«
»

Sam Harris on Science and Morality

Tags: , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 7:56 am and is filed under Philosophy, Religion, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

39 Responses to “Sam Harris on Science and Morality”

  1. Dale Campbell says:
    March 23, 2010 at 3:26 pm

    Thanks for sharing the vid, Damian,
    I enjoyed listening to it and noting points of agreement/disagreement. And it was great to see how emotionally affected he was at the raped-daughter-murdering dads. I just did a post on ‘true feelings’ and that is another case of when emotions ring true to the core.
    In one sense, one could take his notion of ‘moral facts’ as essentially lending credibility/reliability to metaphysics (in the broadest, categorical sense). Especially when he strongly challenged the assumption that all moral opinions should automatically count.
    I felt his notions of the ‘moral landscape’(peaks/valleys) and especially the sense of just how ‘patently obvious’ some moral facts are to be perfectly compatible with my understanding of Truth – we don’t know all of it, but (double negatives and all) we don’t know none of it either. :)

    I liked some of the spectrum thoughts he had (esp. the burka/boobs one), but naturally, I found his general discussion avoided the necessary discussion of the goals that underlie all morality – something you/I agree about, if I remember correctly.

    In sum, I don’t think he actually destroyed a clear distinction between facts/values, is/ought, description/prescription – it’s more that he seemed to talk about values, oughts and prescriptions in terms of Truth that is obvious, self-explanatory, etc.! Which, for what it’s worth, is wonderfully compatible with my understanding – though I’m not sure that was what he was meaning to say.

    enough rambling from me for the moment… :)

  2. Damian says:
    March 23, 2010 at 3:48 pm

    He pointed out right at the start that all moral behaviour is tied to questions of an ability to suffer (with the rock/ant/ape example). He didn’t reiterate it later on and I suspected that some would forget that critical point when he got to the ‘self-explanatory’ stuff. From what I gathered from the video, any time he talked about how something was ‘obvious’ it was in relation to this link between actions and the suffering (or happiness) they cause.

    If, as he claims, moral behaviour is entirely down to this question of suffering/happiness then he’s right in claiming that there is no traditional separation between is/ought and that science can indeed be used to guide our actions in the reduction of suffering and the increase of happiness.

  3. Damian says:
    March 23, 2010 at 3:52 pm

    Oh and with regard to where we agreed on ‘the goals that underlie morality’ I think it is in the area of suffering. Like all people, we can agree that suffering should be avoided but we can’t all agree whether burka-wearing or same-sex attraction or specific food prohibitions constitute moral behaviour.

  4. Dale Campbell says:
    March 23, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    Cheers Damian,
    A few more thoughts…

    Basically, and I deny that it’s nit-picking, the goal of ‘less sentient suffering’ seems precisely that goal which is not only other than ‘scientific’ but also manifest/obvious/self-evident – a kind of basic metaphysical true goal, if you like. I see science much like I view technology – incredible tools which can be used to serve good or less-than-good goals, which are themselves (the goals) not ‘science’.

    Another thought I’d like to ask Sam (curious for your comments, too), is along these lines: Take the horrible example Sam referred to of the raped-daughter-killing man. What do moral people do to such men? Do we punish and/or restrict them somehow? Punishment could perhaps be on a spectrum from a simple disapproving look on one hand to brutal, humiliating, dehumanising, torture/death on the other. Surely even a disapproving look would produce some kind of (emotional) ‘suffering’ in this sadistic-yet-sentient man. The point obviously is that it seems that striving toward a goal would entail the violation of it at times? Perhaps this is also true with the (obvious/self-evident) goal of peace: war is sometimes necessary for the goal of peace?

  5. Damian says:
    March 24, 2010 at 6:56 am

    Dale,
    Regarding your view of the goal of less suffering being a metaphysical one I disagree. If your dog steals food from the table and then hides in fear and shame do you believe she is driven by metaphysical goals? If not, then why not the same for humans but at a more complex level?

    And on your question to Sam I can’t answer for him but I can give my own thoughts on how justice does work and also how it ought to work if we are to approach it logically.

    We find ourselves in human bodies with some innate desires and fears almost all of which we share in common. From these common desires we form common goals and we find that cooperation helps us achieve those goals far more effectively than alone. We form societies based on these common goals. Occasionally we find that a member of our society — either by nature, nurture or other means — will act in a way that is detrimental to the shared goals of our society. We, as a society, have inbuilt desires to ‘punish’ what we emotionally feel is an injustice and acting on that desire has served us well for curbing people’s actions which may be of detriment to the rest of us in some way. The threat of punishment also serves us well in this respect. We also have minor disincentives (fines, etc) that help us keep our less harmful anti-social desires in check.

    But when we think of this logically we can see that we can achieve the same results without having to resort to this base desire to hurt someone in order to stop them from acting anti-socially. We find that we can achieve the same results merely by removing them from society until such time as we think they’ll no longer cause harm. I.e. prison. This removes some of the nasty reverse-harmful behaviour we’ve indulged in in the past the likes of corporal and capital punishment which went beyond the simple desire to stop a person from harming to actually causing harm to someone in a way that brings personal pleasure (revenge).

    In the case of the father who kills his daughter because she was raped it should be a simple matter to point out that the daughter has not acted in a manner which causes anyone else harm but that both the rapist and that father directly caused harm and need to be removed from society (1) until such time as we can be sure they’ll not harm again and (2) for a minimum period that will be sufficient to act as a deterrent to others who might be inclined to do the same.

