Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[Piggy]

Let's say science shows us that the best way to promote maximum social well-being is to have the society entirely made up of women, because of physical traits making them more pacifistic, or their social interactions being better for well-being, or whatever.

Science would suggest we should isolate men to breeding camps, where we extract their semen. And we abort all male fetuses that are not needed to repopulate those camps.

Science would also say we should genetically engineer those women to be lesbians so they wouldn't lose the positive sexual well-being.

That an okay "moral answer" for you?

There's really no point going into that because, first of all, it has nothing to do with what Harris is actually saying, or what I'm actually saying, and second of all it's so outlandish as to be ridiculous.

 

[Piggy]

Tell me where I'm wrong in my analysis of Sam Harris' argument.

Sam Harris makes a certain argument, provides a key premise 'Values = Facts about the wellbeing of conscious beings' and proceeds to make a different argument due to the equivocation contained in this premise. Is that not so?

Perhaps it is so.

Would you mind explaining what the "different argument" is?

 

[Piggy]

Science can tell us a lot of things about how our decisions will affect the world. In that way, it can help us to answer moral questions. No-one is arguing this point.

What science cannot do is tell us what our values ought to be. Sam Harris asserts that it can. Remember:

1. Science should/can have an opinion about good and evil and right and wrong.

2. Science can tell us what we ought to value.

3. Science will answer the most important questions of life, what it is worth living and dying for and what constitutes a good life.

Do you not see the difference in the argument he claims he is making at the beginning and the actual argument he goes on to make? Yes he is right when he makes the later argument, but this does not make the earlier argument (what he said he was arguing for), right. This is the problem when we equivocate. It is easy to fool oneself and others that you have the answer to a question, if you actually then answer a different question.

Let me start by saying that I don't agree with everything Harris says in his talk.

But let's take these points one at a time.

1. Science should/can have an opinion about good and evil and right and wrong.

I find it impossible to argue against that, as it's stated.

"Good and evil", "right and wrong" are products of the human brain. Science is our best bet for understanding them. Surely, science has a better shot at it than either religion or introspection.

So yes, I don't see why science should not have an opinion about these things. But on to the more nuanced, and more important, bits....

2. Science can tell us what we ought to value.

I wouldn't take this single phrase at the beginning of the lecture -- where he's simply laying out the topics he's going to address -- as the gospel.

He says "It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value." And he's very clear that he's going to argue against that position.

But that's a thumbnail.

What does he mean by "tell us"? Well, he's very explicit in the body of his talk that, first of all, science can't simply hand us the answers to tough moral questions. So obviously, by "tell us" he does not mean that we can apply the scientific method to moral problems and get a solution in the way we get solutions to problems of chemistry.

So you if you want to contend that this is his position, then obviously it's a strawman.

When he elaborates what his position actually is, it's clear that he's talking about science playing a part in coming to decisions about what we ought to value.

Now, can it do that?

Well, yes, within the terms and scope of this lecture. For instance, he compares a scientifically oriented approach to issues of women's rights to approaches based on scriptural fundamentalism and narcissistic sociopathy.

I don't actually agree with his assertions about the conclusions one must reach from a scientific perspective, but that's beside the point. The point is that there exists a scientifically oriented viewpoint on this question -- or, more acurately, viewpoints.

Is a scientifically informed viewpoint superior to a fundamentalist or sociopathic viewpoint? I say yes, it is, for the same reason that any objectively informed, reality-based view of any topic is superior to a view based on faith-centered belief in ancient scripture or based on narcissistic impulses.

But to slice and dice the lecture and claim that he's contradicting himself, rather than taking the entire lecture and coming to a conclusion about what his points really are, is unproductive, to say the least.

3. Science will answer the most important questions of life, what it is worth living and dying for and what constitutes a good life.

My response to this is pretty much the same as my response to point 2.

Imagine, for example, that we were talking about another species and trying to understand them.

Science would certainly be our best means of figuring out what that species considers to be worth living and dying for and what constitutes a good life.

We can, and should, use the tools of science to better understand those same impulses in ourselves.

For example, when we see religious fundamentalists committing murder-suicides because they believe it will get them into heaven, or because they believe we are in the End Times and they need to battle the Antichrist or some such, does science have nothing to say about whether this is a correct position to take?

