Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[Dragoonster]

I see no reason to doubt the fact that Sam cares very deeply about the issues at hand and is rigorously intellectually honest. I do see reason to believe that you are personally offended enough by his thesis to imagine this.

Intellectually honest? Sure, as far as anyone, including middle school students, are intellectually honest as much as they can due to their ignorance.

"Rigorously"? Ridiculous. Harris never really deals with is-ought, or even any little axiom that would make his philosophy robust. He starts from an advanced position (utilitarianism) and neverminds the justifications. This isn't new btw. Please, tell us, what is his thesis and how does he scientifically justify it? You seem to know what his thesis is, and I assume it's presented clearly in his book, so tell us. And tell us why it's special (as opposed to centuries of philosophers who've done the same).

 

[Sophronius]

Like others here, I would like to know exactly what the claim is that Harris is making. I have watched two of his videos now, lasting over an hour each, and he never clearly stated what he was arguing in favour of. "Science can help answer moral questions." Well sure, science can provide facts that can support moral claims, but is he saying it can be the foundation? If so, how?

I do however firmly disagree with what he said about scientific values. He essentially claimed that "Science is based on virtues like intellectual honesty and reason" and that therefore morality is already embedded in science. Ridiculous. The ability to think clearly and honestly is not a virtue and has nothing to do with morality, it is merely a human attribute which is necessary for purely practical concerns. One might as well claim that physical strength is a "virtue" that body-builders require, and that therefore body-building is moral .

 

[Joey McGee]

Sam's response to critics explains that in his own words. Even though uberskeptic Michael Shermer has voiced his support for the thesis, I'm still slightly skeptical, which is why I bothered to see what people are saying about it.

What strikes me as odd is the outright accusation of Sam being dishonest intentionally. It's kind of a slander, "hey he just wants to sell books". It's actually kind of disgusting.

 

[Dragoonster]

Sam's response to critics explains that in his own words. Even though uberskeptic Michael Shermer has voiced his support for the thesis, I'm still slightly skeptical, which is why I bothered to see what people are saying about it.

What strikes me as odd is the outright accusation of Sam being dishonest intentionally. It's kind of a slander, "hey he just wants to sell books". It's actually kind of disgusting.

I don't think or know that it's intentional. Doesn't matter. I'm not interested in Harris' personality, only in what he submits. And he is (at least imo) submitting way too much BS and way too little substance. I agree an accusation of that sort would be out of line. I'm slandering his lack of logic and slippery contentions, and bringing nothing at all new, but not him.

I previously tried to read that response, but slogging through it it seemed he was still dodging real issues and avoiding answering the basic questions and problems that were put to him.

 

[Paulhoff]

Science can give me excellent reasons to do X in terms of satisfying my own personal utility. If I want to experience happy brain states I should do X - no problem there, and not even an "ought" claim.

However what it can't do is give me a reason to care about your wellbeing.

And can anyone else really give you a reason to care about someone else's wellbeing.

And you really think that dumb old science couldn't at all show you why there are reasons to care about others. Is your idea of what knowledge is, that limited.

Paul

 

[Dragoonster]

And can anyone else really give you a reason to care about someone else's wellbeing.

And you really think that dumb old science couldn't at all show you why there are reasons to care about others. Is your idea of what knowledge is, that limited.

Paul

Science can't even say that the survival of our species is desirable. It can't say anything is desirable. Science views bloodspatters from a woman shooting her rapist and bloodspatters from a serial killer cutting his victim's throat equally. Science doesn't judge.

There are plenty of reasons to care about others' well-being. None of those reasons are based on science.

 

[Joey McGee]

I don't think or know that it's intentional. Doesn't matter.

Great, I was talking to Kevin who clearly stated he does think that.

I previously tried to read that response, but slogging through it it seemed he was still dodging real issues and avoiding answering the basic questions and problems that were put to him.