    I’m not sure whether Sam adheres to Utilitarianism, Negative Utilitarianism, Abolitionism or something else but none of these ethical frameworks demand a simplistic goal of reducing suffering without ever causing suffering in the process.

  6. Dale Campbell says:
    March 24, 2010 at 10:33 am

    Thanks Damian,
    I do think the less-suffering goal is a goal and thus not descriptive/’scientific’. The food-stealing dog probably has very dog-ish responses to the hungry owners response, but has no concept of ‘stealing’ or conflicting with a goal – which is the human-ish response.

    I really, really, really like how this animal-desire (eating) relates to your discussion of desires leading to goals. A desire of a man to have 5 cheerleaders at once is understandable enough, but those desires need to be moulded, disciplined such that the desirer controls the desire, not the other way ’round. Harmony with common goals don’t mean suppression of desire, but the realisation of desire in the best way.

    On the ‘punishment’ thing, I think many cultures have traditionally seen ‘necessary violence’ as a reality (dare I say ‘just war’), so perhaps out-and-out pacifism is simplistic? Frank? :D

    But it remains that these (99.954%) common goals themselves are not descriptive/’scientific’/'facts’, but rather are metaphysical/traditional/philosophical[hence the 'isms' you mention]/’religious’ – and are very much part of what make us human.

  7. Damian says:
    March 24, 2010 at 12:55 pm

    Dale, I’d like to test your assertion that there is a fundamental difference between goals that animals have and goals that humans have. When I say ‘fundamental difference’ I’m assuming you believe that it’s not simply a matter of complexity as I put forward in the previous comment.

    I’ll give you an example across three different ‘types’ of animals; adult dogs, infant humans and adult humans.

    Guilt is knowing that you have acted in such a way that you hve caused harm and will quite possibly be punished. This is generally in the context of a society but can become abstracted as I will illustrate later.

    1. When a dog, driven by desire, steals food from a table and it slinks away sheepishly eyeing the about-to-be-angry human is this not a display of guilt?

    2. When an infant starts destroying your entire CD collection without even the slightest hint of remorse should we be concerned about their morally corrupt behaviour or do we excuse it because we realise they’ve not yet developed a complex enough brain to realise the consequences of their actions and how they might be harming others.

    3. When an obese adult caves in, buys chocolates from the shop and hides them from their partner is this not simply an extended but convoluted version of the guilt that our dog displayed? What about an adult who has been taught that they must cover their head at all times for fear of offending their deity? They lose faith in their religion but why is it that when they secretly take off their head covering they still feel a twinge of guilt and dread when they know that no one can see them? Is this not ingrained behaviour just like we’d expect in a mere conditioned animal?

    I suspect that what you perceive as the fundamental difference between animal and human goals is the fact that we can talk about the whole thing afterwards as a series of abstract ideas. But infants can’t do this and yet they are humans. This should be a strong indicator that what you imagine to be ‘metaphysical’ is in fact just more complexity which is not ‘beyond physical’ but just physical things doing more things in a more complicated way.

    If you and I share a goal (whether it be a base desire or a complex abstracted concept) then within the context of our micro-society of two we can use the scientific method to hypothesise and test which actions will work to the detriment or advancement of that goal. Hell, technically we could even use science to determine what our shared goals are if we are ever able to decipher the workings of the brain. But I’m guessing that you aren’t convinced that our minds are physical objects that interact and respond to the environment? (I can’t remember whether you are a dualist or not)

  8. Dale Campbell says:
    March 24, 2010 at 2:15 pm

    Love the practical, concrete examples, as always :)

    I have absolutely no problem whatsoever in the linear progression from amoeba –> anthropos in biological development, which is reflected, indeed recapitulated, in the embryo –> eve development. To pun off of a common religious phrase, we might say that in humanity, the biological world reaches the ‘age of accountability’ – becoming uniquely aware of themselves and able to reflect on their desires, and even shape, mould, control themselves – and also to ‘rule’/'govern’/'preserve’ the rest of the world (biological or not), including doing things like shepherding, farming, dog-training, horse-breaking, chimp-teaching-to-’count’-better-than-humans!!, etc., etc. We train animals and thus alter their behaviour in this/that way, but without our influence, they would remain ‘wild’, and not be ‘tamed’. But then again, humans can learn a lot from animals, etc. I’m getting off topic… :)

    So no, I don’t scream at Thomas when he thrashes our CD rack (which he does! your example was only too real! ;D ), though little by little, as he matures, I’ll expect more and more from him (and hopefully Di/I will learn something about parenting along the way!). Someone once said, ‘unto whom much is given, much is expected’. I don’t expect a dog to not eat off of my plate when left in front of it, and I don’t consider it a personal offense (usually! some of his smiles make me wonder!) when Thoams fills the ole diaper, but I think it’s healthy to have various expectations of mature adults. Perhaps in a similar way that it would be natural to expect a trained dog to act according to training?

    But the thing I’m interested in is the ‘goodness’ of the shared goals; which you touch on in your last two paragraphs.

    I am a dualist in the sense of holding to ontological duality on the brain/mind issue, but I hold to a fundamental correspondence between the two. Our brains indeed are physical and interact/respond to environment and this affects whatever our minds are in a direct/fundamental way. But I cannot yet see how ontological monism (‘just physical’) regarding the mind cannot lead to ultimate relativism concerning morality that is truly morality (which it needs to be prescriptive to be so).

