Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[Kevin_Lowe]

Perhaps you should, as you seem to have an "is/ought" problem or is that just where you got the idea that you ought to have such an "is/ought" problem?

You seem to be determined to misunderstand me, and unwilling to do any work to catch up on the thread to avoid such misunderstandings, so I don't think this discussion is going to be productive.


Moral or not “ought” is still just a claim of what one thinks should be. Like a positive and a negative charge ought to attract.

No, this is just wrong. Objects with mass just do feel a mutually attractive force. Objects with opposite charges just do feel a mutually attractive force. There is absolutely no moral ought to the matter.


Actually was still responding to your assertions, one being.

No you weren't. You were responding directly to my summary of Harris' argument. Scroll back and look at what went before.


You claimed an "is/ought" problem if you can’t explain exactly what your problem is then perhaps you still don't understand it.

If you find my explanation confusing then use Google and read someone else's explanation of the problem until you get it. Come back when you're done.


So, that Harris is wrong was your point.

No. My argument does not boil down to a black-and-white talking point.


See you might have found some science in it after all, but I guess we’ll still just have to agree to disagree about there being a problem to start with.

Or you could go and do some reading as I originally suggested. Just because you can't figure something out when you jump into an ongoing thread on the thirty-eighth page without doing any homework of your own whatsoever, when the thread topic is university-level philosophy, doesn't mean that there is nothing to figure out.

[JoelKatz]

But they aren't the same.They are the same if you take away our scientific understanding of color.

From a position of scientific naivety, I would be inclined to regard color perception as being directed at some real feature of the external world, but I would do so because was can have, say, two otherwise identical balls, viewed under identical conditions, and see one as red and the other as blue, and other people would reliably report their colors the same way I do. This would seem to deny the claim that color is merely conventional any footing--there's just nothing else in our experience to hang it on.But you can't have two "otherwise identical balls" that are different colors under the same conditions. If you could, that would be an incredibly perplexing thing for us to understand. In fact, their surface composition has to be different or there has to be some similar difference. These differences are perceptible by other senses.

Moral intuitions are exactly not like this. We never have two otherwise identical acts such that one is right and the other wrong.Imagine if we could have two otherwise identical acts such that one is accurately judged right and the other is accurately judged wrong. That would prove morality is subjective because here is nothing objective the judgment could measure.

If you had some kind of 'proxy' you could pass vision through. of course something different would have to pass through the proxy to see red rather than blue. If you could feed vision through such a proxy, and the same input produced different colors seen, that would *refute* objectivity.

Moral assessments do generally pass through such a proxy. I speak the thing you judge. So of course, I have to speak something different for you to judge something different. Were it not so, morality could not be measuring objective properties -- there must be some difference to measure.

In fact, because we can test morality under circumstances where we completely control the input, it's much easier to argue that the assessment is of objective properties. We can actually see that a person is assessing two different inputs, with objective differences that might be what they're measuring, when they produce different output.

We sweep whole classes of acts into one moral category or the other. We even completely disregard details that we don't consider relevant--it's generally taken to be a desirable feature of a moral system that its prescriptions be universalizable. And it's trivial to propose a mechanism to explain this without reference to some set of mind-independent facts about the world: maybe values are just transmitted from one generation to the next. Maybe they're ingrained in our biology. It doesn't matter in any case--none of this will get you to exotic entities like moral facts with normative force that provide logical grounds for moving from is to ought.But this is the same about color. For example, the fact that we consider a mix of pure yellow and pure blue to be the same color as green is due to facts about our color vision. Two green balls can emit spectra of light that are as difference as a blue ball and a yellow ball, yet we see them as the same color because of facts ingrained in our biology.

We disregard all kinds of things when we assess an object's color. We zoom in on those things that relate to color, just as when making moral assessments, we zoom in on things that relate to morality.

Color names are transmitted from one generation to the next too. We draw the line between red and orange at a point that's learned, not necessarily part of biology. But whatever we learn about morality, it must be that we are learning how to assess some property. The question is what exactly is that property.

[KingofMadCows]

Isn't he kind of rehashing arguments made by BF Skinner? Although I think Skinner's arguments were more in-depth and he had some ways of modifying human behavior in order to solve social problems.

[fls]

Assertion isn't argument.

I agree.

You can assert all day that I have misunderstood you and that I'm wrong, but such assertions are empty unless you also explain why I am wrong and what your position is.

I agree.

:rolleyes: There is nothing to "interrogate".

:)

The reason you have never been able to clearly state a solution is that you do not have one.

I agree.

As I recall, your position is based on a different error, usually referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. While Harris blatantly helps himself to the assumption that the flourishing of conscious beings is morally good, you covertly help yourself to the assumption that what we have evolved to think of as good is good. Then when you get called on it you run around chasing your own tail saying "That's not what I'm saying, but it is, but it's more complicated!".

Thank you. That makes your position clear.

You're far from the first to fall in to that trap, and you certainly won't be the last. You're not saying anything new, deep or clever, if that's what you were thinking.

No. At least, I hope not. I'd hate to be the only one, or one of a few, to say something clever.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

As I recall, your position is based on a different error, usually referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. While Harris blatantly helps himself to the assumption that the flourishing of conscious beings is morally good, you covertly help yourself to the assumption that what we have evolved to think of as good is good. Then when you get called on it you run around chasing your own tail saying "That's not what I'm saying, but it is, but it's more complicated!".I think most of us would agree that if we were given some incontrovertible mechanism to know how much to value particular goals, ends or outcomes, then the question of what actions would most achieve those goals would become an objective/scientific one. If we have to choose between two actions, and we could objectively put a 'value' on the result of each action, the one with the highest value would objectively be 'right', in the sense that it maximizes that value. However, you then have to face the problem of how to value the ends these actions achieve.

To an extent, it's axiomatic that what we've evolved to think of as good is good in one sense of 'good'. To go back to color vision again (sorry), it's absurd to argue that we are calling what is really red by the word 'blue' and what is really blue by the word 'red'. In an important sense, 'red' *is* whatever we decide call red. The labeling of colors and the choice of their boundaries is somewhat arbitrary. The challenge for science is to figure out precisely what in the real word corresponds (and to what extent) to what we call 'good'.

I should also point out that to a very real extent, there does not really exist inherent in objects themselves a pure property that corresponds to what we call 'green'. We call pure 525nm light 'green'. We call mixes of 460nm light and 580nm light also 'green'. What makes these 'the same color' is at least as much in us as in the objects we look at. Understanding moral judgments will also help us understand how much of morality comes from how we judge, and I bet our understanding of what 'good' really is will change just as our understanding of colors did.

In other words, part of my response to the argument that morality is 'subjective' is that color vision sort of is subjective too. Subjective does not mean arbitrary, useless, whatever someone says it is, or the like. It just means that the boundaries around what objective aspects are part of the property and what aren't and how they are measured is somewhat dependent on *our* nature. All measurements, perceptions, and judgments are subjective in this sense. If I ask you how long something is, part of what affects the answer I get from you is what you have available to do the measuring with. That doesn't change the fact that extent is an objective property.

[fls]

To those who have read the book:

Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?

As Kevin has pointed out above, given the moral philosophies people claim to be guided by we already know quite clearly what we ought to be doing, but most of us and most of our governments seem to find lots of excuses as to why we're not doing them now.

Perhaps science could help us with that problem before we think about throwing out moral philosophy and replacing it with a science of morality?

I think it starts with throwing out religious dogmatism.

Linda

[Dragoonster]

I think it starts with throwing out religious dogmatism.

Linda

Well, that's like basing a world morality upon throwing out addiction to heroin, alcohol, tobacco, wasteful materialism, (serial killing, murder, assault), etc. Nice in theory, never going to universally happen.

Second, you didn't really answer the question.

As response to Ivor--Harris has suggested brain operations to make people comply with the (aka his) True Morality. I think this cite is way back in the thread.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think most of us would agree that if we were given some incontrovertible mechanism to know how much to value particular goals, ends or outcomes, then the question of what actions would most achieve those goals would become an objective/scientific one. If we have to choose between two actions, and we could objectively put a 'value' on the result of each action, the one with the highest value would objectively be 'right', in the sense that it maximizes that value. However, you then have to face the problem of how to value the ends these actions achieve.

Yes.


To an extent, it's axiomatic that what we've evolved to think of as good is good in one sense of 'good'.

No. Or rather, not in any useful sense of the word good. We've evolved to think of rape and genocide as good, in that sense of 'good', hence it's not a very useful sense.

[fls]

Well, that's like basing a world morality upon throwing out addiction to heroin, alcohol, tobacco, wasteful materialism, (serial killing, murder, assault), etc. Nice in theory, never going to universally happen.

Second, you didn't really answer the question.

Ivor the Engineer asked about what was in the book.

Linda

[Beth]

To those who have read the book:

Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be? No

[Paulhoff]

Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?
Yes, the same thing that is used now, it is called JAIL.

Paul

:) :) :)

[JoelKatz]

No. Or rather, not in any useful sense of the word good. We've evolved to think of rape and genocide as good, in that sense of 'good', hence it's not a very useful sense.I think this is somewhat akin to arguing that vision is not useful because of the existence of optical illusions. However, if your point is that it would be absurd to say that because a pencil looks bent when under water, it must actually *be* bent and if we don't consider it bent, then we should change our definition of 'bent' to mean precisely the same thing as 'looking bent', then I agree with you.

Once we understand how our moral sense works and how it can go wrong, we can figure out cases where things "seem right" even though they are "really wrong" just as the pencil may "look bent" or the two lines may "look the same length".

This is the same thing that happened with color vision. At one time, 'green' simply meant things that looked green to normal human vision. As we understood how color vision works, our understanding of 'green' has evolved to one that more accurately affects what's "really green" in the real world and we've separated "really green" (a particular range of frequencies) from "looking green" (stimulating our color vision the same way light in that range does).

[The Man]

You seem to be determined to misunderstand me, and unwilling to do any work to catch up on the thread to avoid such misunderstandings, so I don't think this discussion is going to be productive.

Yet you persist.




No, this is just wrong. Objects with mass just do feel a mutually attractive force. Objects with opposite charges just do feel a mutually attractive force. There is absolutely no moral ought to the matter.

So “ought” isn’t an assertion of what one thinks should be? So people just don‘t feel something ought to be moral or not?



No you weren't. You were responding directly to my summary of Harris' argument. Scroll back and look at what went before.

Indeed I was, if you think not then I suggest you scroll back and read what I said I was responding to. If you would simply like to limit that response to something of your own preference there is not much I or anyone (but you) can do about that.



If you find my explanation confusing then use Google and read someone else's explanation of the problem until you get it. Come back when you're done.

I found nothing in that confusing. So your assertion is that I should agree with you (or them) first then “Come back”?



No. My argument does not boil down to a black-and-white talking point.

Sure it does you think Harris wrong if he thinks he has solved the “”is/ought" problem”. Is there something else you think he is wrong about?



Or you could go and do some reading as I originally suggested. Just because you can't figure something out when you jump into an ongoing thread on the thirty-eighth page without doing any homework of your own whatsoever, when the thread topic is university-level philosophy, doesn't mean that there is nothing to figure out.

I’m not the one who claimed to have a problem so it is just that you can't figure something out. One of the ways to try to figure something out is to first explicitly and exactly state what the problem is. If you can’t than it is unlikely that you will find a solution if there is one or even the problem if there was one.


Also, I suspect that The Man's question was not meant to indicate ignorance of the "is/ought problem", but was meant as a device to ask you to interrogate the question. But I think you're right - he can't have been paying attention to this thread if he thought this was a possibility. :)

Linda

Exactly.

[The Man]

I think most of us would agree that if we were given some incontrovertible mechanism to know how much to value particular goals, ends or outcomes, then the question of what actions would most achieve those goals would become an objective/scientific one. If we have to choose between two actions, and we could objectively put a 'value' on the result of each action, the one with the highest value would objectively be 'right', in the sense that it maximizes that value. However, you then have to face the problem of how to value the ends these actions achieve.

Again science only has the same tools to make such evaluations as it does in any other consideration.


To an extent, it's axiomatic that what we've evolved to think of as good is good in one sense of 'good'. To go back to color vision again (sorry), it's absurd to argue that we are calling what is really red by the word 'blue' and what is really blue by the word 'red'. In an important sense, 'red' *is* whatever we decide call red. The labeling of colors and the choice of their boundaries is somewhat arbitrary. The challenge for science is to figure out precisely what in the real word corresponds (and to what extent) to what we call 'good'.

It is the same challenge as it is to figure out what we call ‘red’. It is just that most people would tend to agree on some designation of ‘red’ than what they might call ‘good’. People tend to have less of an emotional investment in ascriptions like ‘red’ or ‘blue’ than they do with ‘good’.



I should also point out that to a very real extent, there does not really exist inherent in objects themselves a pure property that corresponds to what we call 'green'. We call pure 525nm light 'green'. We call mixes of 460nm light and 580nm light also 'green'. What makes these 'the same color' is at least as much in us as in the objects we look at. Understanding moral judgments will also help us understand how much of morality comes from how we judge, and I bet our understanding of what 'good' really is will change just as our understanding of colors did.

Exactly just as a waveform can be broken down into a combination of other, even opposing waveforms. What one takes as predominantly good or bad can likewise be a combination of other elements that on their own could have different and perhaps opposing ascriptions.



In other words, part of my response to the argument that morality is 'subjective' is that color vision sort of is subjective too. Subjective does not mean arbitrary, useless, whatever someone says it is, or the like. It just means that the boundaries around what objective aspects are part of the property and what aren't and how they are measured is somewhat dependent on *our* nature. All measurements, perceptions, and judgments are subjective in this sense. If I ask you how long something is, part of what affects the answer I get from you is what you have available to do the measuring with. That doesn't change the fact that extent is an objective property.

No, subjective does not mean arbitrary, however it also doesn’t preclude that determination from being just arbitrary and arbitrary does infer subjectivity.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yet you persist.

Up to a point.

[Beth]

Again science only has the same tools to make such evaluations as it does in any other consideration.



It is the same challenge as it is to figure out what we call ‘red’. It is just that most people would tend to agree on some designation of ‘red’ than what they might call ‘good’. People tend to have less of an emotional investment in ascriptions like ‘red’ or ‘blue’ than they do with ‘good’.

I like the color analogy. I disagree with it only in that it is considered an 'objective' property of objects. But I think that objectivity is an illusion anyway. Or more properly, that true objectivity is an unattainable perfection of measurement. Ithink of objective/subjective as two extremes of a continuous property of all measurements.

The big different I see is that color is measuring a property of material object. Sam Harris is proposing we scientifically attempt to measure an intangible property of material objects, namely us.

If we accept that normal humans have an inborn propensity towards describing certain behaviors as 'good' or 'bad', then we should be able to construct better and more objective measures of such.

I think that this leads to a 'the majority is always sane' ethos. Consider this, the majority of humans in my society consider a sincere belief in some sort of religion or god a primary indicator of morality. Suppose we identify neurologically what is different about people people who do and don't believe in god. Who do you think that people in my society will consider 'broken' and in need of 'fixing'.

[Dragoonster]

Ivor the Engineer asked about what was in the book.

Linda

"I think it starts with throwing out religious dogmatism"?

That quote is in the book?



And does that sentence fulfillingly and completely answer "Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?"

Is he going to jail people who don't throw out their religious dogmatism (and that's worked awesome in past history!)? How does he design to get people to throw out their religious dogmatism?

DETAILS

[Trent Wray]

Of course science can answer moral questions. So long as we agree there are no correct or incorrect responses.

Every judicial system can be replaced with Magic 8 Balls.

[Beth]

"I think it starts with throwing out religious dogmatism"?

That quote is in the book?



And does that sentence fulfillingly and completely answer "Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?"

Is he going to jail people who don't throw out their religious dogmatism (and that's worked awesome in past history!)? How does he design to get people to throw out their religious dogmatism?

DETAILS

I think the general idea is that science can measure what is wrong with people neurologically and then prescribe treatments to address moral deficiencies. We are actually able to do such things in a very primitive way at the moment. IIRC, there have been experiments regarding drug regimens for convicted rapists. 'Chemical Castration' is a headline I recall, though I haven't heard anything more about it in years so that particular experiment may not have worked out.

If I am understanding Harris correctly, that would be an example of science solving a moral problem. If that isn't a good example, I'd appreciate hearing why and a different example provided.


Of course science can answer moral questions. So long as we agree there are no correct or incorrect responses.
We can define responses we consider 'good', same as we define what we consider 'red'. It only remains to get similar concurrence on the issue by the rest of humanity.


Every judicial system can be replaced with Magic 8 Balls.

Sadly, I think such a system might be an improvement over our current one. :(

[AlBell]

I think the general idea is that science can measure what is wrong with people neurologically and then prescribe treatments to address moral deficiencies. We are actually able to do such things in a very primitive way at the moment. IIRC, there have been experiments regarding drug regimens for convicted rapists. 'Chemical Castration' is a headline I recall, though I haven't heard anything more about it in years so that particular experiment may not have worked out.

If I am understanding Harris correctly, that would be an example of science solving a moral problem. If that isn't a good example, I'd appreciate hearing why and a different example provided.
The rather large majority of humanity who profess to believe in god, and likely consider non-belief a moral deficiency, may decide Harris and other atheists need some chemical (or other) "fixing" so they believe in god too.

[Beth]

The rather large majority of humanity who profess to believe in god, and likely consider non-belief a moral deficiency, may decide Harris and other atheists need some chemical (or other) "fixing" so they believe in god too.

You think this is what Sam Harris had in mind?

[AlBell]

No, but one just never knows how others' "oughts" may or may not be implemented.

Buried in sand with head exposed as target for the rock throwers seems to be one method in current use.

ps. I continue to think Harris has nothing in mind for his believers other than book sales and speaking fees.

[JJM 777]

I think the general idea is that science can measure what is wrong with people neurologically and then prescribe treatments to address moral deficiencies.
Doesn´t sound good if "experts" (or even worse: laymen) decide what is "wrong" and then physically destroy anyone or anything that thinks otherwise.

there have been experiments regarding drug regimens for convicted rapists. 'Chemical Castration'
Castration does not make a person "healthy". Unless you would agree that amputating or paralyzing the hands and legs of a violent person makes the person "healthy".

If I am understanding Harris correctly, that would be an example of science solving a moral problem.
Chemical castration and whatever they would do to thieves remove symptoms. Brushing the symptoms under the carpet, without addressing the actual source of symptoms, is not a good long-term strategy to heal any sickness. The reasons for criminality are at least to some extent social, some people turn to criminality only after first trying and failing in legal working life.

We can define responses we consider 'good' (...) it only remains to get similar concurrence on the issue by the rest of humanity.
With the rest of humanity? Never. With majority of humanity? Possibly. But the cynical and ignorant majority is nearly always more wrong than some minorities.

[The Man]

The rather large majority of humanity who profess to believe in god, and likely consider non-belief a moral deficiency, may decide Harris and other atheists need some chemical (or other) "fixing" so they believe in god too.

Actually some applied magnetic fields might be more suited to that endeavor.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

[AlBell]

Agreed. Interesting study. Various psyco-active experiences might also suffice.

Once one has such an experience, would atheism still be one's choice? What would the evolutionary value of the needed circuitry be?

[The Man]

I like the color analogy. I disagree with it only in that it is considered an 'objective' property of objects. But I think that objectivity is an illusion anyway. Or more properly, that true objectivity is an unattainable perfection of measurement. Ithink of objective/subjective as two extremes of a continuous property of all measurements.

We can only go by what we can perceive and with instrumentality that ability has increased tremendously. However, the need for ascriptions still remain.


The big different I see is that color is measuring a property of material object. Sam Harris is proposing we scientifically attempt to measure an intangible property of material objects, namely us.

A property that we can perceive to some degree on our own but we still may not agree on what to ascribe those perceived properties, ‘red’ , ‘blue’ ‘good’ ‘bad’. Also (as you note) we have the capability of making such ascriptions based more on self perception than on any perceived property of a material object, or perhaps just conflate the two. Again it is one of the goals of science to objectify even the subjective.


If we accept that normal humans have an inborn propensity towards describing certain behaviors as 'good' or 'bad', then we should be able to construct better and more objective measures of such.

Exactly, as there appears to be no natural morality, that it is simply a construct of conscious beings or agents seems to be unavoidable. However, as you note the tendency to make such ascriptions does seem to be widespread so just that inherent drive to make such ascriptions may have some natural basis. Science has to start somewhere and generally is starts by defining terms and applications in some limited and to some degree idealized consideration. Once relationships become more apparent, theories developed and tested within those constraints the tendency is to move towards more generalized and less ideal considerations.



I think that this leads to a 'the majority is always sane' ethos. Consider this, the majority of humans in my society consider a sincere belief in some sort of religion or god a primary indicator of morality. Suppose we identify neurologically what is different about people people who do and don't believe in god. Who do you think that people in my society will consider 'broken' and in need of 'fixing'.

Sure to some degree, but we already consider people who lack empathy and have amoral behavior to be “broken” is some regard. The clinical term is (or at least was) Psychopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy).


Certainly I do take your point ‘let’s fix everyone to the same morality’, not a promising perspective. However, we can’t just let fear of misuse stand in the way of trying to learn more about ourselves.

[The Man]

Agreed. Interesting study. Various psyco-active experiences might also suffice.

Once one has such an experience, would atheism still be one's choice? What would the evolutionary value of the needed circuitry be?

Certainly if they knew the experience was deliberately induced and you will note the tendency to attribute the felt presence to, at times, just some conscious entity and not god or a god in particular. However, it might present an interesting experience for some atheist.

‘Take the God ride and feel what they feel’.

As to the “evolutionary value of the needed circuitry be” it might exploit sensory pattern recognition that would have helped alert us to some presence or danger, however in this case bypassing those sensory inputs.

[Beth]

No, but one just never knows how others' "oughts" may or may not be implemented. Exactly my point!

Doesn´t sound good if "experts" (or even worse: laymen) decide what is "wrong" and then physically destroy anyone or anything that thinks otherwise. I don't disagree with anything you've said.

With the rest of humanity? Never. With majority of humanity? Possibly. But the cynical and ignorant majority is nearly always more wrong than some minorities.

Back in the mid seventies when I took Intro to Sociology, the professor described the term "mores" as meaning a near universal ethical value. Things like "torturing small children for pleasure is bad". I think there may be some basic ground rules that the vast majority can agree on. Or maybe not. I think Sam is proposing that we start with that.

To go back to the color analogy, it's like being able to define black and white and using that knowledge to build up to discerning colors. I'm not sure if it's possible or not. You need an scale for an axis orthogonal to the black-white axis.

We can only go by what we can perceive and with instrumentality that ability has increased tremendously. However, the need for ascriptions still remain.
I think we are most in agreement too.


