Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[The Man]

I think you might have the wrong end of the stick. This isn't simply a thread about "Harris boo!" versus "Harris yay!".

My point isn't that Harris' conclusions are wrong or bad. I've got no problem with them as conclusions. His conclusions aren't new or original, but that's not at all the same as them being wrong or bad.

It's just that he makes the bald-faced claim that he has solved the is/ought problem in the first minute of his talk, and he hasn't.

So that isn't wrong and/or bad? What "is/ought problem"? If one makes a problem where there is none I ought to at least hope they could solve it for themselves.

 

[AlBell]

At some point, if a person says "I don't see anything wrong with torturing children for pleasure", we will be able to explain why he's 'wrong' the same way we can explain to someone who denies that the sky and grass are different colors is 'wrong'.

Perhaps we can agree anyone who would make such a statement has something 'wrong', although I suggest the issue involves the wrongness of insanity, not the wrongness of morality.

 

[JoelKatz]

No, I am talking about one and the same act, the exact same situation. So no "the sky is not blue at night". In this case, the underlying reality is identical. So how come people will consistently disagree on the morality of just about any one specific thing?

The same reason a mountain appears small from far away but big from up close. The same reason the moon appears flat from the Earth but mountainous when you are on it. The circumstances of perception affect the objective aspects perceived.

And no, don't go picking the torture children example with the specific purpose of minimising the disagreement and acting as if that shows that morality is objective. There is always disagreement, the exact amount just varies. But if morality is solely dependent on the act itself, if it is simply a case of some hidden criteria being measured, then how can people disagree on the morality of a single act?

People can disagree over whether the moon is flat or covered with craters. People can disagree over whether the surface of a lake is flat or rippled. People can disagree over whether something is red or orange. The disagreement present is perfectly well explained by the perception of objective properties by people with differences in their perceptual apparatus, cognitive differences in the "named buckets" they categorize things into, and differences in the circumstances of perception.

You could make this same argument about color vision. You could insist I pick two objects that have the same color and explain why people thing they're the same color. Or you could pick something at the boundary between red and orange and insist I explain why some people say it's red and some people say it's orange. Heck, you could insist that the inability to tell what color a non-emitting object is in the dark (or with your eyes closed, or with your back turned to it) proves that color is not inherent in the object. It is the existence of agreement that proves the measurement is objective. The existence of disagreement is also consistent with objective measurement.

And, of course, people can be 'defective' and lack a sense of perception others lack. And, quite frankly, they can *lie* just to be jerks. (I submit that anyone who says they don't perceive torturing children for pleasure as morally wrong is either a liar or has a fundamentally broken moral perceptual apparatus. Just as anyone who denies that the sky and grass are typically different colors as perceived by normal human vision is broken or lying.)

The answer is, of course, simple. It is because people have different "measurement sticks". There is not a specific attribute that is being measured. Just subjective interpretations by people who often value completely different things.

That doesn't change the fact that it is objective properties that they are measuring differently. Sure, people have different numbers of rods and cones. Some people might have defective retinas. Some people might disagree over where to draw the line between red and orange. That doesn't change the fact that it is objective properties that are being measured.

 

[The Man]

The same reason a mountain appears small from far away but big from up close. The same reason the moon appears flat from the Earth but mountainous when you are on it. The circumstances of perception affect the objective aspects perceived.

People can disagree over whether the moon is flat or covered with craters. People can disagree over whether the surface of a lake is flat or rippled. People can disagree over whether something is red or orange. The disagreement present is perfectly well explained by the perception of objective properties by people with differences in their perceptual apparatus, cognitive differences in the "named buckets" they categorize things into, and differences in the circumstances of perception.

You could make this same argument about color vision. You could insist I pick two objects that have the same color and explain why people thing they're the same color. Or you could pick something at the boundary between red and orange and insist I explain why some people say it's red and some people say it's orange. Heck, you could insist that the inability to tell what color a non-emitting object is in the dark (or with your eyes closed, or with your back turned to it) proves that color is not inherent in the object. It is the existence of agreement that proves the measurement is objective. The existence of disagreement is also consistent with objective measurement.