    The goodness of the goal is the whole question that science cannot answer. Sure, once we have an established/assumed/agreed goal, then yes, as you say “we can use the scientific method to hypothesise and test which actions will work to the detriment or advancement of that goal”. But I’m confused by what you mean when you say “technically we could even use science to determine what our shared goals are if we are ever able to decipher the workings of the brain.” It’s the words ‘determine’ and ‘are’ that are key… Do you mean something like recognising fMRI brain patterns for ppl that hold the same goal (i.e. increased activity in ‘x’ area of the brain when told their wife cheated on them…)?? How would this show if the goals were good or not? How could this mean that ‘goals’ are purely physical complex phenomena and not things with both physical-AND-metaphysical correlates? ((I’ve never understood how increase in physical knowledge of the brain = decrease in reasons to believe in more-than-physical aspects of mind… it’s like someone cracking open a human skull and announcing that the mind is purely material – or like someone exiting earth’s atmosphere, having a look around and declaring ‘god isn’t up here’??))

  9. Ken says:
    March 25, 2010 at 10:36 am

    I found Sam’s presentation much better than normal. He seems to be on a high. Perhaps something to do with finishing his Ph.D. and book. He got a standing ovation, even though I suspect most people in the audience won’t have happily accepted a lot of what he said.

    The book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, will be out in October. I think it will be important as probably most of the scientific research on morality has been looking at the evolution of moral intuitions but the book appears to go further than that.

    Harris has actually been doing neuroscience in this area. But I also think from this, and another recent (but less convincing) presentation, he has been sorting out his thinking on the objective basis for moral logic (something close to my thinking).

    While people like Pinker often refer to this I think Sam’s book will probably do a lot to bring these concepts into more popular discussion.

    So I am really looking forward to the book and I hope to get an early review copy.

  10. Damian says:
    March 25, 2010 at 7:33 pm

    Dale, you say,

    The goodness of the goal is the whole question that science cannot answer.

    Please provide an example of a goal which you do not think is ‘good’ that you’ve not already deemed ‘bad’ because it is detrimental to another implicit goal. I suspect that you may be thinking that if someone has a goal to murder people science has no way to answering whether this is a ‘good’ (read, ‘appropriate’) goal or not. But when seen in the context of your own greater goal of increasing happiness or reducing suffering science can quite easily show that murdering people is not a ‘good’ goal. And even when you get to the end of the line and ask “well then why is suffering bad?” science will answer “because YOU (you complex, evolving, surviving and procreating homosapian) defined it as such in the first place”.

    And you ask,

    But I’m confused by what you mean when you say “technically we could even use science to determine what our shared goals are if we are ever able to decipher the workings of the brain.”

    Yeah, I mean with enough technology it could be possible to know exactly what a person’s goals are by reading the physical state of the brain. Of course it’s a hugely complex task and so may never be accomplished given that an average human brain contains 100,000,000,000 neurons each of which can make up to 1,000 connections. But if a brain is purely physical (as all neuroscience seems to indicate and nothing but incredulity contradicts) then technically it could be ‘read’ and understood.

    Ken, I’ll keep my eyes open for Sam’s new book and look forward to your review if you happen to get it before me. I find him lucid.

  11. Dale Campbell says:
    March 26, 2010 at 10:56 am

    Damian,
    It’s a good topic to discuss and though we’ll probably not agree at the end of the day, I enjoy the sharpening :)

    First, I submit that (at least some) people knew that murder was inappropriate for the goal of less suffering / more happiness long before ‘science’ came on the scene. Which makes it hard to see how ‘science’ determines it now? And we’re not just (scientifically speaking) ‘complex, evolving, surviving and procreating’ homosapiens, we’re also brutal, gentle, murderous, protecting, raping, comforting, law-making ones. The ‘raw data’ of human experience does not admit of a straight line to any goals. Indeed ‘we’ (‘YOU’) ‘make’ these goals (or I’d say ‘discover’/'discern’/'uncover’ them), but not based on the ‘raw data’ – the universe, our planet, and our material bodies just don’t care about anything – but ‘we’ do.

    And yes, I’ve not doubt about the possibility to ‘read’(observational/descriptive) what a person’s goals are, with some kind of hyper fMRI – but the point is that science cannot adjudicate (ethical/prescriptive) what a person’s goals should be.

  12. Ken says:
    March 26, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    The word ‘science” is really being used loosely here and Sam does talk about a fact-based morality.

    I personally like to use “science” as a loose description of something humanity has been doing for an extremely long time. I was very impressed by a recent talk of AC Grayling where he described religion and science as having a common ancestor – ignorance (he was countering the naive argument that science grew out of religion – sort of like saying humans evolved from monkeys.) Science really developed as humanity started to use facts, trial and error in its attempts at agriculture, navigation etc.

    In the same way when humanity started to consider factual evidence about itself it was capable of developing a fact-based moral logic (alongside it’s evolved moral intuitions).

    Of course religion does interfere with this. Sometimes to take on the moral logic as its own teaching. Sometimes to produce story-based, non-humane moral logic and teachings in opposition.

    I think today we are in a situation where there is quite a large agreement on a fact based morality internationally. How else can we come to the agreements and laws that we have?

    I agree, not completely there yet and not perfect.

  13. Dale Campbell says:
    March 26, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    A discussion about epistemology (how we can ‘know’ anything) is logically prior to this entire conversation about what we need to ‘know’ for morality. Morality is tied up inseparably with goals. We can only speak of something being ‘wrong’ given a certain goal. Unfortunately humanity has no 100% shared goals, and possibly never will. And to make matters worse, 100% agreement isn’t (in my view) able to assure us that the 100% agreed-upon goal is in fact truly ‘good’. WE’ve every reason to think that at least sometimes the majority could be wrong.