He dodges nothing and avoids nothing, you just don't agree with how he does it. Again, it's kind of weird how the ad hominems come out, however slight they are they are still there. It's not enough that he's simply wrong, oh no. He's being a wuss, he's disrespecting the tradition, he's trying to sell books... Ok I'm done.

 

[Paulhoff]

Science can't even say that the survival of our species is desirable.

OK, you tell me, is it desirable or not, and what do you base it on.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

Again, it's kind of weird how the ad hominems come out, however slight they are they are still there.

Just throw a so-called god in, end of problem.

Paul



for some

 

[Paulhoff]

None of those reasons are based on science.

Sure, none can be, sure. Science isn't made of people, we all know that.

Paul

 

[Dragoonster]

OK, you tell me, is it desirable or not, and what do you base it on.

Paul

The survival of our species? I don't find it desirable, except for it's impact on me. I find my own survival desirable, because I wish to be happy and keep living. If humans' continuing survival leads to that, I approve of it. If it doesn't, I don't mind the species (except for me of course) dying.

I base this on my egoistic selfishness. This basis isn't ratified by science or philosophy, it's just what I feel, and from my particular personality. I'm not stupid enough to say that my notion is based on science or something and everyone else should follow it in order to follow science, or something.

He dodges nothing and avoids nothing, you just don't agree with how he does it. Again, it's kind of weird how the ad hominems come out, however slight they are they are still there. It's not enough that he's simply wrong, oh no. He's being a wuss, he's disrespecting the tradition, he's trying to sell books... Ok I'm done.

He dodges the burden of actually explaining his philosophy (or "science") from the base.

Since you say he doesn't though, tell us how his philosophy (or "science") is based. How exactly does science soberly and objectively say we should we care about well-being and human flourishing of conscious creatures?

 

[Sophronius]

Well, that reponse to criticism of Harris was interesting. Seems like he gave answers to pretty much all the complaints in this thread:

In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil.

I should note in passing, however, that I don’t think the distinction between morality and something like taste is as clear or as categorical as we might suppose. If, for instance, a preference for chocolate ice cream allowed for the most rewarding experience a human being could have, while a preference for vanilla did not, we would deem it morally important to help people overcome any defect in their sense of taste that caused them to prefer vanilla—in the same way that we currently treat people for curable forms of blindness.

Contrary to Blackford’s assertion, I’m not simply claiming that morality is “fully determined by an objective reality, independent of people’s actual values and desires.” I am claiming that people’s actual values and desires are fully determined by an objective reality, and that we can conceptually get behind all of this—indeed, we must—in order to talk about what is actually good. This becomes clear the moment we ask whether it would be good to alter people values and desires.

Is it unscientific to value health and seek to maximize it within the context of medicine? No. Clearly there are scientific truths to be known about health—and we can fail to know them, to our great detriment. This is a fact. And yet, it is possible for people to deny this fact, or to have perverse and even self-destructive ideas about how to live. Needless to say, it can be fruitless to argue with such people.

My critics have been especially exercised over the subtitle of my book, “how science can determine human values.” The charge is that I haven’t actually used science to determine the foundational value (well-being) upon which my proffered science of morality would rest. Rather, I have just assumed that well-being is a value, and this move is both unscientific and question-begging.

Again, the same can be said about medicine, or science as a whole. As I point out in my book, science is based on values that must be presupposed—like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn’t share these values cannot do science. But nor can he attack the presuppositions of science in a way that anyone should find compelling.

Consider how we would view a situation in which all of us miraculously began to behave so as to maximize our collective well-being. Imagine that on the basis of remarkable breakthroughs in technology, economics, and politic skill, we create a genuine utopia on earth. Needless to say, this wouldn’t be boring, because we will have wisely avoided all the boring utopias. Rather, we will have created a global civilization of astonishing creativity, security, and happiness.