And, of course, people can be 'defective' and lack a sense of perception others lack. And, quite frankly, they can *lie* just to be jerks. (I submit that anyone who says they don't perceive torturing children for pleasure as morally wrong is either a liar or has a fundamentally broken moral perceptual apparatus. Just as anyone who denies that the sky and grass are typically different colors as perceived by normal human vision is broken or lying.)

That doesn't change the fact that it is objective properties that they are measuring differently. Sure, people have different numbers of rods and cones. Some people might have defective retinas. Some people might disagree over where to draw the line between red and orange. That doesn't change the fact that it is objective properties that are being measured.

To some degree JoelKatz, one of the uses of science is to try to bring objectivity to even the subjective. A very difficult task even just for colors. One could use a central wavelength for "blue" and some statistical limits to classify what is not "blue". One can support those limits in a number of ways. Including that this range is what most people consider "blue". However, with about 6.9 billion people in the world it is not surprising that someone might say the limits of "blue" ought to be different and perhaps present a different standard to determine those limitations on "blue". So objectivity determining something as subjective as morality one only has the same scientific tools. Scientifically it basically comes down to what is acceptable to some statistical population. Were "torturing children for pleasure" the norm for some population or even required for some genetic or developmental reason it could very well be immoral not to do so in that population.

As some examples; were me and my friends to meet a group of women with young children (of a certain age), then kill those children so that I (or the leader) could impregnate those females. That would be considered immoral in most human societies. However, for lions it is a fact of developed survival (for genetic material) behavior. Likewise breeding masses of intentionally disposable people would also be considered immoral in most human societies. However, again it is a demonstrable fact of some insect societies that such a requirement has developed to ensure genetic survival. Morality is a value consideration, which both fortunately and unfortunately we (as a self aware and thinking species) tend to place more value on than most other species.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What "is/ought problem"?

I guess it might be time for a recap at that, although we've been discussing this for thirty-eight pages and it's kind of fundamental to the topic, so jumping it at this point without knowing what we're talking about might not be the best way to approach things.

The "is/ought" problem, first noted by Hume, is that there is no logically watertight was to get from any number of factual statements about how the universe is to a sound conclusion about how the universe ought to be.

As such every logically consistent moral theory must start with some kind of axiomatic "ought" claim which is not justified by scientific observations but is essentially pulled out of thin air, and then judged on the basis of whether the conclusions the axiom gives rise to are useful, consistent or cohere with our evolved intuitions about what we should do.

To put it another way, the is/ought problem has no solution and never will have a solution. All anyone has ever done (including Harris) or will ever do is make up a moral axiom out of thin air and work from there.

Harris tries to make people think he has solved the is/ought problem with the following manoeuvre, which just doesn't work:

1. Science needs some assumptions pulled out of thin air to get going, like "the universe is consistent".
2. So if we can pull assumptions like that out of thin air, we can also pull "we ought to bring about human flourishing" out of thin air. That's science!
3. I solved the is/ought problem!

However the simple fact is that he didn't. He pulled an axiomatic ought claim out of thin air like everyone else. That isn't a solution, nor is it a new idea.

Harris' defenders here, possibly because they aren't very philosophically sophisticated, have trouble grasping this point. You can say "Harris claimed to solve the is/ought problem and did not do so" until you are blue in the face but what they seem to read is "Harris boo! Boo boo boo! Harris sucks eggs! Boo!". So they respond to that instead, and the conversation goes around in circles.

I think the fundamental problem is that people like the idea of being able to dress up their moral ideas as science and have the cachet of science behind them when they express their moral ideas. Harris is flogging them snake oil that they really, truly, deeply want to believe in and like all snake oil customers they want to believe the best of their dealer. So when mean old philosophers come along and say "Harris is just recycling welfare utilitarianism and passing it off as shiny, new and scientific, there is nothing new here and his claim to have solved the is/ought problem is snake oil" they get really upset. They thought they were special because they read Harris, and here I am telling them they are ignorant suckers. That's how life goes on the JREF forums though - sometimes beliefs that are important to you get exploded. If you can't handle it when you are on the receiving end you aren't much of a skeptic.