Of course not. Because using science, we can determine that those beliefs are delusional, or at the very least misinformed, and that these folks are giving their lives and taking other lives in the service of a phantasm, which they would not do if they had a better grasp on reality.

Science does has something to say about what's worth living and dying for, simply because it has something to say about which ideas are accurate and which are not.

A scientifically informed person may have the same moral hard-wiring as any other person, but they're less likely to make mistakes when making actual choices about what to do, because their understanding of the world is clearer.

In other words, it's simply a fact that having a scientific world view does affect your views of what behaviors are beneficial and detrimental. It just does. And we should acknowledge that.

 

[Piggy]

This is called "psychological egoism" is philosophy, the idea that we don't actually make moral choices, we just do whatever we want to do.

It's unfalsifiable. Nothing anyone does can prove it wrong. If you donate your fortune to charity, or throw yourself on a grenade to save your platoon or whatever, it doesn't matter. The psychological egoist just says "That must have been what they really wanted to do".

Your narrow focus on philosophical isms is not only tiresome but unproductive.

Of course people do what they want to do, given what they believe their choices are.

But it's not that simple, of course. The role of emotion and intellect, for example, is a fascinating topic.

In any case, if you adhere to a philosophy which states that people actually do things other than what they want to do, given their perception of their choices, it's a rather bizarre philosophy on its face. And one which, as far as I know, has no objective backing to it.

 

[Piggy]

Actually you are completely wrong. He makes, very clearly, the arguments which have just been enumerated by Democracy Simulator. Harris is not just saying that you're going to have a different experience if you come from a religious perspective, or a selfish perspective, or a scientific perspective, or what have you.

He's saying that the fact/value distinction is erroneous, and that science can tell us what we ought to value.

He says that values are a particular kind of fact, and he's certainly correct about that.

If we were an alien species studying humans, we would treat questions about human values as questions of fact. There's no reason we should do otherwise simply because we are attempting to study ourselves.

And you're right that he's not just saying that you're "going to have a different experience" if you're coming from a scientific perspective. He's very clearly saying that your moral judgments are going to be not merely different but superior, because they will be more accurate.

He's saying that science not only can but does have something to say about moral questions. Present tense. And no one should pretend that it doesn't.

 

[Piggy]

If you assert the truth of psychological egoism then all talk of morality is meaningless. So if we replace "morality" with "(meaningless) opinions about morality", then your statement is correct in your own terms. There would only be "scientifically informed meaningless opinions about morality", "religiously informed meaningless opinions about morality" and so on.

However this position of yours is nothing like Harris' position. It's also unfalsifiable and hence uninteresting.

No, that is not correct, because if we begin by observing that individudal moral dilemmas are conflicts between contradictory emotions that are very closely balanced, and that interpersonal moral conflicts arise when there are differences in emotional responses and/or in perceptions of the world, then moral decisions are certainly very worthy of study, especially when we consider how frequent such decisions are and how important they can be.

There is nothing in my argument, or Harris's, which would lump these decisions in the category of "meaningless".

To the contrary, it is precisely because these choices are so fraught with meaning that they are so important and so interesting.

Let's take the Terri Schiavo case, which I'd hardly call "meaningless".

You had one side which was very vocal about their opinion that removing life support was murder, and morally reprehensible.

You had another side which asserted that Terri could not possibly be conscious because the areas of her brain which would be responsible for consciousness had been destroyed.

This is a clear example -- and a much neater one than Harris's burka issue -- of a case in which science does in fact have something quite important to say about a moral conflict.

If it's true that consciousness is a product of brain activity, and that Terri's brain had been rendered incapable of such activity, then this has a profound effect on what it means to remove life support.

On the other hand, if it's true that all people have souls which make us human, and that these souls are not dependent on brain activity, and that an all-mighty God has commanded us not to end human life (except in certain specified circumstances) then the moral balance tips in a very different direction.

So in the Schiavo case, science did in fact have something to say about what was good and right under the circumstances.

And that's not because science somehow ignores our moral hard-wiring.

 

[Piggy]

Democracy Simulator enumerated his central claims for you quite precisely.

Actually, DS claimed that there was a fundamental contradiction because rather than taking the lecture as a whole -- which any sensible person should do -- s/he instead separated the thumbnail statements in the introduction from the subsequent explanations.

I mean, really, listen to what the man's saying.