  14. Damian says:
    March 29, 2010 at 7:38 am

    Dale,

    First, I submit that (at least some) people knew that murder was inappropriate for the goal of less suffering / more happiness long before ’science’ came on the scene. Which makes it hard to see how ’science’ determines it now?

    No one has claimed that moral creatures have always used science to guide them. The claim is that science *can* be used to guide us and that it’s *not* exclusive to religions. It’s analogous to me making the claim that we’ll make better food choices if we use science whereupon you come back with the complaint that people were eating fruit long before science was used.

    It’s probably appropriate to summarise at this point.

    It has been claimed that you can’t look at how the world IS and from that say how the world OUGHT to be.

    But if we observe a creature evolved and developed to desire, say, procreation, food and community as well as avoidance of pain we have established the IS. We have also established goals merely by observation of what IS. In establishing these goals we can determine from a range of available actions which it OUGHT to do if it is to achieve these goals.

    We can apply this fairly simple formula to a praying mantid (who eats her consort), a wolf in a pack or a human in a city just so long as we make a good observation of its desires and fears.

    Now, the desires may change from creature to creature and from person to person but within a society (which is where the word ‘morality’ usually comes into play), whether that be a pack of wolves or the country of New Zealand, there will be many, many shared goals. Sociable animals like ourselves strongly desire company and so the acceptance or rejection of our fellow beings play a very important role in our actions.

    If a wolf has the choice to kill and eat a pack member’s pup it stands to gain a tasty treat but it also stands to be attacked by other members of the pack or to be chased off. If we see that this wolf’s desires to not be attacked or to be excommunicated outweigh its desire for a tasty snack we can say it OUGHT not kill the pup.

    We have our own evolved and developed desires and fears. Almost all of them we share in some way with others in our community and we often take them for granted as some kind of externally imposed morality (which, in a way it is when you consider that your community is external to you) but some people make the mistake of imagining that this morality actually came from a supernatural being. An easy mistake to make for a species only gradually emerging from our superstitious past but not one we need to continue with — especially when some of the ‘morals’ prescribed demonstrably cause suffering.

    The funniest thing about prescribed religious morality is that at the end of the day it really all about what makes you most happy anyway (i.e. fear of hell or desire to live forever or spiritual reward, etc, etc). Religious morality is a human invention adopted by those not yet ready to act like thinking, reasoning adults.

    Some of our desires actually work against us. Lust which might cause rape will work against our desire to be a part of a community so we find ways to temper our strongest sexual urges. Easy access to fatty foods when we find ourselves in bodies which reward our taste buds as a hangover from millions of years scratching for food also has to be tempered if we desire the ability to be mobile and live a long life.

    So, in summary, we *can* derive an OUGHT from an IS just so long as that IS is related in some way to a goal which in turn is driven by our desires and fears.

  15. Ken says:
    March 29, 2010 at 10:55 am

    Sam talks at greater length on this subject;
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrA-8rTxXf0

  16. Dale Campbell says:
    March 29, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    Damian,
    I appreciate that comment for several reasons, it’s tone, it’s patience, and it’s demonstrable attempt to interact with the other view (i.e. the use of is/ought language throughout). Thank you.

    My main/single point in return would be to suggest that the ‘is’ is actually not so simple? As opposed to the ‘is’ of a rock, human ‘is’-ness is pretty complex. As you begin to show towwrd the end, we have many desires that need ‘tempering’ (in a sense every desire needs this?). It is the judgment of which desires to temper (and indeed, which direction to temper them!?) in which we are being ‘selective’ as to which expressions of desire/fear are appropriate (for a given goal). This ‘judgment’/'selection’ of how to ‘temper’ desires/fears is where we are not merely going in a judgment-free, straight-line fashion from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, but are judging whether the goal is good/evil/’bad’ or superior/subservient to other goals – or just a bad goal.

    Your last sentence is a brilliant summary of your position. And yes, the is/ought connection must always be related to a goal. But, to be provocative, can we not say that for the goal of maximum sexual expression, a man ‘ought’ to have sex with literally anyone and anything that has an orifice? For me this highlights the reality of ‘judging’ what is a good goal or not a good goal, as well as ‘judging’ how to shape (this/that way) our desires/fears/emotions to match these good goals. We don’t, for example, shape our desires to match what we judge to be bad goals – i.e. we don’t say “…’x’ is a bad goal, so I’ll shape my desires to be pro-’x'…”
    Hope that makes sense?

  17. Damian says:
    March 30, 2010 at 6:38 am

    Dale, yes, I thought it was obvious that I was over-simplifying the various factors involved. Yes, there are many, many more factors than just desire to breed, eat, etc.

    And speaking of over-simplification. You say,

    But, to be provocative, can we not say that for the goal of maximum sexual expression, a man ‘ought’ to have sex with literally anyone and anything that has an orifice?

    I’m really not sure you are understanding what I’ve been saying. I’ve never said that we can isolate a single desire and seek to fulfil it regardless of the consequences to other desires.

    Let me explain in a simplified example.

    Assume we have a creature that desires only two things; 1. any kind of edible food and lots of it, 2. a long and mobile life. We can’t just say that because it gets pleasure from eating anything and everything that doing so would be the best course of action because we’re omitting the fact that they also want to live long and be mobile. Overindulging in the first would work against the second.

    Of course to really get into the domain of morality it helps of have more than one party involved so you can envisage another simplified set of creatures who have equal desires to, say, hurt their fellows, be accepted by their fellows and not to be hurt. If these creatures are to gain maximum happiness they’re going to have to compromise on either the whole desire to hurt thing or to be accepted. If each desire is of equal weight in this simplified case then they’ll be happier living together and not hurting each other with a happiness of 66% as opposed to 33% if they go it alone hurting others and being hurt by others.