 

[The Man]

I guess it might be time for a recap at that, although we've been discussing this for thirty-eight pages and it's kind of fundamental to the topic, so jumping it at this point without knowing what we're talking about might not be the best way to approach things.

There are sometimes many ways to approach things, one is objectively.

My first question also went directly to your apparent self-contradictory statements about your point.

The "is/ought" problem, first noted by Hume, is that there is no logically watertight was to get from any number of factual statements about how the universe is to a sound conclusion about how the universe ought to be.

Scientifically the universe "ought to be" as it is. ought we be in some other universe? Which would still be as it "ought to be"?

As such every logically consistent moral theory must start with some kind of axiomatic "ought" claim which is not justified by scientific observations but is essentially pulled out of thin air, and then judged on the basis of whether the conclusions the axiom gives rise to are useful, consistent or cohere with our evolved intuitions about what we should do.

Ah, a pragmatic approach, both axioms and morality do have their uses and limitations.

To put it another way, the is/ought problem has no solution and never will have a solution. All anyone has ever done (including Harris) or will ever do is make up a moral axiom out of thin air and work from there.

A limitation of any axiom, it must be taken as true for that "logically consistent moral theory" or the logical consistency of any axiomatic theory.

Harris tries to make people think he has solved the is/ought problem with the following maneuver, which just doesn't work:

1. Science needs some assumptions pulled out of thin air to get going, like "the universe is consistent".

Based on all current evidence the "the universe is consistent". Please present any counter-indicative evidence. Will the universe always be evidently consistent? Well, who can say how the universe ought to be other than based on what the current evidence is.?

2. So if we can pull assumptions like that out of thin air, we can also pull "we ought to bring about human flourishing" out of thin air. That's science!

Where exactly is that "science" in your assetion? Science is quantitative as well as logically consistent.

3. I solved the is/ought problem!

OK, whatever, I never claimed to agree with Harris and have yet to see this ""is/ought" problem". Certainly not in any scientific regard.

However the simple fact is that he didn't. He pulled an axiomatic ought claim out of thin air like everyone else. That isn't a solution, nor is it a new idea.

Solution to what? That the universe isn't or may not be what someone (even Harris) thinks it "ought to be", even consistent? That's not a problem for me.

Harris' defenders here, possibly because they aren't very philosophically sophisticated, have trouble grasping this point. You can say "Harris claimed to solve the is/ought problem and did not do so" until you are blue in the face but what they seem to read is "Harris boo! Boo boo boo! Harris sucks eggs! Boo!". So they respond to that instead, and the conversation goes around in circles.

Again, I never claimed to agree with Harris, however all current evidence indicates that the universe is consistent. If that evidence changes I'm quite amicable to such evidence.

I think the fundamental problem is that people like the idea of being able to dress up their moral ideas as science and have the cachet of science behind them when they express their moral ideas. Harris is flogging them snake oil that they really, truly, deeply want to believe in and like all snake oil customers they want to believe the best of their dealer. So when mean old philosophers come along and say "Harris is just recycling welfare utilitarianism and passing it off as shiny, new and scientific, there is nothing new here and his claim to have solved the is/ought problem is snake oil" they get really upset. They thought they were special because they read Harris, and here I am telling them they are ignorant suckers. That's how life goes on the JREF forums though - sometimes beliefs that are important to you get exploded. If you can't handle it when you are on the receiving end you aren't much of a skeptic.

Oh perhaps, but please don't confuse just a scientific approach even to morality as always just some dress up game. If you want to consider morality better served by the philosophers, fine I got no problem with that. However science can help to evidentially demonstrate the inherent lack of objectivity in morality.

So your point is now that not only Harris but also other "ignorant suckers" are wrong?

 

[Sophronius]

The same reason a mountain appears small from far away but big from up close. The same reason the moon appears flat from the Earth but mountainous when you are on it. The circumstances of perception affect the objective aspects perceived.

You're trying to weasel your way out of it again, which is really quite telling.

I am NOT talking about a scenario which appears different to different people. Everyone has the exact same input here, but they get different output. Why?

