Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[JoelKatz]

I don't see how we could ever use science to discern why one value judgement might be "better" than another.

You really don't think there's any objective way to compare "ice cream tastes great" to "feces tastes great"? Why are there so many more stores selling ice cream for in store consumption than stores that sell feces for in store consumption? Is that just a baffling mystery for objective inquiry?

We freely state relationship facts as inherent properties. For example, "hydrogen is flammable" uses the form of an inherent property of hydrogen. But it is a relationship fact about what can happen with both hydrogen and oxygen. Just as the word "great" turns relationships into the form of an inherent property, so do many other adjectives such as "flammable" and "nutritious". While "ice cream is great" appears to claim ice cream has the mysterious inherent property of greatness, it is really stating the relationship fact about what happens when many people consume ice cream, and every competent English speaker recognizes it as such.

The is precisely the same as how when someone says "it is raining", you understand them to be saying that they have reason to believe that it is in fact raining that justify your adopting the same belief. This is what every competent English speaker understands someone to mean when they say "it is raining". They just use fewer words because vouching or claiming is the most common thing people do to a logical proposition. So an efficient language such as English allows a person to vouch for a proposition simply by stating it.

 

[JoelKatz]

You also thought that "the sky is blue" is a value judgement.

Only to show that your use of the term 'value judgment' wasn't really meaningful and was just a term for a relationship fact like 'hydrogen is flammable'. "The sky is blue" (in the context I was talking about) was really no different from "the sky looks blue to me". This is no different from "ice cream tastes good to me".

You simply don't seem to understand what morality is.

I agree. In fact, nobody does. That's what science will contribute to morality in the future. At one time, nobody understood what color vision was. It took science to figure out what it was we were measuring.

A moral ought tells people what they should do, not out of practical considerations but because the act is "good" or "bad" in and of itself. People who say that murder is wrong generally don't mean that murder should be discouraged in civilised society as it decreases general quality of life, but because the notion does not sit well with them on a fundamental level. Their human nature is opposed to it. That makes it a moral ought.

What does it mean for an act to be "good in and of itself", as opposed to merely seeming good to someone? This is the same kind of question as what it means for the sky to be blue "in and of itself". We know what that means, thanks to a scientific understanding of color vision. But we don't have a scientific understanding of moral judgment. So we don't know what "good in and of itself" means.

It is just like the term "blue", which once just meant "looks blue to people with normal vision". It took science to explain what real "blueness" was. Before that, "blue in and of itself" just meant "having whatever property is needed for it to seem blue to people". That is our present understanding of morality -- moral acts have whatever it takes to seem right to people.

If you honestly don't think there's a difference between the two, then there is no point in talking about morality in the first place. It certainly does not follow that morality is objective. Rather it would argue in favour of moral nihilism.

There's a huge difference. Something can "look green to people" but in a sense, really not be green (because it emits both blue and yellow light that humans see as blue). I understand there is a difference between what is there in reality and the end result of a perception or judgment. It has always been science that has been able to tell us what is in the real world "in and of itself" when we sense something.

The ability to separate what is "really there in the world" from the artifacts of our perceptions and judgments of it has always been something science has given us. Just as it is science that allows me to understand that a far away mountain can "seem small" but really be big in and of itself. It is because I understand vision in a scientific way that I can, when I need to, separate what is "in and of itself" from what is "how it seems to me".

If I understood moral judgment scientifically, I could determine what it meant for something to be "good in and of itself". Either I would know what it was I was measuring when I judged something to be good or I would know that there is no such thing.

But I firmly do accept that "good" is *not* "having what it takes for humans to judge it to be good. This is the same way a scientific understanding of blueness is *not* "having what it takes for humans to judge it to be blue" but instead emitting specific frequencies of light that *typically* look blue to people, but not always.

 

[Sophronius]

Only to show that your use of the term 'value judgment' wasn't really meaningful and was just a term for a relationship fact like 'hydrogen is flammable'. "The sky is blue" (in the context I was talking about) was really no different from "the sky looks blue to me". This is no different from "ice cream tastes good to me".