    You can’t just take a single desire and think you’ve addressed the morality question by attempting to fulfil that desire. Your sex-crazed person example was the equivalent of only trying to determine whether one of our creatures OUGHT to hurt others because it desired it and without regard to the other desires that it has.

    Do those examples make it clearer?

  18. Dale Campbell says:
    March 30, 2010 at 1:18 pm

    Cheers Damian,
    A very helpful follow-up point to my comments. Nothing like (good!) dialogue to sharpen views.

    I totally take your point about the problem of using one, single desire as an example. Indeed, my last comment included a possibly confusing mix of pointing to muliplicity of desire as well as that single-desire example. Well pointed out.

    Another thing I’d want to point out in response is that all the way there is an underlying assumed (and non-’factual’) goal of ‘getting what you want’ or ‘fulfilling desires’ or a kind of utilitarian ‘let’s all fulfil as much desire as we can’ (or ‘let’s minimise the level of unfulfilled desire’, etc.).

    I can’t see or imagine any way at all that a goal or value could be directly based on an ‘is’. Certainly (and I guess this is kind of the point?), our ‘is’ is what we’re trying to figure out what to do with, so the ‘is’ is part of the process, and we would want to understand the nature/causes of the ‘is’ (i.e. desires). But as to what we ‘do’ with them, that’s not a ‘factual’ measurement – but will always be a mix of reason, intuition, logic, tradition, emotion, etc., etc. And I think we can take these subjective things seriously enough to say (whilst we’re not all-knowing, or epistemically perfect!) that we ‘know’ things to be the case, etc.
    hope that helps.

  19. Dale Campbell says:
    March 30, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    …by the way, I think that’s effectively what Sam does in this video when he talks about some moral opinions ‘just’ being wrong (i.e. Dalai Lama v. Ted Bundy) – not very ‘factual’ or ‘objective’, but I think he’s right!

  20. Damian says:
    March 30, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    Dale, when you say,

    I can’t see or imagine any way at all that a goal or value could be directly based on an ‘is’.

    Surely you are either being obtuse at this stage or have not taken in a single thing I’ve written in the comments above? I don’t mean that to be insulting but I’ve addressed this in quite some detail.

    I’m tempted to ask you to re-read my comments and write out in your own words what it is you think I was talking about in the examples of the wolves and the creatures who desire to hurt, not be hurt and to have community.

    Let me give you some ISes:
    1. Fido is a dog who likes to eat meat, hang around with other dogs and doesn’t like to be eaten.
    2. All dogs are made of meat and share Fido’s likes and dislikes.
    3. Other food sources are available.

    Now, tell me, based only on those three ISes, how OUGHT Fido proceed if he wants to achieve as many of his goals as possible? (assuming that each goal is worth 33%). How OUGHT all the dogs behave if they were to have a rational conversation about how to proceed?

  21. Damian says:
    March 30, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    Also, with regard to Sam’s example of the Dalai Lama and Ted Bundy he quite clearly talks about right and wrong with respect to human flourishing.

  22. Dale Campbell says:
    March 30, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    Sorry Damian,
    I certainly wasn’t being obtuse and am genuinely trying to take everything you’ve said into consideration. Am I wrong to point out remaining assumed, underlying goals? (i.e. the underlying goal of human ‘flourishing’ in the D.Lama/Bundy case; Bundy was ‘flourishing’ just as much as the D.Lama was, but for different goals – one is self-evidently/intuitively ‘just’ better)

    And the goodness of the goal of Fido and other dogs achieving maximum levels of their meat-eating + non-being-eaten goals (dog ‘flourishing’?) is assumed as well.

    I know it may sound like nit-picking, but a value-judgment seems inescapable with this stuff. We’re just so used to making these judgments that we easily forget they are judgments?

  23. Damian says:
    March 31, 2010 at 11:34 am

    Dale, I can’t give this the time it deserves suffice to say that you’re still missing the main point (which is that once you have identified all the ISes you inevitably end up with OUGHTs when one or more of those ISes involve desires). I’m heading away this evening and will be away until Monday so will pick this back up then. Have a good weekend!

  24. Dale Campbell says:
    March 31, 2010 at 11:39 am

    No worries at all Damian, i think the amount of discussion his talk has provoked illustrates if nothing else, the complexity of the issue and the controversiality of what he is claiming. Let’s do a coffee some time? Have a good easter weekend.

  25. Damian says:
    April 6, 2010 at 9:51 am

    Dale,
    When we define an OUGHT we are required to also have a goal of some sort. Sometimes we economise and don’t explicitly define the goal but there is always one there at least implicitly.

    So, when you ask whether Fido’s goals in themselves are ‘good’ all you are doing is moving the OUGHT back a step which we can do with any moral system including one we perceive as directly from God. (How do we know that God wanting us to flourish is a good goal? etc, etc).

    Because I clearly defined Fido’s desires and fears (which forms goals) we can say — within this frame of reference — what Fido OUGHT to do. If we wanted we could examine Fido’s actions in the greater context of other animals (including ourselves) but we still have to take into account the same kinds of factors.

    A couple of comments ago I gave a fairly simple and locked-down example of Fido and asked you to tell me what he (and also the other dogs) OUGHT to do based on these observed facts. I’d like you to have a go at that even though it seems fairly elementary. As you do, you’ll find yourself doing testable, predictable science. Hopefully that will be enough to prove my point.