People can disagree over whether the moon is flat or covered with craters. People can disagree over whether the surface of a lake is flat or rippled. People can disagree over whether something is red or orange. The disagreement present is perfectly well explained by the perception of objective properties by people with differences in their perceptual apparatus, cognitive differences in the "named buckets" they categorize things into, and differences in the circumstances of perception.

No, no, no. The disagreements in those examples are about factual matters. People in my example are not disagreeing about what exactly happened in the act itself. They are arguing over whether or not it's a good thing. How can you not see that that is COMPLETELY different? How can you not notice the difference between a value judgement and a factual claim?

You could make this same argument about color vision.

Aaaaand you are trying to steer the conversation back to colour vision, because that is actually objective, unlike morality.

And, of course, people can be 'defective' and lack a sense of perception others lack. And, quite frankly, they can *lie* just to be jerks. (I submit that anyone who says they don't perceive torturing children for pleasure as morally wrong is either a liar or has a fundamentally broken moral perceptual apparatus.

Aaaand you are going back to the torture children example, in an attempt to make it appear that there is no moral disagreement.


This is my third time asking you to respond. If you still don't answer the question, that is answer the actual question and not some analogy that you whip up and insist is the same, I think it is fair to conclude that you have no answer.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

There are sometimes many ways to approach things, one is objectively.

My first question also went directly to your apparent self-contradictory statements about your point.

I'll go with this for one more post and try to clear up your confusion, but we really are going around in circles. If you want more details you can read the thread, or pick up a good first year moral philosophy textbook.

Scientifically the universe "ought to be" as it is. ought we be in some other universe? Which would still be as it "ought to be"?

It's a moral ought. Moral ought claims are claims like "you ought not to steal".

Based on all current evidence the "the universe is consistent". Please present any counter-indicative evidence. Will the universe always be evidently consistent? Well, who can say how the universe ought to be other than based on what the current evidence is.?

In the bit you are responding to I am just recounting Harris' argument. It's his argument. If you disagree with it, that's okay by me.

Where exactly is that "science" in your assetion? Science is quantitative as well as logically consistent.

Again, take it up with Harris.

OK, whatever, I never claimed to agree with Harris and have yet to see this ""is/ought" problem". Certainly not in any scientific regard.

Oh well. I explained it to you once. Look it up if you still don't understand it.

Oh perhaps, but please don't confuse just a scientific approach even to morality as always just some dress up game. If you want to consider morality better served by the philosophers, fine I got no problem with that. However science can help to evidentially demonstrate the inherent lack of objectivity in morality.

Well, in an important sense Hume proved there is no way to get directly from scientific facts to moral ought claims, so there's nothing more to be done on that front by science.

So your point is now that not only Harris but also other "ignorant suckers" are wrong?

Harris is wrong about a specific thing, that he solved the is/ought problem.

Harris' followers are wrong if they think he solved the is/ought problem, or if they think his theory is anything other than welfare utilitarianism, or if they think he's contributed anything to moral philosophy.

Harris' stuff about the neurology of instinctive moral views might well be interesting, useful and/or scientifically valid.

 

[Joey McGee]

I've been studying science and religion, history and pseudohistory, etc, for years and this is the most asinine discussion I have come across to date.

On one side, Sam Harris seems to make perfect sense to everyone who doesn't have a degree in philosophy. The most ardent skeptics and scientists like Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins have come out in support of him, and it's really hard to say that he doesn't make sense.

Then on the other side, the philosophers seem to have an airtight case that can't be broken. It also makes perfect sense, in it's own way. But it's philosophy, it's ideas in people's heads. It's harder for the average person to pin down. It's ideas. I think this is why more people are supportive of Sam, even if they are right.

The point is that we live in a world where we make moral decisions based on what we think are facts about reality. No one can dispute this. If being adopted by gay parents made you gay 90% of the time instead of 0%, I daresay it wouldn't be popular. If you think that we choose our experiences before we incarnate as a soul life-lesson you won't be motivated to intervene in other people's lives. This is just something we all know and accept.

And if you come up with an idea of good and bad that has nothing to do with the well-being of conscious creatures I can pretty much guarantee no one will care about it.

