The Word of a God???

[BUFFALO]

Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins on Morality and Science:




The problem with philosophical objections to Harris' brand of simple "clear-headed" thinking is that philosophers are endlessly able to find fault with their own positions. One of my favorite quotes on this is from Bertrand Russell:

"It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical." (Logical Atomism, 1924)

[James S Saint]

Sam Harris has serious troubles actually understanding the issues of Science and Morality.

[volchok]

Sam Harris has serious troubles actually understanding the issues of Science and Morality.

I know right? You know who REALLY understands it? That guy James S Saint from the ilovephilosophy forum.

[lizbethrose]

O_H,

You know, many of us really dislike it when you say this; "...to educated white middle-class males like us?" What are you, a closet misogynist?

[BUFFALO]

Sam Harris has serious troubles actually understanding the issues of Science and Morality.

Unfortunately, this is a fairly typical response to Harris. Also, typically, it is devoid of counter argument.

[phyllo]

There are answers to moral problems; this is not a realm where we have throw our arms in the air and proclaim there is no right answer. And he uses very concrete practical examples to point this out. Exactly how many stars are there in the universe? Well science just doesn't have the capacity to say - BUT IS THERE an exact answer? Yes, of course.

Of course science can measure the number of stars in the universe.

Is there an exact number of stars in the universe at an instant of time?
Of course.
Is it possible to count them? No.
Is there any way to determine how many stars there are? No.

The number of stars in the universe is unknowable.

This kind of theoretical, idealistic, approach discredits science and scientists.

Is there an ideal moral action to be taken at any moment? You can certainly imagine that there is one perfect action. You can base it on personal well-being, family well-being, community well-being, world well-being or universe well-being. You can consider short-term and long-term well-being. The perfect action will probably depend on which criteria you select. Even if you can decide on an objectively ideal criteria, there really is no way of knowing what the ideal moral action is except in very simple isolated cases. There is no way to do a scientific analysis of one-off situations which is life.
We observe, contemplate and make up some rules-of-thumb to guide our actions. We have been doing that since we started thinking. Over time we change the rules. We adapt and hopefully get better at it. We can use the techniques of science to gain insights but ultimately we are deciding holistically what we think is best.

[BUFFALO]

Is there an exact number of stars in the universe at an instant of time?
Of course.
Is it possible to count them? No.
Is there any way to determine how many stars there are? No.
The number of stars in the universe is unknowable.

It may be unknowable, but the answere exists. A better analogy is used by Harris in the video above: How many birds are in flight above the earth? Well there is just no way to determine these data, it is constantly changing, etc. but at any given instant we can be sure that the answer is an integer. And that is the point - there is an objective answer, its is not "undefined" somehow; and similarly with moral questions, on the scale of the human race, there is a good and evil and they can be defined objectively, at least in theory.

This kind of theoretical, idealistic, approach discredits science and scientists.

I disagree totally. this is the kind of common sense, practical approach that gives science weight in human issues.

Is there an ideal moral action to be taken at any moment? You can certainly imagine that there is one perfect action. You can base it on personal well-being, family well-being, community well-being, world well-being or universe well-being. You can consider short-term and long-term well-being. The perfect action will probably depend on which criteria you select. Even if you can decide on an objectively ideal criteria, there really is no way of knowing what the ideal moral action is except in very simple isolated cases. There is no way to do a scientific analysis of one-off situations which is life. We observe, contemplate and make up some rules-of-thumb to guide our actions. We have been doing that since we started thinking. Over time we change the rules. We adapt and hopefully get better at it. We can use the techniques of science to gain insights but ultimately we are deciding holistically what we think is best.

But what you are describing IS essentially science or the scientific process.