  26. Dale Campbell says:
    April 6, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    Thanks Damian,
    I want to ask you about these words, which I’ve not understood:

    Because I clearly defined Fido’s desires and fears (which forms goals [emphasis added]) we can say — within this frame of reference — what Fido OUGHT to do.

    What do you mean when you say that desires/fears “forms goals”?

  27. Damian says:
    April 6, 2010 at 1:14 pm

    In its simplest form, if you desire food a goal of eating exists. If you fear pain a goal of pain-avoidance exists. An OUGHT cannot be devoid of a goal which cannot be devoid of desires (where even a worm’s aversion to light could be seen as a simplified desire). Desires and goals could well be used synonymously.

    If that answers your question please take the time to address the problem of how you would advise Fido and his doggy friends’ actions.

  28. Dale Campbell says:
    April 6, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    Thanks Damian,
    I agree that desires (or ‘will’/'intention’/'disposition’ to throw a couple other terms in there) are linked to goals, and that an ‘ought cannot be devoid of a goal, which cannot be devoid of desires’ (though I’d not go so far as to say that goals/desires could ever be seen/used as synonyms).

    The Fido scenario is self-answering really – almost (and I’d be curious as to what you think you’d be proving if the “let’s not eat each other” ‘ought’ was acknowledged to be the clear rational answer). It doesn’t consider all of Fido (other desires), nor the non-dog meat sources (and whatever desires they might have – i.e. desiring not to be eaten by dogs).

    Rather than this being a pointless diversion from a simple moral example, it is instead a gentle suggestion that the moral example is not so much simple as simplistic.

    The question it fails to address (which seems to me to be the question at the heart of the controversy over Sam’s ‘fact-based’ morality) is that ‘oughts’, ‘goals’ and ‘desires’ can be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with relationship to other oughts/goals/desires.

    It fails to provide any prescriptive impetus for discerning/reasoning the moral difference between the Fido scenario and the following scenario:
    1. John is a father likes to sexually touch his daughter and his 6 girlfriends.
    2. John’s daughter and girlfriends like to be sexually touched by a male around once a week.
    3. All 8 of them live in isolation from any cultural influences for/against these practices.

    Both Fido and John (with their respective ‘communities’) all can have their desires fulfilled by (respectively) eating only non-dog meat and sharing John sexually between them. As you can see, both examples are simplistic (they fail to take account of all the ‘data’ – any other desires of others and/or the dogs/persons).

  29. Damian says:
    April 6, 2010 at 4:12 pm

    Dale,
    See what you were required to do in the Fido example. You were able to take the facts at hand and prescribe an OUGHT. Of course we suspect that there are likely to be more factors involved in the real world but I can see no reason why we can’t factor those in just as we did with the simple ones we started with and apply the same methodology. Sometimes we may not be able to enumerate every factor and so we act on hunches and past experience (which is no guarantee of success but in the absence of anything else it’s the best we can do).

    In your example of John, his daughter and her friends, given the restricted list of factors involved our OUGHT would be for them to indulge themselves. To go for it.

    Do you find that disturbing?

    Well that’s because you’re thinking of other factors that were not defined. So we must go ahead and list what those factors are to get a more complete OUGHT.

    Will we ever be able to factor in every variable? I doubt it. In much the same way that we can’t factor in every variable which influences the motion of the planets but we can get enough to get a reasonably close approximation. We may have to fly by the seat of our pants for the missing factors but that shouldn’t mean that flying by the seat of our pants is the most effective way of discussing morality.

    Once again, this seems a far more reasonable way to make decisions about what we OUGHT to do as opposed to taking religious revelation on faith. Especially when those religious revelations seem very likely to merely be the imposed morals of a particular time and place, many of which we find repugnant today.

    Science *does* have something to say about morality. And I’d contend that it will do so more fruitfully than superstition. I also understand completely why religions are so hesitant to concede access to morality — what else will they be able to offer when science not only tells us more accurately about how the world works but even can be used to more accurately guide our actions in fulfilling our goals (and, hence, OUGHTs).

  30. Dale Campbell says:
    April 6, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    I am enjoying this, and have to leave for a meeting now-ish, so will be quick,

    I don’t think that “religious revelation” is a) opposed to reason, or b) absent from the most atheistic of moral factoring. We all accept as ‘given’ and ‘basic’ some pretty common goals, and we all value some basic desires are ‘good’, and these judgements are pure ‘hunches’ that no scientific observations/descriptions could clear up. We didn’t need to know the intricate details of the human body to have good, certain, ‘hunches’ about many moral points.

    I’d like to see an example of how *science* (and I mean science in some definable sense, as opposed to some general notions of the collective activity of human observation of the world, etc.) helps us ‘access’ or ‘guide’ our moral decisions any measurable way better than (i.e.) before we had science?

    Our definition of ‘science’ could well be a key point in this conversation…

  31. Damian says:
    April 6, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    Dale, religious revelation is immune to reason. If you don’t believe that simply find some other religion and try to reason with them about their particular religious revelation. I find it the same with your particular revelations (virgin births, resurrections, etc).

    I don’t understand what you mean by religious revelation not being absent from the most atheistic of moral factoring.

    We all accept as ‘given’ and ‘basic’ some pretty common goals, and we all value some basic desires are ‘good’, and these judgements are pure ‘hunches’ that no scientific observations/descriptions could clear up

    Perhaps some concrete examples would help here? Care to provide some so that we can analyse them and perhaps try to discover where these ‘basic’ goals may have come from? And perhaps whether the scientific process may be of use instead of simply taking things on authority.