However, some people were not ready for this earthly paradise once it arrived. Some were psychopaths who, despite enjoying the general change in quality of life, were nevertheless eager to break into their neighbors’ homes and torture them from time to time. A few had preferences that were incompatible with the flourishing of whole societies: Try as he might, Kim Jong Il just couldn’t shake the feeling that his cognac didn’t taste as sweet without millions of people starving beyond his palace gates. Given our advances in science, however, we were able to alter preferences of this kind. In fact, we painlessly delivered a firmware update to everyone. Now the entirety of the species is fit to live in a global civilization that is as safe, and as fun, and as interesting, and as filled with love as it can be.

It seems to me that this scenario cuts through the worry that the concept of well-being might leave out something that is worth caring about: for if you care about something that is not compatible with a peak of human flourishing—given the requisite changes in your brain, you would recognize that you were wrong to care about this thing in the first place. Wrong in what sense? Wrong in the sense that you didn’t know what you were missing. This is the core of my argument: I am claiming that there must be frontiers of human well-being that await our discovery—and certain interests and preferences surely blind us to them.

We can’t think about this deeper reality by focusing on the narrow question of what a person “should” do in the gray areas of life where we spend much of our time. However, the extremes of human experience throw ample light: are the Taliban wrong about morality? Yes. Really wrong? Yes. Can we say so from the perspective of science? Yes. If we know anything at all about human well-being—and we do—we know that the Taliban are not leading anyone, including themselves, toward a peak on the moral landscape.

Overall, it seems to me that Harris is not making any exceptionally crazy claims here. He is simply saying that although morality is a matter of subjectivity, one's morals can still be "wrong" if they are logically inconsistent or make everyone worse of in some way. It's not really anything new for most people here I guess, but some people do seem to believe that you have to respect a person's morality even if it's bat-**** insane, so I suppose it helps to argue against that position.

He is also saying that a person's well-being can be measured scientifically and that this could be used as an objective standard for morality, which seems likes the more interesting claim. However, I still doubt whether such a thing could be determined on a purely objective basis, as what is understood by well-being varies enormously from person to person. I don't quite see how you could objectively measure it. And I must admit that the notion of "happiness police" makes me a little nervous.

 

[Paulhoff]

Adam and Eve eat of the fruit on the bad tree. Before eating the fruit they have no idea of what right or wrong are, and of course they don’t know that it was really bad to eat it even if they were told, much like telling a young child that the stove is hot, not a clue. So of course the moral of this is, Damnation. So by not using logical thinking we can see that Adam and Eve are at fault, and we can buy into the Damnation thing, but on the other hand……….

Paul

 

[Dragoonster]

Overall, it seems to me that Harris is not making any exceptionally crazy claims here. He is simply saying that although morality is a matter of subjectivity, one's morals can still be "wrong" if they are logically inconsistent or make everyone worse of in some way. It's not really anything new for most people here I guess, but some people do seem to believe that you have to respect a person's morality even if it's bat-**** insane, so I suppose it helps to argue against that position.

He is also saying that a person's well-being can be measured scientifically and that this could be used as an objective standard for morality, which seems likes the more interesting claim. However, I still doubt whether such a thing could be determined on a purely objective basis, as what is understood by well-being varies enormously from person to person. I don't quite see how you could objectively measure it. And I must admit that the notion of "happiness police" makes me a little nervous.

In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil.

Where does he say how science has devised that "flourishing" is desirable? It can't be desirable just from philosophical morality since he eschews that, so apparently there has to be a scientific justification.

It's very easy to start with a ready-made morality. "Human flourishing". "Adherence to God's law". "Hedonistic selfishness". If we just accept that these are inviolately true we can devise all kinds of consequential moralities. And none of them hold true for everyone, and none of them are objective.

"Well-being" and "flourishing" of conscious creatures may seem an obvious TRUTH to Harris or you or whoever, but it sure isn't to me and a host of smarter philosophers in the last couple millenia. And Harris doesn't even define these terms.

I agree with you, he isn't making any exceptional claims. He's a random utilitarian, and quite sloppy at that.

 

[fls]

And our moral values aren't part of the scientific method.