"Patricia Churchland is a philosopher at University of California - San Diego well known for supporting eliminative materialism (the position that certain terms used in materialistic philosophies need elimination or revision). To Churchland, the ideas of philosophers should be grounded in science, making them more like "theoretical" scientists. She cites facts about early visual processing, explaining that valence is assigned to stimulus subconsciously; this process is seen in children and may have a large biological component. Churchland uses this an example of science limiting the scope of relevant philosophical theories. Regarding her book "Braintrust", some of what she discussed on evolutionary neurological understanding of facts/values and is/ought, falls within the general structure that Sam Harris has laid out. She describes what he is asking us to envision, that if false beliefs were factored out, the remaining evaluative facts should become apparent, and that should result in a agreement on values. She agrees especially it would be most likely at the extreme ends of the spectrum, in the clear-cut cases of flourishing or not flourishing."

"However, Churchland anticipates a lot of cases lie in the middle ground, that can lead to disagreement and it's uncertain whether this might be due to a disagreement about facts, or a fundamental disagreement on values. She continues, that there may be cases where there are simply no more facts that can shed any light on the matter. She also mentions pernicious cases, such as questions involving just war and preemptive strikes, were there is always most likely be some value disagreement. Referring to Harris understanding of a science of morality, she says he handles many issues very well, but Churchland claims to play devil's advocate, and offers three worries: arrogance (or silliness) on the part of academics, in providing condescending or unrealistic advice; ideological enthusiasm at the behest of demagogy, as in the cultural revolution in China; and finally, do-goodery that takes on a bad problem and makes it worse, when one ought not to have interfered on a presumption of having the normative high-ground." (source: Wiki)

[phyllo]

And that is the point - there is an objective answer, its is not "undefined" somehow; and similarly with moral questions, on the scale of the human race, there is a good and evil and they can be defined objectively, at least in theory.

It's not undefined ... it's unknowable. An answer exists which is not available to humans.

Referring to Harris understanding of a science of morality, she says he handles many issues very well, but Churchland claims to play devil's advocate, and offers three worries: arrogance (or silliness) on the part of academics, in providing condescending or unrealistic advice; ideological enthusiasm at the behest of demagogy, as in the cultural revolution in China; and finally, do-goodery that takes on a bad problem and makes it worse, when one ought not to have interfered on a presumption of having the normative high-ground.

I agree with this part of the quote. Star counting and bird counting are signs of the first two worries...silliness which leads to unrealistic advice.

[BUFFALO]

Star counting and bird counting are signs of the first two worries...silliness which leads to unrealistic advice.

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how Harris' advice is "silly"? Or "unrealistic".

Or better yet, recommend an existent framework for evaluating moral issues that isn't "silly" or "unrealistic".

[Fixed Cross]

I know who wrote the Bible actually, I have met him on my travel through the Hymalaya's. It's not God, but a man, though a rather special one. He lives in a grotto, told me I can't reveal where, and he is, he says, roughly twenty thousand years old already, lives of breath and sunlight. Apparently, he wrote the Bible, or the first part of the Old testament, at least. I can't prove it but then proof is always tricky with this issue, religion... anyway, no need to drag God into it, he is just a figment of this cavedwellers imagination. At least I assumed it was a work of fiction, I didn't think to ask... maybe I'll go back someday, when I have time, and if I manage to locate him again - he moves from grotto to grotto but in a specific areal where he finds the energy is strong and pure. I'll ask him if there is a biographical element to the story.

[BUFFALO]

I know who wrote the Bible actually, I have met him on my travel through the Hymalaya's. It's not God, but a man, though a rather special one. He lives in a grotto, told me I can't reveal where, and he is, he says, roughly twenty thousand years old already, lives of breath and sunlight. Apparently, he wrote the Bible, or the first part of the Old testament, at least. I can't prove it but then proof is always tricky with this issue, religion... anyway, no need to drag God into it, he is just a figment of this cavedwellers imagination. At least I assumed it was a work of fiction, I didn't think to ask... maybe I'll go back someday, when I have time, and if I manage to locate him again - he moves from grotto to grotto but in a specific areal where he finds the energy is strong and pure. I'll ask him if there is a biographical element to the story.

You see? Exactly why we need a few more like Sam Harris...

[phyllo]

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how Harris' advice is "silly"? Or "unrealistic".

