Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[Paulhoff]

Everyone should do the same. Anarchy sounds like fun.

So, now you jump to anarchy, that is nice, have fun.

I didn't know I could change laws.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

So, now you jump to anarchy, that is nice, have fun.

I've noted before that atheists should believe that if it isn't unLawful it's got to be ok.

Of course Laws are promises, not moral guidelines.

I didn't know I could change laws.

I doubt that you can either. What to do! What to do?

 

[Paulhoff]

I've noted before that atheists should believe that if it isn't unLawful it's got to be ok.

Really, and all those that believe in some so-called god are not in jail, oh my.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

Of course Laws are promises, not moral guidelines.

Promises............. geezz, promises that can jail you, again, oh my.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

Bless your heart, you appear to miss the point quicker and more often than most people.

 

[Paulhoff]

Bless your heart, you appear to miss the point quicker and more often than most people.

Don't underestimate yourself.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

I'm glad you appear to have some idea what I said that time. Always nice to see a first.

 

[Paulhoff]

I'm glad you appear to have some idea what I said that time. Always nice to see a first.

Appear............, you are funny, I haven't had any problem understanding anything on the forum.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

Then I await you and Harris to soon announce The New and Scientific Morality.

 

[Paulhoff]

Here is a moral for you that has changed for many people, Slavery, it was and still is to some people moral to have slaves, and the bible said how one should treat their slaves and it says nothing against slavery.

Anarchy, don’t you just love it.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

Thanks for the continuing demonstration of missing the thread topic; Can science answer moral questions.

As to why you seem hung-up on imaginary sky daddies I haven't a clue.

Regarding slavery, as I understand it bible-thumpers were at the forefront of calling it morally wrong as the scientists of the day were doing their best to demonstrate caucasian superiority.

 

[Paulhoff]

Regarding slavery, as I understand it bible-thumpers were at the forefront of calling it morally wrong as the scientists of the day were doing their best to demonstrate caucasian superiority.

Sure the bible was used against it, but even Jesus said nothing against it. So anything they said had nothing in the bible to back up that idea. And it seems you haven't heard people in person still quoting the bible like I have for slavery.

Also anything can and will be by some, misused. But the bible is unchanging to new information, science has and will change to it, only some people slow down that change.

Paul

 

[AlBell]

Again, what is your apparent concern with bible fantasies, and imaginary sky-daddies, in this thread?

As to slowing a change, what change, within this discussion of science to provide moral principles?

Religion and Philosophy is thataway >>>.

 

[Paulhoff]

Again, what is your apparent concern with bible fantasies, and imaginary sky-daddies, in this thread?

As to slowing a change, what change, within this discussion of science to provide moral principles?

Religion and Philosophy is thataway >>>.

I guess you don't live in the States.

Paul

 

[Dani]

Really? Who? And does it matter, since what I'm asking is about moral statements derived from facts about human values?

Who? Don't make me go back and find all the people who argued about this. Let's say that your interpretation of some of what has been said in this thread seems to be different from mine.

I don't understand what you mean by moral statements derived from facts about human values. Can you give an example of what you're trying to communicate?

But we are completely uninterested in the truth of statement 1, anyway. When we are talking about moral statements, even thought we might say something that appears to be prescriptive, it is really a type of statement 2.

No. I'll give an example from reality now:

"Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a prescriptive statement.

It is a statement with a subject and which is meant to correspond to reality.

In the statement "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", the subject is women and the predicate isn't meant to correspond to reality. It is a prescriptive statement.

We have no need to work backwards to form a statement 1.

When a person says "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", there's no moving backwards. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a statement on its own. People make these type of statements. It is a way of communicating a certain type of information that is not descriptive.

You and others keep saying that moral statements are prescriptive, but they are not.

That's an odd thing to say. Yes, they are, by their own definition. Show me an example of a moral statement that is not prescriptive so I can figure out what you're talking about.

There is no need to consider whether "Y ought to Z", nobody would say that "Y ought to Z", except in the context of a statement 2.

No. People say things like "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" or "Capital punishment should be banned". These are prescriptive statements.

Now I agree that religion offers up prescriptive, non-rational moral statements, which are a form of statement 1, from which people attempt to service moral statements.

Not only religion. Any person can offer non-rational moral statements. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", religion-inspired or not, is a moral statement, and non-rational on its own.

