there are things that do not come under the purview of science want to confound and confuse with linguistic legerdemain and puffs of semantic smoke under which to materialize their wishful thinking and illusions.

All their sleights of pen and tongue are of course in order to furtively sneak in their religious and supernatural insults to reason and sanity and establish them as the magical denizens of those fissures and cracks they cunningly created and shrewdly declared off limits for investigation except by their claptrap sophistry and apologetic casuistry.

 

[marplots]

A few decades ago they were able to burn people who tried to science humanity into reason.

Now they can no longer do that they want to "delimit" science and bamboozle people that science cannot answer some magical stuff they materialize out of puffs of word magic.

People who claim that there are things that do not come under the purview of science want to confound and confuse with linguistic legerdemain and puffs of semantic smoke under which to materialize their wishful thinking and illusions.

All their sleights of pen and tongue are of course in order to furtively sneak in their religious and supernatural insults to reason and sanity and establish them as the magical denizens of those fissures and cracks they cunningly created and shrewdly declared off limits for investigation except by their claptrap sophistry and apologetic casuistry.

Sure, but what do you really think?

 

[Leumas]

I hope Harris' attempt at solving a philosophical dilemma doesn't go down the path of Ayn Rand and her spin on morality. No cult-spawning, please.

My own take on Sam Harris' thesis

There is no such thing as some magical objective morality that does not come under the purview of science.

Everything in this universe is natural. There is nothing outside nature.

Morality and everything humans do is the result of our biological and sociological evolution.

Science can investigate and even assign morality because it all can be analyzed and investigated rationally and scientifically to evaluate what would be the best choices if one is trying to maximize overall human happiness and minimize miserable decisions (e.g. religion) that are made by illogical, ill-informed, people who are only trying to maximize their chances of entry into magical realms at the expense of the wellbeing of humanity.
​

 

[marplots]

My own take on Sam Harris' thesis

There is no such thing as some magical objective morality that does not come under the purview of science.

Everything in this universe is natural. There is nothing outside nature.

Morality and everything humans do is the result of our biological and sociological evolution.

Science can investigate and even assign morality because it all can be analyzed and investigated rationally and scientifically to evaluate what would be the best choices if one is trying to maximize overall human happiness and minimize miserable decisions (e.g. religion) that are made by illogical, ill-informed, people who are only trying to maximize their chances of entry into magical realms at the expense of the well being of humanity.
​

That sounds pretty good. I think that's a good summary of the concepts.

It would help to see the method in practice though. Any burning moral questions we can answer using Harris' ideas?

 

[BadBoy]

I'm about 20 minutes in and he's making the case about the scale from the (imagined) "worst possible state, where everyone is suffering maximally" (paraphrased). I'm having problems with this premise and it looks like I'm expected to agree with it, as well as the scalar movement away from this state. So, I'm not going to get much further.

It's a crucial step - the mathematization of "good." It's also essential to establish that an objective morality will have to spring from some concept we all agree on and then use that to leverage in the rest of the argument.

I'll keep listening, but I don't think I will end up in the Harris' camp.

What is your problem with the premise? Can you be more specific?

 

[marplots]

What is your problem with the premise? Can you be more specific?

I cannot attach the word "maximal" to suffering without the associated concept of ordinality - this state is worse than that state and better than this other state. Not in the sense that I can't make such statements at all, or that they don't have any meaning, but that they do not have meaning in the same way I would handle numbers. I would not say, "I'll take a pound of misery please, so I can have 5 pounds of happiness later." - for whatever unit we use (is it utils?).

There are also too many subjective dimensions involved, not all of which are visible, and some of which change the nature of the others when they become visible. Some even have a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect about them.

However, I am largely unfamiliar with the arguments of utilitarianism, so I expect this ground has been covered better than I could do.

Just to give an example: Would it be moral (based on Harris' ideas about well-being) to pursue a path with a 100% chance of visiting the maximum worst state for some period for a 40% chance of gaining a state better than I am in now, for some unspecified period of time? And, if I do the calculation incorrectly, should I feel guilty about it?

The mathematization just doesn't work for me. If I know that killing everyone on the planet yields the lowest level of suffering - no humans, so no suffering - but also the minimal amount of well-being, how am I to understand this?

What makes the whole thing really strange is that we are asked to evaluate where we are against some hypothetical, a hypothetical that may even be impossible to achieve. How could we ever have a "worst" state (or a "best") so long as even the impossible is there for us to imagine?

Plus, the worst state may be unavoidable. Some day I will die. On that day, I will have arrived at the worst possible state (subjectively) for me. Does this mean my death is the most immoral thing of all? And, if I cannot avoid it, why bother with all the day-to-day stuff? Do moral choices accumulate somehow? It seems odd to think that 40 years of a high level of well-being somehow mitigates the next 20 spent suffering (or some other mix).

It's all very muddled in my mind.