A property that we can perceive to some degree on our own but we still may not agree on what to ascribe those perceived properties, ‘red’ , ‘blue’ ‘good’ ‘bad’. Also (as you note) we have the capability of making such ascriptions based more on self perception than on any perceived property of a material object, or perhaps just conflate the two. Again it is one of the goals of science to objectify even the subjective. Indeed. Measurement turns out to be the fundamental building block of the scientific method.


Sure to some degree, but we already consider people who lack empathy and have amoral behavior to be “broken” is some regard. The clinical term is (or at least was) Psychopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy).
Yes. And we try to find chemical "fixes" for their problem. In point of fact, I suffer from depression and find anti-depressants to make the difference between having a life and being able to get out of bed in morning. I am quite happy to be able to repair my mind so it isn't broken.

Certainly I do take your point ‘let’s fix everyone to the same morality’, not a promising perspective. However, we can’t just let fear of misuse stand in the way of trying to learn more about ourselves.

No, we can't let it stand in the way, but we can't ignore the potential ramifications of misuse. I'm afraid I'm pretty cynical in that regard. If we develop such technology, there will be people who will misuse it. That's what humans do.

[The Man]

To go back to the color analogy, it's like being able to define black and white and using that knowledge to build up to discerning colors. I'm not sure if it's possible or not. You need an scale for an axis orthogonal to the black-white axis.

I think Harris already notes (perhaps not in the OP interview) that “flourishing” may take on some stratification as the usage develops.



I think we are most in agreement too.

Indeed. Measurement turns out to be the fundamental building block of the scientific method.

It certainly is one, or more specifically science is quantitative. So assigning and dealing with values is right up the ol’ scientific alley.




Yes. And we try to find chemical "fixes" for their problem. In point of fact, I suffer from depression and find anti-depressants to make the difference between having a life and being able to get out of bed in morning. I am quite happy to be able to repair my mind so it isn't broken.

I can certianly empathize, my own affliction is psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Without treatments my immune system attacks my joints till they don’t work anymore. With treatments I’m able to continue in what is often a very physically demanding job. Unfortunately those treatments put me at other risks like infection or liver damage. So you take the good with the bad.



No, we can't let it stand in the way, but we can't ignore the potential ramifications of misuse. I'm afraid I'm pretty cynical in that regard. If we develop such technology, there will be people who will misuse it. That's what humans do.

That type of technology is a long way away if at all. Also we can look at our own chemical fixes as some examples. For myself I don’t see much potential for abuse. One a TNF inhibitor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNF_inhibitor) is just too darn expensive and all it is likely to do to any normal individual is too make it harder for them to fight an infection should they get one. The other Methotrexate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methotrexate) is just too dang nasty. It makes you feel like you’re hung over. However, serotonin reuptake inhibitors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_reuptake_inhibitors) (typically used as antidepressants) do find recreational uses and abuses. Still no one (that I know of) is administering them unilaterally to try to alter everyone’s behavior.

[fls]

"I think it starts with throwing out religious dogmatism"?

That quote is in the book?



And does that sentence fulfillingly and completely answer "Does Harris explain how we might get people to do the right thing once science has determined what that might be?"

Is he going to jail people who don't throw out their religious dogmatism (and that's worked awesome in past history!)? How does he design to get people to throw out their religious dogmatism?

DETAILS

I think it goes...quit excusing religion and the nonsense will become plain.

Linda

[AlBell]

I think it goes...quit excusing religion and the nonsense will become plain.

Linda
You appear to believe you've quit excusing religion, so the nonsense must be plain to you.

How about a list of the top 10 nonsenses?

[Beth]

Still no one (that I know of) is administering them unilaterally to try to alter everyone’s behavior.

No. But I'm one of those people who is rather suspicious of the current trend of 'diagnosing' problems to the extent that a sizable minority of the children in the U.S., primarily boys, are prescribed psychoactive medications.

I don't see it as an overt attempt to control, but a trend that might lead to poor outcomes.

[AlBell]

No. But I'm one of those people who is rather suspicious of the current trend of 'diagnosing' problems to the extent that a sizable minority of the children in the U.S., primarily boys, are prescribed psychoactive medications.

I don't see it as an overt attempt to control, but a trend that might lead to poor outcomes.
Gee. I'd say you are an optimist if that's as scary as you find the implications of Science (which unfortunately requires scientists) defining morality.

[The Man]

No. But I'm one of those people who is rather suspicious of the current trend of 'diagnosing' problems to the extent that a sizable minority of the children in the U.S., primarily boys, are prescribed psychoactive medications.

I don't see it as an overt attempt to control, but a trend that might lead to poor outcomes.


Good point, the current attitude is too often to reach for the pill bottle or the prescription pad too readily. Just as MDMA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA) (“acts as a releasing agent of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine”) is sometimes referred to a the trust drug, as it can result in feelings of closeness and trust (even with strangers), a similar morality drug is perhaps conceivable. Where it might increase or decrease one’s propensity to make decisions they feel to be moral or more or less comfortable in the consideration that the decisions they made were moral. I doubt it could induce any certain or particular set of moral norms. I suspect that would take a protracted period of behavioral conditioning even with the benefit of effective drugs. Of course just the former can have abuses ‘the guilt pill’, take it and you’ll feel nothing but remorse about everything you do. ‘The amoral pill’ take it and you won’t give a flying handshake about anyone or anything.

A Clockwork Orange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)), anyone?

[Beth]

Gee. I'd say you are an optimist if that's as scary as you find the implications of Science (which unfortunately requires scientists) defining morality.

No, that's not the scariest implication. I don't actually have any problem with science/scientists defining morality - after all, it something that we humans do - as long as we remain free to decide for ourselves whether or not we agree with their morality.

Good point, the current attitude is too often to reach for the pill bottle or the prescription pad too readily. Just as MDMA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA) (“acts as a releasing agent of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine”) is sometimes referred to a the trust drug, as it can result in feelings of closeness and trust (even with strangers), a similar morality drug is perhaps conceivable. Where it might increase or decrease one’s propensity to make decisions they feel to be moral or more or less comfortable in the consideration that the decisions they made were moral. I doubt it could induce any certain or particular set of moral norms. I suspect that would take a protracted period of behavioral conditioning even with the benefit of effective drugs. Of course just the former can have abuses ‘the guilt pill’, take it and you’ll feel nothing but remorse about everything you do. ‘The amoral pill’ take it and you won’t give a flying handshake about anyone or anything.

A Clockwork Orange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)), anyone?

There's also "Brave New World" by Huxley. I think it is inevitable that our descendants will reshape their culture to suit them and not us. That we may disapprove of the direction they go doesn't really matter to them. They, no doubt, will disapprove of some things we do, like rampant pollution, much as we now disapprove of slavery.

[AlBell]

No, that's not the scariest implication. I don't actually have any problem with science/scientists defining morality - after all, it something that we humans do - as long as we remain free to decide for ourselves whether or not we agree with their morality.

You seem to misunderstand the meaning of morality in that others are as free as you (and there are a lot more of 'em) to decide if your behaviors are moral.

[Beth]

You seem to misunderstand the meaning of morality in that others are as free as you (and there are a lot more of 'em) to decide if your behaviors are moral.

Yes. I'm not sure what you think I misunderstood, but I understand that.

[Dragoonster]

I think the general idea is that science can measure what is wrong

Uh...

with people neurologically and then prescribe treatments to address moral deficiencies. We are actually able to do such things in a very primitive way at the moment. IIRC, there have been experiments regarding drug regimens for convicted rapists. 'Chemical Castration' is a headline I recall, though I haven't heard anything more about it in years so that particular experiment may not have worked out.

If I am understanding Harris correctly, that would be an example of science solving a moral problem. If that isn't a good example, I'd appreciate hearing why and a different example provided.

The entire problem would be that science can't scentifically say "rape is wrong". Obviously if we already enter with "rape is wrong" science can give "answers". This is nothing new.

So anyway; okay, castration for mentally "wrong" rapists. What solution to mentally "wrong" ADD sufferers? Anxiety and depression sufferers? How do we forcibly fix them, without their consent?

We can define responses we consider 'good', same as we define what we consider 'red'. It only remains to get similar concurrence on the issue by the rest of humanity.

That's about the toughest "it only" I've ever seen. This is a utopian concept. No different than Christians thinking "it only remains to get everyone else to believe in Jesus".

Even if every single person held rationality, logic, and science in highest respect, they wouldn't/shouldn't be swayed by Harris, who hasn't established (read: proven) his claims by science at all.

[Paulhoff]

Uh...

The entire problem would be that science can't scentifically say "rape is wrong".
So when it can be shown that the person raped is not a happy camper anymore, science can't scentifically say this to be a bad thing.

Oh My.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Beth]

Uh...

The entire problem would be that science can't scentifically say "rape is wrong".
Correct. Only we humans can say that 'rape is wrong' and we do based on our moral beliefs, not scientific evidence.

Obviously if we already enter with "rape is wrong" science can give "answers". This is nothing new. I agree.

So anyway; okay, castration for mentally "wrong" rapists. What solution to mentally "wrong" ADD sufferers? Anxiety and depression sufferers? How do we forcibly fix them, without their consent?
The issue of forcing people to alter their brain state is crucial. I don't think people should be forcibly 'fixed' in such a way. In the experiment I referenced earlier, rapists were given the choice of participating or remaining in prison for the duration of the sentence, so no one was forced to endure the treatment against their will.

That's about the toughest "it only" I've ever seen. This is a utopian concept. No different than Christians thinking "it only remains to get everyone else to believe in Jesus". Indeed, I was being slightly facetious with my choice of wording there.

[Trent Wray]

We can define responses we consider 'good', same as we define what we consider 'red'. It only remains to get similar concurrence on the issue by the rest of humanity. I wouldn't compare "good" to "red". I would compare "good" to "beautiful".

And the problem lies in getting the rest of humanity to concur, as you point out. The only way to do that, is by some kind of force or manipulation as far as I can tell.

Sadly, I think such a system might be an improvement over our current one. :( Well, maybe they don't need Magic 8 Balls ... just Balls :) lol

Doesn´t sound good if "experts" (or even worse: laymen) decide what is "wrong" and then physically destroy anyone or anything that thinks otherwise.Darth Vader anyone?

With the rest of humanity? Never. With majority of humanity? Possibly. But the cynical and ignorant majority is nearly always more wrong than some minorities. Furthermore, "right" and "wrong" are essentially two sides of the same coin. A grey coin.

To be most effective, moral choices and enforcing consequences need to be based on circumstances I believe, capable of "evolving" like everything else ...

[Beth]

I wouldn't compare "good" to "red". I would compare "good" to "beautiful". That is a better analogy. We're also getting better at understanding why something is judged 'beautiful'. There are scientists working on that problem.

And the problem lies in getting the rest of humanity to concur, as you point out. The only way to do that, is by some kind of force or manipulation as far as I can tell.


Yes, there is that issue. Insisting upon other people adhering to your particular ethical system is problematic to justify ethically. But plenty of religions have managed to justify just that for centuries.


Furthermore, "right" and "wrong" are essentially two sides of the same coin. A grey coin.

To be most effective, moral choices and enforcing consequences need to be based on circumstances I believe, capable of "evolving" like everything else ...

Yes. But it either needs to evolve slowly - crawling "up" the side of whatever 'peak' we are closest to - or it it needs to evolve simultaneously in many different directions, in which case, we have to be prepared to deal with a great many failures and dead ends.

[Dani]

I would also compare good to beautiful. In fact, that's a perfect analogy. Science can tell us that we have a tendency to find some things beautiful (for example, face symmetry) but won't tell us what's objectively beautiful.

I think the general idea is that science can measure what is wrong with people neurologically and then prescribe treatments to address moral deficiencies.

In order to measure what is wrong with people neurologically, you have to decide what is wrong with people in the first place. Observing neural activity isn't going to tell us anything about whether something is morally right or wrong. We can unscientifically decide what's right and wrong, and then observe it neurologically. We can't find moral values by observing neural connections. Try someday. They are not there to be found.

So when it can be shown that the person raped is not a happy camper anymore, science can't scentifically say this to be a bad thing.

No, it can't. But we can, and we do it. Trivial problem solved.

[JoelKatz]

I would also compare good to beautiful. In fact, that's a perfect analogy. Science can tell us that we have a tendency to find some things beautiful (for example, face symmetry) but won't tell us what's objectively beautiful.I don't think that comparison works because we don't know that science can't ever tell us what's objectively beautiful. It simply hasn't yet.

Anything you can say about beauty was once true for redness. At one time, the only way to tell if something was red was to have someone look at it and ask them if it seemed red to them. And one person might think something was red while another person might think it was not red but orange. Yet science can today tell us that some things are objectively red and, more importantly, science has changed our understanding of what it means for something to "really be" red.

Unless you can demonstrate that science cannot ever understand beauty the way we now understand color, I'm not sure what this analogy buys you.

[Dragoonster]

I don't think that comparison works because we don't know that science can't ever tell us what's objectively beautiful. It simply hasn't yet.

Anything you can say about beauty was once true for redness. At one time, the only way to tell if something was red was to have someone look at it and ask them if it seemed red to them. And one person might think something was red while another person might think it was not red but orange. Yet science can today tell us that some things are objectively red and, more importantly, science has changed our understanding of what it means for something to "really be" red.

Unless you can demonstrate that science cannot ever understand beauty the way we now understand color, I'm not sure what this analogy buys you.

Some people think Thai women are hottest. Some think Russian women are hottest. Some think Brazilian women are hottest.

Does this really need explaining? If it does: Individuals have different takes on beauty.

Personally, I find Indian women the hottest, on average. How is science going to tell me that I'm wrong, in my own mind?

That is; obviously I'm probably "wrong" in finding Indian women the hottest, based on averages. What btw is the "right" hottest ehnicity? Since science--oh wait, nevermind the sentence, "it hasn't yet".

[JoelKatz]

Some people think Thai women are hottest. Some think Russian women are hottest. Some think Brazilian women are hottest.

Does this really need explaining? If it does: Individuals have different takes on beauty.Of course. But this doesn't prove what you think it does.

Personally, I find Indian women the hottest, on average. How is science going to tell me that I'm wrong, in my own mind?We don't know how. But let's not make an argument from personal incredulity.

Is it really impossible in principle that scientists could make a meter that measures precisely how much you like something you look at. So that scientists could tell you that you were wrong/lying when you said one woman looked hotter than another to you?

That is; obviously I'm probably "wrong" in finding Indian women the hottest, based on averages. What btw is the "right" hottest ehnicity? Since science--oh wait, nevermind the sentence, "it hasn't yet".Well, let's separate two issues.

1) Whether you are right or wrong about claiming you find Indian women hot is potentially objectively testable. It's entirely possible we could invent some kind of brain reading machine that could determine how hot you find someone. We could then say that you were lying if you were in fact lying about how hot you found someone.

2) In terms of hotness itself, as in "Woman A is hotter than woman B", no amount of brain reading would determine this. Even if everyone we tested through woman A was hotter than woman B, that wouldn't really establish any kind of inherent 'hotter than' attribute. And, of course, it's entirely possible that even with the brain reading machine from my hypothetical, some people may find woman A hotter and some woman B hotter. But what does this tell us?

Consider the property "closest to my own height". Some people may find woman A to have this property more and some woman B. That doesn't establish that the property isn't an objective relationship.

Again, at one time in history the only way we could tell something was red was to have someone look at it and say "it seems red to me". And people could disagree over whether something was red or orange, and there was no objective referee. And people who were colorblind could insist that color was all made up and that there was no such real property and our minds just "painted the world" for our own entertainment or conceptual convenience. All of that would not only have been wrong but *absurd*, even before we understood what color really was.

[fls]

You appear to believe you've quit excusing religion, so the nonsense must be plain to you.

How about a list of the top 10 nonsenses?

Well, one could make a list about the silliness of bits of crackers and wine turning into human flesh and blood, or the idea that supernatural beings will interfere so that your favorite sweater doesn't get ruined but won't stop babies from getting AIDS. But what is of most relevance is the nonsense that religions are useful for their contribution to morality.

If our moral intuitions identify suffering as bad, then it is clear that religious prescriptions are not addressing the same thing that we are identifying as morality. It's clearly nonsense to think that an institution which finds the rape of children of less interest than having the wrong set of genitalia to preach the word of God, is an institution which is concerning itself with morals.

Linda

[fls]

I don't think that comparison works because we don't know that science can't ever tell us what's objectively beautiful. It simply hasn't yet.

I would disagree on this point. We already know some of the characteristics we are identifying when we refer to people or things as beautiful. Symmetry (specifically, mirror symmetry of faces) or a specific range of complexity (with respect to landscapes) are two examples.

Linda

[fls]

2) In terms of hotness itself, as in "Woman A is hotter than woman B", no amount of brain reading would determine this. Even if everyone we tested through woman A was hotter than woman B, that wouldn't really establish any kind of inherent 'hotter than' attribute. And, of course, it's entirely possible that even with the brain reading machine from my hypothetical, some people may find woman A hotter and some woman B hotter. But what does this tell us?

The "brain reading machine" could help tell us which characteristics we are identifying with our 'hotness' intuition. Whether or not those characteristics are present in woman A or B would be independent of individual opinion.

Linda

[fls]

Is he going to jail people who don't throw out their religious dogmatism (and that's worked awesome in past history!)? How does he design to get people to throw out their religious dogmatism?

DETAILS

I'm also not sure where the idea of force is coming from. Discovering what is good or bad is separate from the idea of forcing people to engage in or refrain from specific behaviors. For example, we can identify that sustained activity for 30 or more minutes per day is good for your health, but this discovery doesn't also impel the suggestion that everyone be forced to exercise. So why bring it up when we are discussing related types of 'good' and 'bad' actions?

Linda

[AlBell]

Well, one could make a list about the silliness of bits of crackers and wine turning into human flesh and blood, or the idea that supernatural beings will interfere so that your favorite sweater doesn't get ruined but won't stop babies from getting AIDS.
You believe those examples to be immoral? Mmmkay, we just bash religion.



But what is of most relevance is the nonsense that religions are useful for their contribution to morality.
Do you also contend that theolgians have contributed nothing "useful" on moral issues?

If our moral intuitions identify suffering as bad, then it is clear that religious prescriptions are not addressing the same thing that we are identifying as morality.
And why, again, is "suffering bad" a moral issue?



It's clearly nonsense to think that an institution which finds the rape of children of less interest than having the wrong set of genitalia to preach the word of God, is an institution which is concerning itself with morals.

Linda:deadhorse

If you think the Harris/fls Church of Moral Science will be any less a religious endeavor than previous efforts, good luck.

[JoelKatz]

I would disagree on this point. We already know some of the characteristics we are identifying when we refer to people or things as beautiful. Symmetry (specifically, mirror symmetry of faces) or a specific range of complexity (with respect to landscapes) are two examples.I don't see how that disagrees with me. This is certainly true, but I don't think it has any consequences, and I think it's true for just about everything.

I would agree that science can identify some characteristics of things that one would expect would tend to make people thing it's beautiful. And we could also identify things that people tend to think make it ugly. But this could be completely incorrect since it would be based purely on correlation.

To give yet another color-vision analogy, without understanding color vision at all, scientists could notice that people describe strawberries generally as "red" and that people describe grass typically as "green". He could even make a machine that tested if something was a strawberry or grass and output "red" or "green" and pronounce this his objective color vision machine. He could add objects one-by-one to try to produce a 'perfect' color vision machine.

People would be impressed by your machine, it would seem to understand color vision. And it would get the right answer a lot of the time. But no color vision is actually taking place. The machine is getting the right answer by correlation without ever actually measuring any colors at all. And when the machine is wrong, who is to say that it's not the human that's wrong?

Trying to identify beauty by looking for the attributes people say make things beautiful to them might be making precisely the same mistake. You may be correlationally right, but you may not actually be perceiving or assessing beauty. You may get the right answer, but you may be totally missing the point.

[Beth]

Well, one could make a list about the silliness of bits of crackers and wine turning into human flesh and blood, or the idea that supernatural beings will interfere so that your favorite sweater doesn't get ruined but won't stop babies from getting AIDS. But what is of most relevance is the nonsense that religions are useful for their contribution to morality.

You don't think that religions are helpful in disseminating knowledge about and helping people adhere to their particular moral code?


If our moral intuitions identify suffering as bad, then it is clear that religious prescriptions are not addressing the same thing that we are identifying as morality. It's clearly nonsense to think that an institution which finds the rape of children of less interest than having the wrong set of genitalia to preach the word of God, is an institution which is concerning itself with morals.
Linda

It's nonsense only if you first define morality using Sam Harris's axiom regarding the well-being of conscious creatures. This is, I think, the point of contention that many have been arguing about.

[fls]

You believe those examples to be immoral?

You specifically asked for examples of nonsense. 'Immoral' and 'nonsense' and two different things.

Do you also contend that theolgians have contributed nothing "useful" on moral issues?

To the extent that theologians also happen to speak about moral issues, rather than religious issues.

And why, again, is "suffering bad" a moral issue?

It is one of the characteristics our moral intuitions are (imperfectly) identifying/referencing (ETA: moreso than 'well-being', I suspect).

Linda

[fls]

I don't see how that disagrees with me. This is certainly true, but I don't think it has any consequences, and I think it's true for just about everything.

I would agree that science can identify some characteristics of things that one would expect would tend to make people thing it's beautiful. And we could also identify things that people tend to think make it ugly. But this could be completely incorrect since it would be based purely on correlation.

To give yet another color-vision analogy, without understanding color vision at all, scientists could notice that people describe strawberries generally as "red" and that people describe grass typically as "green". He could even make a machine that tested if something was a strawberry or grass and output "red" or "green" and pronounce this his objective color vision machine. He could add objects one-by-one to try to produce a 'perfect' color vision machine.

People would be impressed by your machine, it would seem to understand color vision. And it would get the right answer a lot of the time. But no color vision is actually taking place. The machine is getting the right answer by correlation without ever actually measuring any colors at all. And when the machine is wrong, who is to say that it's not the human that's wrong?

Trying to identify beauty by looking for the attributes people say make things beautiful to them might be making precisely the same mistake. You may be correlationally right, but you may not actually be perceiving or assessing beauty. You may get the right answer, but you may be totally missing the point.

That wasn't my intention. That is, I wasn't trying to suggest that 'beauty' be got at through consensus. I was trying to suggest the same thing that you had described earlier with respect to colour. Noticing that people distinguish objects on the basis of colour led us to discover a property of objects related to electromagnetism. Noticing that people make distinctions on the basis of 'beauty' can lead us to discover properties related to symmetry and complexity.

Linda

[Ivor the Engineer]

<snip>

It [suffering] is one of the characteristics our moral intuitions are (imperfectly) identifying/referencing.

Linda

What are Muslims who are stoning and flogging adulterous women and homosexuals indentifying/referencing?

Are our moral intuitions* about such acts as universal as we wish they were?







*I'm assuming we feel roughly the same about these acts.