Uh, no. I was talking about moral values. Saying that "murder is bad" is the same kind of statement as "hydrogen is flammable" just shows that you do not understand what either morality or value judgements are all about. Your attempts to conflate facts with values serves no purpose but to muddle the discussion.

But hey, let's be scientific about this. You say that a statement like "murder is bad" objectively describes reality in the same way that "hydrogen is flammable" does, right? Well, the statement that hydrogen is flammable can easily be tested. If "murder is bad" describes an objective property of the universe then you should be able to do the same. How will you test this to find out if it's true or not? Without making it subject to human opinion of course? In a way that lends evidence to your hypothesis as opposed to mine (the H0) that it is subjective opinion?

I agree. In fact, nobody does. That's what science will contribute to morality in the future.

Ah yes, this again. "I don't understand morality/ghosts so I can't answer your questions, but I just know that science will prove them in the future!" No you don't. Science will explain where the impulse for morality comes from. There is absolutely 0 reason to believe that science will show that morality isn't subject to opinion.

Plenty of people understand what morality is. In fact, everyone in this thread except you seems to understand it just fine.

What does it mean for an act to be "good in and of itself", as opposed to merely seeming good to someone?

See? You simply do not understand. You also do not appear willing to consider this possibility, preferring instead that as you don't understand it that the knowledge must just not be available. You keep repeating the same claims over and over again while showing absolutely no desire to learn. I suspect that this conversation will go absolutely nowhere, for exactly that reason.

But hey, I'm a stubborn guy. I don't give up easily. So here goes:

When someone says that an act is "good" or "bad" he is not making a statement of fact, but a statement of opinion that is based on a strong aspect of belief ingrained in human nature. This same aspect causes the person to "feel" that their moral claims are not just opinion, but rather fact, even though this is clearly not so. They often feel that everyone should subscribe to their moral beliefs, that they should act in ways that their moral beliefs subscribe. At the very least they feel that they themselves should act in accordance with those beliefs. It is this urge that makes moral claims different from other opinions.

If you didn't know this already, that is not the fault of science, but purely your own.

It is just like the term "blue", which once just meant "looks blue to people with normal vision". It took science to explain what real "blueness" was. Before that, "blue in and of itself" just meant "having whatever property is needed for it to seem blue to people". That is our present understanding of morality -- moral acts have whatever it takes to seem right to people.

*Snipped*

*Snipped*

*Snipped*

And you are going back to talking about colour again. You may have noticed that I have rejected this comparison several times already. You may also have noticed that I told you that I am not replying to them for exactly this reason. And yet, you are still talking about it at every possible opportunity with the same fervour of a bible-thumping Christian who just cannot seem to understand why those foolish atheists won't accept scripture as evidence. One would think they would eventually notice that it is NOT WORKING and TRY SOMETHING ELSE. But of course they don't.

 

[qayak]

I agree. In fact, nobody does. That's what science will contribute to morality in the future. At one time, nobody understood what color vision was. It took science to figure out what it was we were measuring.

I would extend this even further. Nothing had a value until someone came along and gave it an arbitrary value that, through various events and over varying periods of time, most others came to accept.

This is true of temperature measurement, time measurement, speed measurements, hardness measurements, etc.

The issue right now is that no one has arbitrarily set down a standard for measuring good. We do not have a unit of measure or a scale for the unit to sit on.

People think it is arrogant to assume that someone gets to decide. It is no more arrogant than someone setting the standards for time, length, etc. It is an arbitrary scale and no one is claiming anything different.

What Harris has proposed, which is what I have been saying for a very, very long time, is that science can give us such a standard because we are able to measure pain in individuals using neuroscience. With some sort of unit of measure and a scale for the unit to sit on, there is nothing stopping us from developing a measure of morality.

Add into this advancements in Game Theory and other fields and i think we can have a pretty accurate measure of suffering and if we accept that morality has the goal of lowering the overall suffering of an individual, or group, I think it is possible to get an accurate measure of good.

Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be accepted? Probably not by everybody immediately but that isn't unusual. Should we give it a try? Absolutely. Look at all the other advancements in science that people saud would be impossible, or that people didn't even have the imagination to dream up before they became reality. We should do it just to see if we can.

 

[JoelKatz]

Uh, no. I was talking about moral values. Saying that "murder is bad" is the same kind of statement as "hydrogen is flammable" just shows that you do not understand what either morality or value judgements are all about. Your attempts to conflate facts with values serves no purpose but to muddle the discussion.

Obviously, I completely disagree. They are the same kind of statement.

But hey, let's be scientific about this. You say that a statement like "murder is bad" objectively describes reality in the same way that "hydrogen is flammable" does, right? Well, the statement that hydrogen is flammable can easily be tested. If "murder is bad" describes an objective property of the universe then you should be able to do the same. How will you test this to find out if it's true or not? Without making it subject to human opinion of course? In a way that lends evidence to your hypothesis as opposed to mine (the H0) that it is subjective opinion?

How many times do I have to address this same argument? How would you test if hydrogen was flammable without making it subject to human opinion? Even if you could make some machine to do the test, some human would have to design and build the machine and interpret the results.

And, of course, before we understood what blueness was, how could you test my claim that a piece of wood was painted blue, other than by asking people whether it looked blue to them?

Yes, we have to ask people if it "seems bad to them", but this is *precisely* the same as what we had to do with colors before we had a scientific understanding of them.

Ah yes, this again. "I don't understand morality/ghosts so I can't answer your questions, but I just know that science will prove them in the future!" No you don't. Science will explain where the impulse for morality comes from. There is absolutely 0 reason to believe that science will show that morality isn't subject to opinion.

I never claimed science would show that morality isn't subject to opinion. People can disagree over whether something is red or orange.

Plenty of people understand what morality is. In fact, everyone in this thread except you seems to understand it just fine.

Then please, explain to me what "good in an of itself" is. We understand morality like we understood blue as "seems blue to me" once.

When someone says that an act is "good" or "bad" he is not making a statement of fact, but a statement of opinion that is based on a strong aspect of belief ingrained in human nature. This same aspect causes the person to "feel" that their moral claims are not just opinion, but rather fact, even though this is clearly not so. They often feel that everyone should subscribe to their moral beliefs, that they should act in ways that their moral beliefs subscribe. At the very least they feel that they themselves should act in accordance with those beliefs. It is this urge that makes moral claims different from other opinions.

This is the same as when someone says the sky "seems blue to them". It is not really a statement of fact because what "blue" means is based largely on aspects of how human vision works just as much on the light received.

You're simply saying "he is not making a statement of fact" because you don't know what the facts that underly the value judgment are. Just as a person who says "ice cream tastes great" may not know what facts underlie his value judgment. But there are such facts. And if there weren't, his value judgment would be of no value at all.

One would think they would eventually notice that it is NOT WORKING and TRY SOMETHING ELSE. But of course they don't.

And you might notice that your attempts to insist that moral value judgments are magical and based on no facts isn't working at all either. But ...

We disagree over the validity of my argument. Using some other argument won't fix *that* disagreement. That's actually a simpler disagreement than our larger one over morality. So giving up this wedge would be a huge step backwards in us reaching any agreement.

 

[JoelKatz]

What Harris has proposed, which is what I have been saying for a very, very long time, is that science can give us such a standard because we are able to measure pain in individuals using neuroscience. With some sort of unit of measure and a scale for the unit to sit on, there is nothing stopping us from developing a measure of morality.

The problem is, I think we're very likely to get it wrong. For one thing, one could imagine a drug that would end all pain. It seems strange to argue that people would be morally compelled to take such a drug. Pain evolved as a means to an end. It seems odd to make the means sacred rather than the end.

I don't think you can just choose a scale for morality like you can for length or temperature. The scale has to be how you report your measurement, not what you measure.