Suggesting that an unknowable fact can somehow lead to practical knowledge or understanding in science and morality.
You can never know the well-being of an aborted fetus. It's destroyed before it lives. Any value you assign to its life is a fiction based on pseudo-scientific statistics. You stick some numbers in a computer and it has an average income, educational background , townhouse, 2.1 cars, 1.7 children, etc. Sims - Aborted Fetus Edition.

Or better yet, recommend an existent framework for evaluating moral issues that isn't "silly" or "unrealistic".

All frameworks will be touchy-feely, emotional, historical, scientific, arbitrary. We have been refining the Golden Rule for a while and it forms the basis of a lot of morality.

[BUFFALO]

Suggesting that an unknowable fact can somehow lead to practical knowledge or understanding in science and morality.
You can never know the well-being of an aborted fetus. It's destroyed before it lives. Any value you assign to its life is a fiction based on pseudo-scientific statistics. You stick some numbers in a computer and it has an average income, educational background , townhouse, 2.1 cars, 1.7 children, etc. Sims - Aborted Fetus Edition.

Well, this is the whole problem - people insist on interpreting Harris in a manner that leads to absurdity. Harris is not suggesting that you can somehow run the fetus' "parameters" through a computer and come up with the correct answer. The truly relevant issues with respect to abortion have little to do with the wellbeing of the aborted fetus.

All frameworks will be touchy-feely, emotional, historical, scientific, arbitrary.

I think this (as Patricia Churchland tries to point out) is demonstrably wrong. The real over-arching point that Harris is trying to make is that moral absolutes based on superstition, religion, social inertia and general ignorance should not form the basis for morality. The awareness and acceptance of fact, evidence and the application of reason and logic are what we are left with, and just because human emotion and subjectivity enter into the picture, we do not ignore them as "unscientific". As Harris points out in the youtube clip, the fact that most people are uncomfortable with throwing the fat man under the wheels of the train in the classic "trolley car" moral thought experiment must be taken into account - if you are going to suffer psychologically for the rest of your life because you feel responsible for one man's death, even though you saved the lives of a trolley car full of fellow humans, this needs to enter the moral calculus.

We have been refining the Golden Rule for a while and it forms the basis of a lot of morality.

And the Golden Rule is exactly the kind of moral reasoning that a scientific morality embraces. As a general principal it leads to human flourishing. It forms part of an objective standard that we can all agree on.

[von Rivers]

You can never know the well-being of an aborted fetus. It's destroyed before it lives. Any value you assign to its life is a fiction based on pseudo-scientific statistics. You stick some numbers in a computer and it has an average income, educational background , townhouse, 2.1 cars, 1.7 children, etc. Sims - Aborted Fetus Edition.

Pseudo-science? There's a growing body of knowledge about predicting genetic disorders and diseases and so on. It's just nonsense to claim that we know nothing about how the quality of life of someone with such a disorder is affected. We don't know everything, and as always we have to make predictions based on limited knowledge, but how is that an objection to the method itself, particularly as we know more and more? It's as if your criticism of empirical method is that you can't currently know everything. A matured fetus with an esophagus attached to a lung can look forward to a short painful life of a few hours at most and intense surgery for little to no chance of survival. We know things like this, and these facts matter. An aborted fetus obviously doesn't have a well-being, but we can make legitimate predictions about what an aborted fetus missed out on---which was, a few hours of intense suffering. No doubt, the quickest way to obscure some approach to moral problem solving is to give it the toughest moral problem we have---and then scoff when its answers are indefinite or imprecise. But you look as ridiculous criticizing that way as if you were to go to NASA and scoff at their not having a colony on some other planet, for when lazy asses screw this one. I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But we have science and are ready you see. Now the troubles are going to have troubles with we!

[BUFFALO]

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But we have science and are ready you see.
Now the troubles are going to have troubles with we!

Brilliant!

Where is that from? Did you just make that up? True poetry.

[von Rivers]

Where is that from? Did you just make that up? True poetry.

It's Dr. Seuss, I just changed it around alittle. ...was trying to appeal to phyllo.

[BUFFALO]

Where is that from? Did you just make that up? True poetry.

It's Dr. Seuss, I just changed it around alittle.

OK. I found it - thought it sounded familiar. Excellent.

