Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[AlBell]

You misunderstand. This statement cannot be 'correct' any more than the statement "crowd should be black" can be 'correct'.

Linda

So we are back to 'anything goes'.

 

[Dani]

I understand that it is possible to treat these questions as a moral exercise, or even as a grammatical exercise. My point is that these forms of mental masturbation are irrelevant when it comes to answering useful questions. What you are calling "moral questions" happen to also be useful questions. You are stating that moral questions are answered by playing logical and grammatical games.

No, I'm not stating this. I was just emphasizing the difference between statements about moral values and statements about truth.

I am stating that useful questions can be answered using scientific methods.

What type of useful questions? Questions about whether women should be forced to wear burkas? Without any previously established goal? No. Show me please how it can be done.

I am not questioning whether, by the rules of your game, moral statements follow a set of rules. I am questioning why anyone would insist on finding answers by playing games instead of using a methodology which provides useful answers. The distinction between prescriptive and descriptive statements only matters if we are playing your game. But if we are not, the distinction is meaningless.

I haven't established any rules, I was just applying common sense and in the process I made a mistake. I was emphasizing the difference between information expressing moral values and information expressing knowledge by showing that the first one is subjective, while the second one can be objective through science. This is a real distinction, not just a game.

Okay. That clarifies for me that your distinction between prescriptive and descriptive statements is meaningless with respect to answering useful questions. Methodologic naturalism does not treat information which comes from a subject as different from that which comes from an object.

Of course not. However, my exercise wasn't meaningless.

Do you understand that the information given by a subject is, by definition, subjective? And that we make it objective by applying a common set of rules when observing any given information and making a description?

Do you understand that, without previously establishing a goal, a subject can say that women shouldn't wear burkas but science can't? Do you understand that all science can say is that said subject believes that women shouldn't wear burkas? Science also can give us statistical information about as many subjects as we want.

Okay, so you are confirming that this is simply a matter of wordplay which has relevance when playing logic games, but is of no relevance to real world investigations.

Logic games? Logic isn't a game. It's a basic scientific rule.

I don't think the statement is nonsensical. I think it is nonsensical to pretend that we would have any interest in the statement if it didn't happen to describe reality (i.e. the reality that humans have an interest in coercion and autonomy, as opposed to bees' lack of interest in coercion and autonomy).

So the question "should women be forced to wear burkas" alone is not of scientific interest? I agree.

 

[fls]

You misunderstand. This statement cannot be 'correct' any more than the statement "crowd should be black" can be 'correct'.

Linda

Oops, that should be "crows should be black".

Linda

 

[Beth]

Oops, that should be "crows should be black".

Linda

I'm not following you at all here. Earlier you said

What you are calling "moral questions" happen to also be useful questions. You are stating that moral questions are answered by playing logical and grammatical games. I am stating that useful questions can be answered using scientific methods.

Is the question regarding the truth value of the statement "women shouldn't be forced to wear burqas" a useful one?

If it is, how would you use science to answer that question?

If it is not, could you give an example of what you consider a useful question?

 

[AlBell]

Maybe, "How many eggs a day in your diet constitutes a (Harris & fls) moral good?"

 

[fls]

No, I'm not stating this. I was just emphasizing the difference between statements about moral values and statements about truth.

I'm sorry, but I still don't see a difference. It's as though you are insisting that the observation that crows are black must be changed to a statement about what colour they should be, in order to state that claims about crow colour ultimately cannot be based in fact.

What type of useful questions? Questions about whether women should be forced to wear burkas?

Yes.

Without any previously established goal? No. Show me please how it can be done.

What do you mean, without any previously established goal? Why would it occur to anyone that women should be forced to wear burquas in the first place? Doesn't that suggest to you that there is a goal associated with the idea? These aren't random ideas. They arise within a context. Give me an example of a moral statement which arises devoid of any context and then I will understand what you mean by "without any previously established goal".

I haven't established any rules, I was just applying common sense and in the process I made a mistake. I was emphasizing the difference between information expressing moral values and information expressing knowledge by showing that the first one is subjective, while the second one can be objective through science. This is a real distinction, not just a game.