[AlBell]

You specifically asked for examples of nonsense. 'Immoral' and 'nonsense' and two different things.
I doubt you actually missed the point.

The topic is morality, not the idiocy of religious rites and rituals.



To the extent that theologians also happen to speak about moral issues, rather than religious issues.
An area of agreement!



It is one of the characteristics our moral intuitions are (imperfectly) identifying/referencing (ETA: moreso than 'well-being', I suspect).

Linda
"Imperfectly" indeed. Other than, as always, might makes right.

[fls]

What are Muslims who are stoning and flogging adulterous women and homosexuals indentifying/referencing?

Are our moral intuitions* about such acts as universal as we wish they were?

*I'm assuming we feel roughly the same about these acts.

Do you think that absent religious dogma indoctrinating them otherwise, Mid-Eastern people would have radically different intuitions about flogging and stoning individuals from you and I?

Linda

[JoelKatz]

What are Muslims who are stoning and flogging adulterous women and homosexuals indentifying/referencing?

Are our moral intuitions* about such acts as universal as we wish they were?
It's hard to know, but I don't think it matters. There is no reason the existence of colorblind people should make you doubt the accuracy of your color vision. Nothing about anyone else's moral intuitions casts any doubt on the validity of my own moral intuitions. They stand or fall on their own merits.

Even without an understanding of how color vision works and what it is, if someone else swears they cannot tell a blue ball from a green ball, we can be reasonably sure that they are lying or broken. It would be supremely irrational for us to say "if they can't tell a blue ball from a green ball, maybe there's something wrong with me distinguishing them on that basis".

[AlBell]

Do you think that absent religious dogma indoctrinating them otherwise, Mid-Eastern people would have radically different intuitions about flogging and stoning individuals from you and I?

Linda
Why do you think the religious dogma is not in place to amplify pre-existing social and moral doctrine based on radically different intuitions about flogging and stoning individuals?

[JJM 777]

So when it can be shown that the person raped is not a happy camper anymore, science can't scentifically say this to be a bad thing.
Actually science can give this objective information, in the following manner:

And why, again, is "suffering bad" a moral issue?
"Suffering = evil, happiness = good" is maybe the only objective and potentially scientifically measurable indicator of morals / ethics that I can think of. Brain research is not so developed yet that we can measure anyone´s pain or bliss, but we can make good estimations already. Why torturing a child in front of her mother is evil, while giving food to poor hungry orphans is good, is objectively measurable by the suffering or happiness that follows from these actions.

If we analyze the suffering or happiness that follows from diverse activities, we could rate them with some numeric indicator, for example from 0 (worst possible suffering) to 100 (greatest possible happiness). Then the general population would know how good or bad the various activities are, based on the measured and reported suffering or happiness that follows from them. Then they would make decisions how good or bad they want their lives to be.

moral choices and enforcing consequences need to be based on circumstances I believe, capable of "evolving"
Everything depends on circumstances, for example the circumstance of who owns the food that you consume, or in combat who is the aggressor and who is the self-defender.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Do you think that absent religious dogma indoctrinating them otherwise, Mid-Eastern people would have radically different intuitions about flogging and stoning individuals from you and I?

Linda

I'd like to think not, but I'm not sure.

I think people are naturally attracted to moral absolutes because they offer a feeling of security through providing "correct" answers to problems which don't have any.

[Democracy Simulator]

Let's take this slowly:

Harris alludes to Hume's is/ought problem in his talk and he also mentions it explicitly in the book. Does anyone disagree with this?

Although he mentions it, Harris does not solve the is/ought problem in either the book or the talk, therefore the problem still stands. Does anyone disagree with this?

Note that in the book, Harris mentions Hume and is/ought, but then goes along to address G.E. Moore's Open Question argument. He ducks out of the confrontation with Hume. Does anyone disagree with this?

If the is/ought problem stands, then science (what is) cannot determine human values (what ought to be). It simply can't. Facts and values are forever separated, until we assume a non-scientific premise (as Sam Harris admits that he does with his ‘well-being’ assumption). Does anyone disagree with this? Harris seems to disagree with this. He says things like:

I am going to argue that the separation of facts and values is an illusion.

Yet facts and values are separated and Hume explains exactly how they are separated, which is why he is germane to the discussion. If Harris had argued that facts and values are not separated if first we assume other things to be true, then I would not have an issue with him. Yet he never makes this crystal clear, preferring instead the headline-grabbing statements such as the one above and the one included in the subtitle of his book.

The strongest reference Harris makes to is/ought is from one of his rebuttals. Harris writes:

Many of my critics piously cite Hume’s is/ought distinction as though it were well known to be the last word on the subject of morality until the end of time. Indeed, Carroll appears to think that Hume’s lazy analysis of facts and values is so compelling that he elevates it to the status of mathematical truth:

Note that Harris does not refute Hume anywhere at anytime. Yet here he describes Hume's analysis of facts (is statements) and values (ought statements) as 'lazy'. Note that this is critical of Hume without exactly saying whether he is right or wrong. Unfortunately, I now feel compelled to call this criticism, 'lazy' for what it is: a weasel word. It gives the impression that Hume’s analysis is deficient, but as anyone who knows Hume will understand, Hume’s observation about is/ought is either refuted or it stands. It is not a matter of Hume not having the energy to solve it. No one has solved it including Harris. Calling it ‘lazy’ makes no sense and does not address the problem in any meaningful way. I would suggest that it is a criticism that verges on stupidity.

Also, Harris seems to fundamentally misunderstand his critics. Yes Harris makes a lot of other arguments in the book and the talk, but until he honestly addresses Hume these criticisms involving is/ought will not go away. It would be simple for Harris to say:

‘No, you’ve all got the wrong end of the stick, I haven’t refuted Hume, I am not claiming that I have, I’m sorry for the confusion.’

Then most of his critics would disappear in a puff of smoke.

Yet we are left with a kind of confusion about whether Harris believes he has solved is/ought or not. Does anyone disagree with this?

Given all this, I think that Harris could halt a lot of confusion by answering whether he believes Hume is right or wrong in his observation (for that is what it is) about is/ought statements and if he believes Hume is wrong, how exactly is Hume wrong. The fact that given copious opportunities he does not address this issue is telling. Is it because:

If the is/ought problem stands, then science (what is) cannot determine human values (what ought to be)?

Also, one final point: given that Sam Harris has written a work of moral philosophy and that solving the is/ought problem would be a groundbreaking event in moral philosophy and that Sam Harrris repeatedly alludes to is/ought and is critical of is/ought (Hume's lazy analysis); then it is therefore quite right for philosophers and those interested in moral philosophy to pick him up on this point, demonstrate that he hasn't solved it and demand some clarification as to whether he thinks he has solved it. Does anyone disagree with this?

[JoelKatz]

Also, one final point: given that Sam Harris has written a work of moral philosophy and that solving the is/ought problem would be a groundbreaking event in moral philosophy and that Sam Harrris repeatedly alludes to is/ought and is critical of is/ought (Hume's lazy analysis); then it is therefore quite right for philosophers and those interested in moral philosophy to pick him up on this point, demonstrate that he hasn't solved it and demand some clarification as to whether he thinks he has solved it. Does anyone disagree with this?I think it's a fair point to ask Harris. But I also think the is/ought problem arises from looking at morality in a way that is likely to be completely wrong.

To use yet another color vision analogy, imagine if we didn't know the physics of color vision at all. We might start writing down that strawberries "look red" and grass "looks green". We might make up a massive table of how things look and begin an analysis of "color philosophy" to find the redness in strawberries and the greenness in grass. We might even imagine an "is/color problem". Nothing in what strawberries are seems to tell us why people consider them red. Nothing in what grass is seems to tell us why people judge it to be green.

The solution is simple -- that humans judge something to be wrong is part of what that something is (just as 'reacts explosively with water' is part of what sodium is). The question for science is why and how. Once we understand that, there won't be an is/ought problem anymore just as once we understood why people judged strawberries to be red and grass to be green, the "is/color problem" went away.

In part the problem went away because our understanding of what 'red' is changed from 'seems red to people who seem to have normal vision' to specific objective characteristics. That needs to happen to our understanding of 'good', and when it does, the is/ought problem will go away by itself.

[fls]

Let's take this slowly:

Harris alludes to Hume's is/ought problem in his talk and he also mentions it explicitly in the book. Does anyone disagree with this?

No.

Although he mentions it, Harris does not solve the is/ought problem in either the book or the talk, therefore the problem still stands. Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes. He discusses why he thinks that this is an "artificial and needlessly confusing way to think about moral choice" on page 37. That is, he does not 'solve' the problem because, as Joel Katz pointed out, it is a way of looking at morality that is likely to be wrong.

Note that in the book, Harris mentions Hume and is/ought, but then goes along to address G.E. Moore's Open Question argument. He ducks out of the confrontation with Hume. Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes, per above.

If the is/ought problem stands, then science (what is) cannot determine human values (what ought to be). It simply can't. Facts and values are forever separated, until we assume a non-scientific premise (as Sam Harris admits that he does with his ‘well-being’ assumption). Does anyone disagree with this? Harris seems to disagree with this. He says things like:

Yet facts and values are separated and Hume explains exactly how they are separated, which is why he is germane to the discussion. If Harris had argued that facts and values are not separated if first we assume other things to be true, then I would not have an issue with him. Yet he never makes this crystal clear, preferring instead the headline-grabbing statements such as the one above and the one included in the subtitle of his book.

He describes the lack of real distinction between facts and values in detail in Chapter 3: Belief.

The strongest reference Harris makes to is/ought is from one of his rebuttals. Harris writes:

Note that Harris does not refute Hume anywhere at anytime. Yet here he describes Hume's analysis of facts (is statements) and values (ought statements) as 'lazy'. Note that this is critical of Hume without exactly saying whether he is right or wrong. Unfortunately, I now feel compelled to call this criticism, 'lazy' for what it is: a weasel word. It gives the impression that Hume’s analysis is deficient, but as anyone who knows Hume will understand, Hume’s observation about is/ought is either refuted or it stands. It is not a matter of Hume not having the energy to solve it. No one has solved it including Harris. Calling it ‘lazy’ makes no sense and does not address the problem in any meaningful way. I would suggest that it is a criticism that verges on stupidity.

Also, Harris seems to fundamentally misunderstand his critics. Yes Harris makes a lot of other arguments in the book and the talk, but until he honestly addresses Hume these criticisms involving is/ought will not go away. It would be simple for Harris to say:

‘No, you’ve all got the wrong end of the stick, I haven’t refuted Hume, I am not claiming that I have, I’m sorry for the confusion.’

Then most of his critics would disappear in a puff of smoke.

I doubt this is true. The critics seem to be insisting that Hume is relevant, so any attempts to placate them would still leave Harris with his main premise unaddressed by his critics.

Yet we are left with a kind of confusion about whether Harris believes he has solved is/ought or not. Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes. I think the confusion comes from not attending to what Harris has said, and instead trying to fit them into the framework moral philosophers are in the habit of using.

Given all this, I think that Harris could halt a lot of confusion by answering whether he believes Hume is right or wrong in his observation (for that is what it is) about is/ought statements...

Clearly not, since Harris explicitly states that he believes Hume, and those who use this notion of "ought" to be wrong.


...and if he believes Hume is wrong, how exactly is Hume wrong. The fact that given copious opportunities he does not address this issue is telling. Is it because:

If the is/ought problem stands, then science (what is) cannot determine human values (what ought to be)?

Also, one final point: given that Sam Harris has written a work of moral philosophy and that solving the is/ought problem would be a groundbreaking event in moral philosophy and that Sam Harrris repeatedly alludes to is/ought and is critical of is/ought (Hume's lazy analysis); then it is therefore quite right for philosophers and those interested in moral philosophy to pick him up on this point, demonstrate that he hasn't solved it and demand some clarification as to whether he thinks he has solved it. Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes. I think it would be more worthwhile to address the ideas that Harris raised, such as the research demonstrating that there isn't a distinction between facts and values, rather than forcing him to address an issue which seems likely to be wrong anyway, just so that his response can be ignored again.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

Yes. I think it would be more worthwhile to address the ideas that Harris raised, such as the research demonstrating that there isn't a distinction between facts and values, rather than forcing him to address an issue which seems likely to be wrong anyway, just so that his response can be ignored again.For example, consider:

"I like vanilla ice cream."

This may seem like an impenetrable value judgment. Some people like vanilla ice cream, some don't. It's subjective. Science cannot test this claim. It's forever outside the bounds of science. What could science possibly do with such an untestable subjective value judgment?

But:

"The interaction between vanilla ice cream and my taste buds is such that my brain is stimulated in the areas associated with pleasure."

Well, this is an objective statement about a physical interaction. Science can test it and determine if it is true or false.

The only thing it took to get from the first statement to the second was to really understand what it means to "like" something (and I admit, this does change the understanding). A similar understanding of "good" may well do the same thing for moral judgments.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yes. He discusses why he thinks that this is an "artificial and needlessly confusing way to think about moral choice" on page 37. That is, he does not 'solve' the problem because, as Joel Katz pointed out, it is a way of looking at morality that is likely to be wrong.

:rolleyes: Joel Katz is still hung up on the naturalistic fallacy, despite any number of efforts to educate him. That's the fallacy which I stated earlier that you were hung up on - nice to have that confirmed.


He describes the lack of real distinction between facts and values in detail in Chapter 3: Belief.

Yup. Naturalistic fallacy. Harris fails first year philosophy, again.


I doubt this is true. The critics seem to be insisting that Hume is relevant, so any attempts to placate them would still leave Harris with his main premise unaddressed by his critics.

Nope. Totally wrong. If Harris gave up the publicity-seeking, book-selling charade and said "I own up, I'm just another welfare utilitarian and I haven't solved the is/ought problem at all" I'd have no beef with him whatsoever.


Yes. I think the confusion comes from not attending to what Harris has said, and instead trying to fit them into the framework moral philosophers are in the habit of using.

The framework you refer to is called "logic", "rigour" or "minimal academic standards".


Yes. I think it would be more worthwhile to address the ideas that Harris raised, such as the research demonstrating that there isn't a distinction between facts and values, rather than forcing him to address an issue which seems likely to be wrong anyway, just so that his response can be ignored again.

Research can no more demonstrate that there isn't a distinction between facts and values than it can demonstrate that there isn't a distinction between deduction and induction. It's not a matter which you can address with any number of factual observations, and if you think otherwise you aren't thinking outside the box, you're just making a category error.

What science might do is show some people just can't grasp the fact/value distinction - but then again this thread alone is more evidence for that claim than we'll ever need. I don't need to give anyone an MRI to tell you that.

[JoelKatz]

:rolleyes: Joel Katz is still hung up on the naturalistic fallacy, despite any number of efforts to educate him. That's the fallacy which I stated earlier that you were hung up on - nice to have that confirmed.This is absolutely false for reasons I explained.

To use yet another color vision analogy, the naturalistic fallacy would be "green is all and only whatever people call green". However, what happened when science began to understand color was that we understood enough to reject the fallacy. We now know, for example, that many different combinations of light frequencies can appear to be green to people with color vision.

A scientific understanding of color vision allowed us to reject the naturalistic fallacy and define a new sense of 'green' that refers to a particular pure frequency. And we can accept with scientific rigor that yellow and blue together may "look green" but not really "be green".

A scientific understanding of morality will let us reject the naturalistic fallacy with morality as well. We will one day understand that things may "seem wrong" but not really "be wrong".

Of course, we don't understand that distinction *yet*, just as we once didn't with color vision. All we knew was some things "looked green" and some "looked red".

To put it another way, one of the main roles for science with respect to morality is to let us understand what moral judgments really are so that we can separate the parts to fully rid ourselves of any fallacious naturalistic reasoning.

It was understanding, scientifically, what was really going on when a person "saw green" that allowed us to understand that something can "look green" but not really "be green". It will be understanding, scientifically, what's really going on when a person "judges good" that will allow us to understand that something can "seem good" but not really "be good". Just as we once didn't really know what "really be green" meant, we only knew what "looked green" meant, we now don't really know what "really be good" means, we only know what "seems good" means.

[fls]

:rolleyes: Joel Katz is still hung up on the naturalistic fallacy, despite any number of efforts to educate him. That's the fallacy which I stated earlier that you were hung up on - nice to have that confirmed.

Yup. Naturalistic fallacy. Harris fails first year philosophy, again.

What Harris and I (and JoelKatz, I think) have been talking about is the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy, although I realize that pointing this out does not matter to you. :)

Nope. Totally wrong. If Harris gave up the publicity-seeking, book-selling charade and said "I own up, I'm just another welfare utilitarian and I haven't solved the is/ought problem at all" I'd have no beef with him whatsoever.

Then it seems that Harris' ideas are not intended to address your particular concerns.

Research can no more demonstrate that there isn't a distinction between facts and values than it can demonstrate that there isn't a distinction between deduction and induction. It's not a matter which you can address with any number of factual observations, and if you think otherwise you aren't thinking outside the box, you're just making a category error.

Wouldn't the very definition of "category error" be "thinking outside the box"? ;)

What science might do is show some people just can't grasp the fact/value distinction - but then again this thread alone is more evidence for that claim than we'll ever need. I don't need to give anyone an MRI to tell you that.

That's an excellent point and quite relevant to what Harris and I have said - on what basis has a fact/value distinction been made?

Linda

[Earthborn]

To use yet another color vision analogy, the naturalistic fallacy would be "green is all and only whatever people call green".That's not a naturalistic fallacy, because it makes no appeal to "nature", only an appeal to opinion.

However, what happened when science began to understand color was that we understood enough to reject the fallacy.When science began to understand colour, making an appeal to the "nature" of colour was no longer fallacious. There is no reason to suspect moral concepts will evolve in a similar way; scientists are working too hard to prevent that from happening. To be taken seriously as scientists they have to build a reputation of being morally neutral, as impartial observers.

[JoelKatz]

That's not a naturalistic fallacy, because it makes no appeal to "nature", only an appeal to opinion.I don't think the difference really matters. As far as what we see as green, it's our nature that directly determines our opinion of what colors look the same. We had to understand colors to really know this, but it was always true. You can fix it, more or less, by substituting "looks green to people" for "call green".

The point is, I fully accept (in fact, it's my main point) that our understanding of what "wrong" is will likely change when we have a scientific understanding of how people make moral judgments -- just as our conception of what "green" really is changed when we learned how people make color judgments. We will learn that things might not "be wrong" even though they "seem wrong" just as we know things might not really "be blue" even though they "look blue" because we understand scientifically how our color sense works and will understand scientifically how our moral sense works. I am making the very opposite of the naturalistic fallacy.

When science began to understand colour, making an appeal to the "nature" of colour was no longer fallacious. There is no reason to suspect moral concepts will evolve in a similar way; scientists are working too hard to prevent that from happening. To be taken seriously as scientists they have to build a reputation of being morally neutral, as impartial observers.As I've argued, there is every reason to suspect moral concepts will evolve in a similar way and no reason to think they won't.

The idea that scientists should be morally neutral is facially absurd. You can't do science if you're morally neutral. Valuing obfuscating and prevaricating equally with truth-seeking and honest reporting of evidence in the name of moral neutrality would be scientific suicide. Just as we had to use our other senses to do science even before we understood how they work, we must use our moral sense to do science even though we do not understand how it works. Just as science taught us how the other senses work, it will do the same for our 'internal' senses, including our moral sense.

[Kevin_Lowe]

This is absolutely false for reasons I explained.

To use yet another color vision analogy, the naturalistic fallacy would be "green is all and only whatever people call green". However, what happened when science began to understand color was that we understood enough to reject the fallacy. We now know, for example, that many different combinations of light frequencies can appear to be green to people with color vision.

A scientific understanding of color vision allowed us to reject the naturalistic fallacy and define a new sense of 'green' that refers to a particular pure frequency. And we can accept with scientific rigor that yellow and blue together may "look green" but not really "be green".

Nope, this is still completely wrong.

Your thesis still relies on the assumption that there is a correspondence between what we, as a result of evolved biological processes, instinctively perceive to be moral and "what is moral".

It's a twofold error because firstly there is no such thing as "what is moral". There are only more or less coherent, or more or less useful, value judgments which have no truth value. Secondly even if there was such a thing as "what is moral", we have no sense organs that could detect such a phenomenon.

One last time: When we perceive colour we are perceiving something that corresponds in a mechanistic and to-a-degree reliable way with objectively existing, external phenomena. When we have moral ideas we are not. There is no analogy.

You can repeat your colour analogy from now until the heat death of the universe and it will always be completely wrong. No amount of elaboration or repetition can fix it.

[Kevin_Lowe]

What Harris and I (and JoelKatz, I think) have been talking about is the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy, although I realize that pointing this out does not matter to you. :)

Piggy played this game as well - he made multiple contradictory statements, and then when any of them were shown to be nonsensical he repeated a different one and got outraged because he'd been "misinterpreted" again.

It reminds me of Chalmers' spoof of Goodman:


Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis that p is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But these so- called "counterexamples" depend on construing my thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended -- for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples. Therefore p.

Wanting to be right doesn't make you right.


Then it seems that Harris' ideas are not intended to address your particular concerns.

If you are privy to some secret version of Harris where his real ideas are expounded, as opposed to the public version where he claims to have solved the is/ought problem but when cornered admits to just being a welfare utilitarian, then please link us to this source of wisdom.

Otherwise it looks to me like you are not so much moving the goalposts as claiming with a straight face that the real soccer field is in a secret location hidden several miles away, and so the barrage of balls going into your goalposts don't count.


Wouldn't the very definition of "category error" be "thinking outside the box"? ;)

There's a well-known aphorism about not being so open-minded that your brains fall out. "Thinking outside the box" makes it possible to find novel solutions, and also makes it possible to fall into errors that the box was originally constructed to exclude you from. The mere fact that you are outside the box does not make you right, or even make it likely that you are right.


That's an excellent point and quite relevant to what Harris and I have said - on what basis has a fact/value distinction been made?

One minute you're claiming that you have relevant postgraduate study under your belt, and the next you don't even understand what basis the fact/value distinction has been made on. (Plus you had no idea at all about what Bentham contributed to the field, or for that matter Kant. How the heck can you have gotten up to the postgraduate level in moral philosophy and be clueless about Kant?).

Anyway, if you had the chops you pretend to have, it would be the work of minutes to find relevant on-line resources and find out for yourself the basis for the fact/value distinction. Then you could post in a paragraph or two your own argument for why we should erase that distinction, instead of posting the absolute minimum possible and trying to snipe from a position of maximal safety.

[JoelKatz]

Nope, this is still completely wrong.Please, show me how.

Your thesis still relies on the assumption that there is a correspondence between what we, as a result of evolved biological processes, instinctively perceive to be moral and "what is moral".Yes, but since it doesn't rely on what that correspondence is, I don't see how it can be wrong. Also, since it relies on an open definition of "is moral", it also cannot be wrong. It's inconceivable that there exists no definition of moral that can make that work, and it leaves "what is moral" as an open question.