Whether you call it welfare utilitarianism, wishful thinking or a brilliant scientific theory, it doesn't matter, it's already how the world works and again, the only thing that's going to improve our moral choices is better science.

I don't think Sam is claiming to have come up with anything radically new or transcendental. He's just framed it in a really intelligent way that doesn't leave much room for improvement when we start thinking about what we should do. And that's why he's gotten so much support

 

[JoelKatz]

I am NOT talking about a scenario which appears different to different people. Everyone has the exact same input here, but they get different output. Why?

While our color vision is pretty much determined wholly by our genes and almost identical among all normal people, many other parts of our brain, and many of our other facilities, develop very differently from person to person. Certainly, the answer to multiplication problems is objective, yet people can reach different results in those problems owing to differences in mathematical skill.

Imagine if we encountered aliens who had perfect color vision over a larger spectrum than us and could accurately measure the presence and amount of each frequency. We might say two things are the same color and they would differ.

When we look at something and when they look at something, we are both measuring the same objective properties -- the frequencies of light. But because our perceptual apparatus and their perceptual apparatus are different, they perceive and describe those aspects of the light in different ways.

We wouldn't even agree on much of anything about color with these aliens (absent a technical understanding of why we differ, of course) and yet you concede that color is an objective property.

But a better analogy here might be people disagreeing over which of two objects is bigger, based on them both looking at those two objects under the same conditions. One may, for example, judge one object as further away and thus think it bigger even if it appears smaller. Or they may disagree over the boundaries of an object (if a cloud trails off into wisp, how much of the wisp is a part of the cloud?). But surely an object's size is an objective property of that object.

No, no, no. The disagreements in those examples are about factual matters. People in my example are not disagreeing about what exactly happened in the act itself. They are arguing over whether or not it's a good thing. How can you not see that that is COMPLETELY different? How can you not notice the difference between a value judgement and a factual claim?

If I say the sky looks blue, is that a factual claim or a value judgment? Isn't it partly one and partly another? This is especially true if the color is 'somewhat' blue. And, of course, it has subjective components because 'blue' describes many different light frequency and intensity patterns that happen to look similar due to the way human vision works.

Aaaaand you are trying to steer the conversation back to colour vision, because that is actually objective, unlike morality.

Because the properties are identical, yet you conclude one is objective and the other subjective. For every argument you can make why morality is subjective, I can show how that same argument can be made, and is equally invalid, about color vision. All I need is that we don't understand fully how human vision works.

Aaaand you are going back to the torture children example, in an attempt to make it appear that there is no moral disagreement.

Quite the contrary, I do not claim there is no moral disagreement.

This is my third time asking you to respond. If you still don't answer the question, that is answer the actual question and not some analogy that you whip up and insist is the same, I think it is fair to conclude that you have no answer.

I have no idea what question you think I haven't responded to.

 

[The Man]

I'll go with this for one more post and try to clear up your confusion, but we really are going around in circles. If you want more details you can read the thread, or pick up a good first year moral philosophy textbook.

Perhaps you should, as you seem to have an "is/ought" problem or is that just where you got the idea that you ought to have such an "is/ought" problem?

It's a moral ought. Moral ought claims are claims like "you ought not to steal".

Moral or not “ought” is still just a claim of what one thinks should be. Like a positive and a negative charge ought to attract.

In the bit you are responding to I am just recounting Harris' argument. It's his argument. If you disagree with it, that's okay by me.

Actually was still responding to your assertions, one being.

As such every logically consistent moral theory must start with some kind of axiomatic "ought" claim which is not justified by scientific observations but is essentially pulled out of thin air, and then judged on the basis of whether the conclusions the axiom gives rise to are useful, consistent or cohere with our evolved intuitions about what we should do.

It can also start with an “is” claim like ‘morality is subjective‘ , ‘morality is genetic’ ‘morality is sociological’ or the ‘universe is consistent‘. So you disagree with it, but that’s ok with me.

Again, take it up with Harris.

I should take up the lack of science in your assertion with Harris?

Oh well. I explained it to you once. Look it up if you still don't understand it.

You claimed an "is/ought" problem if you can’t explain exactly what your problem is then perhaps you still don't understand it.

