Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[qayak]

Some apparently do.

I guess you can ask Science if you haven't found an answer.

You forget one thing. If morality is subjective and science doesn't have anything to say about it, that doesn't mean that religion does.

Science is the only system we have for figuring things out. Religions still haven't figured out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Religion has nothing to say about morality, and more often than not, makes the poorest moral guide.

Another supposedly subjective area that science shouldn't be able to say anything about is art and yet . . . science has told us a lot about art and why people like certain works over others. (Salvador Dali's Last Supper comes to mind.)

The idea that science has nothing to say about morality is a myth that will soon be debunked. It doesn't matter that believers want to protect their precious gods and beliefs . . . science marches on without them just like it has in so many other areas.

 

[qayak]

It's okay to murder anyone so long as they're believed to be the enemy (at least today).

So wrong. All societies believe murder is wrong. Some don't believe killing enemies is wrong.

Killing enemies =/= murder

 

[JoelKatz]

So you would agree that belief in ghosts and bigfoot is justified by those who have perceived them? Is that correct? Or did you mean something else by that statement?

It's hard to reply seriously to you when you say something like that. I would agree that something must explain those perceptions, I do not agree that the explanation is ghosts or bigfoot. I did not say that *every* reasoning chain that has perceptions at its root is necessarily valid. I just said that's a key requirement for being valid.

 

[AlBell]

Only if you think that religious rules are somehow moral principles, when clearly they are not.

Clear to you, Paul, and Harris at least.

And again, although The Rules may be subsumed with religious veneer they were formulated by men; likely very intelligent men.

I realize that we are obliged, from a socio-political standpoint, to address the fact that people think they have been offered morals.

We are?

But if you are talking about how science would address questions of human values, your questions are non-starters.

Yes I notice you've been unable so far to formulate any question for Science to address that actually addresses hot-button topics involving "moral" choices.

There isn't anything special about technologically possible actions - that is, they don't need to be addressed any differently from deciding other preferred courses of action.

Thanks for your usual non-answer off-on-a-tangent (in fact belonging in some other thread) response.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

So wrong. All societies believe murder is wrong. Some don't believe killing enemies is wrong.

Killing enemies =/= murder

That's mostly a convenient fiction. A lot of "enemies" who have been killed are of no immediate threat to the people who murder them.

 

[Paulhoff]

How large do you think the intersection of all those different groups' points of view on the right way to behave is going to be?



It's okay to murder anyone so long as they're believed to be the enemy (at least today).

Do you think all morals are voted on.

And if your enemy is unarmed, do you think you have the right to now murder them.

Paul

 

[qayak]

That's mostly a convenient fiction. A lot of "enemies" who have been killed are of no immediate threat to the people who murder them.

But you are not looking at the words you use in context. If a society says it is okay to kill your enemies it is not, nor can it ever be, murder.

Murder is the unlawful killing of another person. For thousands of years killing an enemy wasn't murder. It was a matter of people killing "enemies" because they were of a different tribe, race, religion, skin colour, sex, etc. That is what an enemy was. It wasn't necessarily that they were a threat to you in any manner at the time of their killing.

Science stepped in on this one and showed through genetics that there are no sub-humans, no "us and them" only us. So, right there science had something to say about morality. Science says that killing enemies because they are from another tribe, race, religion, etc. is MURDER because they are not your enemy, they are you . All societies believe murder is wrong, science just shows that the old ideas of what an enemy is have no basis in reality, and therefore, no moral ground to stand on.

 

[AlBell]

Do you think all morals are voted on.

And if your enemy is unarmed, do you think you have the right to now murder them.

Check with the scientists who've worked on those problems, and get back to us with The Answers.

Ktxby.

 

[Paulhoff]

Check with the scientists who've worked on those problems, and get back to us with The Answers.

Ktxby.

Scientist may vote on a term, like "planet", but theories are not voted on.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

Check with the scientists who've worked on those problems, and get back to us with The Answers.

Ktxby.

And what is you answer to where these morals should come from?

Paul

 

[bigred]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=


This is Sam Harris at TED. Can science answer moral questions? Does Sam Harris even answer that question in this talk?

What do you think?

I think he's a narrow-minded idiot and the very idea is laughable. Morality cannot be dissected or measured in a test tube kinda way.

 

[Paulhoff]

I think he's a narrow-minded idiot and the very idea is laughable. Morality cannot be dissected or measured in a test tube kinda way.

Geee, really, narrow-minded............

And you are right, science only works with test tubes.

Sure it does.

Paul

 

[bigred]

Yeah, he really is.