Our moral values are part of a body of facts, and so are as amenable to being made use of by the scientific method as any other fact.

To us. Not as an objective fact.

The body of facts which includes the brain states of conscious creatures will be different in the presence of our existence that it will be in our absence.

"Preferred" as in Parsimony, you mean?

I mean the standard definition of "preferred" - chosen over another. This also is part of a body facts which includes the brain states of conscious creatures.

You mean we no longer call it "morals"? That's ironic. I agree about the rest.

Well, it's like how we call the creature who supposedly set off a spark which imbued the universe with its physical properties almost 14 billion years ago and hasn't been heard of since "God", even though it doesn't have anything in common with the sky daddy raining hellfire and love down on humans while micro-managing their daily lives who got the name first.

Perception, deduction, induction, parsimony, no contradiction, excluded middle. These are rational/scientific tools. They all help us objectively describe the universe.

Anthropocentrism or "conscious-centrism" don't constitute part of the scientific method.

They represent the tools you describe above applied to a particular body of facts.

Good and bad are concepts that are in our brains. They don't exist outside our brains and are not objective properties of things in the universe.

Like 'up' and 'down'.

Agreed. And we don't need science to answer moral questions to reach this conclusion.

It was an example of science answering a health question to reach a conclusion. Substitute a moral question, "does killing someone who works on a Sunday change the position occupied on a moral landscape?", and it becomes an example of science answering moral questions by referring to facts, rather than the words of bronze-age men.

I don't agree that "good actions are those which reduce suffering" is an accurate description of how humans behave. Suffering of whom, exactly?

It's the directionality provided by discovering whether someone would rather not be hit on the head with a hammer.

Anyway, even if we reached an accurate description, that wouldn't logically lead to a prescriptive statement about how we should behave. It would only mean "we behave this way" and that's all. It's a non sequitur.

It wouldn't be a description of "we behave this way". "We behave this way" is a small part of the map of the general descriptor "well-being". To call something "good" or "bad" simply adds another dimension to this map, just like the presence or absence of disease adds another dimension to the map of "health". We could make it so that the presence of disease and disability represents more health, just like we could make it so that brain states associated with suffering could represent more well-being. What is being said is that behaving in a particular way changes position occupied in the direction of being hit on the head with a hammer. It is true that if someone does not betray in any way that there is a choice to be made between getting hit on the head with a hammer or not, that science does not supply that choice. Harris suggests that perhaps it can be noticed that we do betray ourselves.

And this is a concession which is easier ask for than to concede parsimony or logic. It is far easier to cling to a bit of illogic than not to duck.

And of course, this is altogether different from those who agree with the concession, but choose to disregard it. Who here hasn't taken more pieces of chocolate than they should (to enjoy optimal health).

Linda

 

[fls]

So in the end it was about an argumentum ad populum?

The scientific method, fortunately, exists independently of majorities.

It's also a distorted argument: being hit on the head with a hammer is something that is relevant to the well-being of one single individual (the one that is being hit) not to the well-being of conscious creatures in general. There are people who don't want to be hit on the head with a hammer but don't care much about other conscious beings. Ask Muammar al-Gaddafi if he wants to be hit on the head and you'll see what I mean.

This doesn't have anything to do with whether you care whether other people are hit on the head with a hammer. It is only about which brain states you personally would associate with suffering, so it only matters whether you would have any preference between being hit or not.

Linda

 

[Sophronius]

Where does he say how science has devised that "flourishing" is desirable? It can't be desirable just from philosophical morality since he eschews that, so apparently there has to be a scientific justification.

He doesn't make that claim, at least not as far as I can see. The title of the book is a bit misleading. He simply says that one should consider "flourishing" to be "good" if the word good is to mean anything at all. It doesn't seem like such an outrageous claim to me, though I do baulk at his insistence that this is a "moral truth".

It's very easy to start with a ready-made morality. "Human flourishing". "Adherence to God's law". "Hedonistic selfishness". If we just accept that these are inviolately true we can devise all kinds of consequential moralities. And none of them hold true for everyone, and none of them are objective.