 

[Piggy]

You've been shown knock-down arguments that he's wrong about the big picture, unless you are defining "the big picture" be something other than what Harris is actually claiming. If you're not seeing them it's not because they have not been posted for you.

I don't know where you imagine those "knock-down arguments" are.

 

[timf1234]

I didn't watch the video, but it seems obvious that if you accept certain base moral assumptions, then science can help find the best way to make a given decision or question match those assumptions.

Science might not be able to tell you what the base moral assumptions should be, but it might even be able to tell you what assumptions you would be most comfortable with and then proceed as above.

Excellent point.
I agree.
Rationality can find common grounds among various cultural/religious morality more than by means of any other methodolgy.

 

[Dragoonster]

There's really no point going into that because, first of all, it has nothing to do with what Harris is actually saying, or what I'm actually saying, and second of all it's so outlandish as to be ridiculous.

I'm trying to figure out where reliance on science as a finder of "ought" should end. And if it should end at some point, then apparently it isn't so absolute after all. You say in another post:

"Good and evil", "right and wrong" are products of the human brain. Science is our best bet for understanding them. Surely, science has a better shot at it than either religion or introspection.

So, let's say you or Harris currently hold a moral belief or opinion formed from introspection (or any non-scientific means), belief x. You use science to determine if x truly does promote well-being, and find to your surprise it doesn't. Not only does it not, but not-x promotes it better than a neutral position on x. Are you truly going to reverse your moral position because you find science superior as a finder of good/evil and "ought"?

For Harris, his introspection or utilitarianism or empathy or whatever has brought him to believe forcing women to wear burkas is immoral, for one example. Most westerners would agree with him. But let's say a scientific/sociological/brain experiment shows that if all women wore burkas in all societies, people would eventually accept this, and it would actually promote more people's well-being or to higher levels for enough of the people to make it a net well-being gain. I'm not asking you to accept that this is a likely result, only asking you (or Harris) what your reaction would be. Would Harris accept it and alter his moral thought to believe women should wear burkas?

As someone said earlier, he already assumes that the objectively correct restriction on clothing should fall somewhere inbetween two extremes, his example scantily clad women vs. Islamic women. He's assuming that Islam hasn't actually chanced upon what science may eventually say is the correct amount of clothing.

At worst he's simply entering a moral discussion with preheld beliefs, and attempting to justify them by using science as a basis. Why science? Because he's an atheist, or feels comfortable believing science would support his views. But if it ends up not supporting his views, I doubt he'll continue calling for it to decide the "ought" rather than just the "is".

If this is a strawman, it's understandable why we'd build it. His video presentation and retort to counterarguments are unclear and sloppy. He doesn't seem to have much of an understanding of philosophy, ethics, or science, as related to each other. Not saying I do either, but I think even I can tell his propositions have logical flaws, moral flaws, and class flaws. For science to contribute to morality, at least one moral axiom must already have been decided, from non-scientific reasoning or dogma. For Harris, it's that well-being is desirable, possibly also the most important goal of any moral system. If someone else thinks individual freedom is that most important goal, then their initial beliefs will be dissimilar to his, and the "oughts" they foolishly try to derive from science will be dissimilar. Neither Harris nor that person will be more or less objectively correct than the other.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I don't know where you imagine those "knock-down arguments" are.

Then you need to start paying attention. Have you grasped what the fact/value distinction is yet? Have you grasped that no number of "is" statements can get you to an "ought" statement?

It might help if I teach you some more philosophy. I know, I know, you consider learning what other people have already said about this issue unproductive, if it means you have to learn a new word or two. Bear with me anyway.

One kind of (moral) good is an instrumental good. It is good because it helps us achieve a goal, and that goal is seen as good. Money, for example, is strictly an instrumental good. It's good because you can use it to do good things. It is of no value in and of itself. Science is also an instrumental good.

This is distinct from an intrinsic good. An intrinsic good is good just because it is good. It does not depend for its goodness on achieving anything, it is morally desirable just in and of itself.

Instrumental goods are only good because they can bring about some other, intrinsic good.

So far so good.

Science can not tell us what is intrinsically good. Not ever. It can only ever tell us what is instrumentally good.

Based on what you've said earlier you might be inclined to reply "But the intrinsic good is just whatever our brains are wired to think is good. That's all morality is, it's just us following our biological programming".