But we are under no obligation to follow this route. We are under no obligation to try to come up with types of statement 1's.

So we are under no obligation to say things such as "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas"? Maybe not, but I haven't met a person who doesn't ever make prescriptive statements. It sounds extremely odd to me. Anyway, I'm not arguing about the necessity of moral statements, but about its ultimate non-rational nature.

So you are claiming that prescriptive statements are necessary? Why?

No. I didn't claim such thing, and I wonder what logic path led you to infer this. Descriptive statements such as "cows are mammals" or "Rome is the capital city of Italy" don't include any type of prescriptive statements.

Read what I said again.

I'll say it in a different way:

Prescriptive statements can't be derived from descriptive statements, while descriptive statements can be derived from prescriptive statements.

When I say can, I don't mean always, whereas when I say can't I mean never. Obviously.

It seems clear to me that they are unnecessary. Instead of starting with descriptive statements and then moving backward to prescriptive statements before moving forward, just move forward from the descriptive statements.

I'm not following you. I'm not moving backward to prescriptive statements. I'm just showing that, from a prescriptive statement, we can infer a descriptive statement by adding a new subject and a descriptive action, and that we can make as many descriptive meta-statements as we want.

Prescriptive statements happen. Statements such as "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" happen, and that's why I'm talking about them.

ETA: Tieing this in with Harris' words...it is an illusion that moral statements are prescriptive.

No. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a prescriptive statement. Show me where is the illusion.

 

[Paulhoff]

In the 60's, it was a big thing about some women not wearing a bra.

Paul

 

[Beth]

Dani,

I just want to say that I appreciate your posts. I'm pretty much in agreement with you, but more on an intuitive level than a well-reason position. You explain things in ways that help me understand why. Thanks.

I'll say it in a different way:

Prescriptive statements can't be derived from descriptive statements, while descriptive statements can be derived from prescriptive statements.

When I say can, I don't mean always, whereas when I say can't I mean never. Obviously.

Could you explain this a bit more. Because I thought that we could, in fact, derive prescriptive statements from descriptive statements, but that ultimately at bottom, there are a few axioms that we cannot.

For example, the prescriptive statement about women and Burkas can be derived from descriptive statements about what that is like. But underlying it are axioms about what people ultimately find to be 'good' and 'bad' that have no rational basis.

 

[AlBell]

Dani,

I just want to say that I appreciate your posts. I'm pretty much in agreement with you, but more on an intuitive level than a well-reason position. You explain things in ways that help me understand why. Thanks.

My thanks too.

But underlying it are axioms about what people ultimately find to be 'good' and 'bad' that have no rational basis.

That encapsules my thinking anyway. A nihilist might flip a coin to find which side of a position to take.

 

[fls]

I don't understand what you mean by moral statements derived from facts about human values. Can you give an example of what you're trying to communicate?

Humans marginally value autonomy over well-being. Humans ought to be provided with autonomy for small sacrifices in well-being. The first sentence would be a fact about human values. The second would be a statement about good and bad actions.

But we are completely uninterested in the truth of statement 1, anyway. When we are talking about moral statements, even thought we might say something that appears to be prescriptive, it is really a type of statement 2.

No. I'll give an example from reality now:

"Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a prescriptive statement.

It is a statement with a subject and which is meant to correspond to reality.

In the statement "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", the subject is women and the predicate isn't meant to correspond to reality. It is a prescriptive statement.

The subject in this case is whomever made the prescriptive statement, not the subject of that prescriptive statement.

We have no need to work backwards to form a statement 1.

When a person says "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", there's no moving backwards. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a statement on its own. People make these type of statements. It is a way of communicating a certain type of information that is not descriptive.

Exactly. "A person says..."

These are statements which are made by people. Even though you are pretending that what we are talking about is "women shouldn't be forced to wear burqas" what we are really talking about is "Dani and Harris say women shouldn't be forced to wear burqas." It isn't a matter of forming a descriptive statement from a prescriptive statement. It's that you are attempting to form prescriptive statements by talking a descriptive statement and removing the subject.

You and others keep saying that moral statements are prescriptive, but they are not.

That's an odd thing to say. Yes, they are, by their own definition. Show me an example of a moral statement that is not prescriptive so I can figure out what you're talking about.