But like I said, science does not treat subjective and objective information differently. That is, regardless of whether you wish to apply these rules about what is subjective and what is objective, it does not prevent science from investigating both of them.

Of course not. However, my exercise wasn't meaningless.

Do you understand that the information given by a subject is, by definition, subjective?

Yes.

And that we make it objective by applying a common set of rules when observing any given information and making a description?

So what?

Do you understand that, without previously establishing a goal, a subject can say that women shouldn't wear burkas but science can't? Do you understand that all science can say is that said subject believes that women shouldn't wear burkas? Science also can give us statistical information about as many subjects as we want.

Way back I gave some examples of how science uses descriptive information to investigate morals which goes beyond merely describing what subjects believe. I can add the links.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6455035#post6455035
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6458506#post6458506

Logic games? Logic isn't a game. It's a basic scientific rule

Not really. Science makes use of logic where appropriate, but science is mostly about collecting empirical information, rather than attempting to derive facts from first principles.

So the question "should women be forced to wear burkas" alone is not of scientific interest? I agree.

It's not of anybody's interest unless woman are actually forced to wear burquas and if coercion is distasteful.

Linda

 

[Beth]

I could support that actually. If the moral axioms are clearly stated, even if I don't agree with them entirely, I can agree that science can help us determine if the statement is true given those axioms.

But I get the impression that Harris and Linda are of the opinion that no moral axioms need to be stated as a starting point. That they can all be scientifically determined from his base assumption that morality is about the well-being of conscious creatures.

Re what I bolded, look at that statement and think about it. What possible meaning in reality can it have?

I'm sorry, but I don't know what you are trying to get at here.

Consider the statement "women shouldn't be forced to wear burqas". Even accepting that base assumption, how can we determine if that is true or false?

I'd call the statement a truly lousy example to start with. My first thought is, sounds good ... now what can we force women to do?

At this stage of meandering trash this thread has become, does anyone know if Harris actually made that statement?

One of the videos I saw, I think the TED talk but I don't recall for sure, he talked about that particular example.

 

[Dragoonster]

I'm sorry, but I still don't see a difference. It's as though you are insisting that the observation that crows are black must be changed to a statement about what colour they should be, in order to state that claims about crow colour ultimately cannot be based in fact.

A woman wears a burka
A crow is black

Women should not wear burkas (because...)
Crows should not be black (because...)

If science can solve the "because..." of the burka question, surely it can solve the "because..." of the crow color question. I'd think every fact in the Universe would have to be subject to a scientifically objective moral evaluation.

 

[Beth]

Thanks for the links Linda. It was helpful to reread those posts.

Why? It appears to be what we have been talking about - finding grounds to say that women ought not be forcibly coerced into wearing burqas.

Sure. But we're not suggesting a utilitarian approach.

Exactly. These examples demonstrate that we care about something other than utility (hence the reason utilitarianism is not in play) if two scenarios which are the same in terms of utility lead to different choices. It means that we have a way to distinguish between choices based on right actions vs. right outcomes without appealing to long-dead authority figures.

I think utilitarianism is in play. Also what Keven called Deontologists seems to be in play too. Mathematically speaking, are you talking about finding a weighting of the different choices based on what we humans naturally tend toward choosing.

If we look at self-interest, there appears to be a difference between a terrorist who blows himself up in a crowded mall and my husband taking me to a nice restaurant for dinner, but if we break it down we might show that they are the same in that they are both hoping for sex (from the promised 72 virgins for the terrorist). And we can recognize that this is something they can be wrong about and whether they are wrong is discoverable.

This is where we part company. We cannot discover whether they are wrong. There's no empirical evidence for any belief regarding life after death. We can hold the opinion that the probability they are correct is vanishingly small, but we cannot objectively and conclusively establish they are wrong scientifically.