Well, in an important sense Hume proved there is no way to get directly from scientific facts to moral ought claims, so there's nothing more to be done on that front by science.

Sure there is in sociology, psychology and a whole host of other scientific disciplines.

Harris is wrong about a specific thing, that he solved the is/ought problem.

Harris' followers are wrong if they think he solved the is/ought problem, or if they think his theory is anything other than welfare utilitarianism, or if they think he's contributed anything to moral philosophy.

So, that Harris is wrong was your point.

Harris' stuff about the neurology of instinctive moral views might well be interesting, useful and/or scientifically valid.

See you might have found some science in it after all, but I guess we’ll still just have to agree to disagree about there being a problem to start with.

 

[fls]

Harris tries to make people think he has solved the is/ought problem with the following manoeuvre, which just doesn't work:

1. Science needs some assumptions pulled out of thin air to get going, like "the universe is consistent".
2. So if we can pull assumptions like that out of thin air, we can also pull "we ought to bring about human flourishing" out of thin air. That's science!
3. I solved the is/ought problem!

However the simple fact is that he didn't. He pulled an axiomatic ought claim out of thin air like everyone else. That isn't a solution, nor is it a new idea.

Harris' defenders here, possibly because they aren't very philosophically sophisticated, have trouble grasping this point. You can say "Harris claimed to solve the is/ought problem and did not do so" until you are blue in the face...

Even taking into consideration any inaccuracies introduced by the choice of sarcasm as a rhetorical tool, you have failed to represent Harris' or my position. I think you are sincere, that you think that in your perspicacity you have grasped the essentials of what Harris and I have said and that it is ignorance and naivety which leads me to point out that you haven't. I don't think you are intentionally offering a gross misrepresentation. Nevertheless, the end result remains the same, your yelling cannot be of use to me. And I don't want you to hurt yourself.

Also, I suspect that The Man's question was not meant to indicate ignorance of the "is/ought problem", but was meant as a device to ask you to interrogate the question. But I think you're right - he can't have been paying attention to this thread if he thought this was a possibility.

Linda

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Even taking into consideration any inaccuracies introduced by the choice of sarcasm as a rhetorical tool, you have failed to represent Harris' or my position. I think you are sincere, that you think that in your perspicacity you have grasped the essentials of what Harris and I have said and that it is ignorance and naivety which leads me to point out that you haven't. I don't think you are intentionally offering a gross misrepresentation. Nevertheless, the end result remains the same, your yelling cannot be of use to me. And I don't want you to hurt yourself.

Also, I suspect that The Man's question was not meant to indicate ignorance of the "is/ought problem", but was meant as a device to ask you to interrogate the question. But I think you're right - he can't have been paying attention to this thread if he thought this was a possibility.

Linda

Who else had to look the meaning of that word up?

My initial guess was:

'thinking so hard you begin to sweat'

 

[Sophronius]

While our color vision is pretty much determined wholly by our genes and almost identical among all normal people, many other parts of our brain, and many of our other facilities, develop very differently from person to person. Certainly, the answer to multiplication problems is objective, yet people can reach different results in those problems owing to differences in mathematical skill.

You are talking about colour again, despite my repeated requests to stop doing so as it only muddles the issue. This really makes it looks like you are trying to weasel out of this. I don't see why it's so hard to give a straight answer, without analogies.

But fine, I'll try to make this work, though you're not making this easy for me. Your response is that "the answer to multiplication problems is objective, yet people can reach different results due to differences in mathematical skill". If I take this to be an answer to my question (by analogy, alas) then this would mean that you consider the answers to moral questions to be like answers to mathematical problems. In other words, when people disagree on a single moral issue, that's because some or all of the participants are objectively wrong.

This is madness. How can you say that when one person says "I like X" and another says "I don't like X" that one of them is wrong? How can you even tell which person is wrong? WHY would you even think reality works like this?

If I say the sky looks blue, is that a factual claim or a value judgment? Isn't it partly one and partly another? This is especially true if the color is 'somewhat' blue. And, of course, it has subjective components because 'blue' describes many different light frequency and intensity patterns that happen to look similar due to the way human vision works.