His position seems to be that the desire for an objective morality is foolish. I agree with him on this. The fact that there are no moral rules set in stone does not mean that all systems of morality are equally valid. The assumption that "flourishing is good" is infinitely more reasonable than the assumption "everything written in this 2000 year old book is written by god and therefore objectively true even when it contradicts itself, and may never be questioned."

"Well-being" and "flourishing" of conscious creatures may seem an obvious TRUTH to Harris or you or whoever, but it sure isn't to me and a host of smarter philosophers in the last couple millenia. And Harris doesn't even define these terms.

Hey, leave me out of this. I have said no such thing. I don't deal with moral TRUTH(tm). I agree that Harris gives of this vibe, though he has never stated it like that outright.

I agree with you, he isn't making any exceptional claims. He's a random utilitarian, and quite sloppy at that.

He is a bit all over the place, but he does raise a few interesting points. I think you're being too harsh on him.

 

[Kuko 4000]

First of all:

The goal of this book is to begin a conversation about how moral truth can be understood in the context of science.

Harris never really deals with is-ought, or even any little axiom that would make his philosophy robust.

What on earth Dragoonster? Maybe you need to take a step back, it would help your case enormously if you'd know what he actually writes about in the book. I have merely glanced through the first three chapters and Hume, Moore, "is-ought", the naturalistic fallacy, etc. are discussed in it. This quote is from the introduction, for FSM's sake:

The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume famously argued that no description of the way the world is (facts) can tell us how we ought to behave (morality).13 Following Hume, the philosopher G. E. Moore declared that any attempt to locate moral truths in the natural world was to commit a “naturalistic fallacy.” 14 Moore argued that goodness could not be equated with any property of human experience (e.g., pleasure, happiness, evolutionary fitness) because it would always be appropriate to ask whether the property on offer was itself good. If, for instance, we were to say that goodness is synonymous with whatever gives people pleasure, it would still be possible to worry whether a specific instance of pleasure is actually good. This is known as Moore’s “open question argument.” And while I think this verbal trap is easily avoided when we focus on human well-being, most scientists and public intellectuals appear to have fallen into it. Other influential philosophers, including Karl Popper, 15 have echoed Hume and Moore on this point, and the effect has been to create a firewall between facts and values throughout our intellectual discourse. 16

While psychologists and neuroscientists now routinely study human happiness, positive emotions, and moral reasoning, they rarely draw conclusions about how human beings ought to think or behave in light of their findings. In fact, it seems to be generally considered intellectually disreputable, even vaguely authoritarian, for a scientist to suggest that his or her work offers some guidance about how people should live. The philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor crystallizes the view:

Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it couldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are. There couldn’t be a science of the human condition.17

Despite the reticence of most scientists on the subject of good and evil, the scientific study of morality and human happiness is well underway. This research is bound to bring science into conflict with religious orthodoxy and popular opinion—just as our growing understanding of evolution has —because the divide between facts and values is illusory in at least three senses: (1) whatever can be known about maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures—which is, I will argue, the only thing we can reasonably value—must at some point translate into facts about brains and their interaction with the world at large; (2) the very idea of “objective” knowledge (i.e., knowledge acquired through honest observation and reasoning) has values built into it, as every effort we make to discuss facts depends upon principles that we must first value (e.g., logical consistency, reliance on evidence, parsimony, etc.); (3) beliefs about facts and beliefs about values seem to arise from similar processes at the level of the brain: it appears that we have a common system for judging truth and falsity in both domains. I will discuss each of these points in greater detail below. Both in terms of what there is to know about the world and the brain mechanisms that allow us to know it, we will see that a clear boundary between facts and values simply does not exist.

He starts from an advanced position (utilitarianism) and neverminds the justifications.