To go back to a color vision analogy, that would be akin to us saying "we can measure light, so let's just call bright light blue and dim light green, that will give us an objective way to assess color that doesn't rely on the vagaries of human subjective color assessment. Well, it won't always agree with us, since it will make the Sun technically blue, but it's objective and we're not, so it's better. The Sun is, therefore, objectively blue."

Because your scale differs so much with subjective moral judgments, my bet would be that it's measuring the wrong thing.

 

[annnnoid]

I would extend this even further. Nothing had a value until someone came along and gave it an arbitrary value that, through various events and over varying periods of time, most others came to accept.

This is true of temperature measurement, time measurement, speed measurements, hardness measurements, etc.

The issue right now is that no one has arbitrarily set down a standard for measuring good. We do not have a unit of measure or a scale for the unit to sit on.

People think it is arrogant to assume that someone gets to decide. It is no more arrogant than someone setting the standards for time, length, etc. It is an arbitrary scale and no one is claiming anything different.

What Harris has proposed, which is what I have been saying for a very, very long time, is that science can give us such a standard because we are able to measure pain in individuals using neuroscience. With some sort of unit of measure and a scale for the unit to sit on, there is nothing stopping us from developing a measure of morality.

Add into this advancements in Game Theory and other fields and i think we can have a pretty accurate measure of suffering and if we accept that morality has the goal of lowering the overall suffering of an individual, or group, I think it is possible to get an accurate measure of good.

Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be accepted? Probably not by everybody immediately but that isn't unusual. Should we give it a try? Absolutely. Look at all the other advancements in science that people saud would be impossible, or that people didn't even have the imagination to dream up before they became reality. We should do it just to see if we can.

I’m always so impressed with these skeptics who have this wildly delusional idea of how simplistic the whole ‘human’ enterprise actually is…and how science is so close to mastering the whole mundane matter.

Perhaps a bit of reality to temper the atheist ardor. On the subjects of ‘reading’ neural correlates (for the purpose of developing a neuroscience of morality or anything else)…the state of science’ understanding of human affairs (and scientists capacity to administer morality)…..the dimensions of the ‘human question’….and the essential reality of the human condition.


Professor Geraint Rees, Director… Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London:

“ Brain reading will be restricted to simple cases with a fixed number of alternatives...for all of which training date are available....because of the all but infinite number of cognitive states and necessarily limited training categories. “


Noam Chomsky:

"It should be obvious to everyone that by and large science reaches deep explanatory theories to the extent that it narrows its gaze. If a problem is too hard for physicists, they hand it over to chemists, and so on down the line until it ends with people who try to deal somehow with human affairs, where scientific understanding is very thin, and is likely to remain so, except in a few areas that can be abstracted for special studies.

On the ordinary problems of human life, science tells us very little, and scientists as people are surely no guide. In fact they are often the worst guide, because they often tend to focus, laser-like, on their professional interests and know very little about the world."


Scott Huettel of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University:

“The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe … complexity makes simple models impractical and accurate models impossible to comprehend.”


Scott Atran on the basic irrationality of human life:

"I find it fascinating that among the brilliant scientists and philosophers at the conference, there was no convincing evidence presented that they know how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based. It makes me embarrassed to be a scientist and atheist. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that scientists have a keener or deeper appreciation than religious people of how to deal with personal or moral problems."

…..the basic irrationality of human life. What, exactly, does that mean? And here we have Harris advocating, it would seem, a rationalization of a fundamental aspect of human life. Where and why is the conflict here?

 

[Paulhoff]

And man will never fly, let alone go to the moon.

Paul



A computer the size of a dime, NEVER.

 

[fls]

I like this argument. "Morality is difficult and complicated, so rather than giving it to a method of inquiry which has been successful when it comes to complicated and difficult problems, let's give it to those who have failed to get even simple problems right."

Linda

 

[JoelKatz]

Scott Atran on the basic irrationality of human life:

"I find it fascinating that among the brilliant scientists and philosophers at the conference, there was no convincing evidence presented that they know how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based. It makes me embarrassed to be a scientist and atheist. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that scientists have a keener or deeper appreciation than religious people of how to deal with personal or moral problems."