[phyllo]

No doubt, the quickest way to obscure some approach to moral problem solving is to give it the toughest moral problem we have---and then scoff when its answers are indefinite or imprecise.

How would Harris tackle the simple problem of girls being prevented from getting an education in Afghanistan? Let's assume that we can agree that educating girls is a good thing, although even in the US there will be disagreements about what is an appropriate level of education.
The men who are blocking this, in Afghanistan, know that their well being and control will be diminished if girls are educated. Their personal servants will no longer serve. You can tell them that in the long term their children will become prosperous by exploiting the country's natural resources and education will make it possible. Their children will be healthier. However in an unstable environment, short term considerations take precedence. There is no guarantee of long term benefit. There is personal risk involved at this point in time. All arguments to convince them to accept education are of the "Bismillah, truly it is written..." variety.

What can Harris say?

200px-Bismillah.svg.png (13.54 KiB) Viewed 152 times

[Only_Humean]

Let's be frank here, those that subjugate women in these cultures are NOT women. The fact that their consciences appear to be ruled by a religious standard that is 1400 years behind the time has a lot to do with why these practices persist. And when you used the adjective "ignorant" you may have hit the nail on the head.

Let's be frank, it's men AND women who do it. It's not restricted to a particular religion, so which faculty of objective sense has a Christian in the US that a Christian in Ethiopia doesn't? I know I keep asking, but what is being objectively measured(/ignored by the ignorant) here? Because you talk about stars in the universe and birds in flight, but this is a misleading analogy because these are measurable, countable things. As soon as well-being comes up, it's handwaving. There is simply no comparison.

This quote:

"You can concoct odd situations in which, if you're really conserving everything we could plausibly mean by well-being and maximising it, then I would have to say that was good by my definition, but the worry is that some really important things are left out by that account. But I am arguing that if they really are important, they must translate into some sort of well-being. So, for instance, these stoned people don't know anything about science, they're ignoramuses. They are forsaking all of the joys of learning about the universe. If that has a cash value in curiosity and in the fulfilment that comes from being able to teach your children things, we're still talking the talk of human well-being."

perfectly, acutely illustrates his project for what it really is: an appeal to moral intuitionism, backed by the good form of shifting your goalposts until you find a metric with which you can justify what you already knew was right. It's the "I may not know morals, but I know my right from wrong" school of unreflective, antiphilosophical thought, backed with a clipboard that's been filtered and tweaked to give a politician's veneer of respectable statistics.

When he comes up with evidence for the wellbeing particle, or distills a few grams of wellbeing into a conical flask, I'll pay attention, I promise. As it is, he's indicated he's willing to measure whatever it takes to back up his personal prejudices. Which, if you share his prejudices and appreciate the value of science, can be a seductive route to moral certainty. The religious impulse is nothing if not seductive.

I will grant that if you can't possibly find any way to massage figures or twist your definitions of wellbeing to fit to a conclusion, you're going to have a hard argument that what you're doing is moral. Do we need a moral theory to tell us not to bayonet babies for fun?

Science measures masses, charges, metres, seconds. At least, last time I looked. If members of another culture come up with different criteria to "suffering" and "consciousness", are they objectively wrong? What if they interpret "conscious" in a different way, or have a different conception of "suffering"? That we are advanced enough to measure things rather than rely on bronze age scripture I'm not doubting. That that means morality moves into the realm of measuring, I am.

This is one of Harris' central points. We can measure (and scientifically investigate) subjective experience. What do you think a Doctor is doing when he asks you to evaluate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10? And subjective experience must be taken into account, but we can apply objective standards in the evaluation.

1) You can ask a sample of New Yorkers how funny they find Seinfeld, and compare it to a sample from Shanghai. That you can measure a cultural difference scientifically doesn't make it a non-cultural difference. In fact, you leave an open goal for the cultural relativists to claim that that's all you're doing with morality.
2) Ask 100 people to evaluate their well-being. Give them all a good shot of cocaine, and ask them 10 minutes later. Draw objective, scientific conclusions on the morality of mandatory cocaine use from this.