Ah, you don't understand what value judgements are. That explains some of the confusion. Wikipedia will help:

A value judgment is a judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something

So no, "the sky is blue" is not a value judgement in any way shape or form.

 

[fls]

Who else had to look the meaning of that word up?

My initial guess was:

'thinking so hard you begin to sweat'

Actually, "perspire" is what I use to remember how to spell the damned thing.

Linda

 

[JoelKatz]

You are talking about colour again, despite my repeated requests to stop doing so as it only muddles the issue. This really makes it looks like you are trying to weasel out of this. I don't see why it's so hard to give a straight answer, without analogies.

Because the case for the two things is precisely the same, and color is something we also know is objective. I have a concession from you that color vision is objective, and it is obviously so. So I'm trying to show there is no valid reason for considering moral judgment to be different -- the evidence for both is the same if you subtract our understanding of the physics of color vision.

But fine, I'll try to make this work, though you're not making this easy for me. Your response is that "the answer to multiplication problems is objective, yet people can reach different results due to differences in mathematical skill". If I take this to be an answer to my question (by analogy, alas) then this would mean that you consider the answers to moral questions to be like answers to mathematical problems. In other words, when people disagree on a single moral issue, that's because some or all of the participants are objectively wrong.

Yes, that's correct. However, be very careful that they actually do disagree.

This is madness. How can you say that when one person says "I like X" and another says "I don't like X" that one of them is wrong? How can you even tell which person is wrong? WHY would you even think reality works like this?

These are two different, and non-conflicting claims. This is like arguing color is not objective because one person can say "I have blond hair" and another can say "I don't have blond hair". As soon as two different people both speak the word "I", they are talking about properties of two different things.

Consider: "Jack is 6 feet tall." "Jill is not 6 feet tall." These are both objective and they can both be true. "*I* like X" is not the same claim at all as "*I* don't like X" when there are two different speakers because, though they use the same words, the claims are entirely different.

"Jack likes X" could be based on objective properties of the interaction between X and Jack the same way "the sky looks blue" can be based on objective properties of the interaction between the sky and the physics of human vision. Yet for someone color blind, the sky does not "look blue" in the same sense.

Ah, you don't understand what value judgements are. That explains some of the confusion. Wikipedia will help:

So no, "the sky is blue" is not a value judgement in any way shape or form.

Ah, you mean the emphasis on "value", not "judgment". Fair enough. Then I would submit that nobody knows what value judgments are yet, just as at one time, nobody knew what color judgments really were until we understood the physics of color vision.

Our knowledge of value judgments is akin to a knowledge of color judgments at this level: "It has something to do with the thing observed, something to do with the conditions of observation, and most normal humans seem to do it about the same under the same circumstances. It has objective utility to humans. And probably has something to do with a poorly-understood aspect of the light coming from the object."

We can say much the same about value judgments: "It has something to do with the thing valued, something to do with the conditions in which the thing occurs, and most normal humans seem to do it somewhat the same under the same circumstances. It has objective utility to humans. And probably has something to do with a somewhat-understood aspect of the effects of the action."

I should also point out that people evaluating the "same thing" morally are often not really evaluating the same thing morally. For example, if you mail two people an object and ask them what color it is, they will observe it under different lighting conditions. This may cause them to report different colors for the same object even though its optical properties are objective. Similarly, if you say something like "killing an infant", though to some extent the same act, one person might think about infanticide for pleasure and another person might thing about a family that sacrifices a beloved child so others can eat. So they're not really evaluating the same thing. So they could evaluate 100% objectively with no subjective component and still get different results for the "same thing".

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The point is that we live in a world where we make moral decisions based on what we think are facts about reality. No one can dispute this. If being adopted by gay parents made you gay 90% of the time instead of 0%, I daresay it wouldn't be popular. If you think that we choose our experiences before we incarnate as a soul life-lesson you won't be motivated to intervene in other people's lives. This is just something we all know and accept.

And if you come up with an idea of good and bad that has nothing to do with the well-being of conscious creatures I can pretty much guarantee no one will care about it.