It's a twofold error because firstly there is no such thing as "what is moral". There are only more or less coherent, or more or less useful, value judgments which have no truth value. Secondly even if there was such a thing as "what is moral", we have no sense organs that could detect such a phenomenon.But I agree with all of those things. By our naive notion of "blue", there really was no such thing as "is blue" either. We had to understand color vision to make "is blue" mean something.

One last time: When we perceive colour we are perceiving something that corresponds in a mechanistic and to-a-degree reliable way with objectively existing, external phenomena. When we have moral ideas we are not. There is no analogy.I've addressed this argument so many times I don't know what I can do but point to the many places I've addressed it.

You can repeat your colour analogy from now until the heat death of the universe and it will always be completely wrong. No amount of elaboration or repetition can fix it.Then please show me why it's wrong rather than simply stating it's wrong. Without an understanding of the physical implementation of color, how do you know it corresponds mechanistically? And without an understand of precisely what happens when we judge something to be good, how do you know it doesn't?

You are simply dogmatically asserting that color is different for no justifiable reason despite the fact that the evidence for moral judgments is almost precisely the same as it was for color before we understood the physics and biology of color vision. Yet you must concede that this was obvious for color vision even at that time. We don't yet understand the physics and biology of how we make moral judgments.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Please, show me how.

Yes, but since it doesn't rely on what that correspondence is, I don't see how it can be wrong. Also, since it relies on an open definition of "is moral", it also cannot be wrong. It's inconceivable that there exists no definition of moral that can make that work, and it leaves "what is moral" as an open question.

It's not inconceivable at all that there exists no definition of moral that can make it work. I don't think there can be such a definition, in fact. There simply is no morality "out there" to perceive. Morality is ideas between the ears of humans. It's not out there in the external universe for some spooky moral sense to discern.


I've addressed this argument so many times I don't know what I can do but point to the many places I've addressed it.

Then we will just have to agree to disagree. I think you are provably, completely and fundamentally wrong. You don't see why. I can live with that.


You are simply dogmatically asserting that color is different for no justifiable reason despite the fact that the evidence for moral judgments is almost precisely the same as it was for color before we understood the physics and biology of color vision.

You can't have evidence for a moral claim. If you think you can, then you have put moral claims in the wrong mental category. They are not claims with truth values like "this light is blue" or "these photons have a wavelength of 475nm". They are value judgments which have no truth value. There cannot be evidence for or against their truth. They can only be coherent or incoherent, useful or useless, intuitive or unintuitive.

Yet you must concede that this was obvious for color vision even at that time. We don't yet understand the physics and biology of how we make moral judgments.

It wouldn't matter if we did. Not one iota.

All the physics and biology of how we make moral judgments could ever do, even in theory, is provide a descriptive morality. It could tell us what people think is moral.

It cannot provide a prescriptive morality that makes value judgments about what we should think is moral.

[Paulhoff]

It cannot provide a prescriptive morality that makes value judgments about what we should think is moral.
So what or who, pray tell, can make moral judgments.

Paul

:) :) :)

[The Man]

That's not a naturalistic fallacy, because it makes no appeal to "nature", only an appeal to opinion.

Is it not a fact of human "nature" that we do have and form opinions? Certainly opinions do not need to be based on facts but this does not preclude them from being so based. To argue otherwise would be to assert that ones own opinions can have no factual basis.


When science began to understand colour, making an appeal to the "nature" of colour was no longer fallacious. There is no reason to suspect moral concepts will evolve in a similar way; scientists are working too hard to prevent that from happening. To be taken seriously as scientists they have to build a reputation of being morally neutral, as impartial observers.


However, when science tries to understand what makes some particular color someone's or some group's favorite color (a matter of opinion) the evolution and the available tools are still the same. Just as someone may not know why they prefer blue over red they also may not know why they prefer buying over stealing or visa versa. Just as science can begin to localize areas and functioning of our brains that indicate some preference to certain colors it might also help to do the same to certain moral considerations. It seems to me the place to start would be between those that tend to predominantly act on some specific set of moral convictions and those that seem to act without any particular set of moral convictions.

From "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)

Prince Feisal: " With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable."

[JJM 777]

All the physics and biology of how we make moral judgments could ever do, even in theory, is provide a descriptive morality. It could tell us what people think is moral.
This is what some here seem to be looking for. Is a specific form of sexuality good or evil? Make a study of people´s feelings and opinions. Then make the same study in a different culture, or in the same place 100 years later, and you get different results.

It cannot provide a prescriptive morality that makes value judgments about what we should think is moral.
I just said in my previous post that the suffering or happiness that follows from actions could be used as an objective indicator of how good or evil the actions are. Still it remains unanswered how good or evil people should be allowed to be, that is not a question that science would answer, any more than it would answer how wide my television should be, even if it does tell us what "width" means generally, and how wide something exactly is.

Returning to the specific sexual action example, this suffering or happiness method would give more stable results than the opinion poll based method: if it makes them happy, then it makes them happy. Objective finding reported and file closed in the archives.

[JoelKatz]

There simply is no morality "out there" to perceive. Morality is ideas between the ears of humans. It's not out there in the external universe for some spooky moral sense to discern.As I explained at least twice now, this argument doesn't make any sense. There is nothing magic about the space between our ears that somehow makes it a science-free zone. Ideas in our head are no different from leaves on a tree. They are existent entities that have definite properties that can be analyzed by science. There is nothing special about the "external universe" that somehow makes science work on it and not the "internal universe". This is a vitalism fallacy or regarding consciousness as supernatural magic.

As for it being between the ears of humans and not in the things we evaluate, there really is no difference. It makes no difference to say it is a "property of sodium" that it reacts with water than it is to say it is a property of water that it reacts with sodium or that it is a consequence of the properties of both sodium and water. These are all identical.

That normal humans see the sky as blue is a property of the sky. That normal humans judge torturing children for pleasure to be wrong is a property of torturing children for pleasure. There is no difference between an "inherent property" and a relational or interaction property. For example "weighs one pound" is no different from "weighs the same as an object that weighs one pound".

We judge things inherent properties by how they interact with other things. There is no other way to do so. How things interact with other things are its inherent properties.

You can't have evidence for a moral claim. If you think you can, then you have put moral claims in the wrong mental category. They are not claims with truth values like "this light is blue" or "these photons have a wavelength of 475nm". They are value judgments which have no truth value. There cannot be evidence for or against their truth. They can only be coherent or incoherent, useful or useless, intuitive or unintuitive.Again, you are repeating arguments I already addressed without addressing my response. "This light is blue" is no different from "this light appears blue to humans with normal color vision". We only know this is like "these photons have a wavelength of 475nm" because we understand how color vision works in a way we don't understand our moral sense.

All the physics and biology of how we make moral judgments could ever do, even in theory, is provide a descriptive morality. It could tell us what people think is moral.I don't understand how you could know this. Did all our understanding of color vision just tell us what people think looks blue? No. It allowed us to understand *how* blueness is in the sky. It allowed us to understand that there is such a thing as "really being blue" that "looks blue to me" only approximates in a subjective way owing to the nature of human vision.

It cannot provide a prescriptive morality that makes value judgments about what we should think is moral.And yet, with our understanding of color vision, we can now say that some light isn't "really blue" even though it looks blue to us. That is, with color vision (which you think is even more objective than morality) we have come to understand that being "really blue", objectively blue, is different from merely looking blue to us.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I just said in my previous post that the suffering or happiness that follows from actions could be used as an objective indicator of how good or evil the actions are.

Only if you had already made the philosophical decision to adopt as an axiom that suffering is bad and happiness is good. (This is hedonistic utilitarianism as set out by Bentham).

Even then you still have to iron out all the details of your axiom. Does the suffering of bacteria count? Unborn humans? Chimpanzees? AIs? Should the suffering or pleasure of some entities be weighted more heavily than others, and if so by what mathematical mechanism? Should we be concerned by the distribution of happiness and suffering, or just the arithmetic total? Or maybe the mean instead? Do the interests of unborn future people count, or only living beings? If they count should they be discounted at some rate, and if so at what rate?

It's easy to fool oneself into thinking that it's Just Obviously True that suffering is bad and happiness is good. It's much harder to fool oneself that the specific answers to each of the above questions that you come up with are also all still Just Obviously True. Once you start getting into the details it becomes apparent very quickly that it can't be that simple.

Then some jerk comes along and says "Why should I care if other people suffer? I enjoy hurting other people. I don't agree with your axiom at all". Then what?

You can iron out those details with time and thought. You can, with some work, put together a workable moral philosophy out of hedonistic utilitarianism. However by the time you have done so it's clear that you've done a lot of philosophical work and made a lot of non-evidence-based value judgments to do it.

[ketten]

You could look at the impact of honor on societies and work out if it is beneficial or detrimental to those societies relative to others with out it.

Of course a truly valid experiment on this subject would be both impractical and immoral.
Actually, there is both psychological and anthropological research on this. For example, certain honor systems seem to arise in situations where there is no strong central government and a high risk that somebody might steal your cattle. In that situation it is highly beneficial to have the reputation that you will retaliate severely. However, this cultural trait can persist even when the situation (for example trough migration to the city) changes, and then become maladaptive.

[Kevin_Lowe]

As I explained at least twice now, this argument doesn't make any sense. There is nothing magic about the space between our ears that somehow makes it a science-free zone. Ideas in our head are no different from leaves on a tree. They are existent entities that have definite properties that can be analyzed by science. There is nothing special about the "external universe" that somehow makes science work on it and not the "internal universe". This is a vitalism fallacy or regarding consciousness as supernatural magic.

:rolleyes: It's nothing whatsoever to do with regarding consciousness as supernatural magic.

Nobody here thinks that people do not have opinions on moral matters. Nobody here thinks that these opinions are not just physical things going on in their brains - or if they do they are superstitious idiots and I discard their opinion. Everyone here is on exactly the same page as far as that goes.

The problem still remains that you can't get from any number of "is" statements about people's brains to a moral "ought" statement.

Okay, so people hold some moral opinions. What now? How do you get from there to a conclusion about morality?

What happens if we meet aliens whose brains are wired up so that they reach entirely different moral conclusions about the same states of affairs? Are we both right (moral relativism), or are you actually going to try and tell us that there is a True Universal Morality and as a matter of fact the aliens are wrong? Or that because there is True Universal Morality no such aliens could possibly exist as an article of faith?

[JoelKatz]

You can iron out those details with time and thought. You can, with some work, put together a workable moral philosophy out of hedonistic utilitarianism. However by the time you have done so it's clear that you've done a lot of philosophical work and made a lot of non-evidence-based value judgments to do it.It would be akin to making a machine to tell you what color things are without the machine actually having color vision. You would simply program it with enough heuristics -- "the sky is blue, unless it's night, and unless it's cloudy, and ...".

The machine would get right every case you had rigged it for. And you could almost convince yourself that this is all there is to color vision. And when a person disagrees with the machine, maybe the person is wrong. Or maybe you just need one more rule. If you keep going, the machine will be right more and more often -- so aren't you scientifically understanding and replicating color vision? (Of course, no, you're not. Because you aren't replicating what people actually *do*, just the results they get.)

You can't scientifically start from "the sky looks blue to people" to get to "the sky really is blue (in a scientific/objective sense)" unless your first understand precisely why and how the sky looks blue to people. But once you understand what is actually going on when a person judges the sky to be blue, you can then build a machine to accurately judge colors. (And you can defend the machine's judgment as being free from 'error' caused by limitations of human vision when it disagrees with people.)

[JoelKatz]

:rolleyes: It's nothing whatsoever to do with regarding consciousness as supernatural magic.Then why does it matter whether it happens inside my head or somewhere else? Scientifically, what is the difference? Why does it matter whether it's inside my head or inside a thermometer?

Nobody here thinks that people do not have opinions on moral matters. Nobody here thinks that these opinions are not just physical things going on in their brains - or if they do they are superstitious idiots and I discard their opinion. Everyone here is on exactly the same page as far as that goes.

The problem still remains that you can't get from any number of "is" statements about people's brains to a moral "ought" statement.Right, not without understanding what "ought" really means, which we don't.

Okay, so people hold some moral opinions. What now? How do you get from there to a conclusion about morality?By understanding what "ought" really means. Right now, we only understand morality as things that "seem right to us", just as we once understood colors only as things that "seemed red to us". So we can't get from "the sky looks blue" to "the sky really has these properties that make it look blue to me" because we don't know what those properties are. But once we understand how humans actually make such judgments, we should be able to trace the input to the output. Then we should be able to separate the objective property from the subjective judgment of it.

What happens if we meet aliens whose brains are wired up so that they reach entirely different moral conclusions about the same states of affairs? Are we both right (moral relativism), or are you actually going to try and tell us that there is a True Universal Morality and as a matter of fact the aliens are wrong? Or that because there is True Universal Morality no such aliens could possibly exist as an article of faith?We are both right, but this is not moral relativism.

Suppose two people look at an object. One says "this object is tall". The other says "this object is short". Is this height relativism? Does this prove that object's sizes are subjective? The height is an objective property, however judging it to be 'tall' or 'short' is contaminated by subjective biases -- as all measurements made by humans are. Science is very good at filtering these out given enough time to understand how the perception or judgment at hand works.

If the aliens had a more limited range of color vision than us, they may say two things "seem the same color" to them and a normal human will say the two things "seem different colors" to him. They are both right because the two things are objectively such that they seem different colors to people with normal vision and the same color to our aliens. We can very precisely say what objective properties make this happen because we understand very well how people make such judgments.

Again, all properties are relational in this sense. Saying that a ball is blue means that when white light hits it, the reflected light has a mix of frequencies that appears blue to normal human vision. How is what happens when light shines on a ball any more or less inherent in the ball than what happens when a human evaluates the morality of an action inherent in the action? It is an objective fact that what measurement you get depends on what and how you measure. It is the norm for two measurements of the same objective property made by different 'meters' to differ.

That something "seems right to me" is such a contaminated subjective judgment. We don't yet know enough to figure out what the corresponding objective properties are. The problem is, we don't yet know what "really ought" means just as we once didn't know what "really blue" meant -- which objective properties cause us to judge something to be blue.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Then why does it matter whether it happens inside my head or somewhere else? Scientifically, what is the difference? Why does it matter whether it's inside my head or inside a thermometer?

Because there is nothing external to the brain to measure.

You can find out if something is "really blue" by testing the light it emits.

You cannot ever, even in principle, find out if something is really moral by testing it in any possible way.

You can examine people's minds and find out if they really think it is moral, but that gets you nowhere. If a million people really think slavery is moral, that doesn't make it moral. If a million people really think women should not have the vote, that doesn't make it moral.

What people think is moral is a psychological fact about people. It's not a moral fact about the universe, because moral facts about the universe do not exist.

By that I do not mean that such truths exist and we are ignorant of them. I'm saying they do not exist. End of story.


Right, not without understanding what "ought" really means, which we don't.

In a way this is the lynchpin of your argument. You redefine "ought" to mean something mysterious, external and universal. It's not. It's a perfectly well-understood value judgment made by morally fallible humans.

[Ivor the Engineer]

A few of things concern me about Harris’ idea of a science of morality.

Firstly, what’s it going to be used for and why is it inherently better than any of the other moral philosophies people use today?

Secondly, I don’t think analogies with colour vision are at all helpful. People’s perception of the colour of an object illuminated under white light* doesn’t radically change by them thinking about it for longer or their emotional state, whereas a people’s moral decisions often do change depending on their experiences, the amount of thought they’ve dedicated to an issue and their emotional state.

Thirdly, if a science of morality determines behaviour A is “better” than behaviour B, why are the people who disagree and think behaviour B is better going to change what they’re doing? Will they just suddenly see the light, or are the moral scientists going to send an army in to make them change their ways?








*This in itself is problematic. Even if we were to assume there is a morality circuit in the brain, what would be the moral equivalent of white light, which would provide an unbiased weighting to all the humanly perceptible factors involved in a moral decision?

[JJM 777]

Only if you had already made the philosophical decision to adopt as an axiom that suffering is bad and happiness is good.
No more than I need to make the decision that a certain millimetrage is bad or good. Science just defines what the units are and how the reality around us is measurable with them. In this case, science would define a creature´s emotional state as the thing to measure.

[JoelKatz]

Because there is nothing external to the brain to measure.So what? If consciousness is not supernatural magic, why does it matter whether something is inside or outside the brain? It would be equally amenable to scientific inquiry. Scientific reasoning takes place entirely inside the brain.

You can find out if something is "really blue" by testing the light it emits.Only because we now understand that "really blue" is different from "looking blue". This understanding came from knowing what goes on inside our head when we see colors.

You cannot ever, even in principle, find out if something is really moral by testing it in any possible way.How can you say that given that we don't even know what "really moral" means yet? Can we, in principle, find out if something looks blue to humans with normal vision by testing it?

You can examine people's minds and find out if they really think it is moral, but that gets you nowhere. If a million people really think slavery is moral, that doesn't make it moral. If a million people really think women should not have the vote, that doesn't make it moral.I agree. If a million people think something is "really green" it could still be a mix of yellow and blue that merely looks green to everyone because of how the human color vision sense works. That's because we now understand what "really green" is. We do not yet have a scientific understanding of what "really moral" even means.

What people think is moral is a psychological fact about people. It's not a moral fact about the universe, because moral facts about the universe do not exist.Is what looks blue to people a physical fact about the universe?

By that I do not mean that such truths exist and we are ignorant of them. I'm saying they do not exist. End of story.I understand that you are saying that. But all the evidence contradicts you. How then do you explain the fact that morally normal humans agree that torturing children for pleasure is wrong precisely the same way humans with normal color vision agree that the sky and the grass are different colors? Other than magic, what is the alternative explanation to there being a difference between what the sky is and what the grass is that accounts for the judgment/perception difference?

In a way this is the lynchpin of your argument. You redefine "ought" to mean something mysterious, external and universal. It's not. It's a perfectly well-understood value judgment made by morally fallible humans.Sure, just as "looks red" is as simple and inexplicable as anything can be. It means that when I look at it, I have a particular type of experience of redness. "Looks different colors" is as simple as anything can be too. We understand what it is to experience seeing something as blue quite well even without any understanding of the physics of color vision.

The question is not what the end result is though -- the experience that something is blue or that something is morally right. The question is what is the process, in sufficient detail so we can figure out what input determines the output so we can figure out what properties of the input the output is really measuring.

[Kevin_Lowe]

No more than I need to make the decision that a certain millimetrage is bad or good. Science just defines what the units are and how the reality around us is measurable with them. In this case, science would define a creature´s emotional state as the thing to measure.

Those are two totally different things.

Picking a scale is not remotely the same thing as adopting out of thin air a philosophical axiom. The first is part of science, the second most definitely is not.

It's also not an ideal axiom, in many ways. Most obviously if the best way to maximise human pleasure and minimise human suffering was to spend all of our non-working hours shooting up heroin and staring at a wall, that would be the most moral possible activity. John Stuart Mill modified Bentham's utilitarianism to try to get around this, and then other people modified it further, and so on.

So it's not science, and it's also a potentially problematic axiom anyway.

[fls]

Piggy played this game as well - he made multiple contradictory statements, and then when any of them were shown to be nonsensical he repeated a different one and got outraged because he'd been "misinterpreted" again.

"Multiple contradictory statements" is the natural consequence of deciding that someone means one thing when they mean something else.

If you are privy to some secret version of Harris where his real ideas are expounded, as opposed to the public version where he claims to have solved the is/ought problem but when cornered admits to just being a welfare utilitarian, then please link us to this source of wisdom.

He has expounded on these ideas in a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

And in lectures (this is one):
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6913036#post6913036

There's a well-known aphorism about not being so open-minded that your brains fall out. "Thinking outside the box" makes it possible to find novel solutions, and also makes it possible to fall into errors that the box was originally constructed to exclude you from. The mere fact that you are outside the box does not make you right, or even make it likely that you are right.

I agree. I don't understand what that has to do with what I said.

One minute you're claiming that you have relevant postgraduate study under your belt, and the next you don't even understand what basis the fact/value distinction has been made on.

This was another example of a form of inquiry based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas, as I explained earlier with respect to The Man's question, not an appeal for you to satisfy a point of ignorance.

(Plus you had no idea at all about what Bentham contributed to the field, or for that matter Kant. How the heck can you have gotten up to the postgraduate level in moral philosophy and be clueless about Kant?).

The easiest and most obvious answer is that you have characterized the situation incorrectly.

Linda

[Kevin_Lowe]

I don't think I'm going to be able to get through to you, sorry.

At the root of the matter you are making a philosophical mistake, not a scientific one.

Scientifically your position is not wrong, merely unfalsifiable and hence worthless, because you have built in the escape hatch of saying "We don't even know what morality really is, so no possible observation can falsify my pet theory".

Philosophically, you just don't seem able to grasp the all-important distinction between moral description and moral prescription. You seem to think that if we can just get a detailed enough descriptive picture of how the brain thinks about moral ideas then we will magically get to a prescriptive morality. The idea that this is so is called the naturalistic fallacy, and as the name suggests it's an intellectual error.

[Kevin_Lowe]

"Multiple contradictory statements" is the natural consequence of deciding that someone means one thing when they mean something else.

Or of correctly understanding their meaning when they contradict themselves.


He has expounded on these ideas in a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

And in lectures (this is one):
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6913036#post6913036

This isn't anything new. In that speech he specifically cops out of defending his claims about the is/ought distinction with some bluster about it being boring and him not needing to bother with it.


I agree. I don't understand what that has to do with what I said.

Oh well. In your copious free time read it again and you might get it.


This was another example of a form of inquiry based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas, as I explained earlier with respect to The Man's question, not an appeal for you to satisfy a point of ignorance.

Trying to position yourself as someone "stimulating critical thinking" at this stage is a bit optimistic, isn't it? Since your position's already been demolished by astute critical thinking and a modicum of actual knowledge of philosophy, I don't think lack of critical thinking on this end is anything you have to worry your head about.

I think at this stage rather than pretending to try to "stimulate critical thinking" you should be trying to stimulate yourself to post some better argument for your position, or to be a good rationalist and admit that you were just confused all along.


The easiest and most obvious answer is that you have characterized the situation incorrectly.

No. As I said before, posers are nothing new on the internet. The easiest and most obvious answer when someone claims postgraduate expertise but wouldn't know the first year content from a hole in the ground is that they are misrepresenting themselves. If they subsequently don't show any more knowledge than before, but retreat and start sniping, then the easy and obvious answer gets further confirmation.

[AlBell]

So what or who, pray tell, can make moral judgments.

Paul

:) :) :)
You can. fls can. Kevin can. Harris can. repeat ad-finitum.

But you knew that.

[JoelKatz]

Scientifically your position is not wrong, merely unfalsifiable and hence worthless, because you have built in the escape hatch of saying "We don't even know what morality really is, so no possible observation can falsify my pet theory".It is entirely falsifiable. For example, if moral judgments appeared completely random and people didn't ever agree on them to better than chance, that would falsify my theory.

