Sam Harris said:
Many of my critics piously cite Hume’s is/ought distinction as though it were well known to be the last word on the subject of morality until the end of time.
Well, it is unless someone comes up with a way to derive an "ought" from an "is", which nobody has so far.
... a reference to something Robert Oppenheimer once wrote, on the assumption that it was now an unmovable object around which all future human thought must flow. Happily, that’s not how physics works. But neither is it how philosophy works. Frankly, it’s not how anything that works, works.
I find this a very strange statement by Harris. If morality was something that is scientifically knowable, Oppenheimer's statement would be true. It would mean moral truth would be reduceable to the underlying physics.
The deeper issue, however, is that truth has nothing, in principle, to do with consensus: It is, after all, quite possible for everyone to be wrong, or for one lone person to be right.
Let's for a moment assume that there is such a thing as "scientific truth" where one lone person might be right and everybody else wrong (a view highly contested by most philosophers of science). This does not mean the same is true of "moral truth".
Strangely, Carroll also imagines that there is greater consensus about scientific truth than about moral truth. Taking humanity as a whole, I am quite certain that he is mistaken about this.
How about taking the consensus among relavent experts? I think you'll find that most experts of morality don't take the position that "moral truth" is a meaningful concept. Most people might disagree, but sometimes the few are right and the many are wrong.
In fact, I believe that we can know, through reason alone, that consciousness is the only intelligible domain of value. What’s the alternative?
The obvious alternative is of course that there is no "intelligible domain of value". But Harris decides to argue against a point of view that is not even the issue:
Imagine some genius comes forward and says, “I have found a source of value/morality that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings.” Take a moment to think about what this claim actually means. Here’s the problem: whatever this person has found cannot, by definition, be of interest to anyone (in this life or in any other). Put this thing in a box, and what you have in that box is—again, by definition—the least interesting thing in the universe.
Notice how similar this is to how scientific truths are discovered; those are often things that very few people are interested in, or are even able to understand. If he wants to argue that there are scientific moral truths, he should not be afraid of truths that few people care about or understand. That's because as Harris put it himself: "It is, after all, quite possible for everyone to be wrong, or for one lone person to be right."
The same criticism of "not being of interest to anyone" can used against the idea that consciousness is the domain of value. Suppose science discovered that plants had a conscious mind just like us. How many would be interested in that truth and suddenly decide it is immoral to eat them? Not many, I reckon.
And, as I pointed out at TED, all the people who claim to have alternative sources of morality (like the Word of God) are, in every case that I am aware of, only concerned about wellbeing anyway:
All the people? Or is Harris just twisting the beliefs of many of them?
They just happen to believe that the universe functions in such a way as to place the really important changes in conscious experience after death (i.e. in heaven or hell).
In other words, forever outside the scope of science. Which makes it very difficult for science to show how the morality based on such ideas is wrong.
Fanciers of Hume’s is/ought distinction never seem to realize what the stakes are,
Or perhaps they do, and they realise that the stakes are higher than Harris realises. There have been many ideologies based on the view that what "ought" can be derived from what "is", and that science can be used to decide moral issues. And from Nazism to communism they all managed to produce a perversion of both science and morality, and human suffering. It usually leads to "science proves that I am right and you are wrong, so do as I tell you."
Both science and morality demand a level of humility, which is lost if you want to back up your morality with science, or want science to decide what is moral.
Look into their eyes, and tell me that what has been done to them is the product of an alternative moral code every bit as authentic and philosophically justifiable as your own.
This is the sort of argument that always pops up against claims that morality is not "scientific" or "absolute" or whatever: the preposterous argument that if one cannot justify one's morality on "something higher" one refuses to make a moral judgement. It is not true no matter whether that "something higher" is God or science. Moral relativism is not itself a moral judgement.
Harris' statement is an appeal to emotion to boot.
Think of the champions of “tolerance” who reflexively blamed Salman Rushdie for his fatwa, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her ongoing security concerns, or the Danish cartoonists for their “controversy,” and you will understand what happens when educated liberals think there is no universal foundation for human values.
It appears Harris has already decided which moralities are best, without doing the science on which he wants to base them. What if science discovers that human wellbeing is maximised by not allowing people to angre others? Will he then change his mind on these issues?