More clearly:

I believe that we will increasingly understand good and evil, right and wrong, in scientific terms, because moral concerns translate into facts about how our thoughts and behaviors affect the well-being of conscious creatures like ourselves. If there are facts to be known about the well-being of such creatures—and there are—then there must be right and wrong answers to moral questions. Students of philosophy will notice that this commits me to some form of moral realism (viz. moral claims can really be true or false) and some form of consequentialism (viz. the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures). While moral realism and consequentialism have both come under pressure in philosophical circles, they have the virtue of corresponding to many of our intuitions about how the world works.12


12. Consequentialism has undergone many refinements since the original utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. My discussion will ignore most of these developments, as they are generally of interest only to academic philosophers. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a good summary article (Sinnott- Armstrong, 2006).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all questions of value (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.) depend upon the possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequences at the level of experience—happiness, suffering, joy, despair, etc.—all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of conscious creatures (whether actual or potential). I am unaware of any interesting exception to this rule. Needless to say, if one is worried about pleasing God or His angels, this assumes that such invisible entities are conscious (in some sense) and cognizant of human behavior. It also generally assumes that it is possible to suffer their wrath or enjoy their approval, either in this world or the world to come. Even within religion, therefore, consequences and conscious states remain the foundation of all values.

He dodges the burden of actually explaining his philosophy (or "science") from the base.

And so it is obvious that before we can make any progress toward a science of morality, we will have to clear some philosophical brush. In this chapter, I attempt to do this within the limits of what I imagine to be most readers’ tolerance for such projects. Those who leave this section with their doubts intact are encouraged to consult the endnotes.

First, I want to be very clear about my general thesis: I am not suggesting that science can give us an evolutionary or neurobiological account of what people do in the name of “morality.” Nor am I merely saying that science can help us get what we want out of life. These would be quite banal claims to make—unless one happens to doubt the truth of evolution, the mind’s dependency on the brain, or the general utility of science. Rather I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want—and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind.

Once we see that a concern for well-being (defined as deeply and as inclusively as possible) is the only intelligible basis for morality and values, we will see that there must be a science of morality, whether or not we ever succeed in developing it: because the well-being of conscious creatures depends upon how the universe is, altogether. Given that changes in the physical universe and in our experience of it can be understood, science should increasingly enable us to answer specific moral questions. For instance, would it be better to spend our next billion dollars eradicating racism or malaria? Which is generally more harmful to our personal relationships, “white” lies or gossip? Such questions may seem impossible to get a hold of at this moment, but they may not stay that way forever. As we come to understand how human beings can best collaborate and thrive in this world, science can help us find a path leading away from the lowest depths of misery and toward the heights of happiness for the greatest number of people. Of course, there will be practical impediments to evaluating the consequences of certain actions, and different paths through life may be morally equivalent (i.e., there may be many peaks on the moral landscape), but I am arguing that there are no obstacles, in principle, to our speaking about moral truth.

And, as I have said, there may be many different ways for individuals and communities to thrive—many peaks on the moral landscape—so if there is real diversity in how people can be deeply fulfilled in this life, such diversity can be accounted for and honored in the context of science. The concept of “well-being,” like the concept of “health,” is truly open for revision and discovery. Just how fulfilled is it possible for us to be, personally and collectively? What are the conditions—ranging from changes in the genome to changes in economic systems—that will produce such happiness? We simply do not know.

But what if certain people insist that their “values” or “morality” have nothing to do with well-being? Or, more realistically, what if their conception of well-being is so idiosyncratic and circumscribed as to be hostile, in principle, to the well-being of all others? For instance, what if a man like Jeffrey Dahmer says, “The only peaks on the moral landscape that interest me are ones where I get to murder young men and have sex with their corpses.” This possibility —the prospect of radically different moral commitments—is at the heart of many people’s doubts about moral truth.

Etc.

This was just a quick fact check, I don't want to use any more of my time on such clearly wrong statements. If you're really interested, maybe you could lend a PDF of the book from someone you know and actually critizise the points one by one using copy + paste? My PM box is not full.