No idea what your 2d remark meant-

 

[Paulhoff]

Yeah, he really is.

No idea what your 2d remark meant-

Mmmmmmmmmmm, it means you are wrong.

Paul

 

[bigred]

Can't argue with that dazzling logic.

 

[Paulhoff]

Can't argue with that dazzling logic.

You have made up your mind, so I should waste my time.

Paul

 

[JoelKatz]

And what is you answer to where these morals should come from?

The same place all other observations and judgments come from.

 

[Dragoonster]

Fetish for Buddhism, that is funny.

Yes, it is. Funny and true.

Please tell me where you morals come from?

From my brain and experiences. They trump any science, religion, and any other attempt to tell me my brain and experiences are somehow (objectively) faulty.

And of course we all know that Science is all inflexible and never ever changes when new information is learned, unlike the above religions.

Paul

Yeah...Christianity still espouses keeping slaves, killing witches, paying a neighbor 100 currency if you kill his goat, etc.

Religions do change with the times/social bent, believe it or not. Sure, they suck and are completely irrational. But Harris sucks and is completely irrational. I don't see any reason to pay attention to him over any Pope simply because his basis for idiocy is atheism/science instead of theism/God.

As for science changing, I earlier wrote about how science often changes what foods are healthy to eat. Bread, eggs, occasional wine, etc. Science also gets other things wrong, even astronomy--"we never expected this"; "we need to recalculate our variables".

If science can't actually answer moral questions once and for all, but instead is just another random, ignorant system changing every week/year, why should it be respected any more than any other "solution" that doesn't actually solve anything?

 

[Dragoonster]

You forget one thing. If morality is subjective and science doesn't have anything to say about it, that doesn't mean that religion does.

So? Maybe NOTHING has anything objective to say about morality. Maybe morality is purely subjective.

Science is the only system we have for figuring things out. Religions still haven't figured out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Religion has nothing to say about morality, and more often than not, makes the poorest moral guide.

How many angels dancing on a pin is a moral question? Religion has figured out many ways to describe and formalize morality.

"Religions still haven't figured out how murders is immoral". Actually, most religions have.

Another supposedly subjective area that science shouldn't be able to say anything about is art and yet . . . science has told us a lot about art and why people like certain works over others. (Salvador Dali's Last Supper comes to mind.)

You're bringing aesthetics into this?

I'll just mention that psychology and sociology have also "told us a lot" about art and why people like certain works over others. Does this mean psychology is an objective science?

The idea that science has nothing to say about morality is a myth that will soon be debunked. It doesn't matter that believers want to protect their precious gods and beliefs . . . science marches on without them just like it has in so many other areas.

Of course science has something to say about morality. Many disciplines do. This isn't disputed, as has been noted time and time again in this thread. What's disputed is that "science can answer moral questions". Not "have something to say about moral questions". "Answer moral questions". There actually is a difference between these claims.

 

[JoelKatz]

You forget one thing. If morality is subjective and science doesn't have anything to say about it, that doesn't mean that religion does.

So? Maybe NOTHING has anything objective to say about morality. Maybe morality is purely subjective.

Actually, science can tell us everything there is to know about things that are subjective. For example, ice cream preferences are purely subjective. Tell me anything useful about ice cream preferences that science cannot (in principle, we may not have figured it out yet) tell us.

Science can figure out what happens when different people taste ice cream. They can assess ice cream preferences in the population. They may find correlations between ice cream preferences and mental states. They may be able to measure how much pleasure different people experience when they try different ice creams and tell us why some people like vanilla more than chocolate. They may be able to scan my brain and craft the ultimate ice cream flavor for me or tell me why and how much I will and won't like all flavors.

There is nothing useful about something subjective that science cannot (at least in principle, we may not know yet) tell us. I think you'll find that anything that would actually be useful would necessarily be amenable to scientific study for precisely the same reason it would be useful. If it has effects, we can study them scientifically. If it has no effects, what difference does it make?

Also, Dragoonster, subjective things are a type of objective thing. "Subjective" and "objective" are not opposites. Everything subjective is also objective, but not everything objective is subjective. For example, the size of a mountain is purely objective. But how big a mountain looks to a particular person from a particular point of view is subjective. Nevertheless, it is also objectively determined by the person's location, the nature of human vision, their distance from the mountain, and so on.

Subjective properties are completely amenable to objective analysis and understanding. We can understand the input objectively, we can understand the process objectively, we can understand the output objectively. What is left that we can't understand scientifically? There is nothing beyond the input, the processing, and the output.