Think about what it would take to prove, in the absence of an understanding of the physics of color vision, that people can perceive colors that are an objective property of the thing perceived. It's pretty simple. For example, demonstrating that people agree on which ball "looks a different color" at rates better than chance among balls otherwise the same would be sufficient. (And note that 'otherwise the same' would simply mean that we couldn't figure out any other difference. Whatever the difference actually was would be what color actually is.)

Philosophically, you just don't seem able to grasp the all-important distinction between moral description and moral prescription. You seem to think that if we can just get a detailed enough descriptive picture of how the brain thinks about moral ideas then we will magically get to a prescriptive morality. The idea that this is so is called the naturalistic fallacy, and as the name suggests it's an intellectual error.Quite the reverse, I address this distinction head on. I fully accept that there can be a huge difference between something "seeming wrong to us" (descriptive morality) and "really being wrong" (prescriptive morality) just as something can "seem blue to us" (cause a particular subjective experience when we look at it) but really be yellow and blue (emit particular frequencies of light).

Do you think understanding color vision allowed us to "magically get" that "really being blue" was about emitting particular frequencies of light with specific energy levels per emitted particle?

If you think we fully understand prescriptive morality, then please explain it to me. What does it mean for something to "really be wrong"? What does it mean to say a person "ought to do" something?

[Kevin_Lowe]

It is entirely falsifiable. For example, if moral judgments appeared completely random and people didn't ever agree on them to better than chance, that would falsify my theory.

We already know that people's moral ideas are non-random, and that most fellow members of your society broadly agree with your moral ideas.

However your thesis is that there is a true, objective morality and that people's moral ideas tap into that. What falsifiable predictions does this lead to? What allows us to decide whether your theory is true, or whether the more mainstream theory that moral ideas are just evolved heuristics for behaviour with absolutely no connection of any kind whatsoever to any true, objective morality is true?


Quite the reverse, I address this distinction head on. I fully accept that there can be a huge difference between something "seeming wrong to us" (descriptive morality) and "really being wrong" (prescriptive morality) just as something can "seem blue to us" (cause a particular subjective experience when we look at it) but really be yellow and blue (emit particular frequencies of light).

But your proposed method to get to "what's really moral" is just to do more descriptive morality until magically you get to the one true prescriptive morality. It can't work that way.


If you think we fully understand prescriptive morality, then please explain it to me.

I can tell you what prescriptive moral ideas are: they're claims to the effect that people should behave in certain ways. They are purely value judgments, and they have no truth value. Science cannot prove them to be correct or incorrect because they are just the wrong kind of thing for science to engage with.

You seem to think that there can be such a thing as a true prescriptive morality (there can't be) and that you can discover it by doing descriptive moral research (you can't).

[fls]

Or of correctly understanding their meaning when they contradict themselves.

Hence the need for some way to break symmetry. I hope that you don't mind that your failure to characterize my position does this for me. :)

This isn't anything new. In that speech he specifically cops out of defending his claims about the is/ought distinction with some bluster about it being boring and him not needing to bother with it.

That's not the part where he addresses whether the is/ought distinction is relevant.

Oh well. In your copious free time read it again and you might get it.

Well, it looks as though you are criticizing the idea that thinking outside the box is necessarily valuable. This would be relevant if you thought that I was making this claim. But since I did not, why bring it up?

Trying to position yourself as someone "stimulating critical thinking" at this stage is a bit optimistic, isn't it?

Most definitely. :)

I apologize. I realize that by making this query in a response to you, it gives the decided impression that I expected to stimulate this sort of inquiry in you. That was not my intention.

Since your position's already been demolished by astute critical thinking and a modicum of actual knowledge of philosophy, I don't think lack of critical thinking on this end is anything you have to worry your head about.

I think at this stage rather than pretending to try to "stimulate critical thinking" you should be trying to stimulate yourself to post some better argument for your position, or to be a good rationalist and admit that you were just confused all along.

No. As I said before, posers are nothing new on the internet. The easiest and most obvious answer when someone claims postgraduate expertise but wouldn't know the first year content from a hole in the ground is that they are misrepresenting themselves. If they subsequently don't show any more knowledge than before, but retreat and start sniping, then the easy and obvious answer gets further confirmation.

This would all be very much more useful to me had you been able to characterize what I said correctly (where the hell did you get "postgraduate expertise"?) and give the appearance of understanding points that have been made by myself and now by JoelKatz. I wanted to believe you.

Linda

[Dragoonster]

I'm also not sure where the idea of force is coming from. Discovering what is good or bad is separate from the idea of forcing people to engage in or refrain from specific behaviors. For example, we can identify that sustained activity for 30 or more minutes per day is good for your health, but this discovery doesn't also impel the suggestion that everyone be forced to exercise. So why bring it up when we are discussing related types of 'good' and 'bad' actions?

Linda

As I recall Sam Harris was in favor of introducing chemical "solutions" to wrong-headedness. This was WAY back in the thread and I can't find the reference quickly.

Since you read it, does he say in his book how his Scientific Morality should be introduced or forced upon people? Should it just be realized as Truth by any random person? He obviously wants to crush Islamic laws in particular. I just wonder how he plans to do so.

Is he advocating a Scientific Crusade? How likely is it that his utterly ridiculous and non-persuasive contentions will sway theists and fundamentalists and etc.? To date it doesn't even seem to sway real philosophers and atheists.

Sam Harris is on an island of his own illogical making, and in the island drawing/inducing normally intelligent and skeptical people to believing nonsense.

[fls]

As I recall Sam Harris was in favor of introducing chemical "solutions" to wrong-headedness. This was WAY back in the thread and I can't find the reference quickly.

Since you read it, does he say in his book how his Scientific Morality should be introduced or forced upon people? Should it just be realized as Truth by any random person? He obviously wants to crush Islamic laws in particular. I just wonder how he plans to do so.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Where are you getting the idea that understanding the properties of behaviors which are perceived as good or bad entails forcing people people to participate in said behaviors?

Linda

[Paulhoff]

You can. fls can. Kevin can. Harris can. repeat ad-finitum.

But you knew that.
Since you seem to know that science can't learn what will work and what can't work as morals for humans, but seems to learn how so many other things do, please tell me what does work. The only thing I have ever heard from most people is that morals come from their man in the sky who in the bible shows no morals at all and acts like a child.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Dragoonster]

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Where are you getting the idea that understanding the properties of behaviors which are perceived as good or bad entails forcing people people to participate in said behaviors?

Linda

Obviously, as I said, from a memory of a reference to Sam Harris advocating a chemical solution to the problem of those who don't adhere to his morals.

Of course I could be wrong and my memory does suck.

Anyway, people already force moral behaviors upon others. Murderers and rapists are jailed, etc. This is the standard social/legal/anthropological punisment for "wrong" behavior. Child rapists are forced to not engage in child rape because they're put into confinement by the government.

Seems to me if Sam Harris is establishing a new scientific morality, he should establish legal punishments for those who oppose or flaunt it. After all, his new Scientific Morality is apparently objective and the Truth of the Universe. If so, it's certainly the very best way to legally judge those who don't abide by it. Much better than current wrong/rights per the Judicial System. Harris' moral quantification is perfect.

But in the real world, if he or you decide to make the Scientific Morality the law of the land, just what force/persuasion do you reckon you'll have?

This isn't a side issue: Current state morals and laws have been built on millenia of legal and philosophical thought, and attending to particular regions. If Sam Harris has a revolutionary new moral philosophy here, he needs to either a) easily convince everyone in the world, because it's so obviously true, or b) force his moral philosophy on others using whatever forces he has at command.

[Beth]

I just said in my previous post that the suffering or happiness that follows from actions could be used as an objective indicator of how good or evil the actions are. Still it remains unanswered how good or evil people should be allowed to be, that is not a question that science would answer, any more than it would answer how wide my television should be, even if it does tell us what "width" means generally, and how wide something exactly is.
I think that when Harris claims to have solved the is/ought problem, it is akin to claiming that science will be able to answer how wide your television should be. That is what is being objected to in this thread.


Seems to me if Sam Harris is establishing a new scientific morality, he should establish legal punishments for those who oppose or flaunt it.
I don't think this follows. It seems to me that establishing legal punishments is an entirely different matter from establishing a morality. The ten commandments establishes a morality, but it doesn't establish penalties for failure to adhere to that morality.

[Paulhoff]

I find it funny how nowhere did Sam Harris talk as if science would be the only source to morals, but it seems others talk as if he did.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Dragoonster]

I find it funny how nowhere did Sam Harris talk as if science would be the only source to morals, but it seems others talk as if he did.

Paul

:) :) :)

"Science can answer moral questions"

Gee, and we talk as if he said something like this.

I don't think this follows. It seems to me that establishing legal punishments is an entirely different matter from establishing a morality. The ten commandments establishes a morality, but it doesn't establish penalties for failure to adhere to that morality.

So what is Harris' point? Is his morality a suggestion; a command; a scientific truth...what?

How does he usurp the current legal/ethical consensus? Laws aren't morals, but they are pretty important for forcing morals on others. Let's say Harris' scientific morality shows that forcing women to wear burkas is wrong. And Sayid still forces his wife to wear a burka. How is Harris' Scienctific Morality going to deal with this?

[fls]

Obviously, as I said, from a memory of a reference to Sam Harris advocating a chemical solution to the problem of those who don't adhere to his morals.

Of course I could be wrong and my memory does suck.

Anyway, people already force moral behaviors upon others. Murderers and rapists are jailed, etc. This is the standard social/legal/anthropological punisment for "wrong" behavior. Child rapists are forced to not engage in child rape because they're put into confinement by the government.

Seems to me if Sam Harris is establishing a new scientific morality, he should establish legal punishments for those who oppose or flaunt it. After all, his new Scientific Morality is apparently objective and the Truth of the Universe. If so, it's certainly the very best way to legally judge those who don't abide by it. Much better than current wrong/rights per the Judicial System. Harris' moral quantification is perfect.

But in the real world, if he or you decide to make the Scientific Morality the law of the land, just what force/persuasion do you reckon you'll have?

This isn't a side issue: Current state morals and laws have been built on millenia of legal and philosophical thought, and attending to particular regions. If Sam Harris has a revolutionary new moral philosophy here, he needs to either a) easily convince everyone in the world, because it's so obviously true, or b) force his moral philosophy on others using whatever forces he has at command.

I think your memory is off.

Harris doesn't advocate using force, chemical or otherwise. It seems to be more like what I mentioned earlier - removing impediments to good behaviors, like providing good information and getting rid of bad advice (religion precepts which pretend to be about morality but which serve to act against it).

Laws don't really seem to represent codified morals anyway, so I'm not sure why you are drawing this connection.

Linda

[Dragoonster]

I think your memory is off.

Very likely. :drool:

Harris doesn't advocate using force, chemical or otherwise. It seems to be more like what I mentioned earlier - removing impediments to good behaviors, like providing good information and getting rid of bad advice (religion precepts which pretend to be about morality but which serve to act against it).

Sounds like an AA meeting. Or a sweat lodge.

Laws don't really seem to represent codified morals anyway, so I'm not sure why you are drawing this connection.

Linda

IMO laws do represent morals. I don't see how anyone could disagree with this.

Murder is bad because it's considered by society immoral to kill an innocent human; embezzlement is bad because it's immoral to steal from an innocent human; and so on.

What (non-trivial) laws do you have in mind that are not based on morality?

[Paulhoff]

"Science can answer moral questions"

Gee, and we talk as if he said something like this.
Gee, I didn't know a talk was only one sentence, go figure.

Paul

:) :) :)

[fls]

IMO laws do represent morals. I don't see how anyone could disagree with this.

Murder is bad because it's considered by society immoral to kill an innocent human; embezzlement is bad because it's immoral to steal from an innocent human; and so on.

What (non-trivial) laws do you have in mind that are not based on morality?

Laws seem to be about protecting social/economic/political systems. It's not illegal to lie, cheat and steal. It's illegal to do so in situations where it would interfere with economic stability.

Anyways, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the topic of this thread. Nobody is suggesting a set of laws codifying those actions which encourage well-being.

Linda

[Ivor the Engineer]

Laws seem to be about protecting social/economic/political systems. It's not illegal to lie, cheat and steal. It's illegal to do so in situations where it would interfere with economic stability.

Anyways, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the topic of this thread. Nobody is suggesting a set of laws codifying those actions which encourage well-being.

Linda

In that case I'm puzzled as to what Harris hopes to achieve.

For example, followers of Islam don't seem to give two hoots what anyone else and especially atheists think about their cultural and religious practices.

What things in society do you think would change because of morality being studied scientifically?

[Paulhoff]

For example, followers of Islam don't seem to give two hoots what anyone else and especially atheists think about their cultural and religious practices.
So, when should we stop science and learning?

Paul

:) :) :)

[JJM 777]

Picking a scale is not remotely the same thing as adopting out of thin air a philosophical axiom. The first is part of science, the second most definitely is not.
Unnecessary playing with words.

So don´t call it a philosophy, just call it a scale. And don´t name the ends of the scale as Good and Evil, we can name them as Braun and Yello.

See, imaginary problems solved.

if the best way to maximise human pleasure and minimise human suffering was to spend all of our non-working hours shooting up heroin and staring at a wall, that would be the most moral possible activity.
If that is a fact, which I doubt, then it should be reported as a fact.

Why I doubt its factuality, is because heroinists are not usually described as the happiest people on the planet.

if a science of morality determines behaviour A is “better” than behaviour B, why are the people who disagree and think behaviour B is better going to change what they’re doing? Will they just suddenly see the light
Many Jehovah´s Witnesses believe that blood transfusions are harmful or evil. But some are convinced by the evidence that points to the contrary. Several such public opinions have collapsed in recent decades and centuries, people have seen the light of facts vs. unfounded claims. But not all people, and not immediately.

Scientific or anyway sceptical voices in public moral debate give people the facts and thinking patterns that they might independently not discover, or not have the social courage to express publicly.

[Earthborn]

In this case, science would define a creature´s emotional state as the thing to measure.You make it sound so easy. All that remains to do to establish scientific moral standards is... ... decide which creatures' emotional states to measure. One would get a different standard of morality if one decides to measure the well-being of a lion than if one decides to measure that of an antilope.
... decides which behaviours or brain states constitute well-being or suffering, and quantify the well-being and suffering in comparable quantities.
... decide how long one has to measure. Too short a measurement of well-being that is too short will make sticking wires into conscious creatures' pleasure centers appear the most moral thing to do as it produces the greatest amount of pleasure in the short term. Too long a measurement, and primitive technophobic cultures with lots of child mortality will appear better in the long run then our own resource intensive way of life because while they may not produce the greatest well-being, they can keep their level of well-being up the longest.
... standardise the units of morality by putting a platinum KiloHarris in a vault.
... have some institute in Paris dictate this moral standard to the whole world.Sounds simple enough. Of course it doesn't quite work that way; when scientists define a unit of measurement they try to make sure it is based on something that stays the same for a long time, not something like the emotional state of a living thing that is constantly changing. They also try to make sure the size of the unit is as arbitrary as possible: if the unit were greater or smaller all their formulas and calculations still have to work.

It is entirely falsifiable. For example, if moral judgments appeared completely random and people didn't ever agree on them to better than chance, that would falsify my theory.Only if you have managed to quantify morality could you determine how much agreement there would be if moral judgements were completely random. If you were to find that moral judgements were not completely random, you'd still have to show that people didn't communicate their moral ideas with eachother to falsify your theory.

It's pretty simple. For example, demonstrating that people agree on which ball "looks a different color" at rates better than chance among balls otherwise the same would be sufficient.You'd first have to make sure the people you are testing understand what is meant by "colour" in the same way. That would be difficult to do if you had no prior scientific understanding of colour.

[Ivor the Engineer]

So, when should we stop science and learning?

Paul

:) :) :)

:confused:

14:28 tomorrow?

[AlBell]

You make it sound so easy. All that remains to do to establish scientific moral standards is... ... decide which creatures' emotional states to measure. One would get a different standard of morality if one decides to measure the well-being of a lion than if one decides to measure that of an antilope.
... decides which behaviours or brain states constitute well-being or suffering, and quantify the well-being and suffering in comparable quantities.
... decide how long one has to measure. Too short a measurement of well-being that is too short will make sticking wires into conscious creatures' pleasure centers appear the most moral thing to do as it produces the greatest amount of pleasure in the short term. Too long a measurement, and primitive technophobic cultures with lots of child mortality will appear better in the long run then our own resource intensive way of life because while they may not produce the greatest well-being, they can keep their level of well-being up the longest.
... standardise the units of morality by putting a platinum KiloHarris in a vault.
... have some institute in Paris dictate this moral standard to the whole world.
Sure are a lot of unscientific "oughts" needed there before we 'science it all out'.

Who woulda guessed? ;)

[Beth]

So what is Harris' point? Is his morality a suggestion; a command; a scientific truth...what?
He is claiming that we can scientifically discover moral truths. It's not a claim I'm in agreement with, but I think that is what he is claiming.

How does he usurp the current legal/ethical consensus? Laws aren't morals, but they are pretty important for forcing morals on others. Let's say Harris' scientific morality shows that forcing women to wear burkas is wrong. And Sayid still forces his wife to wear a burka. How is Harris' Scienctific Morality going to deal with this?

I don't know. Personally, I don't think he has given a great deal of thought to implementation of his ideas. He certainly hasn't communicated anything along those lines.

[fls]

In that case I'm puzzled as to what Harris hopes to achieve.

For example, followers of Islam don't seem to give two hoots what anyone else and especially atheists think about their cultural and religious practices.

What things in society do you think would change because of morality being studied scientifically?

I don't understand what you're getting at. We don't pass laws dictating the treatment of heart disease as a way to see improvements in morbidity and mortality.

Linda

[AlBell]

I don't understand what you're getting at. We don't pass laws dictating the treatment of heart disease as a way to see improvements in morbidity and mortality.

Linda
Some would try to if Scientific Results actually demonstrated what the "100% proper" treatment was.

[Ivor the Engineer]

I don't understand what you're getting at. We don't pass laws dictating the treatment of heart disease as a way to see improvements in morbidity and mortality.

Linda

I'm presuming that Harris has written his book and is giving talks about his ideas because he thinks doing so will increase the wellbeing of conscious creatures.

So what I'm puzzled by is how exactly he sees the wellbeing of conscious creatures increasing because of his idea.

For example, what will change if we find the brain circuit which makes most people sad and/or angry when they see children being tortured, except when the torture is at the hands of a mohel or physician and it's the children's genitals being trimmed away?

[Kevin_Lowe]

Unnecessary playing with words.

So don´t call it a philosophy, just call it a scale. And don´t name the ends of the scale as Good and Evil, we can name them as Braun and Yello.

See, imaginary problems solved.

You can call them whatever you like, it's still not a legitimate scientific move.

In science you can make up a unit to measure something like length, to be sure. However you can't then say "if I can divide the space between two points up into a unit of my own choosing, then I must also be able to say that what is moral is to have forearms that are as close as possible to 30cm long". The first is merely a choice of units to express a physical fact that would be true whatever units you used, and the second it a moral ought claim. They are two different beasts and that is not an arbitrary semantic difference, it's a fundamental epistemological difference.

In exactly the same way, even if you could make some kind of pain-o-meter that objectively measured suffering, it's an additional philosophical assumption to move from "I can measure suffering" to "morally we ought to reduce suffering".


If that is a fact, which I doubt, then it should be reported as a fact.

Why I doubt its factuality, is because heroinists are not usually described as the happiest people on the planet.

What if it's not a fact, but merely an unwanted consequence of an ill-chosen philosophical axiom?

After all instead of choosing pleasure and suffering as your metric you could have used "higher pleasures" like art and learning (J.S. Mill), fulfilled and unfulfilled preferences, or fulfilled and unfulfilled second-order preferences (preferences about our preferences), or the preferences that entities would have if they were fully-informed and rational, or Quality Adjusted Life Years, or something else entirely.

[JoelKatz]

I can tell you what prescriptive moral ideas are: they're claims to the effect that people should behave in certain ways. They are purely value judgments, and they have no truth value. Science cannot prove them to be correct or incorrect because they are just the wrong kind of thing for science to engage with.This doesn't help, because you've used the word "should". When I ask what prescriptive morality actually is, what I want do know is what it means when we say someone "should" do something.

And it also doesn't help to say it best achieves some goal or purpose. Committing suicide best achieves the goal or purpose of ending your life. The question of "should" is the question of what it means to say a particular goal is the "best" one or the most appropriate one. For something to be "best" it has to be best at something.

I think you are side-stepping the fact that we really do not understand what it means for something to "be right" or "be best" precisely as we once did not understand what it means for something to "be blue". (Because we always had to reduce it to it seeming so to us.)

That is, the is/ought problem or the descriptive/proscriptive dichotomy are all artifacts of the fact that we do not understand what making moral judgments actually is, much as we once didn't understand what seeing in color actually was. Once we do understand that, there will be no dichotomy. It will be what it will be, and we will know what it is.

As a hypothetical, imagine if science had discovered that the physical universe and everything in it obeys strict, hard physical determinism. That is, given a particular state of the universe, there is only one possible set of succeeding states of the universe. Had such a scientific discovery been made, the entire concept of prescriptive ethics would, I think, become meaningless. If there is only ever one thing it is physically possible for a person to do, what does it mean to talk about what a person should do? If men are basically just complicated hammers, then there is no prescriptive morality. No sane person wonders what a hammer should do. (The notion of 'should' only applies to entities for which more than one course of action is physically possible.)

We don't yet even understand how people implement choices. If they don't, then there is no prescriptive ethics, and science can answer all meaningful moral question. If they do, then science can explain how they implement choices. Can you seriously argue that understanding how people choose and how they physically implement their decisions (the physical facts that make prescriptive ethics exist in the first place) won't teach us anything about it? That's akin to arguing that understanding color vision won't tell us anything about color. It's facially absurd.

[Kevin_Lowe]

This doesn't help, because you've used the word "should". When I ask what prescriptive morality actually is, what I want do know is what it means when we say someone "should" do something.

And it also doesn't help to say it best achieves some goal or purpose. Committing suicide best achieves the goal or purpose of ending your life. The question of "should" is the question of what it means to say a particular goal is the "best" one or the most appropriate one. For something to be "best" it has to be best at something.

It just means that one thing is preferable to another on moral grounds. If it's being best at something, it's being best at being morally good. There is nothing more to it than that. There is no further to dig - we're at the axiomatic rock bottom.


I think you are side-stepping the fact that we really do not understand what it means for something to "be right" or "be best" precisely as we once did not understand what it means for something to "be blue". (Because we always had to reduce it to it seeming so to us.)