 

[Beth]

Well, that reponse to criticism of Harris was interesting. Seems like he gave answers to pretty much all the complaints in this thread:

Answers yes. Answers sufficient to counter his critics, no.

In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil.

How do truths about the mind and how they flourish inevitably lead to truths to be known about good and evil?

I should note in passing, however, that I don’t think the distinction between morality and something like taste is as clear or as categorical as we might suppose. If, for instance, a preference for chocolate ice cream allowed for the most rewarding experience a human being could have, while a preference for vanilla did not, we would deem it morally important to help people overcome any defect in their sense of taste that caused them to prefer vanilla—in the same way that we currently treat people for curable forms of blindness.

I think he does have a good point here. The distinction isn't clear or categorical; it's more of a continuum. But it's not sufficient to justify his strong claims.

Contrary to Blackford’s assertion, I’m not simply claiming that morality is “fully determined by an objective reality, independent of people’s actual values and desires.” I am claiming that people’s actual values and desires are fully determined by an objective reality, and that we can conceptually get behind all of this—indeed, we must—in order to talk about what is actually good. This becomes clear the moment we ask whether it would be good to alter people values and desires.

I have a hard time reconciling this statement with his claim of being able to derive an "ought" from an "is". The two claims seem contradictory to me.

Is it unscientific to value health and seek to maximize it within the context of medicine? No. Clearly there are scientific truths to be known about health—and we can fail to know them, to our great detriment. This is a fact. And yet, it is possible for people to deny this fact, or to have perverse and even self-destructive ideas about how to live. Needless to say, it can be fruitless to argue with such people.

The decision to value health and seek to maximize it is not a scientific one. Sure, we can use science to achieve that goal, but that only supports the weak claim that science can help us achieve our goals which no one disputes.

My critics have been especially exercised over the subtitle of my book, “how science can determine human values.” The charge is that I haven’t actually used science to determine the foundational value (well-being) upon which my proffered science of morality would rest. Rather, I have just assumed that well-being is a value, and this move is both unscientific and question-begging.

Yes, that seems the case to me.

Again, the same can be said about medicine, or science as a whole.

Correct. The foundations of medicine (valuing health) or science (valuing parsimony, consistency, etc.) are not based on science. Since morality concerns the questions of what should be valued, it seem to me that it is question-begging to start with an axiom about what should be valued (i.e. well-being).

As I point out in my book, science is based on values that must be presupposed—like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn’t share these values cannot do science.

Correct.

But nor can he attack the presuppositions of science in a way that anyone should find compelling.

But how does this follow? Not everyone cleaves to the axioms of science. Further, science does not claim that those presuppositions are true, it only says that IF those presuppositions are true, THEN the rest follows.

Overall, it seems to me that Harris is not making any exceptionally crazy claims here. He is simply saying that although morality is a matter of subjectivity, one's morals can still be "wrong" if they are logically inconsistent or make everyone worse of in some way. It's not really anything new for most people here I guess, but some people do seem to believe that you have to respect a person's morality even if it's bat-**** insane, so I suppose it helps to argue against that position.

I think the point is that his position can't even construct a logical and consistent argument against a competing morality that is bat-**** insane without resorting to 'but mine is right and yours is wrong'. That is not a scientifically based argument. While it can be compelling - I would have no qualms about telling a serial killer his morality is wrong and evil - I wouldn't claim that it's a scientifically justified position.

 

[Kuko 4000]

I don't deal with moral TRUTH(tm). I agree that Harris gives of this vibe, though he has never stated it like that outright.

I don't know about capitals, but he definitely talks about moral truth underlined and in italics. See Chapter 1 (titled 'Moral Truth'):

Of course, there will be practical impediments to evaluating the consequences of certain actions, and different paths through life may be morally equivalent (i.e., there may be many peaks on the moral landscape), but I am arguing that there are no obstacles, in principle, to our speaking about moral truth.

The point being, it's not simple.