Getting back to the horrible society, what we would try to understand is why/how they are the same as as those societies which are not horrible, and then discover whether the apparent horribleness is because they are wrong with respect to their choices. And what is meant by that, is that they would make a different choice if they had the information that they were wrong. If it were known that the terrorist altered his choice to blow himself up based on the promise of 72 virgins (per the kind of scenario investigation i mentioned earlier), then if he received overwhelming information from sources he considered credible and trustworthy that this was wrong, then he ought not blow himself up. If those in a horrible society are, like us, trying to ensure some degree of security, and it is those things which they think provide security which also make it horrible , then knowledge that they are wrong about their security provides grounds for saying that it ought not be horrible.

So knowledge that the current invasive airport scanning techniques recently put in place in the U.S. are ineffective provides us with grounds to scientifically establish that our government should not do that? You know, you might be able to talk me into your POV. I think that makes sense.

Note that this is different from saying that science can inform moral claims. In that case, that source of the credible and trustworthy information would be science. Instead, this is what science has to say about the moral claims.

I'm not following your distinction here. Could you clarify please?

 

[Dani]

I'm sorry, but I still don't see a difference. It's as though you are insisting that the observation that crows are black must be changed to a statement about what colour they should be, in order to state that claims about crow colour ultimately cannot be based in fact.

Well, it's as though you are making a strawman argument then. If I said that crows should be black, my own subjective statement would be interchangeable with the objective "Dani says that crows should be black". That's all.

What do you mean, without any previously established goal? Why would it occur to anyone that women should be forced to wear burquas in the first place? Doesn't that suggest to you that there is a goal associated with the idea? These aren't random ideas. They arise within a context. Give me an example of a moral statement which arises devoid of any context and then I will understand what you mean by "without any previously established goal".

Don't worry. Since we both agree that science can't give an answer to this question without a previously established goal, we can skip this part. Give me an example of a scientifically established goal.

But like I said, science does not treat subjective and objective information differently. That is, regardless of whether you wish to apply these rules about what is subjective and what is objective, it does not prevent science from investigating both of them.

Agreed. I haven't said anything that implied the contrary.

Way back I gave some examples of how science uses descriptive information to investigate morals which goes beyond merely describing what subjects believe. I can add the links.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6455035#post6455035
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6458506#post6458506

As far I understand, you describe different outcomes related to different actions, and people are logically inconsistent many times with their choices. I have nothing to add if that's all. If I missed something important, feel free to point it out.

Not really. Science makes use of logic where appropriate, but science is mostly about collecting empirical information, rather than attempting to derive facts from first principles.

Well, you made a derogatory comment about logic: "logic games". We can be logically right or wrong, but logic isn't a game with which one can wind up other people. It's a very serious and consistent method.

You have a narrow view of science. Collecting empirical information without logic is like collecting stamps. Any time scientists decide to collect empirical information, logic is appropriate. Collecting empirical information, with inductive logic, leads to a hypothesis. When a hypothesis is tested, if it doesn't pass the test, scientists logically deduce that it's invalid. Logic is very present in the scientific method.

It's not of anybody's interest unless woman are actually forced to wear burquas and if coercion is distasteful.

And who decides if coercion is distasteful? Who decides if coercion to women is distasteful? Who decides if, even being distasteful, it's bad? And based on what?

 

[Democracy Simulator]

Sorry for the delay fls; i have been offline for a couple of weeks.

I am happy to be wrong about this. The problem is that it doesn't help me. If Hume means that there is no logical or emprical basis to move from as is to an ought, he is excluding science's ability to do so from the picture. I'm looking for some sort of justification for this.

View the question from the other way around. Hume points out that so far, no-one has been able to move from is to ought using only is statements. This in itself is merely an observation and Hume would grant that the problem of induction would pertain to this observation - perhaps there is a way to move from is to ought statements, only no-one has cracked it yet. Yet it's like the observation that no human has so far been able to fly by merely flapping their arms. Would I need to justify this claim?

After all, you stated earlier that it is reasonable to say "if we want to improve well-being...". The point is that what "we want" is a factual description of the mental states of conscious beings. It is possible to state whether or not we want to improve well-being to fill in our "if...then..." If Hume claims that this is insufficient, that a description of what we want is not sufficient to indicate what we want, then I need to understand why we are expected to divorce ourselves from science on this point.

If we have Goal A, then Action B may be reasonable. This is not the point of contention. If we agree on our goals and values, science can help us to fulfill them.