No. You keep trying to smuggle back in as agreed-upon fact the totally incorrect assumption that there is such a thing as what is "really moral" if only we could perceive it, and that the problem is our imperfect perceptive faculties. This is still just wrong, and it will continue to be just wrong however many times you try to smuggle it back in.

[JoelKatz]

No. You keep trying to smuggle back in as agreed-upon fact the totally incorrect assumption that there is such a thing as what is "really moral" if only we could perceive it, and that the problem is our imperfect perceptive faculties. This is still just wrong, and it will continue to be just wrong however many times you try to smuggle it back in.If the assumption is incorrect, then there is no such thing as "really being wrong", in which case there is no such thing as prescriptive morality. (Prescriptive morality is about what is really wrong, regardless of how people judge it.) Otherwise, all moral questions are descriptive, which science can answer.

There is only an is/ought problem if it really means something for something to "really be wrong", independent of our judging it so. If there is no such thing, then what is the question science can't answer? (And my own answer would be that we have no idea, and only science can tell us.)

[Kevin_Lowe]

If the assumption is incorrect, then there is no such thing as "really being wrong", in which case there is no such thing as prescriptive morality. (Prescriptive morality is about what is really wrong, regardless of how people judge it.)

There is such a thing as prescriptive morality, it's just ideas in people's heads. Every time some priest says "it's immoral to blaspheme!" they are making a prescriptive moral statement.

There are no true, objective, universal prescriptive moral rules.


Otherwise, all moral questions are descriptive, which science can answer.

See above.


There is only an is/ought problem if it really means something for something to "really be wrong", independent of our judging it so.

No.

There is an is/ought problem because I can independently think your moral judgments are wrong. not because you can be wrong by comparison to some phlogiston-like imaginary cosmic morality.

[JoelKatz]

There is such a thing as prescriptive morality, it's just ideas in people's heads. Every time some priest says "it's immoral to blaspheme!" they are making a prescriptive moral statement.Yes, and one that you have shown is false scientifically. As you have shown, the immorality of blasphemy is only in his head. Yet he has claimed that blasphemy really is immoral, independent of the contents of his head. Thus science has answered this moral question -- his claim is false.

Your argument is that because science has shown that blasphemy cannot really be immoral, science cannot answer the question of whether blasphemy really is immoral. This is self-contradictory. If there are no real prescriptive moral truths, then anything that claims to be a real prescriptive moral truth is false.

There are no true, objective, universal prescriptive moral rules.If there are no true prescriptive moral rules, then all prescriptive claims are false. Whether they are objective or universal is irrelevant, if they aren't true, they are false or incoherent. So there is nothing for science to explain.

There is an is/ought problem because I can independently think your moral judgments are wrong. not because you can be wrong by comparison to some phlogiston-like imaginary cosmic morality.Prescriptive morality claims that some things are really wrong, independent of people thinking they are wrong. If that is not true, and you can show that scientifically, then science has resolved all prescriptive moral claims -- they are false. On the other hand, if all that can really be true is that you think I'm wrong, then there is only descriptive morality, which you have conceded science can address.

That is, either proscriptive morality is amenable to the scientific process because it makes claims that are really true, or it makes false claims.

(Of course, I believe, as I've argued, that prescriptive moral claims can actually be true. I'm just showing that the consequence of the rejection of moral realism is that all prescriptive moral claims are either false or are simply claims that a person has a particular thought. But of course, if someone says "blasphemy is wrong", no rational person would investigate the claim by trying to figure out if the person really believes blasphemy is wrong -- who cares? What we want to know is what really is right. No sane, rational person can believe that prescriptive moral claims are really about the contents of people's heads.)

[Kevin_Lowe]

Your argument is that because science has shown that blasphemy cannot really be immoral, science cannot answer the question of whether blasphemy really is immoral. This is self-contradictory. If there are no real prescriptive moral truths, then anything that claims to be a real prescriptive moral truth is false.

No. As I keep telling you, they are not claims that can have truth values. They are not true. Nor are they false.

Maybe this analogy will help you.

Some things make people angry. The anger is a real physical phenomenon which can be scientifically studied. When we perceive ourselves being angry we are perceiving that internal, physical phenomenon.

This does not mean that there is any external quality of "angry-making" which we are magically perceiving through some totally unknown phlogiston-like medium.

It also does not mean that if we study enough people we will arrive at some transcendental rule about what is cause for justified anger. You can do as much descriptive work as you like about what actually makes people angry, but what should justifiably make people angry is not a question science can solve alone without adopting one or more philosophical axioms.

Moral instincts are just the same. You can study people as long as you like so see what they think is moral. It will never give you an answer to the question of what they should think is moral. To answer that question you need to help yourself to a philosophical "ought" statement, because there is simply no way of getting to an "ought" unless you start with an "ought".

[JoelKatz]

Some things make people angry. The anger is a real physical phenomenon which can be scientifically studied. When we perceive ourselves being angry we are perceiving that internal, physical phenomenon.

This does not mean that there is any external quality of "angry-making" which we are magically perceiving through some totally unknown phlogiston-like medium.So any claim that there was an external quality of angry-making would be a false claim. Claims like "blasphemy is immoral" claim that blasphemy has the property, independent of anyone thinking anything, of being immoral. If it does not, the claim is false.

It also does not mean that if we study enough people we will arrive at some transcendental rule about what is cause for justified anger. You can do as much descriptive work as you like about what actually makes people angry, but what should justifiably make people angry is not a question science can solve alone without adopting one or more philosophical axioms.Right, because the idea of "justifiably making people angry" is incoherent. This is the same "inherent angry-making" that you reject.

If something can make people justifiably angry, that is an inherent property. It doesn't rely on anyone actually being made angry.

Moral instincts are just the same. You can study people as long as you like so see what they think is moral. It will never give you an answer to the question of what they should think is moral.Because you don't believe there is any such thing. That something is the kind of thing a human being should think is moral would be the exact inherent moral property you claim does not exist. "Should be thought to be moral" is like inherent angry-making.

To answer that question you need to help yourself to a philosophical "ought" statement, because there is simply no way of getting to an "ought" unless you start with an "ought".Then all such "ought" statements are false. You need a root "ought" statement since you cannot get an "ought" without starting from an "ought". But therefore you cannot have a root "ought" since you have no "ought" to start from. Whatever root "ought" statement you start out with is thus false, lacking the prior "ought" you claim is necessary for it to be true. Since no "ought" has any prior true "ought" on which to rest, and that is required for them to be true, they are all false.

You just, again, rejected proscriptive morality. You cannot get away from the fact that proscriptive moral claims assert inherent moral properties. "X is wrong and one shouldn't do it" means that X is really, in reality, wrong regardless of what anyone thinks of it, or whether anyone thinks at all. If there are no inherent moral properties independent of our thoughts about actions, there is no proscriptive morality. All such claims are actually meaningless or false.

[JJM 777]

when scientists define a unit of measurement they try to make sure it is based on something that stays the same for a long time, not something like the emotional state of a living thing that is constantly changing
Obviously you don´t do science much, if you try to argue that measuring quickly changing things is not science. Just turning the car motor on starts a chain reaction of unperceivably fast, but still measurable by science, changes in temperatures etc.

... decide which creatures' emotional states to measure. One would get a different standard of morality if one decides to measure the well-being of a lion than if one decides to measure that of an antilope.
Science does measure the tallness and weight of lions, antelopes and humans, separately. Then one of these eats the other, and we must measure again. The fact that there are billions of unmeasured trees in the world does not make it less science to measure the dimensions of one tree.

it's an additional philosophical assumption to move from "I can measure suffering" to "morally we ought to reduce suffering".
Exactly, but you telling this to me somehow indicates that you haven´t read or understood my two previous posts and the width of television analogy. Science tell how wide the television is, people decide how wide it should be.

you could have used "higher pleasures" like art and learning (J.S. Mill), fulfilled and unfulfilled preferences, or fulfilled and unfulfilled second-order preferences (preferences about our preferences), or the preferences that entities would have if they were fully-informed and rational, or Quality Adjusted Life Years, or something else entirely.
Possibly. That would make a different unit for a different purpose.

[Kevin_Lowe]

So any claim that there was an external quality of angry-making would be a false claim. Claims like "blasphemy is immoral" claim that blasphemy has the property, independent of anyone thinking anything, of being immoral. If it does not, the claim is false.

It can't be true or false, it's not that sort of thing.


Right, because the idea of "justifiably making people angry" is incoherent. This is the same "inherent angry-making" that you reject.

Okay then, all moral claims are incoherent in your view. You're a moral nihilist. That's a perfectly coherent position.


If something can make people justifiably angry, that is an inherent property. It doesn't rely on anyone actually being made angry.

No it's not. Someone has to make the value judgment that anger in given situations is justifiable. It's not an inherent property of the situation. It's a value judgment made in the mind of an observer.


Because you don't believe there is any such thing. That something is the kind of thing a human being should think is moral would be the exact inherent moral property you claim does not exist. "Should be thought to be moral" is like inherent angry-making.

Not quite. "I think anger in that situation is justified" is like "I think people should think murder is immoral". It's a value judgment.

"It is a true fact that murder is immoral" is like "it is a true fact that anger in that situation is justified", both being unjustifiable claims to know some kind of universal morality.


Then all such "ought" statements are false. You need a root "ought" statement since you cannot get an "ought" without starting from an "ought". But therefore you cannot have a root "ought" since you have no "ought" to start from. Whatever root "ought" statement you start out with is thus false, lacking the necessary prior "ought" on which to rest.

It's not true or false. How many times do I have to say this to you?

It's an axiom. An arbitrary and convenient starting point which can be judged by criteria like usefulness or coherence, but not on the criteria of factual correctness or incorrectness.

If you don't want to be a moral nihilist, you need to adopt some moral axiom.

Harris' axion is "human flourishing is morally good, human suffering is morally bad", for example.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Exactly, but you telling this to me somehow indicates that you haven´t read or understood my two previous posts and the width of television analogy. Science tell how wide the television is, people decide how wide it should be.

Reading back I think we're actually probably on the same page. Science can help us achieve our "moral" goals once we make the necessary value judgment as to what those goals are, it just can't help us decide what those goals should be.


Possibly. That would make a different unit for a different purpose.

Indeed.

[JoelKatz]

Not quite. "I think anger in that situation is justified" is like "I think people should think murder is immoral". It's a value judgment.This cannot be right. "I think anger in that situation is justified" is something that can clearly be true or false. It *cannot* be a value judgment. A value judgment, you argue, must be the kind of thing that *cannot* be true or false.

Only claims like "anger *is* in fact justified in that situation", a claim that asserts the existence of the very inherent properties you claim do not exist, is a value judgment. Essentially, you are arguing that all value judgments stated in "X is Y" form (rather than "I think X is Y" form or "if J, then X is Y" form) are false. Since X is not the kind of thing that can actually be Y if "X is Y" is a value judgment.

It's an axiom. An arbitrary and convenient starting point which can be judged by criteria like usefulness or coherence, but not on the criteria of factual correctness or incorrectness.The problem is, anything that you deduce from an axiom is dependent on that axiom. If X is an axiom that leads to Y, you get "if X, then Y". Since, you admit, X is not *true*, all you have deduced is that if something that was not capable of being true were somehow true, then Y would be true too. This is like "if two plus two was seven, Christmas would be in January". It's true, but useless.

If you don't want to be a moral nihilist, you need to adopt some moral axiom. Harris' axiom is "human flourishing is morally good, human suffering is morally bad", for example.Then all of his conclusions are of the form "*IF* human flourishing is morally good *AND* human suffering is morally bad, *THEN* doing X is best". That is what it means to make something an axiom.

Realize two things he has done:

1) His morality is not proscriptivist, it is descriptivist. We have again rejected proscriptive morality. "*IF* human flourishing is good, *THEN* we should do X" doesn't proscribe anything. (It's only proscriptive if flourishing really *is* good, which you reject.)

2) His morality makes claims that are provably true or false and subject to scientific analysis. We can determine whether or not particular things really do maximize flourishing or minimize suffering.

You can make it proscriptive by interpreting its conclusions as "if you value human flourishing and disvalue human suffering, you really should do X". This is proscriptive for those people who do in fact have those values. But all it does is redefine "should" to mean "maximizes flourishing and minimizes suffering". Once understood to be precisely equivalent to "X maximizes flourishing and minimizes suffering" (which is all it can conclude) it becomes clear that such claims are scientifically analyzable.

[Earthborn]

Obviously you don´t do science much, if you try to argue that measuring quickly changing things is not science.I haven't argued that.

Just turning the car motor on starts a chain reaction of unperceivably fast, but still measurable by science, changes in temperatures etc.Yes, if you have previously established a unit of measurement that does not change.

Science does measure the tallness and weight of lions, antelopes and humans, separately.You weren't talking about measuring animals. You were talking about measuring how much happiness and/or suffering is caused by a certain act by using animals as the measuring device.

Then one of these eats the other, and we must measure again.What is the well-being of an eaten antelope?

[Kevin_Lowe]

This cannot be right. "I think anger in that situation is justified" is something that can clearly be true or false. It *cannot* be a value judgment. A value judgment, you argue, must be the kind of thing that *cannot* be true or false.

It's a true fact that the person is thinking "I think anger in that situation is justified". That is what their brain is doing.

It's not a true fact that "anger in that situation is justified". That's a value judgment that cannot be true or false.


The problem is, anything that you deduce from an axiom is dependent on that axiom. If X is an axiom that leads to Y, you get "if X, then Y". Since, you admit, X is not *true*, all you have deduced is that if something that was not capable of being true were somehow true, then Y would be true too. This is like "if two plus two was seven, Christmas would be in January". It's true, but useless.

On the contrary, it's enormously useful and even necessary.

The basis for allocating public health spending in Australia, the UK and every other civilized nation I am aware of (the USA doesn't count as civilized in this respect) is "if extending human life and improving human quality of life is good, and every person's life and quality of life count equally, then the most effective way to spend the health budget is thus".

Is it true that the most moral way to spend the Australian health budget is, broadly speaking, to pay for treatments that provide at least one Quality-Adjusted Life Year per AU$40,000? Well, no. It's a consequence of the axiomatic assumption previously stated. If you discard that axiom then the policy has no basis.

This isn't a problem. Well, maybe it's a serious problem for you. I don't see it as one. I recognise that there is simply no way of doing morality at all, that works, except adopting some axiom or axioms as a starting point. So I adopt some axioms and get on with it.

[JoelKatz]

It's not a true fact that "anger in that situation is justified". That's a value judgment that cannot be true or false.You are saying "anger in that situation is justified" is neither true nor false, but that "it is true that anger in that situation is justified" is false. That is, you are drawing a distinction between claiming something and claiming that that same thing is true. That is bizarre and, in my opinion, borderline incoherent.

To anticipate your response, a person who says "going to the movies is fun" is not lying. But saying, "it is true that going to the movies is fun" is not a lie either. To argue so is to misunderstand what "going to the movies is fun" means. As all the things you call value judgments are, it is a relationship claim. This claim is that going to the movies and the speaker are both so constructed as to have a particular relationship, namely that the speaker (or other unspecified people -- the claim is a bit vague) does in fact experience enjoyment when they go to the movies.

It is a claim that going to the movies has an inherent property that is demonstrated by a relationship. Just like "hydrogen is flammable" claims hydrogen has an inherent property that can only be demonstrated by exposing it to oxygen.

The basis for allocating public health spending in Australia, the UK and every other civilized nation I am aware of (the USA doesn't count as civilized in this respect) is "if extending human life and improving human quality of life is good, and every person's life and quality of life count equally, then the most effective way to spend the health budget is thus".This is purely descriptive. It says, "if X, then Y". It is not a moral claim any more than "to make sodium explode, you add water" is a moral claim. "If you want X, then do Y" is another way of saying "Y causes more of X than the other possible things we could do". It's purely objective.

Is it true that the most moral way to spend the Australian health budget is, broadly speaking, to pay for treatments that provide at least one Quality-Adjusted Life Year per AU$40,000? Well, no. It's a consequence of the axiomatic assumption previously stated. If you discard that axiom then the policy has no basis.Right, so anyone who claimed it was true would be wrong. It is, as you say, *not* true.

This isn't a problem. Well, maybe it's a serious problem for you. I don't see it as one. I recognise that there is simply no way of doing morality at all, that works, except adopting some axiom or axioms as a starting point. So I adopt some axioms and get on with it.That's fine. But then all of your conclusions are dependent on the truth of your axioms. You are practicing descriptive morality, not proscriptive.

As you claim, an ought can only be based on another ought. So your root ought must forever be an axiom and any conclusions you draw from it are forever contingent on the truth of that axiom.

If that axiom is not true, as you conceded it is not, then the conclusions are not shown. Anyone who claimed they were shown to be true would be wrong, and if you make such claims, you are intentionally misrepresenting them.

There's one other point I need to make. If you were right about this, then moral claims would be as amenable to scientific claims as anything else. All it would mean is that you need one more axiom. But science has, and needs, many axioms. For example, you cannot prove that a person should reject experimental results that cannot be repeated. This is an axiom that you must accept if you want to do science.

If you say it's not an axiom and you can prove it, it's only because you have accepted some other axiom. For example, if you show that rejecting unrepeatable results leads to more accurate predictions, you still cannot say that one should do that unless you accept that accurate predictions are good. So even if it does require one root axiom that cannot be proven within science, that does not make it unscientific or else no conclusions are scientific.

So this is also a case of special pleading. Somehow, this one axiom makes it not science while all the other axioms of science are fine.

I actually believe that science, in the broadest sense, can in fact internally validate its own axioms, including a 'moral axiom'. (Though we can't do that for a moral axiom *yet*, but we have done it for many other axioms such as about repeatability, objectivity, and all the other shoulds in science.) It's only 'formal science' -- science that you can state as a set of rules or procedures -- that has to have unvalidated axioms. But that's a whole other issue that's probably not worth getting into here and I'm sure you and I have too many disagreements at lower levels, like this one about what values and judgments actually are, to make any headway on it. As a consequence, I believe that value judgments are relationship facts, like most facts are, and not in a different category at all.

We just speak in a form of shorthand. For example, if I say "Your wife is cheating on you", what I really mean is something like, "I have reasons to believe that your wife is cheating on you that justify you sharing my belief". This difference matters because the former claim appears to be false if I have good reasons that just happen to be wrong through no fault of mine. The latter statement can still be true even if your wife is not in fact cheating on you. So it matters to the claim whether when you say the first you are "really saying" the second.

Value judgments are also similar shorthands. They appears to be unverifiable, subjective assessments. But they are actually claims about objective relationship properties, just using a convenient verbal shorthand. For example, we all understand that a person who says "that dress looks great on you" can in fact be lying. (And, of course, we all understand 'that dress looks great on you' to really be saying something like 'I think that dress looks great on you' or 'From what I know about how people judge beauty, that dress improves the way most would assess you' or the like.)

[Kevin_Lowe]

You are saying "anger in that situation is justified" is neither true nor false, but that "it is true that anger in that situation is justified" is false. That is, you are drawing a distinction between claiming something and claiming that that same thing is true. That is bizarre and, in my opinion, borderline incoherent.

It seems perfectly logical to me. If there are classes of things that are neither true nor false, then it is false to say that any member of that class is true, and also false to say that any member of that class is false. I see no problem with this.

X is neither true nor false.
"X is true" is false.
"X is false" is false.

Where's the incoherence?


This is purely descriptive. It says, "if X, then Y". It is not a moral claim any more than "to make sodium explode, you add water" is a moral claim. "If you want X, then do Y" is another way of saying "Y causes more of X than the other possible things we could do". It's purely objective..

No. You misunderstand the terms you are using.

Descriptive moral claims are factual claims about what people think. They by definition have absolutely no content, for or against, that speaks to the question of whether those moral ideas people have are good moral ideas or bad moral ideas.

Prescriptive claims are non-factual claims about what people should do.

In this particular case, QALY-based utilitarianism is prescribing which behaviour the health system should engage in, and the health system engages in the prescribed behaviour.

What might be confusing you is that you can of course describe prescriptive morality in action - how could it be otherwise? However just because you can practice descriptive moral observation on people who are engaged in acting on prescriptivist moral theories does not magically make those theories non-prescriptive.


That's fine. But then all of your conclusions are dependent on the truth of your axioms. You are practicing descriptive morality, not proscriptive.

Nope. It's not merely describing what people happen to think is moral, it's making a claim about what people should do, and as a matter of fact they are doing it right now.


As you claim, an ought can only be based on another ought. So your root ought must forever be an axiom and any conclusions you draw from it are forever contingent on the truth of that axiom.

If that axiom is not true, as you conceded it is not, then the conclusions are not shown. Anyone who claimed they were shown to be true would be wrong, and if you make such claims, you are intentionally misrepresenting them.

You nearly get it.

All moral claims have to be based on one or more axioms which are neither true nor false. The moral claims which develop from those axioms are also neither true nor false. That is how it has to be.


There's one other point I need to make. If you were right about this, then moral claims would be as amenable to scientific claims as anything else. All it would mean is that you need one more axiom. But science has, and needs, many axioms. For example, you cannot prove that a person should reject experimental results that cannot be repeated. This is an axiom that you must accept if you want to do science.

If you say it's not an axiom and you can prove it, it's only because you have accepted some other axiom. For example, if you show that rejecting unrepeatable results leads to more accurate predictions, you still cannot say that one should do that unless you accept that accurate predictions are good. So even if it does require one root axiom that cannot be proven within science, that does not make it unscientific or else no conclusions are scientific.

So this is also a case of special pleading. Somehow, this one axiom makes it not science while all the other axioms of science are fine.

I'd say rather that philosophers of science have pared down the axioms required to do science to the bare minimum needed to make it work. Science assumes that we want to have a map that corresponds to the territory, and that such a map can be found.

However any excess axioms that don't get the scientific job done that you want to tack on aren't science.

Just because science needs specific axioms to get going doesn't give you a blank cheque to take any other wacky axiom you can think of as a given, and call your new creation "science" (as Harris tried to do).

[JoelKatz]

It seems perfectly logical to me. If there are classes of things that are neither true nor false, then it is false to say that any member of that class is true, and also false to say that any member of that class is false. I see no problem with this.

X is neither true nor false.
"X is true" is false.
"X is false" is false.

Where's the incoherence?The incoherence is that you are equating logical propositions with claims. "X" (as a claim) is precisely equivalent to "X is true". That's what it means to claim something. If "X is true" is false, then X is false.

Someone who says "it is raining" is not just stating a logical proposition. That's why no sane person responds to "it is raining" with "that's interesting, you've just stated a logical proposition that might be true and might be false". Claiming a proposition, which is what "it is raining" does, is equivalent to asserting that the proposition is true or that belief in its truth is justified.

Someone who says "ice cream is delicious" is asserting that it is in fact true that there exists a particular relationship between ice cream and a group of people (that consuming it produces pleasure in most of the people). This relationship can in fact exist and it can in fact not exist. He is using the same inherent property shorthand as scientists do when they say "hydrogen is flammable". This also, of course, is asserting that in fact a relationship exists between hydrogen and oxygen.