Alternatively, you could figure that something is objectively wrong with this picture, backed by your intuition, and take a few more measurements or add some caveats. Because intuition beats measurements, in the end. It's a good job our intuition is completely free of the taint of cultural relativism, it's a shame about those foreigners, though.

It's good enough for meat-eating societies.

Why do you think this dialogue has opened up in the last half century or so? Certainly it is partially for health reasons, but also because our perception of the consciousness of animals (contrary to largely religious ideas that have denied this) has changed.

That Sam Harris sees meat-eating (with +/- 58 billion deaths/year) as an optional cause depending on how much you like bacon, while religious terrorism (with at most a few thousand deaths per year) is an immediate and pressing issue, while again the effects of, say, global economic policies (which I would propose lead to pluses or minuses of suffering orders of magnitude greater than terrorism, and exacerbate the latter too) seem all but untouched, speaks volumes about his (I believe unconscious) agenda. Easy, low-impact morality - different people are objectively evil, don't worry about setting your own house in order, keep in your psychological comfort zone by restricting your moral anger for The Other. Wouldn't you say?

[BUFFALO]

How would Harris tackle the simple problem of girls being prevented from getting an education in Afghanistan? Let's assume that we can agree that educating girls is a good thing, although even in the US there will be disagreements about what is an appropriate level of education. The men who are blocking this, in Afghanistan, know that their well being and control will be diminished if girls are educated. Their personal servants will no longer serve. You can tell them that in the long term their children will become prosperous by exploiting the country's natural resources and education will make it possible. Their children will be healthier. However in an unstable environment, short term considerations take precedence. There is no guarantee of long term benefit. There is personal risk involved at this point in time. All arguments to convince them to accept education are of the "Bismillah, truly it is written..." variety. What can Harris say?

Quite simply Harris says that if you are dealing with people who cannot or will not acknowledge factual evidence and reason, there can be no meaningful dialogue in the first place.

"Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.” All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

[Only_Humean]

There's a growing body of knowledge about predicting genetic disorders and diseases and so on. It's just nonsense to claim that we know nothing about how the quality of life of someone with such a disorder is affected. We don't know everything, and as always we have to make predictions based on limited knowledge, but how is that an objection to the method itself, particularly as we know more and more?

Do we know at what point it's not worth living? I'm not sure that this is just another fact to be empirically discovered. I grant that there are some clear cases in which mercy killing is wholly appropriate. And most people would agree that a healthy foetus born into a loving family has a good shot at a happy life. But what sort of scientific facts can we call on to draw the line between them? We could ask progressively crippled people whether they'd rather be dead, I suppose.

It's as if your criticism of empirical method is that you can't currently know everything. A matured fetus with an esophagus attached to a lung can look forward to a short painful life of a few hours at most and intense surgery for little to no chance of survival. We know things like this, and these facts matter. An aborted fetus obviously doesn't have a well-being, but we can make legitimate predictions about what an aborted fetus missed out on---which was, a few hours of intense suffering.

I'm not sure what you're comparing here - an elective abortion versus an induced miscarriage? Or a foetus that we know will be miscarried?

Why not start with the common cases? Most elective abortions are of otherwise healthy foetuses that would have been born to otherwise healthy mothers whose quality of life (they perceive) would have been affected negatively. How do we weigh the pluses and minuses of that? Another common case is foetuses where Down's syndrome has been detected. People with Down's tend to be happier than average, but live less long and make a heavier burden on the parents. That would be a logical next step.

No doubt, the quickest way to obscure some approach to moral problem solving is to give it the toughest moral problem we have---and then scoff when its answers are indefinite or imprecise.

You can also obscure it the other way by taking a moral non-problem and trumpeting that you must be right because you've proven you can't morally bayonet babies for fun. If you can't offer moral guidance on people's common practical problems, you don't have a moral theory worth much, do you? I'm not sure how one would value an ethical theory other than the applied use of it.

[BUFFALO]

Humean,

You raise very valid criticisms that show exactly how difficult moral questions can be. If this weren't the case we would have them all solved by now. But you do so by using reason, the same faculty that hopefully will be employed to help us make moral decisions.