Hume's contention was that we do not seem to be able to use logic and empiricism to justify our values in the first place. You use the term, 'what we want' and point out that this is grounded in 'factual descriptions of conscious beings', but this does not avail as those descriptions are not universal. Imagine a world where everyone has identical beliefs about what ought to be done. In this world it would be possible to derive values from facts in the direct way you suggest. Yet it would also be a world devoid of moral discussion.

If I am wrong about this and Hume intends to incorporate science's purview with respect to useful questions, then this provides a logical and empirical basis for moving from an is to an ought. Either the claim is unsupported by reasoning, or it is unremarkable. Neither option seems worthy of 25 pages of discussion here, let alone several hundred years of discourse. This leads me to suppose that I am misunderstanding some aspect of this.

Let's move from calling it Hume's claim, to calling it Hume's observation. Perhaps that helps you? Hume observes that no-one has logically or empirically justified an ought statement on the basis of is statements alone. As an observation, it stands as good science and I'm not sure why you believe it requires further justification?

So that leaves us with an 'unremarkable' observation. You may consider that the observation itself is unremarkable, but when someone like Sam Harris kinda sounds very much like they are claiming that the observation does not hold, that you can move from is to ought using science, wouldn't you grant that this is remarkable and worth at least 25 pages of a subforum in a relatively obscure internet forum? If I claimed that I can fly when I flap my arms that would be remarkable, no?

And since some people here, such as yourself, are adamant that they understand the claim and that it is valid, I am looking to you to provide that justification. What I seem to have so far is something like, "human wants vary which precludes the formation of an objective or absolute sort of statement as to "we want...", and the lack of that objective/absolute statement is what precludes comparison and ultimately judgement."

I don't need to justify Hume's observation about is/ought (which can really be simply stated that, no-one has successfully moved from is statements to ought statements, purely on the basis of is statements), I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary. If you have, then please show us.

 

[Cavemonster]

fls,
While I can't show that it is impossible to derive an ought purely from empirical or logical means (without beginning with an ought) I believe I can at least show that there are significant hurdles barring the way which have not yet been scaled.

With the concept of ought, we're talking about behavior and its effects. Right away it becomes clear that the effects of any given behavior to be investigated come in multiple flavors and touch on multiple subjects, both human and other.

There are physical benefits and psychological benefits, and many shades of each. Say a certain action took a week off my lifespan, but made me 5% happier emotionally for 6 months? Is that a good outcome, or a bad one? Let's say a certain action I took makes a child 5% happier for 6 months and takes a week off the lifespan of a stranger halfway around the world. What is the objective measure of that trade off?

I'll give you a real world example. PSA screening. There is some debate as to the best age to begin screening. Some experts say the current recommendation results in too large a rate of false positives which call for unneeded surgery and other treatments which can themselves risk death, impotence and extreme stress, all resulting in dramatically lowered quality of life. But for a few it makes the difference between life and death. How do we objectively balance the risk to those with false positives, with the risk to those who need to catch it early? Especially given that unneeded medical expense makes the system more expensive and contributes to people being unable to get health care?

As far as I'm aware, there is no objective way to balance one persons emotional pain with another's physical pain and yet another's lifespan. How much physical pain is equal to the grief of losing a child? How many years off your life is worth feeling physically great every day?

And all that is just among humans. Is a dog's pain worth anything? Why? What if an action caused 10 dogs to die horrible suffering deaths, but gave a man another year to spend with his family?

In order to come to empirical conclusions, we must have consistent measures, and morality deals in incompatible units.

 

[Dani]

View the question from the other way around. Hume points out that so far, no-one has been able to move from is to ought using only is statements. This in itself is merely an observation and Hume would grant that the problem of induction would pertain to this observation - perhaps there is a way to move from is to ought statements, only no-one has cracked it yet. Yet it's like the observation that no human has so far been able to fly by merely flapping their arms. Would I need to justify this claim?

I tried to clarify the difference between ought and is in my debate with Linda by talking about descriptive and prescriptive information instead of is and ought statements. It looks like I failed to communicate what I meant.