However that road leads to a moral black hole. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and every other torturer and murderer in history were following their biological programming. If that's morality it's no good to anyone.

So the usual next move is to retreat a bit and say "I didn't really mean that everything that we are wired to think is good is good. Gosh, that would be really silly. I knew that all along. Obviously what I really meant was that the following list of instinctive desires are the good desires: Blah, blah, blah and blah. The other desires are bad desires, because they clash with the good desires. If you insist on using those unproductive philosophical terms then blah, blah, blah and blah are the intrinsic goods".

That's a better position, but guess what? You just pulled a non-evidence-based moral axiom out of thin air. You decided arbitrarily that some higher standard of what is good exists than mere biological urges, and that only biological urges which fit with that higher standard of good are good.

By the same token you need to pull some non-evidence-based moral axiom out of thin air if you want to claim that we should respect other people's desires when they clash with our own. If Person A wants to rape Person B, and knows they can get away with it, why should Person A care what Person B feels about the issue? You can't appeal to mirror neurons and empathy and such, because obviously Person A's empathy to Person B does not extend to not wanting to rape them. If there is anything to say about the morality of Person A's actions it necessarily involves some kind of non-evidence-based opinion about respecting other people's desires.

Utilitarianism does this by pulling out of thin air the axiom "good actions are those which maximise good outcomes for all beings involved". It's not evidence-based or scientific. It's just an axiom. You pull it out of thin air, see what follows if you provisionally accept it as true, and if what follows is useful and coherent you decide that it's a good axiom.

Now to your other post:

He says that values are a particular kind of fact, and he's certainly correct about that.

If we were an alien species studying humans, we would treat questions about human values as questions of fact. There's no reason we should do otherwise simply because we are attempting to study ourselves.

You are stumbling here over the difference between descriptive ethics, which is just documenting what people reckon is ethical, and normative ethics, which is making claims about what really is morally right or wrong regardless of what people reckon about it.

If aliens were here to do some descriptive ethics work, sure, they would just be collecting facts about what people reckon.

However if you think that's all there is to ethics, you're right back to endorsing Hitler as being a moral guy. If you think that Hitler was not a moral guy, then you're making some kind of normative moral claim, saying that Hitler should not have done what he did even if he felt like it.

Your narrow focus on philosophical isms is not only tiresome but unproductive.

What's tiresome and unproductive is the fantastical conceit you hold that nothing anybody has ever said or thought about this issue before can possibly educate you. People just as smart or you (or, if you will entertain the possibility for a second, maybe even smarter!) have been thinking about these exact issues for thousands of years, and have been doing so with a rationalist, scientific background for nearly two hundred and fifty years.

You and Harris are not the first people to try to dress up the naturalistic fallacy as a coherent moral philosophy. Once you understand that, you might be willing to finally make some kind of effort to catch up to those of us who aren't still in the philosophical eighteenth century.

Of course people do what they want to do, given what they believe their choices are.

But it's not that simple, of course. The role of emotion and intellect, for example, is a fascinating topic.

In any case, if you adhere to a philosophy which states that people actually do things other than what they want to do, given their perception of their choices, it's a rather bizarre philosophy on its face. And one which, as far as I know, has no objective backing to it.

As I told you once already the claim that people only do what they really want to do is circular, hence unfalsifiable, and hence completely uninteresting.

When someone throws themselves on a grenade, or gives billions to charity, or stands in front of a tank, it adds nothing to the discussion to say "There was nothing moral in what they did, because they merely did what they wanted to do. The proof that they wanted to do it, is that they did it. QED. Therefore there is no morality that goes beyond doing what we want to".

The fact that you keep making this point as if it was cogent merely confirms that you would indeed benefit from making the effort to learn philosophy. This exact discussion was hashed out in the nineteenth century by philosophers like Hazlitt. It's not new, and it's not useful.

Actually, DS claimed that there was a fundamental contradiction because rather than taking the lecture as a whole -- which any sensible person should do -- s/he instead separated the thumbnail statements in the introduction from the subsequent explanations.

I mean, really, listen to what the man's saying.

It's already been explained to you that Harris' later arguments do not match up with his "thumbnail statements", and also that his "thumbnail statements" are false.