Your fundamental arguments that value judgments are in a different category from scientific-established relationship facts and that one can claim something and that's somehow different from claiming that that something is true (or that belief in it is justified) are both incorrect. Value judgments are relationship facts. Claiming a proposition is claiming that it is true (or that belief in it is justified or something similar to that, depending on the context).

Descriptive moral claims are factual claims about what people think. They by definition have absolutely no content, for or against, that speaks to the question of whether those moral ideas people have are good moral ideas or bad moral ideas.

Prescriptive claims are non-factual claims about what people should do.Okay, then your so-called moral claims are not moral at all. "If you value thriving and disvalue suffering, you should do X" is therefore not a moral claim at all but a simple factual one.

If you accept, as you do, that at least one axiom is needed to make a moral claim, the you are a moral nihilist. All moral claims are of the form "if my ought axiom is true, then X" so they are neither prescriptive nor descriptive.

In this particular case, QALY-based utilitarianism is prescribing which behaviour the health system should engage in, and the health system engages in the prescribed behaviour.It is prescribing conditional on its axiom. A conditional prescription "if you want X, do Y" is not moral by your definitions.

What might be confusing you is that you can of course describe prescriptive morality in action - how could it be otherwise? However just because you can practice descriptive moral observation on people who are engaged in acting on prescriptivist moral theories does not magically make those theories non-prescriptive.No, what makes those theories non-prescriptive is that all their results are conditional on the truth of their root ought axiom. Since they cannot claim the axiom is true, and you conceded it is not, they don't actually make unconditional prescriptions. And a conditional prescription is no prescription at all.

Nope. It's not merely describing what people happen to think is moral, it's making a claim about what people should do, and as a matter of fact they are doing it right now.It is making a claim about what people should do conditional on an axiom.

All moral claims have to be based on one or more axioms which are neither true nor false. The moral claims which develop from those axioms are also neither true nor false. That is how it has to be.The claims are true provided they are made conditional on the axioms. Since the axiom is not true, anyone who claimed it was true would be making a false claim.

As I explained, claiming 'X' is precisely equivalent to claiming 'X is true'. Since X is not true, and you concede it cannot be true, the claims that it is so are false. (Unless you interpret them as descriptive relationship claims.)

However any excess axioms that don't get the scientific job done that you want to tack on aren't science.But then your argument is entirely circular. "Moral truths are outside of science because I won't add the axioms needed to find them because they aren't needed for science because moral truths are outside of science, but I'll add the axioms needed to find all kinds of other truths."

Just because science needs specific axioms to get going doesn't give you a blank cheque to take any other wacky axiom you can think of as a given, and call your new creation "science" (as Harris tried to do).I 100% agree. The conclusions are conditional on the truth of the axiom, as *all* scientific truths are. In a sense, all scientific results are conditional on the validity of the scientific method, something that cannot be formally proven. If science shows X, the result is "science shows X", not just "X".

[JJM 777]

You weren't talking about measuring animals.
Somewhere earlier in this thread I defined morals/ethics (which seem to be actually synonyms) as "the study of the emotions of living creatures which are capable of emotions, most notably humans".

What is the well-being of an eaten antelope?
A dead creature has no emotions. In the case of bacteria and gnats, it has no mourning living relatives either. In case of humans, the trauma of surviving relatives and friends is significant and long-lasting. In case of antelopes... idunno, haven´t researched their psychology in the aftermath of losing a friend.

[Democracy Simulator]

I’m going to move on from is/ought, because we are going round in circles. To address some of Harris’ other arguments:

Harris writes, on page 37 of TML:

It is essential to see that the demand for radical justification levelled by the moral skeptic could not be met by any branch of science. Science is defined with reference to understanding the processes at work in the universe. Can we justify this goal scientifically? Of course not. Does this make science itself unscientific?

Sam Harris is right: Science itself is not unscientific, because it is a matter of definition that it would be contradictory if it were so. Scientific knowledge is limited to knowledge gained through the application of scientific methodologies based on the assumption of the axioms of science. However, Sam Harris' moral knowledge assumes axioms pertaining to moral truth that are additional to the axioms of science and the definition of what science is, therefore any moral knowledge he speaks of is not scientific knowledge. If Harris had called his book: ‘How science can determine factors of well-being’, I would have less beef with him as this would be a more honest representation of his arguments and vastly less contentious. Instead, Harris assumes moral truth and claims that moral truth (the basis for moral knowledge) is scientific knowledge, but if it assumes axioms extra to science (moral truth should be based on the well-being of conscious creatures), it cannot be. Limiting the discussion of moral truth to science, does not make moral truth real or scientific.

To use an analogy, If I assumed a priori that God existed and that the minds of conscious creatures were a reflection of the mind of God, I could then study the minds of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about them which would give me the knowledge of the mind of God. Yet how ‘scientific’ would my system of God-knowledge be?

Harris makes a similar axiomatic assumption (i.e. one that cannot be proved by logic and evidence), yet claims that this begins a science of morality. We should be a bit dubious of this type of ‘science’.

If we assume additional axioms and present our arguments as science, then they are, by definition not science. Something else has muddied the water.

The comparison to health is a red herring as there are not extra ‘competing axioms’ of health and any 'undecidability' of the healthiness of an action can be, in principal, solved by having better knowledge of the physical world. In contrast, there are many competing moral axioms that cannot be decided by reference to evidence. Indeed there is great doubt as to whether moral axioms are meaningful or whether moral statements can be truth bearing. Certainly the opposite cases cannot be proven. Also, there are plenty of 'hard cases' which can be easily quoted which demonstrate the difficulty of deciding between moral axioms. As far as I am aware, there are no 'hard cases' of health that cannot in principle be decided by science alone.
Also, there are particular single actions that are unhealthy for everyone, e.g. being vaporised in a nuclear blast, and therefore there is a clear objective basis for health.

Harris' 'objective basis for morality' argument is flawed. He imagines the 'worst possible misery for everyone' as providing an objective basis for moral knowledge. Yet there is a problem with this which does not pertain to the 'nuclear blast' example I used for health:

1. Even if we could understand what the 'worst possible misery for everyone' universe looked like (which we do not), there would be no action that would be universally 'worst miserable' for everyone (whereas the nuclear blast is universally unhealthy for everyone). The worst possible misery would be slightly different for everyone, depending on what they subjectively found worst miserable.

2. Therefore we can draw no legitimate moral knowledge from this supposed 'objective' basis for moral knowledge, even if we accepted Harris' axiom about well-being. What objective moral laws or truths can we draw from a situation that provides only the subjective knowledge that this or that scenario is worst miserable for this or that person? The example is self-defeating. It shouldn't be surprising that when we check out this supposed objective basis for moral knowledge we only find a mirror of the subjective disagreements concerning morality.

On page 39 of TLM Harris says:

It is safe to begin with the premise that it is good to avoid behaving in such a way as to produce the worst possible misery for everyone

This premise is meaningless and useless. For a start we do not know what the worst possible misery for everyone is, so we cannot know how to avoid behaving in such a way as to avoid it. It is a useless place to start, unless we wish to defer doing morality for who-knows how long. Also, even if we did know what the worst possible misery for everyone was and this was practically avoidable, this would be different for every individual, so in moving every individual away from their worst possible misery, we would be able to gain precisely no moral knowledge of the kind that Sam Harris would like, whereby we can scientifically tell the Taliban they are bad. We cannot move from moving everyone away from their own worst misery, to anywhere else. Harris' argument of 'worst possible misery' actually ends up being an argument for moral relativism.

There is also another massive problem for Harris which magnifies all his other problems. Harris says that the well-being of conscious creatures must be the basis for deciding values. Yet he does not seem to provide a working definition of what consciousness entails or a justification of his definition as a dividing line in terms of well being. If we assume that Harris has a broad definition in mind, simply ‘the capacity to feel well-being or otherwise’, we must include the well-being of all conscious creatures in the entire universe into our ‘worst possible misery for everyone’ formula. If it wasn’t bad enough already, perhaps if we start removing Harris' anthropocentric arguments and replace the words ‘human’ and everyone’ with ‘all conscious creatures in the universe’, we can see how distorted, truly subjective and meaningless his supposed objective basis for morality becomes. We have to start wondering what the worst possible misery for individual tadpoles looks like, if they have the capacity to feel pain and how much tadpole worst possible misery equals one human worst possible misery, (if we presume that all human worst possible misery is an equal amount of misery, which is almost certainly either meaningless, undecidable or wrong). As anyone should see, this is only going to lead to truths of the most subjective kind.

[Kevin_Lowe]

The incoherence is that you are equating logical propositions with claims. "X" (as a claim) is precisely equivalent to "X is true". That's what it means to claim something. If "X is true" is false, then X is false.

The claim "X" is not equivalent to "X is true" if "X" is a moral claim. In that case "X" is neither true nor false. When I say "the US public health care system is morally atrocious" I am expressing a value judgment which is neither true nor false, for example.


Okay, then your so-called moral claims are not moral at all. "If you value thriving and disvalue suffering, you should do X" is therefore not a moral claim at all but a simple factual one.

If I were to say "If you value X, you should think you should do Y" that could be a true factual statement.

If I were to say "X is morally valuable, which means you should do Y" that compound statement is neither true nor false, and is not factual.

(If I were to say "It's a psychological fact that I think X is morally valuable", that too would be a factual claim).


If you accept, as you do, that at least one axiom is needed to make a moral claim, the you are a moral nihilist. All moral claims are of the form "if my ought axiom is true, then X" so they are neither prescriptive nor descriptive.

You were the one who insisted on that formulation, which is indeed subtly wrong, but there were bigger errors to iron out so I didn't press the issue.

Moral claims are indeed strictly speaking of the form "I believe X is moral", not "If I believe X is moral then...".


No, what makes those theories non-prescriptive is that all their results are conditional on the truth of their root ought axiom.

How many times am I going to have to repeat that axioms are neither true nor false?


But then your argument is entirely circular. "Moral truths are outside of science because I won't add the axioms needed to find them because they aren't needed for science because moral truths are outside of science, but I'll add the axioms needed to find all kinds of other truths."

Not even close. To begin with, moral claims aren't truths or falsehoods. So that part of your thesis is just plain wrong.

Moreover, I'm gratified that you think I'm the ruler of the planet but it turns out that I'm actually not and that I don't get to personally define what science is. There is already a well-defined understanding of what science is, and it doesn't include any moral axioms.

If you want to start tacking new axioms on to science, then you have to start calling your new creation something else. I would suggest "religion", or "philosophy".

[JoelKatz]

The claim "X" is not equivalent to "X is true" if "X" is a moral claim. In that case "X" is neither true nor false. When I say "the US public health care system is morally atrocious" I am expressing a value judgment which is neither true nor false, for example.This is the same incoherent claim just in new dressing. If "the US public health care system is morally atrocious" is a value judgment, then it is precisely the same as saying "I have made the value judgment that the US public health care system is morally atrocious". (And, in fact, any rational person would interpret these two statements as saying precisely the same thing.) This is either true or false, you either have made that judgment or you haven't.

If I were to say "If you value X, you should think you should do Y" that could be a true factual statement.

If I were to say "X is morally valuable, which means you should do Y" that compound statement is neither true nor false, and is not factual.But then what *is* it? To the extent it means you consider X to be morally valuable, it's a true claim. What is the sense in which it is not factual? I genuinely do not know, and I strongly suspect that you don't know either. But if you do, please explain.

(If I were to say "It's a psychological fact that I think X is morally valuable", that too would be a factual claim).Precisely. So what is this sense in which you claim it's not a fact? I don't know.

Moral claims are indeed strictly speaking of the form "I believe X is moral", not "If I believe X is moral then...".Then they are factual claims. The person actually does believe that. If that is, strictly speaking, what they are, then strictly speaking, they are either true or false. Someone either has or does not have that belief.

How many times am I going to have to repeat that axioms are neither true nor false?You can say it as many times as you want and it will still be a serious misunderstanding of the role of axioms. Axioms can be true or false -- just not within the same context in which they are an axiom. Any conclusions based on an axiom are valid truths in another context where the axiom is true and not an axiom.

For example, an axiom of Euclidean geometry is "parallel lines, no matter how far extended, do not meet". This is not, in the abstract, true or false. That's what makes it an axiom. But on an uncurved surface, the axiom is true. In that context, it is no longer an axiom. The principles of Euclidean geometry are truths in contexts where their axioms are truths. In other contexts, they are simply consequences of their axioms and not truths (unless you treat them as conditional on their axioms).

Any conclusions based on an axiom are *never* to be considered true in any context in which the axiom cannot justifiably be considered true. Doing so is a misuse of axioms. That is why the conclusions of Euclidean geometry are *not* true except as conditioned on the truth of the axioms. The apparently conflicting conclusions of Euclidean geometry and of non-Euclidean geometry are all truths, and they do not conflict even though they appear to do so, because their truth is conditioned on the contextual truth of conflicting axioms.

If you need an axiom that cannot ever be true for procscriptive morality to function, then all conclusions therefrom are conditional truths. If you hold your position consistently, it will lead inexorably to moral nihilism.

[Democracy Simulator]

If you need an axiom that cannot ever be true for procscriptive morality to function, then all conclusions therefrom are conditional truths. If you hold your position consistently, it will lead inexorably to moral nihilism.

Isn't that the genuine 'scienitific version' of morality? if we make no assumptions outside of science then we are left with nihilism (or error theory, or non-cognitivism for example).

So, therefore, isn't Sam Harris' project ultimately unscientific? Or not as scienitific as nihilism?

[JoelKatz]

Isn't that the genuine 'scienitific version' of morality? if we make no assumptions outside of science then we are left with nihilism (or error theory, or non-cognitivism for example).That is the inexorable conclusion of the (IMO incorrect) argument that you need an axiom that is not true in order to reach any proscriptive conclusions. However, as I've argued, value judgments are in fact relational truths.

So, therefore, isn't Sam Harris' project ultimately unscientific? Or not as scienitific as nihilism?This argument is invalid because it is based on special pleading and circular reasoning. However, the most obvious way to show the problem is probably thus -- If proscriptive moral truths are outside of science, then all truths are outside of science. If science can't tell us that we *shouldn't* accept that something is true without evidence or that we *should* reject some claim if evidence falsifies it, how can it possibly work?

[fls]

The comparison to health is a red herring as there are not extra ‘competing axioms’ of health and any 'undecidability' of the healthiness of an action can be, in principal, solved by having better knowledge of the physical world. In contrast, there are many competing moral axioms that cannot be decided by reference to evidence. Indeed there is great doubt as to whether moral axioms are meaningful or whether moral statements can be truth bearing. Certainly the opposite cases cannot be proven. Also, there are plenty of 'hard cases' which can be easily quoted which demonstrate the difficulty of deciding between moral axioms. As far as I am aware, there are no 'hard cases' of health that cannot in principle be decided by science alone.

That you no longer are capable of even recognizing that 'health' is analogous is perhaps the best argument in favor of Harris' proposal. Once 'health' is wrested from the grip of teleology, it doesn't even occur to us to question the idea that one can make reference to the physical world in order to answer health questions.

Also, there are particular single actions that are unhealthy for everyone, e.g. being vaporised in a nuclear blast, and therefore there is a clear objective basis for health.

Yet we are unable to tell whether being vaporized in a nuclear blast would be perceived as good for everyone? I find that a bit hard to believe. :)

There is also another massive problem for Harris which magnifies all his other problems. Harris says that the well-being of conscious creatures must be the basis for deciding values. Yet he does not seem to provide a working definition of what consciousness entails or a justification of his definition as a dividing line in terms of well being. If we assume that Harris has a broad definition in mind, simply ‘the capacity to feel well-being or otherwise’, we must include the well-being of all conscious creatures in the entire universe into our ‘worst possible misery for everyone’ formula. If it wasn’t bad enough already, perhaps if we start removing Harris' anthropocentric arguments and replace the words ‘human’ and everyone’ with ‘all conscious creatures in the universe’, we can see how distorted, truly subjective and meaningless his supposed objective basis for morality becomes. We have to start wondering what the worst possible misery for individual tadpoles looks like, if they have the capacity to feel pain and how much tadpole worst possible misery equals one human worst possible misery, (if we presume that all human worst possible misery is an equal amount of misery, which is almost certainly either meaningless, undecidable or wrong). As anyone should see, this is only going to lead to truths of the most subjective kind.

I think this is your strongest argument against the idea that Harris is proposing utilitarianism - i.e. you have shown that his proposals fail to be meaningful or provide some of the necessary information if you try to force them into that particular slot.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

Imagine if it was the early days of science. We knew we had to do experiments. We knew we had to form hypotheses. We knew they had to be testable. But suppose we hadn't thought about repeatability yet. After all, why do something you've already done?

Then suppose someone says to us: "Hey, I just got bored and repeated an experiment and got a different result. It turned out someone made a mistake the first time, but then I started thinking, what if the results depended on factors we didn't recognize. Our scientific progress is slowing because of this and I suggest we add a new axiom."

Proposed axiom: "Efforts *should* be made to repeat scientific experiments to ensure they were done correctly and have no unknown dependencies. If repeated experiments produce results that conflict with the original results, any conclusions drawn from the original results *should* be rejected or at least re-examined"

Now, I would say that this seems subjectively reasonable. It would allow science to progress better and produce more useful conclusions. And rational scientists did accept essentially precisely this as a scientific axiom.

But what of this objection: "Wait. That's a moral axiom, saying what people *should* do. It's certainly not provable and probably not true, no matter how subjectively reasonable it seems. If we accept that, we're just not doing science any more."

The fact is, when a lack of axioms impedes science from drawing useful conclusions, axioms are added that are fundamentally proscriptive moral ones. So even if we agreed that science could not reach moral conclusions without a proscriptive moral axiom, that wouldn't say much. Science can't reach any conclusions without such axioms.

I would argue, in fact, that science has already accepted enough proscriptive moral axioms such that no more are needed. But so what if that's not so? If science can't reach useful conclusions because it's missing an axiom, then there is nothing unscientific about adding one.

[fls]

Imagine if it was the early days of science. We knew we had to do experiments. We knew we had to form hypotheses. We knew they had to be testable. But suppose we hadn't thought about repeatability yet. After all, why do something you've already done?

Then suppose someone says to us: "Hey, I just got bored and repeated an experiment and got a different result. It turned out someone made a mistake the first time, but then I started thinking, what if the results depended on factors we didn't recognize. Our scientific progress is slowing because of this and I suggest we add a new axiom."

Proposed axiom: "Efforts *should* be made to repeat scientific experiments to ensure they were done correctly and have no unknown dependencies. If repeated experiments produce results that conflict with the original results, any conclusions drawn from the original results *should* be rejected or at least re-examined"

Now, I would say that this seems subjectively reasonable. It would allow science to progress better and produce more useful conclusions. And rational scientists did accept essentially precisely this as a scientific axiom.

But what of this objection: "Wait. That's a moral axiom, saying what people *should* do. It's certainly not provable and probably not true, no matter how subjectively reasonable it seems. If we accept that, we're just not doing science any more."

The fact is, when a lack of axioms impedes science from drawing useful conclusions, axioms are added that are fundamentally proscriptive moral ones. So even if we agreed that science could not reach moral conclusions without a proscriptive moral axiom, that wouldn't say much. Science can't reach any conclusions without such axioms.

I would argue, in fact, that science has already accepted enough proscriptive moral axioms such that no more are needed. But so what if that's not so? If science can't reach useful conclusions because it's missing an axiom, then there is nothing unscientific about adding one.

Actually, I think that what your example illustrates is that the idea that we build knowledge using axioms is foolish. Obviously what you describe above is not how the idea of repeatability entered science. It was simply the natural consequence of wanting red cloth or crops to grow (one-off events are not useful in that regard). Similarly, the idea that we build morals from axioms by pretending that we use prescriptive statements obviously does not describe the idea that there are better and worse ways to live. This was simply the natural consequence of finding pleasure and pain in our daily lives.

You will notice that it is far easier to do science than it is to describe what science is. Which suggests that the practise is unrelated to philosophers' failed attempts to constraint it a priori.

Linda

[Egg]

A dead creature has no emotions. In the case of bacteria and gnats, it has no mourning living relatives either. In case of humans, the trauma of surviving relatives and friends is significant and long-lasting. In case of antelopes... idunno, haven´t researched their psychology in the aftermath of losing a friend.
I think you might just have morally justified genocide there (just make sure you kill all the mourners and mourners of the mourners).

Imagine if it was the early days of science. We knew we had to do experiments. We knew we had to form hypotheses. We knew they had to be testable. But suppose we hadn't thought about repeatability yet. After all, why do something you've already done?

Then suppose someone says to us: "Hey, I just got bored and repeated an experiment and got a different result. It turned out someone made a mistake the first time, but then I started thinking, what if the results depended on factors we didn't recognize. Our scientific progress is slowing because of this and I suggest we add a new axiom."

Proposed axiom: "Efforts *should* be made to repeat scientific experiments to ensure they were done correctly and have no unknown dependencies. If repeated experiments produce results that conflict with the original results, any conclusions drawn from the original results *should* be rejected or at least re-examined"

Now, I would say that this seems subjectively reasonable. It would allow science to progress better and produce more useful conclusions. And rational scientists did accept essentially precisely this as a scientific axiom.

But what of this objection: "Wait. That's a moral axiom, saying what people *should* do. It's certainly not provable and probably not true, no matter how subjectively reasonable it seems. If we accept that, we're just not doing science any more."

The fact is, when a lack of axioms impedes science from drawing useful conclusions, axioms are added that are fundamentally proscriptive moral ones. So even if we agreed that science could not reach moral conclusions without a proscriptive moral axiom, that wouldn't say much. Science can't reach any conclusions without such axioms.

I would argue, in fact, that science has already accepted enough proscriptive moral axioms such that no more are needed. But so what if that's not so? If science can't reach useful conclusions because it's missing an axiom, then there is nothing unscientific about adding one.
I'm not seeing how that would be a new axiom. If the original axiom for using science was to be as accurate as possible, the conclusion to repeat experiments would still follow from that same axiom.

[JoelKatz]

I'm not seeing how that would be a new axiom. If the original axiom for using science was to be as accurate as possible, the conclusion to repeat experiments would still follow from that same axiom.Probably so. That doesn't make my point any less valid, but it does show that I don't write very good stories.

I guess you'd have to change my story so they hadn't yet accepted predictive validity as a primary scientific goal and only had isolated concretes like "do experiments". But then a fair argument could be made that what they were doing wasn't really science.

Okay, it's not as good an analogy/story as I thought. Thanks for bumming me out.

But the point is, science has to have at least some root moral axiom like "one should value scientific truths based on their predictive validity". Otherwise, science could never tell us how to do science, which would leave it nothing to do at all.