There are language subtleties that can be confusing. The example given by Linda "John values the life of his friend" is a descriptive statement, but if you look closely, it also provides some prescriptive information about the life of John's friend. By "values the life of his friend" we tacitly understand that it is desirable that his friend stays alive, or that his friend ought to keep living. I honestly think I'm not twisting what is meant by "John values the life of his friend". Independently of how we construct the statement, the relationship between John and the life of his friend is placed by a moral value that I call a piece of prescriptive information and you would call an ought. The sentence "John values the life of his friend" is a descriptive statement, but at the same time it's describing an ought or, as I call it, a piece of prescriptive information. And the subject that is providing this prescriptive information is John.

As Linda pointed out, we don't treat subjective and objective information differently when we're compiling data. But only subjective information can be prescriptive (only subjects have moral values) so only through universally agreed moral values we would reach some sort of objective morality that at the same time would be a human universal morality.

I like your point of view that this is just a falsifiable observation. I think the debate can be restricted to the realms of logic. Whatever a scientist like Harris has to say about this can be scrutinized using logic. With clear definitions of morals and science we can reach a conclusion about whether science can answer moral questions without a previously answered moral question.

About Harris, my objection is that he is not only begging the question with his definition of morals, he is directly making a fallacy of definition. His "facts about the well-being of conscious creatures" is an obvious over-broad definition, as some have pointed out in their arguments in this thread. Cavemonster's post emphasizes the problem of Harris' poor definition.

 

[bokonon]

Wow, 23 pages (I'm on the 50-post-per-page plan; I imagine for many of you, it's even more).

I've been ignoring this thread because I haven't read the book, but I've bobbed to the top of the "reserve" list and the library will be providing it to me this week.

How many people contributing to the last 20 or so pages have read it? I don't want to read the whole thread, but reading the comments from those who have already read the book should give me a good framework when I start to read it myself.

 

[Dragoonster]

Wow, 23 pages (I'm on the 50-post-per-page plan; I imagine for many of you, it's even more).

I've been ignoring this thread because I haven't read the book, but I've bobbed to the top of the "reserve" list and the library will be providing it to me this week.

How many people contributing to the last 20 or so pages have read it? I don't want to read the whole thread, but reading the comments from those who have already read the book should give me a good framework when I start to read it myself.

I saw his TED intro, and from subsequent reviews quoting/discussing the book it seems he doesn't solve the obvious (to anyone with a clue) problems in that talk. As I said way earlier I'm not going to buy a book from someone who seems to have no clue what he's talking about, in the field of the discussion. Most every "pro-Harris" response in this thread seems to confirm this--that Harris himself is clueless, and it seems up to others to attempt defend his juvenile and ignorant claims.

But sure, read the book. And answer--how has Harris revolutionized moral philosophy? How has Harris dealt with the is/ought problem? Perhaps as others in the thread, you'll be more convincing than Harris himself.

 

[bokonon]

How has Harris dealt with the is/ought problem?

Okay, I understand that you haven't read the book, and that's fine. I haven't read it yet myself, but I do have it in hand.

From what I can see, Harris derives his "ought" axiomatically: morality and values relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

I am happy to begin there without questioning why we ought to concern ourselves with the well-being of conscious creatures, just as I am happy to begin any scientific investigation with the stipulation that we ought to concern ourselves with facts.

I have read the last few pages of this thread, and it seems that at least one person began to read The Moral Landscape.

 

[Dragoonster]

Okay, I understand that you haven't read the book, and that's fine. I haven't read it yet myself, but I do have it in hand.

From what I can see, Harris derives his "ought" axiomatically: morality and values relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

I am happy to begin there without questioning why we ought to concern ourselves with the well-being of conscious creatures, just as I am happy to begin any scientific investigation with the stipulation that we ought to concern ourselves with facts.

I have read the last few pages of this thread, and it seems that at least one person began to read The Moral Landscape.

Oh. Okay.

If you don't mind, I'll just start with that what we should concern ourselves with is the wearing of burkas, axiomatically, and thus my position is immune to criticism. Don all females with burkas, natch.