This is incoherent. If we do not agree that we will interact with each other on the basis of reason and evidence, then there is simply no reason to communicate. If he cannot provide a reason for me to accept what he says, why should I do so rather than just making some random stuff up? And if he has no evidence, how will he defend claims?

Even assuming for the sake of argument that his final sentence is correct, so what? Scientists aren't stronger than religious people either. That doesn't change the fact that if you want to present an argument or claim to someone else such that you have any right to expect them to treat it as anything other than noise, reason and evidence are the only tools at your disposal. Period.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

I like this argument. "Morality is difficult and complicated, so rather than giving it to a method of inquiry which has been successful when it comes to complicated and difficult problems, let's give it to those who have failed to get even simple problems right."

Linda

I don't think anyone has suggested doing that. As far as I can tell everyone agrees that moral questions are best answered when the maximum amount of relevant factual information is taken into account. Science is the best tool we have for getting facts. What people are saying is that using science to synthesize a moral decision from a collection of facts requires an implicit (or even better, explicit) weighting of those facts, which while it may be popular is still arbitrary and axiomatic.

 

[AlBell]

This ^^^^^

 

[fls]

I don't think anyone has suggested doing that.

Yes, this is what is suggested - morality falls under the purview of theism. I don't know if more than two posters here have made that specific suggestion, but it is the setting in which this debate takes place in the real world.

As far as I can tell everyone agrees that moral questions are best answered when the maximum amount of relevant factual information is taken into account. Science is the best tool we have for getting facts. What people are saying is that using science to synthesize a moral decision from a collection of facts requires an implicit (or even better, explicit) weighting of those facts, which while it may be popular is still arbitrary and axiomatic.

Yes, I understand what it is that some people here are saying.

Linda

 

[JoelKatz]

What people are saying is that using science to synthesize a moral decision from a collection of facts requires an implicit (or even better, explicit) weighting of those facts, which while it may be popular is still arbitrary and axiomatic.

Right, but this is trivially falsifiable.

If it's arbitrary, there's no way to explain the fact that people generally agree that torturing children for pleasure is wrong. If people make decisions arbitrarily, they would not agree with each other more than you would expect by chance. There may, of course, be some arbitrary component, but that's true of everything. Ask two people to judge if someone is taller than six feet and if it's a close call, they may disagree.

As for the claim that it's axiomatic, this is based on a misunderstanding of what an axiom is. An axiom is a statement that is stipulated true for the purpose of a chain of reasoning. The result of the chain is conditional on the truth of the axiom. So long as the reasoning is correct, the conclusion is correct regardless of what axioms were used, provided one remembers the conclusions are conditional on the axioms. If the axiom cannot (under any circumstances) be true, then the conclusions are not shown true. They are just like "If two plus two was five, Christmas would be in January."

 

[AlBell]

Yes, this is what is suggested - morality falls under the purview of theism. I don't know if more than two posters here have made that specific suggestion, but it is the setting in which this debate takes place in the real world.

Linda

You are one of them; Paul the other.

 

[fls]

You are one of them; Paul the other.

???

Paulhoff and I have made it quite clear that we don't think morality falls under the purview of theism.

Linda

 

[annnnoid]

This ^^^^^

...and then the company line....

I like this argument. "Morality is difficult and complicated, so rather than giving it to a method of inquiry which has been successful when it comes to complicated and difficult problems, let's give it to those who have failed to get even simple problems right."

Linda

Blatantly biased (and factually incorrect)….therefore irrelevant.

The epistemology of science is simply not amenable to dealing with the human condition (as Chomsky implicated). The epistemology of science is a formidable accomplishment and quite effectively and capably deals with an explicitly limited range of issues. Human beings have a singular epistemology that we use when dealing with just about everything else. It might be described as some fathomless combination-interaction of intuition / wisdom / reason / feelings / intelligence / rationality. It is an exclusive function of one word: faith. We did not create it, we do not create it, we do not control it, and we do not understand it. What we are….as David Fincher so succinctly concluded, is ‘in charge’. In charge of what? A miracle, magic, the ‘image of God’ ????…who knows, but what we do know is that if we abdicate that responsibility, ‘in charge’ doesn’t work. One thing is certain though….science does not know. All the mindless wishful thinking

And man will never fly, let alone go to the moon.