The real challenge here is, "Can you define another, superior framework for moral decision making that doesn't acknowledge the primacy of evidence and reason?"

[Only_Humean]

O_H,

You know, many of us really dislike it when you say this; "...to educated white middle-class males like us?" What are you, a closet misogynist?

1) "many of us"? First person singular is usually the grammatical form if you're writing about yourself. But if you're writing as a representative of a group who have gathered to discuss this peeve, please let me know - this is the first I've heard of such a complaint.

2) I was writing to Buffalo, not you, and I was referring to the common cultural variables that Sam Harris, my assumptions-until-corrected-otherwise of Buffalo and I share. I could also have added variables about age or language. Had I been writing to you, I would have used a gender-neutral noun.

3) This is a baffling accusation, and frankly I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. As far as I'm aware, my use of the phrase is not misogynist, racist or classist. I am in fact pointing out that Harris may be unaware of his own biases in this area. If you feel you can enlighten me as to some subconscious prejudice of my own, though, please do.

[von Rivers]

Do we know at what point it's not worth living? I'm not sure that this is just another fact to be empirically discovered. I grant that there are some clear cases in which mercy killing is wholly appropriate.

Well the last line tells me that you get it, and that now it's just a matter of closing the large and murky gap. But don't be like phyllo and suggest that because a problem looks tough, that therefore it's unsolvable, or even that progress is impossible. Here's what looks like a ridiculous tautology: Life is not worth living when there is a preponderance of things in it that make life not worth living. But it's actually helpful in solving some number of abortion cases---which is where the context was when I jumped in. I mentioned one of them. But the best place to start is just below...

And most people would agree that a healthy foetus born into a loving family has a good shot at a happy life. But what sort of scientific facts can we call on to draw the line between them?

Why do you think a healthy fetus born into a loving family has a shot at a happy life? ...Those physical and emotional factors will be the investigatable facts that science can be applied to.

I'm not sure what you're comparing here - an elective abortion versus an induced miscarriage? Or a foetus that we know will be miscarried?

An elective abortion.

Why not start with hard cases, you ask? --Because you can just get clearer about what's going on in the method if you start with simple cases. That's worth doing, for you, because all of your questions are basically: "What the fuck is going on in the method?? And btw, show it to me by solving the hardest cases to my satisfaction!!". Moral issues are issues because they're hard to solve---if you have a theory that has a simple time of a tough abortion case, then you have a bad theory, because it's running over obvious complexities. It just makes more sense to start with an easy case, and work to build the complexity. We can do that, if you want. Heck, we do it for every other subject. You simply never start doing math by solving Grade 12 calculus problems.

[von Rivers]

The men who are blocking this, in Afghanistan, know that their well being and control will be diminished if girls are educated. Their personal servants will no longer serve. You can tell them that in the long term their children will become prosperous by exploiting the country's natural resources and education will make it possible. Their children will be healthier. However in an unstable environment, short term considerations take precedence. There is no guarantee of long term benefit. There is personal risk involved at this point in time. All arguments to convince them to accept education are of the "Bismillah, truly it is written..." variety.

That if you have an educated citizenry, then you can operate an economy, farming techniques, technology, health care, etc, etc, at a level approaching what educated societies do have---and I don't think you're denying that our quality of life is better than theirs. And that if half your citizenry is educated, you can expect half the benefits. And that with these advancements, you won't need a barefoot slave girl to hold a loaf of bread over a fire to get toast, you can just press a fucking button if you want. And even in the most advanced societies, you can always find a dumb girl to stick your dick in and both be happy about it. But that there's far more fulfilling relationships possible, for everyone involved (that's the key), starting somewhere with something to do with basic literacy. I mean, this is your argument basically: "If I walk to the store to get toilet paper, there's no telling that they may be sold out, and I risk getting hit by a car on the way... short term priorities, you know! It's better to wipe my ass with something else". Nevermind, (and this will appeal to you), that it takes hard work to enforce a rule like, "no learning to read!"---and we can all be lazier and more relaxed without it.