Or better, I axiomatically declare that morality's basis is in only my own well-being, and so am off to rape and steal from others, with full moral justification. Sure hope science can tell me how best to achieve this.

p.s. morality is not a scientific investigation

 

[bokonon]

If you don't mind, I'll just start with that what we should concern ourselves with is the wearing of burkas, axiomatically, and thus my position is immune to criticism. Don all females with burkas, natch.

I don't mind. Maybe you'll be able to develop a consistent morality on that axiomatic beginning, the philosophical equivalent of non-Euclidean geometry. It doesn't strike me as initially very promising or useful, but I wouldn't have held out much hope for "parallel lines DO meet" either, so good luck with it.

Or better, I axiomatically declare that morality's basis is in only my own well-being, and so am off to rape and steal from others, with full moral justification. Sure hope science can tell me how best to achieve this.

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.

Again, we should observe the double standard in place regarding the significance of consensus: those who do not share our scientific goals have no influence on scientific discourse whatsoever; but, for some reason, people who do not share our moral goals render us incapable of even speaking about moral truth. It is, perhaps, worth remembering that there are trained "scientists" who are Biblical Creationists, and their "scientific" thinking is purposed toward interpreting the data of science to fit the Book of Genesis. Such people claim to be doing "science," of course, but real scientists are free, and indeed obligated, to point out that they are misusing the term. Similarly, there are people who claim to be highly concerned about "morality" and "human values," but when we see that their beliefs cause tremendous misery, nothing need prevent us from saying that they are misusing the term "morality" or that their values are distorted. How have we convinced ourselves that, on the most important questions in human life, all views must count equally?

It seems to me that Harris' axiomatic beginning is consistent with what I regard as "morality," while "mandate burqas" and "rape, steal, murder" are not, so I'm willing to ride along and see where that bus goes.

You're equally free to begin your scientific inquiries with "consistent with scripture" rather than "consistent with facts," but I probably won't be endorsing that axiomatic beginning either.

 

[Dragoonster]

I don't mind. Maybe you'll be able to develop a consistent morality on that axiomatic beginning, the philosophical equivalent of non-Euclidean geometry. It doesn't strike me as initially very promising or useful, but I wouldn't have held out much hope for "parallel lines DO meet" either, so good luck with it.

I can't develop a consistent morality as objective, because such a thing doesn't exist. I don't fool myself, like the theist, or the Harris, into believing such a thing is able to be approached factually.

Useful? There are plenty of useful moralities. One is religion, believe it, accept it or not. One is utilitarianism, as Harris favors. Neither are couched in any sort of objectivity. Why am I burdened with developing a consistent morality? Might as well burden me with developing a consistent love. A consistent anger.

It seems to me that Harris' axiomatic beginning is consistent with what I regard as "morality," while "mandate burqas" and "rape, steal, murder" are not, so I'm willing to ride along and see where that bus goes.

You're equally free to begin your scientific inquiries with "consistent with scripture" rather than "consistent with facts," but I probably won't be endorsing that axiomatic beginning either.

I'm not foolish enough to attempt to describe individual/social morality as a scientific formula.

If I were though, I wouldn't choose utilitarianism, so would object to Harris even on the "let's choose a morality first, then try to justify it by science/religion/whatever" basis.

Hey, if you or Harris wants to pick up utilitarianism or well-being as the axiom and run with it, fine. Just admit you're choosing an arbitrary basis for your "scientific" morality.

 

[bokonon]

Hey, if you or Harris wants to pick up utilitarianism or well-being as the axiom and run with it, fine. Just admit you're choosing an arbitrary basis for your "scientific" morality.

It's as arbitrary as the choice of logic and empirical evidence as the basis for our "scientific" science. You can't make an objective case that empirical evidence is a better value than scriptural conformity, or that we "ought" to prefer logic to iambic pentameter in scientific papers. I can't make an objective case that we ought to value the well-being of conscious creatures. Fine.

"The well-being of conscious creatures" is completely consistent with my own intuitive understanding of morality, so if labeling it arbitrary is necessary for moving the discussion forward, I'm happy to do it.