I think Harris would point to religious ideas of good and bad as counterexamples to that claim. A lot of those ideas seem clearly counterproductive if the goal is the well-being of conscious creatures, yet people care a lot about them.

Whether you call it welfare utilitarianism, wishful thinking or a brilliant scientific theory, it doesn't matter, it's already how the world works and again, the only thing that's going to improve our moral choices is better science.

I'm not even sure about that. I think that I'd point to Peter Singer and the animal liberation movement as a counterexample there. Scientists were busily torturing animals for decades before Singer led the charge to get people to believe that the wellbeing of non-human conscious beings mattered.

Similarly the appalling state of much of the Third World isn't a scientific problem - the world has more than enough food to feed everyone, and more than enough industrial capability to give everyone in the world clean water, basic medical care, mosquito netting and so forth. Science can make it easier to fix those problems without making any real sacrifices, but another solution would be to persuade people they should make some sacrifices.

I don't think Sam is claiming to have come up with anything radically new or transcendental. He's just framed it in a really intelligent way that doesn't leave much room for improvement when we start thinking about what we should do. And that's why he's gotten so much support

Really? What is he saying that, say, Singer and Parfit and maybe Rawls haven't said before?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

To those who have read the book:

Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?

As Kevin has pointed out above, given the moral philosophies people claim to be guided by we already know quite clearly what we ought to be doing, but most of us and most of our governments seem to find lots of excuses as to why we're not doing them now.

Perhaps science could help us with that problem before we think about throwing out moral philosophy and replacing it with a science of morality?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Even taking into consideration any inaccuracies introduced by the choice of sarcasm as a rhetorical tool, you have failed to represent Harris' or my position.

Nice try, but no. Harris' response to his critics is exactly as I have summarised it. Your position is different and engages in a different error, but since I was talking about Harris and not you at that point I don't see why that's my problem.

I think you are sincere, that you think that in your perspicacity you have grasped the essentials of what Harris and I have said and that it is ignorance and naivety which leads me to point out that you haven't. I don't think you are intentionally offering a gross misrepresentation. Nevertheless, the end result remains the same, your yelling cannot be of use to me. And I don't want you to hurt yourself.

Assertion isn't argument. You can assert all day that I have misunderstood you and that I'm wrong, but such assertions are empty unless you also explain why I am wrong and what your position is. You seem to have great difficulty doing so, which is understandable.

Also, I suspect that The Man's question was not meant to indicate ignorance of the "is/ought problem", but was meant as a device to ask you to interrogate the question. But I think you're right - he can't have been paying attention to this thread if he thought this was a possibility.

There is nothing to "interrogate". It's a problem without any solution.

The reason you have never been able to clearly state a solution is that you do not have one.

As I recall, your position is based on a different error, usually referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. While Harris blatantly helps himself to the assumption that the flourishing of conscious beings is morally good, you covertly help yourself to the assumption that what we have evolved to think of as good is good. Then when you get called on it you run around chasing your own tail saying "That's not what I'm saying, but it is, but it's more complicated!".

You're far from the first to fall in to that trap, and you certainly won't be the last. You're not saying anything new, deep or clever, if that's what you were thinking.

 

[mumblethrax]

Because the case for the two things is precisely the same, and color is something we also know is objective.

But they aren't the same.

From a position of scientific naivety, I would be inclined to regard color perception as being directed at some real feature of the external world, but I would do so because was can have, say, two otherwise identical balls, viewed under identical conditions, and see one as red and the other as blue, and other people would reliably report their colors the same way I do. This would seem to deny the claim that color is merely conventional any footing--there's just nothing else in our experience to hang it on.

Moral intuitions are exactly not like this. We never have two otherwise identical acts such that one is right and the other wrong. We sweep whole classes of acts into one moral category or the other. We even completely disregard details that we don't consider relevant--it's generally taken to be a desirable feature of a moral system that its prescriptions be universalizable. And it's trivial to propose a mechanism to explain this without reference to some set of mind-independent facts about the world: maybe values are just transmitted from one generation to the next. Maybe they're ingrained in our biology. It doesn't matter in any case--none of this will get you to exotic entities like moral facts with normative force that provide logical grounds for moving from is to ought.