Paul



A computer the size of a dime, NEVER.

of all the skeptics in the world isn’t going to change that.

That, specifically, is the issue here. There is a reason that Dan Dennet called human consciousness ‘the last remaining mystery’. It is because the phenomenon of human reality is singularly unique. All these simplistic attempts to reduce it to scientifically manageable / intellectually intelligible proportions (which, by the way, skeptics are just as guilty of…if not far more frequently guilty of….than any Christians I’ve encountered) are simply intellectually dishonest…if not outright delusional.

Mr. Katz….I understand your position, but you clearly are missing the point. And it’s a very very very big point. I suggest you go and read the full text. It is actually relevant to this discussion since Mr. Atran, at the time, was responding to Mr. Harris (among others) who, at the time, was waxing typically vitriolic over his thinly veiled disgust at all things religious / irrational. It can be found here: http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html

 

[JoelKatz]

Mr. Katz….I understand your position, but you clearly are missing the point. And it’s a very very very big point. I suggest you go and read the full text. It is actually relevant to this discussion since Mr. Atran, at the time, was responding to Mr. Harris (among others) who, at the time, was waxing typically vitriolic over his thinly veiled disgust at all things religious / irrational. It can be found here: http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html

Honestly, the more I read, the worse he gets. It is a poorly disguised god of the gaps. Science hasn't cracked morality yet, so it's the province of religion.

He has a legitimate point that it may be tactically unwise to confront religious irrationality head on in the short term. But he is arguing against strategists who are concerned with what is really true, not with which irrational arguments will best make irrational people behave slightly less irrationally for an equally irrational 'reason'.

Long term, winning the war against irrationality will require rational alternatives to irrational ones.

Ultimate, there really only are two possibilities -- either people have to justify their beliefs and actions or everyone does whatever they feel like.

 

[AlBell]

???

Paulhoff and I have made it quite clear that we don't think morality falls under the purview of theism.

Linda

As usual, we disagree. Anyone who actually knows exactly what you've said in this thread is welcome to clarify the matter.

Ought they do so?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Right, but this is trivially falsifiable.

If it's arbitrary, there's no way to explain the fact that people generally agree that torturing children for pleasure is wrong.

"I want my son's penis to look like his dad's" is a common reason parents give for circumcision in the USA. If that's not "torturing children for pleasure", what is?

If people make decisions arbitrarily, they would not agree with each other more than you would expect by chance.

Incorrect. We have the ability to both communicate and remember our own and other's brain farts. We also tend to think the brain farts of higher status people (e.g., authors of books) are more valid than of people of similar or lower status than ourselves.

So it would be very strange for people not to have similar ideas about what's right ot wrong, even though those ideas may ultimately be arbitrary.

It also seems likely that there are behavioural biases encoded in our genome which make particular moral choices more likely than others. E.g., nice guys finish first and evolutionary stable strategies.

There may, of course, be some arbitrary component, but that's true of everything. Ask two people to judge if someone is taller than six feet and if it's a close call, they may disagree.

That or a number of similar questions can serve as nice examples of how weighing various criteria differently can result in people giving different answers, all of which are correct (or incorrect, depending on your point of view).

What is the total distance around the coastline of the UK?

As for the claim that it's axiomatic, this is based on a misunderstanding of what an axiom is. An axiom is a statement that is stipulated true for the purpose of a chain of reasoning. The result of the chain is conditional on the truth of the axiom. So long as the reasoning is correct, the conclusion is correct regardless of what axioms were used, provided one remembers the conclusions are conditional on the axioms. If the axiom cannot (under any circumstances) be true, then the conclusions are not shown true. They are just like "If two plus two was five, Christmas would be in January."

Right, so Harris' has managed to rule out morality based on gibberish. How many people outside a Lewis Carroll story subscribe to such a system of morality?