    We didn’t need to know the intricate details of the human body to have good, certain, ‘hunches’ about many moral points

    And once again I must reply with a verbatim copy and paste of what I said in comment #14:
    “No one has claimed that moral creatures have always used science to guide them. The claim is that science *can* be used to guide us and that it’s *not* exclusive to religions. It’s analogous to me making the claim that we’ll make better food choices if we use science whereupon you come back with the complaint that people were eating fruit long before science was used.”

    I’d like to see an example of how *science* (and I mean science in some definable sense, as opposed to some general notions of the collective activity of human observation of the world, etc.) helps us ‘access’ or ‘guide’ our moral decisions any measurable way better than (i.e.) before we had science?

    Sure, I’ll provide two examples:

    1. Many people used to believe that Negroes were not human and therefore it was morally OK to keep them as beasts of burden. This was perhaps more to do with natural in-group prejudices than anything else but observation of their suffering and the piecing together of human ancestry allowed for an awakening of public awareness which contributed to the anti-slavery movement. This moral issue is pretty much done and dusted but there was once a time when our ancestors thought it perfectly normal to have slaves.

    2. Many people currently believe that cows, sheep and chickens are animals and so not worthy of consideration when it comes to the issue of suffering. Science shows us that animals *do* in fact suffer and can be used to guide our actions especially when we ourselves desire for creatures not to suffer unnecessarily. This moral issue is still in progress. Almost everyone doesn’t like the idea of animals suffering but some give it less thought than others. Perhaps there will come a time in the future when our grand children will look back on us in much the same way we do with our slave-trading ancestors.

    In both these cases the process of science can be used to shed light on the facts of the environment and can even potentially be used to make recommendation when you factor in all of our desires (which include the desire to eat meat as well as a desire to not cause suffering).

    In both of these cases people can pick and choose their morality from the vast array of stories available in various scriptures and can with equal conviction land on either side of the fence.

  32. Dale Campbell says:
    April 6, 2010 at 11:13 pm

    Dale, religious revelation is immune to reason. If you don’t believe that simply find some other religion and try to reason with them about their particular religious revelation.

    I do just that all the time, and find (as you’d expect) points of agreement and disagreement – what was your point? More specifically are you implying that anything less than 100% agreement concerning religion across humanity necessitates a broad-brush sweeping of all religious belief into the rubbish bin of ‘invalid/unnecessary ideas’?

    I don’t understand what you mean by religious revelation not being absent from the most atheistic of moral factoring.

    I’m trying to get past the casual, easy dismissalistic language describing some distinction between ‘pure’ reasoned, ‘scientifically based’ moral reasoning on one hand, and ‘superstitious’, ‘irrational’, ‘if-you-say-so’, ‘anti-science’ dogma on the other. We all believe things about the world that are and will never be ‘scientifically’ proven. Indeed, the belief that beliefs are better when ‘scientifically validated’ (as if all beliefs even could be) is itself a rather interesting and non-scientific (i.e. philosophical) belief. More below…

    Perhaps some concrete examples would help here? Care to provide some so that we can analyse them and perhaps try to discover where these ‘basic’ goals may have come from? And perhaps whether the scientific process may be of use instead of simply taking things on authority.

    One example would be the basic goal of survival and ‘flourishing’. Science helps us achieve our goal of survival in the same way that technology (eye contacts, for example) helps us achieve our goal of seeing better. But the goal itself is discerned apart from *science*.
    Another example would be cases where we don’t dare perform certain experiments as they would be immoral. I’m thinking here of the ‘experiments’ performed at Nazi concentration camps, and (more controversially) the sexuality experiments performed on young children by Kinsey. Sure, some suped-up fMRI scan might give us supplementary images of the brain activity which accompanies the state of emotional/psychological trauma that these experiment victims sufferred, but the judgement that emotional trauma is ‘bad’ is not itself ‘scientific’.

    1. Many people used to believe that Negroes were not human and therefore it was morally OK to keep them as beasts of burden. This was perhaps more to do with natural in-group prejudices than anything else but observation of their suffering and the piecing together of human ancestry allowed for an awakening of public awareness which contributed to the anti-slavery movement.

    sorry, I honestly missed the part where *science* showed slavery to be wrong. Again, our definition of ‘science’ may be a central point to clarify.

    2. Many people currently believe that cows, sheep and chickens are animals and so not worthy of consideration when it comes to the issue of suffering. Science shows us that animals *do* in fact suffer and can be used to guide our actions especially when we ourselves desire for creatures not to suffer unnecessarily. This moral issue is still in progress. Almost everyone doesn’t like the idea of animals suffering but some give it less thought than others.

    Again, I missed how *science* helped us realise/decide anything about how much animal suffering (or what kind – if any at all) is OK or not. And also, again, we surely knew that animals suffered by simply watching/listening to them die? Science did not suddenly reveal that animals suffer.
    And your statement (“Science …can be used to guide our actions especially when we ourselves desire for creatures not to suffer unnecessarily.”) is telling: when we already have a desire/goal that is thought to be ‘good’, then science helps us realise that desire/goal.

    This also relates to your later comment (” the process of science can be used to shed light on the facts of the environment and can even potentially be used to make recommendation when you factor in all of our desires (which include the desire to eat meat as well as a desire to not cause suffering).”).

    In both of these cases people can pick and choose their morality from the vast array of stories available in various scriptures and can with equal conviction land on either side of the fence.

    The same is true for any source of morality – like reason. I could say:
    “In both of these cases people can pick and choose their morality from the vast array of lines of reasoning available in various intellectual contexts and can with equal conviction land on either side of the fence.”