Harris starts out by stating that he is going to prove A (that the fact/value distinction is erroneous). Then he instead proves the completely boring and already-known thesis B (that given fixed values, science can help tell us how to achieve those values).

You can't defend Harris by saying "He didn't really mean that he was going to prove A, just because he said exactly that using well-defined and well-understood philosophical terms which he ought to have understood since he has a philosophy degree. Really, you need to listen to him when he proves B. B, B, B! Why can't you see that B is so obviously true? What have you got against B? Why can only I see the glorious light that is B?".

B is not news. Nobody disagrees with B. We all agree with B. There is no contest about B. You can stop flogging B, it's dead.

We're talking about A, which Harris said completely clearly and explicitly he was going to prove, and which turns out to be completely wrong.

 

[bokonon]

I see that Harris is appearing on The Daily Show later today, which I assume means his book is finally available. Maybe we can replace supposition about what we think Harris might argue with his actual arguments, and see if this discussion is worth reviving.

 

[Piggy]

Sorry I was away from the forum for so long. I've been back for a little while, but this thread was dormant until now.

I think my points about the "ought" are better expressed in my discussion of Pinker's biological take on morality in this thread, btw.

The "ought" comes from the fact that we share a common biology, and as a species we share some common traits, including suffering by severe confinement, physical pain, mental torment, severe restriction of liberty, sexual violation, knowing our loved ones are suffering, and so forth.

And while there are always anomalies, that's the basis for the "ought", and science helps us determine that.

 

[quarky]

excuse me please; I haven't read this thread at all. Nor have I played many video games.
Yet, the few I played seemed to be loaded with something akin to morality:

Don't go after that cheap score! Its a trap!

 

[Paulhoff]

Well, seeing that scientists are human, or so it has been rumored, I think they just may be able to know what questions are needed to be asked about morals.

Paul

 

[INRM]

Bokonon,

Yeah, I saw him on Jon Stewart's show too

 

[Soapy Sam]

The primary flaw is that it gives the wrong answer sometimes.

For example, committing gang rape gives you and your mates more pleasure than it deprives the woman of. If you can figure out a way to reduce your risk of being caught to an acceptable level -- perhaps by murdering her afterwards -- then utilitarianism would say "go for it."

That's begging the question. You say it's the wrong answer , then point out that fom one POV it isn't.
Any moral relativist stance eventually hits this problem, just as any objectivist stance ends in a mass of arbitrary dogma.

There are inconsistencies either way.
Is it moral to a-bomb a city? It is if you can get away with it.
Perhaps the only consistent system would be a hierarchical one? Washing your doorstep is a moral act at street level because it keeps the neighbours happy, but immoral at a global level because the dirty water goes down the drain and pollutes the planet? (Silly examples, but a lot of morality seems silly because we lack the appropriate social context- I can't imagine why cutting a clitoris off could be moral, but some apparently can).

 

[bokonon]

The primary flaw is that it gives the wrong answer sometimes.

For example, committing gang rape gives you and your mates more pleasure than it deprives the woman of. If you can figure out a way to reduce your risk of being caught to an acceptable level -- perhaps by murdering her afterwards -- then utilitarianism would say "go for it."

I don't think even as stated that this is true. The pleasure "you and your mates" get is fleeting; the pleasure the woman is deprived of may span years.

However, a more nearly complete picture of utilitarianism doesn't merely consider pleasure gained, but pain inflicted. The pain inflicted on the woman by you and your gang-raping mates is immense, while the pain you'd experience by foregoing the attack is non-existent.

Therefore, utilitarianism would say refrain.

There probably are cases for which utilitarianism gives the wrong answer, but I don't think yours was one of them.

I haven't read Harris' book yet, but it's possible that his position differs from utilitarianism as it's being generally understood here. He speaks about societies "thriving", which seems to be something other than simple pain or pleasure. Certainly a society in which gangs of roving rapists ran rampant would be a valley rather than a peak.

 

[Paulhoff]

Is it moral to a-bomb a city? It is if you can get away with it.

A-bombing happened twice, done by the orders of a god fearing man. So what it is about these morals that science can't answer and only religion can.

Paul

 

[Piggy]

Therefore, utilitarianism would say refrain.

The problem with utilitarianism is that people don't actually think that way. For certain decisions, sure, but not most of the time, and certainly not as a rule when moral choices are involved.