Show me an example of a moral statement which doesn't start as a statement about human values from which you have stripped the subject.

There is no need to consider whether "Y ought to Z", nobody would say that "Y ought to Z", except in the context of a statement 2.

No. People say things like "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" or "Capital punishment should be banned". These are prescriptive statements.

Now I agree that religion offers up prescriptive, non-rational moral statements, which are a form of statement 1, from which people attempt to service moral statements.

Not only religion. Any person can offer non-rational moral statements. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas", religion-inspired or not, is a moral statement, and non-rational on its own.

But we are under no obligation to follow this route. We are under no obligation to try to come up with types of statement 1's.

So we are under no obligation to say things such as "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas"? Maybe not, but I haven't met a person who doesn't ever make prescriptive statements. It sounds extremely odd to me. Anyway, I'm not arguing about the necessity of moral statements, but about its ultimate non-rational nature.

So you are claiming that prescriptive statements are necessary? Why?

No. I didn't claim such thing, and I wonder what logic path led you to infer this. Descriptive statements such as "cows are mammals" or "Rome is the capital city of Italy" don't include any type of prescriptive statements.

Read what I said again.

I'll say it in a different way:

Prescriptive statements can't be derived from descriptive statements, while descriptive statements can be derived from prescriptive statements.

But this isn't relevant. We are not looking for a way to derive axioms or prescriptive statements from which to derive descriptive statements. We don't need axioms or prescriptive statements because descriptive statements can be derived from descriptive statements.

All along people have agreed that whether or not an action is good or bad depends upon human values. That is, the generally acceptable examples given were of the form "if I value the life of my friend, then I ought not to put poison into his drink." What we ought to do depends upon what "value" in placed into the equation. And it seems to have been generally agreed that we can describe what that value is. "John values the life of his friend." And so we can rationally derive statements about what John ought or ought not do.

Where we diverge is that you seem to be claiming that it is not sufficient to derive the statements about what John ought to do from a description of his values. It is also necessary to go backwards and figure out a way to derive this description of his values from a prescriptive statement. But this is an entirely unnecessary and arbitrary claim. Since we can describe what it is that John values, we do not have to have a way to derive what it is that John values. We can simply measure it directly.

This is what I mean when I say that you are unnecessarily going back one step. The information which is important and necessary is the description of human values. And we have that information. There is no need to gather information (i.e. prescriptions or axioms), which has been rendered unnecessary.

When I say can, I don't mean always, whereas when I say can't I mean never. Obviously.

It seems clear to me that they are unnecessary. Instead of starting with descriptive statements and then moving backward to prescriptive statements before moving forward, just move forward from the descriptive statements.

I'm not following you. I'm not moving backward to prescriptive statements. I'm just showing that, from a prescriptive statement, we can infer a descriptive statement by adding a new subject and a descriptive action, and that we can make as many descriptive meta-statements as we want.

Prescriptive statements happen. Statements such as "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" happen, and that's why I'm talking about them.

ETA: Tieing this in with Harris' words...it is an illusion that moral statements are prescriptive.

No. "Women shouldn't be forced to wear burkas" is a prescriptive statement. Show me where is the illusion.

It is an illusion that these statements you reference are prescriptive. They are really just descriptive statements from which you have stripped the subject.
Linda

 

[Dani]

Dani,

I just want to say that I appreciate your posts. I'm pretty much in agreement with you, but more on an intuitive level than a well-reason position. You explain things in ways that help me understand why. Thanks.

Thank you. I'm still figuring out how to explain my position in the process. I think there are better ways of explaining what I want to say, and that's what I'm in search of while I'm discussing the subject.

Could you explain this a bit more. Because I thought that we could, in fact, derive prescriptive statements from descriptive statements, but that ultimately at bottom, there are a few axioms that we cannot.

For example, the prescriptive statement about women and Burkas can be derived from descriptive statements about what that is like. But underlying it are axioms about what people ultimately find to be 'good' and 'bad' that have no rational basis.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean statements such as "Forcing women to wear burkas is a bad thing to do"? It still is prescriptive. It looks like a descriptive statement, but its content isn't meant to have a correspondence with reality.

But as I said, maybe I misunderstood what you meant. Can you give an example of how you think a prescriptive statement can be derived from a descriptive one?