    The data/facts of Life (like scripture) require interpretation. Skill in interpretation (a.k.a. wisdom) is a must.

  33. Damian says:
    April 7, 2010 at 8:42 am

    One example would be the basic goal of survival and ‘flourishing’. Science helps us achieve our goal of survival in the same way that technology (eye contacts, for example) helps us achieve our goal of seeing better. But the goal itself is discerned apart from *science*.

    But Dale, no one has claimed that science sets our goals for us. You seem to be just not getting this point and I’m starting to wonder if it’s intentional. Almost all of your comment is based on this false premise.

    …when we already have a desire/goal that is thought to be ‘good’, then science helps us realise that desire/goal

    Exactly! All desires are ‘good’ in isolation. Fido likes to eat meat. Good. Fido likes to have friends. Good. Fido likes to eat his friends. Good. But, wait, that last one conflicts with the other two. What desires should Fido suppress if he is to have the maximal happiness? Easy, don’t eat your friends, there is other food available.

    We are using simple observations about Fido’s desires/goals and using simple logic to see which balance will satisfy the most desires.

  34. Dale Campbell says:
    April 7, 2010 at 8:58 am

    So, if science doesn’t set our goals for us, how do we set our goals and know they are good goals?

    For example, how do we know that “All desires are ‘good’ in isolation.”?? Surely a ‘scientific’ analysis of desires must be ‘objective’ and/or indifferent regarding good-ness/bad-ness?

    1 Fido likes meat
    2 Fido likes dog-community
    3 Fido likes to eat fellow dogs

    It is not a ‘scientific’ necessity that Fido fulfilling desires 1 & 2 is ‘better’ than fulfilling only desire 3. It IS a philosophical (indeed probably hedonistic – at this basic/simplistic level, of course) judgement.

    Why not ask “What desires should Fido suppress if he is to have the least happiness?” We could reason just as ‘scientifically’ in that direction too. “Satisfying the most desires” is not a scientifically derived goal.

  35. Damian says:
    April 7, 2010 at 9:43 am

    Dale, perhaps it would have been more technically correct for me to have said that “all desires are ‘neutral’ in isolation”.

    ‘Good’ is inherently bound up in goal-appropriateness. I don’t believe that there is such a thing as ‘good’ which does not in some way relate to a goal. Another way to say ‘good’ would be ‘goal-appropriate’ with ‘all things considered’ tacked on at the end. Do you agree with this? If not, provide an example of ‘good’ without implicit reference to a desire or goal of some kind.

    If we can agree on this definition of ‘good’ then you surely should be able to see that when combining all of Fido’s goals we can aggregate them overall and use the scientific method to determine which set of actions will be most ‘goal-appropriate’ (i.e. ‘good’).

    We can do the same with food. We have desires for all kinds of different food, some of which can be harmful to us. Using the same methodology we can see which desires ought to be suppressed or moderated if we are to achieve the goal of healthiness. We can also use science to show us the most goal-appropriate course of action if we set a goal of poisoning ourselves.

    “Yeah but how does science determine whether it’s better to be healthy or poison ourselves?” you repeat.

    Well, let’s factor in some other goals. Science will have nothing to say about it otherwise. How about a goal of avoiding suffering? Or of living for a long time? Now we can see a conflict with the poisoning course of action and can say that it is not goal-appropriate to eat, say, arsenic.

    Is living and not suffering a ‘good’ goal to have? I don’t know of any other goals that contradict this at the grand scale. You may believe that you get this goal from God. Perhaps living and suffering is only good because there is an entity out there more powerful than us who desires it so. But then why is it good that God would want us to live and not suffer? Just like the uncaused-cause issues of creationism I’m willing to bet that you’re satisfied to stop the questioning right there. But I think it’s reasonable to say that we could have stopped and been satisfied with the explanation that the goal of living and not suffering comes from our in-built evolutionary and developmental responses, without which we would probably not be here to even talk about it.

    Perhaps you should take the opportunity to define what it is you think ‘good’ is.

  36. Dale Campbell says:
    April 7, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Thanks again Damian,
    Yes I agree that ‘neutral’ is better than ‘good’.
    And yes, I also agree that ‘good’ is bound up with goal-appropriate-ness’.

    From here, I really appreciated the way in which you followed the logical progression from specific/momentary goals to larger and larger over-riding general/lasting goals. And I actually like your parallel of the ‘goal-source-regress’ (if I can put it like that) and the ‘causality/contingency-regress’.

    Our epistemic certainty as to these things (what/who is the last cause, is there such a thing as an un-caused cause? & is there a goal or goals that is/are simply unquestionable and/or just self-evidently ‘good’?) will always be less than 100%. But I think that we can be epistemically justified in claiming at least some kind of other-than-omniscient ‘knowledge’ of God’s desires/goals (and of God being the ‘uncaused cause’). The infinite regress(es) points to an infinite source.

    For me (and this is where I challenge many of my fellow believers), belief in a God as the ultimate Cause and ultimate source of goals/desires does not mean that we call off all thinking/study/research as to causality or ethics.

  37. Dale Campbell says:
    May 4, 2010 at 11:15 pm

    ((Just a follow up addition of the following link – where Sean Carroll well describes why the is/ought distinction appears here to stay))

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/05/03/you-cant-derive-ought-from-is/

  38. Damian says:
    May 10, 2010 at 11:31 am

    And a follow up of the follow up of the follow up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html

  39. Ken says:
    May 10, 2010 at 4:56 pm

    Actually, PZ Myers has a few blog posts too.

    I still feel these people are talking past each other a bit. That beneath it all there isn’t much disagreement.

Leave a Reply