[Sophronius]

I don't have the energy left for any prolonged discussions on this, but I'll chip in to comment on this:


Proposed axiom: "Efforts *should* be made to repeat scientific experiments to ensure they were done correctly and have no unknown dependencies. If repeated experiments produce results that conflict with the original results, any conclusions drawn from the original results *should* be rejected or at least re-examined"

Now, I would say that this seems subjectively reasonable. It would allow science to progress better and produce more useful conclusions. And rational scientists did accept essentially precisely this as a scientific axiom.

But what of this objection: "Wait. That's a moral axiom, saying what people *should* do. It's certainly not provable and probably not true, no matter how subjectively reasonable it seems. If we accept that, we're just not doing science any more."

This is the same mistake that Harris made. "we should test things to find out more of reality" or "repeatability increases the accuracy of our findings" are NOT moral oughts. They are purely practical measures. Likewise, assuming that there is such a thing as causality (necessary for science) although it cannot be proven is not the same as saying "well, let's say that our ultimate objective is to increase wellfare for everyone". One is a reasonable assumption garnered from what we have seen of the world so far, the other is a moral proposition.

It really irks me that Harris doesn't seem to grasp the difference between the two.

[JoelKatz]

This is the same mistake that Harris made. "we should test things to find out more of reality" or "repeatability increases the accuracy of our findings" are NOT moral oughts. They are purely practical measures.I don't see what you think the difference is between these two things. Anything that tells us what we should do is a moral ought. Many oughts achieve practical goals.

Likewise, assuming that there is such a thing as causality (necessary for science) although it cannot be proven is not the same as saying "well, let's say that our ultimate objective is to increase wellfare for everyone". One is a reasonable assumption garnered from what we have seen of the world so far, the other is a moral proposition.I 100% agree. Adding arbitrary, unjustified axioms is not doing science. However, the point is that science can contain axioms under the right conditions. So proving that something requires an axiom does not prove it's outside the realm of science.

It really irks me that Harris doesn't seem to grasp the difference between the two.I think you have the problem a bit wrong. The issue is that Harris thinks he can pick an axiom because it seems true to him and that he can add it to science. The level of justification that would be required to permit adding a root moral axiom and be able to justify calling the result 'science' is comparable to what's needed to accept causality or predictive validity. That is, a hell of a lot more than we presently have for any proposed moral axiom.

That's one of the reasons I say we can't really make morality scientific yet. If we need an additional axiom, we don't know what it should be yet. If we don't need an additional axiom, we don't know how to proceed without one yet.

[Egg]

... Adding arbitrary, unjustified axioms is not doing science. However, the point is that science can contain axioms under the right conditions. So proving that something requires an axiom does not prove it's outside the realm of science. ...
It seems to me that the issue of morality is all about that particular axiom. Once the axiom is established, science can be applied to morality. The problem is though that this axiom is at the heart of morality. That's the part that runs into the is/ought problem and that's the part that science cannot be applied to.

[Beth]

It seems to me that the issue of morality is all about that particular axiom. Once the axiom is established, science can be applied to morality. The problem is though that this axiom is at the heart of morality. That's the part that runs into the is/ought problem and that's the part that science cannot be applied to.

Yes, I think you have succinctly stated the problem in regards to those who disagree that Harris has solved the is/ought problem. No one has argued against the idea that given an axiom to start the morality ball rolling, science can then be used to help us achieve the various goals that follow from that axiom.

[JoelKatz]

It seems to me that the issue of morality is all about that particular axiom. Once the axiom is established, science can be applied to morality. The problem is though that this axiom is at the heart of morality. That's the part that runs into the is/ought problem and that's the part that science cannot be applied to.I agree that this is a rational response to this part of my argument. However, my response would be to point to the other parts of my argument where I argued that proscriptive moral claims could actually be objectively valid relational facts -- we just don't know exactly how yet. Once we understand how people actually do form proscriptive moral claims, we should be able to figure out how the input produces the output and objectively validate that process as being error free or reject it as fraught with error.

Moral claims may appear to be value judgments. But once we understand at least what a value judgment purports to measure, we can equate them to relational facts. For example, since we understand reasonably well what "I *like* ice cream" is purporting to measure (how much pleasure one gets from eating ice cream) it's not hard to make it an objective relational fact "ice cream and I are so constructed that when I consume ice cream, I experience pleasure."

We can understand, thanks to knowing what "liking" really is, that the latter objective claim is a reasonable equivalent to the former subjective claim and use the latter in substitution for the former. Once we know what "ought" really is, we should be able to find reasonable objective equivalents to subjective, proscriptive moral claims. We don't yet know what such claims will look like, and only future science can tell us. So that's a significant way science will eventually affect our understanding of moral claims.

You don't need much science to understand descriptive moral claims. They are akin to "it looks green to me". But to understand what "it doesn't just look green to me, it *is* green" really means, you need to understand the science of color vision and optics because that's where "really being green" lives. Similarly, we will need to understand the science of making moral judgments to learn what "really *is* wrong" actually means.

[JJM 777]

I feel that what some here advocate as "scientific morals", namely a set of moral attitudes that we discover to be very popular among humans, would actually be simply a statistical analysis of conteporary human psychology. It would tell something about humans and their moral thinking, not about the validity or orthodoxy or reasonability or obligatority or goodness or cruelty or selfishness or indifference of this moral thinking.

[fls]

I feel that what some here advocate as "scientific morals", namely a set of moral attitudes that we discover to be very popular among humans, would actually be simply a statistical analysis of conteporary human psychology. It would tell something about humans and their moral thinking, not about the validity or orthodoxy or reasonability or obligatority or goodness or cruelty or selfishness or indifference of this moral thinking.

Exactly. Although I must have misunderstood you, because I thought this is what you were proposing with your scale of good and bad acts (which would only make sense in the setting of some sort of psychological consensus on good and bad acts).

We see/saw this in the field of health. We use the way we feel to tell us whether we are well. And for thousands of years, it was our intuitions which told us the state of our health. We even built up a field of folk medicine, whereby the presence or absence of mental states was used to indicate the presence or absence of some sort of process interfering with our health. And the idea that our intuitions are tapping into some sort of objective truth is so pervasive, that it persists today, even in the face of our knowledge that they are often very wrong. Modern medicine and the substantial progress made in health came about because we began to discard the idea that statistical popularity or a cataloging of human intuitions was revealing truths about the human body. We made the most progress when we found ways to discard these intuitions (double blinding).

We are still trying to practice a folk morality, as philosophy still seems to be hung up on the idea that prescriptions produced by moral intuitions form the basis for thinking about good and bad actions.

Linda

[Egg]

I agree that this is a rational response to this part of my argument. However, my response would be to point to the other parts of my argument where I argued that proscriptive moral claims could actually be objectively valid relational facts -- we just don't know exactly how yet. Once we understand how people actually do form proscriptive moral claims, we should be able to figure out how the input produces the output and objectively validate that process as being error free or reject it as fraught with error.

Moral claims may appear to be value judgments. But once we understand at least what a value judgment purports to measure, we can equate them to relational facts. For example, since we understand reasonably well what "I *like* ice cream" is purporting to measure (how much pleasure one gets from eating ice cream) it's not hard to make it an objective relational fact "ice cream and I are so constructed that when I consume ice cream, I experience pleasure."

We can understand, thanks to knowing what "liking" really is, that the latter objective claim is a reasonable equivalent to the former subjective claim and use the latter in substitution for the former. Once we know what "ought" really is, we should be able to find reasonable objective equivalents to subjective, proscriptive moral claims. We don't yet know what such claims will look like, and only future science can tell us. So that's a significant way science will eventually affect our understanding of moral claims.

You don't need much science to understand descriptive moral claims. They are akin to "it looks green to me". But to understand what "it doesn't just look green to me, it *is* green" really means, you need to understand the science of color vision and optics because that's where "really being green" lives. Similarly, we will need to understand the science of making moral judgments to learn what "really *is* wrong" actually means.
"I like ice-cream" is the kind of statement which is either a fact or not, however "ice-cream tastes great!" is a personal value judgement. The same would go for "I believe dying for your country is honourable" vs "dying for your country is honourable". While in future we may get better at discovering if a particular value judgement comes from a poorly functioning brain, I don't see how we could ever use science to discern why one value judgement might be "better" than another.

[JJM 777]

I thought this is what you were proposing with your scale of good and bad acts (which would only make sense in the setting of some sort of psychological consensus on good and bad acts).
My scale is more objective than that, surveying anyone´s opinion about anything is not a part of it.

It is a logical scale from the most selfish possible to the most unselfish possible, ranging from illegal destruction ...to... egocentric free competition ...to... pursuit of full equality ...to... self-sacrifice on behalf of others ...to... being the victim of illegal destruction.

[fls]

My scale is more objective than that, surveying anyone´s opinion about anything is not a part of it.

It is a logical scale from the most selfish possible to the most unselfish possible, ranging from illegal destruction ...to... egocentric free competition ...to... pursuit of full equality ...to... self-sacrifice on behalf of others ...to... being the victim of illegal destruction.

It's not objective. You have simply chosen some characteristics on which you think there is psychological consensus as to 'good' and 'bad', such as equality, selfishness, selflessness, and property rights, and put them onto an arbitrary scale, without any rationalization for the choice of characteristics or with respect to intervals (maybe you have a rational basis for the intervals, but you didn't offer one at the time).

The actual measurement of those characteristics may be objective, but your choice of characteristics and the form the scale takes is the part which would vary depending upon consensus (and represents an example of the "is/ought problem").

Linda

[Ivor the Engineer]

<snip>

We see/saw this in the field of health. We use the way we feel to tell us whether we are well. And for thousands of years, it was our intuitions which told us the state of our health. We even built up a field of folk medicine, whereby the presence or absence of mental states was used to indicate the presence or absence of some sort of process interfering with our health. And the idea that our intuitions are tapping into some sort of objective truth is so pervasive, that it persists today, even in the face of our knowledge that they are often very wrong. Modern medicine and the substantial progress made in health came about because we began to discard the idea that statistical popularity or a cataloging of human intuitions was revealing truths about the human body. We made the most progress when we found ways to discard these intuitions (double blinding).

<snip>

That's because the human body is a meat machine with a fairly standard set of operating limits for the harmonious functioning of its sub-systems.

Underlying all of medical practice are value judgements about cost, quality and quantity which are in the realm of moral philosophy, not science.

[JJM 777]

It's not objective.
As objective as the Celsius system for measuring temperature, for example.

You have simply chosen some characteristics on which you think there is psychological consensus as to 'good' and 'bad'
I have chosen objectively observable characteristics, but not alleged any political or other consensus about them being considered good or bad.

an arbitrary scale
The scale is not more arbitrary than the Celsius system for measuring temperature, for example.

without any rationalization for the choice of characteristics
A lot more than "without any" is available here:
http://www.johnjoemittler.com/ethics/English/ch_04.html

with respect to intervals
It is arguable, whether the distance between "illegal destruction" and "legal selfishness" should be equal to the distance between "legal selfishness" and "pursuit of full equality. That problem goes away by using +b (instead of +2) for illegal destruction, and +a (instead of +1) for legal selfishness, where b > a > 0. Other than that, there are no "arbitrarities", or then you are using criteria that makes a lot of science "arbitrary".

"an example of the "is/ought problem"
The system does not include any "is/ought", and therefore has no such problem either. While the system might indeed be used as an information source for making such decisions.

[Sophronius]

I don't see what you think the difference is between these two things. Anything that tells us what we should do is a moral ought. Many oughts achieve practical goals.

You also thought that "the sky is blue" is a value judgement. You simply don't seem to understand what morality is.

I'll give it another shot though:

-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.
-A practical "ought" is simply a factual claim about the most effective way to achieve a certain thing. For example, "X has the highest chance of achieving Y." Such a claim is either true or false. Someone who says that murder should be discouraged in society if one wants to achieve a higher level of welfare (however this is measured) is making a practical claim.


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.

[fls]

As objective as the Celsius system for measuring temperature, for example.

I agreed that the measurement itself could be considered objective. The part which isn't is the choice of what to measure. For example, choosing to determine size by measuring temperature doesn't quite get you the answer you are looking for.

I have chosen objectively observable characteristics, but not alleged any political or other consensus about them being considered good or bad.

Of course you have alleged consensus. You have ranked disparate ideas in terms of 'something'. If consensus varies on that 'something', then the rankings would change.

The scale is not more arbitrary than the Celsius system for measuring temperature, for example.

Well, the intervals on a Celsius scale are meaningful, for one thing. But more importantly, if you want to know the size of something, the Celsius scale will give you objective numbers, but they don't mean what you think they mean.

A lot more than "without any" is available here:
http://www.johnjoemittler.com/ethics/English/ch_04.html

I read the link. He also does not provide any justification, other than to simply declare what the intervals represent. It's not a matter of whether a scale can be declared, but rather whether that scale forms a valid and reliable measure of whatever it is that is of interest to us.

It is arguable, whether the distance between "illegal destruction" and "legal selfishness" should be equal to the distance between "legal selfishness" and "pursuit of full equality. That problem goes away by using +b (instead of +2) for illegal destruction, and +a (instead of +1) for legal selfishness, where b > a > 0.

Yes, the use of rank does do away with the potential for invalid assumptions. But then it also obviates most of what you claimed for your system, such as:

"Add 1000 people and 10,000 situations and actions, with this mathematical model you can still keep track of the statistical trends of moral behaviour, total moral balance, statistical highs and lows, etc."

Other than that, there are no "arbitrarities", or then you are using criteria that makes a lot of science "arbitrary".

That is why we tend to ask for careful study of the reliability and validity of a measure, rather than declarations (there is a huge body of science behind the idea of measuring constructs).

The system does not include any "is/ought", and therefore has no such problem either. While the system might indeed be used as an information source for making such decisions.

At some point, you have to justify why we ought to measure selfishness if we are interested in whether an action is good or bad.

Linda

[fls]

That's because the human body is a meat machine with a fairly standard set of operating limits for the harmonious functioning of its sub-systems.

Sure, that's easy to say now....

Linda

[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.htmlHonestly, 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?

[fls]

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

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

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

Mr. Atran (surely Dr.?), does not come out well in that exchange, although after all we've been through here, it is heart-warming to see that even powerful intellectuals can talk past one another. :)

I don't think anyone claims that understanding the human condition is simple, only that perhaps we'd be better off approaching it with reason.

Linda

[fls]

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?

???

I find it hard to believe that anyone here confuses me as an apologist for theism. Or that anyone could consider it of importance to clarify the matter.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

"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?And you'll notice that for some reason, this is an exception that Americans typically agree on. So far from being arbitrary, this is more evidence that it's not arbitrary -- we just don't know what it is based on.

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.Well then you've diluted arbitrary to the point of it being meaningless. By this standard, what isn't arbitrary? If I am repeating you, what you say is arbitrary, but what I'm saying is not -- it's determined by you.

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.Then it's not arbitrary, it's partially determined by what we really, in fact, are. Your just slandering these objective facts by calling them "biases" so you can pretend they're arbitrary.

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).I agree. That really just shows that we don't fully understand the question.

What is the total distance around the coastline of the UK?Exactly. No good answer because the question is too vague. What answer you get depends on how you measure and the right way to measure depends on what you want to know.

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?I'd say about 80% of the human population accepts a morality based on gibberish.

[AlBell]

???

I find it hard to believe that anyone here confuses me as an apologist for theism. Or that anyone could consider it of importance to clarify the matter.

Linda
Being an apologist for, and noting current moral systems often use theism as the stated basis for need to adhere to same are not the same thing.

You, Harris, Paul, etal feel they ought not, pretending Science will get us from "is" to (some other) "oughts", without using any apriori "ought" .

[Paulhoff]

Again, and this is simple, Sam Harris said that science wasn't the only way but just one more.

Simple, but like most humans many what to read themselves into what others say.

Paul

:) :) :)

Now I know some here will run amok with that simple idea.

[qayak]

???

I find it hard to believe that anyone here confuses me as an apologist for theism. Or that anyone could consider it of importance to clarify the matter.

Linda

AlBell is a theist who believes morality only comes from religion.

You can add me to your list of people who don't believe that.

[fls]

Being an apologist for, and noting current moral systems often use theism as the stated basis for need to adhere to same are not the same thing.

You, Harris, Paul, etal feel they ought not, pretending Science will get us from "is" to (some other) "oughts", without using any apriori "ought" .

I'm sorry. I can't understand what you are trying to say - I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote.

Linda

[qayak]

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

The epistemology of science is simply not amenable to dealing with the human condition (as Chomsky implicated).

That's funny because there is so much evidence to support just the opposite.

It is simply a well worn, and non-confrontational cliche to say science is not able to deal with this issue. It makes religious people feel self important, even superior to people of reason. Unfortunately for them, it appears scientists are going to turn their attention to the problem. That never bodes well for religion! :o)

Harris isn't the only one to disagree with it.

[AlBell]

I'm sorry. I can't understand what you are trying to say - I'm having trouble parsing what you wrote.

Linda
Ditto.

Al

[Beth]

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

Thanks. I've watched the Beyond Belief videos on the internet. It was nice to see this further expounding on the themes.

Mr. Atran (surely Dr.?), does not come out well in that exchange.
I have to disagree. Dr. Atran (I'm presuming he holds a Ph.D.) was the only person on that page to back up what he was saying with actual data. He studies religion and how religious beliefs contribute to the actions of people scientifically. As he is an expert in that area, I do tend to give his opinion more weight on the matter than the opinion of other scientists who specialized in fields like biology and neurology. In particular, I thought he came off as having better evidence to support his points than Harris.

Dennett is also an expert in that area, but he didn't dispute the points that Atran was arguing. He contended that Atran misinterpreted Harris. Myself, I don't know. What I get from listing to Harris, Dawkins, etc. is not what Dennett felt they were saying and is in line with Atran's interpretation.


although after all we've been through here, it is heart-warming to see that even powerful intellectuals can talk past one another. :)
Here we agree. Although I think that such things happen in pretty much every type of human endeavor requiring more than two people.
I don't think anyone claims that understanding the human condition is simple, only that perhaps we'd be better off approaching it with reason.

Linda

I see Dr. Atran as doing that very thing and basing his conclusions on the information he has acquired through his studies. Why did you feel that he didn't come off well in the exchange?

[Sophronius]

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

I have difficulty wrapping my head around this. Murder is bad expresses feelings a person has towards a certain act. Hydrogen is flammable describes what will happen if you perform a certain act. One is normative, the other is descriptive. Do you seriously believe that we should not distinguish between normative and descriptive statements? That there is, in fact, no difference?

This seems to say that there is no such thing as opinion.

The core difference is that "hydrogen is flammable" solely describes reality, while "murder is bad" describes feelings one has ABOUT a reality (murder). Surely you must be able to see the value in distinguishing between the two? Because even though those feelings are part of reality, they are different from person to person?

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.

Are you serious? Are you really saying that "hydrogen is flammable" is a subjective statement because it has to be witnessed by a human? So "the sun is going to come up tomorrow" is subject to human opinion?

It's not. Reality is not influenced by human opinion. That is what reality MEANS. "Reality is that what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it"

Are you really serious, or are you just messing with me? Because I don't get how you can say that hydrogen being flammable is subject to human opinion. If that were true, then all of reality would have to exist solely in our minds. And if you made that assumption, then you'd essentially have to throw out all of science.

I never claimed science would show that morality isn't subject to opinion.

And yet, you insist that morality is objective, that murder being bad isn't subject to opinion, and whenever you are pressed for evidence you say that science will deliver it later. But you know what, it doesn't matter. There is no evidence for any of this, either way.


Then please, explain to me what "good in an of itself" is.

It's how humans feel about morality. They feel that some acts "simply are" wrong. You yourself argue along the same lines, when you claim that morality isn't subject to opinion. (and yet, hydrogen being flammable is?)

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.

No, no, no. You don't get it. A person who says murder is bad is not making a statement of fact about murder itself. The only fact he describes is that he feels about murder in a certain way. Likewise, the person who says he likes icecream is not making a factual statement about icecream but rather his personal preference for it. If another person says that they hate ice cream they are not WRONG, they simply have a different preference. That makes it different from objective fact: it varies from person to person.

Yes, the underlying reality is the same. The ice cream is the same. The murder is the same. I get it. No need to point it out. But the value judgement says MORE than that. It adds a subjective interpretation of the underlying reality. This extra layer is what morality is all about, and what prevents it from being objective. If people just said "murder causes people to die", that would be objective fact; it's true regardless what anyone thinks of it. Similarly, if someone said that "I don't like murder", that would be a factual statement. Either it's true or it's not. But if someone says "murder is bad", well, then he is making a statement of preference not just for himself, but in general. And that simply cannot hold for everyone. This is what makes it subjective: it is true for some, false for others. You cannot simply say that "murder is bad" is true or false because then you ignore the preferences of those who disagree. And there is simply no reason to believe that anyone's preferences can be wrong in the factual sense.

Is there anything in there that you disagree with? Please take the time to understand and reply carefully, because this is the best that I can explain myself, and if this doesn't help then I suspect nothing will.

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 ...

I don't get why you're doing this. I really don't. You KNOW I've never claimed this. And believe it or not, I have spent a great deal of effort in trying to understand your position. I don't understand why you cannot extend the same courtesy, and insist on this insulting straw man.

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.

I have tried arguing your argument many times. You simply keep going back to the same points that I already replied to 10 times already. It's not going to work.

When you have tried the same argument so many times already, it's time to try a different one. If your position is correct and morality is really objective, then there is no reason why you should be dependent on the colour analogy. In fact there should be no need for any analogy at all. Simply argue for objective morality on its own merits.

[JoelKatz]

I have difficulty wrapping my head around this. Murder is bad expresses feelings a person has towards a certain act. Hydrogen is flammable describes what will happen if you perform a certain act. One is normative, the other is descriptive. Do you seriously believe that we should not distinguish between normative and descriptive statements? That there is, in fact, no difference?That's precisely what I'm saying. Hydrogen is flammable also expresses feeling I have about hydrogen. Murder is bad also describes things that will happen if you perform certain acts. One is written in an normative way and the other is written in a descriptive way, but as I argued, you can push in from both sides to fuzzy boundary.

I do think we have no choice but to distinguish between normative and descriptive statements. But that's because we don't understand the difference yet. It's the same way we once didn't understand the difference between "blue light" and "light that looks blue to a person".

This seems to say that there is no such thing as opinion.Not quite. What I'm saying is that opinions are relationship facts. We simply state them in the 'primitive' way because that's the must useful.

For example, consider "it's raining out". What could be a more descriptive, factual statement? But if someone says "it's raining out", how is that any different from "I have collected facts and evidence that, in my opinion, justify concluding that it's in fact raining out"? See how fact statements and opinion statements can each be pushed in towards the other from either side? You just have to figure out the facts and processes that lead to the opinion, and then you can turn the opinion statement into a fact statement. However, if you don't know the process yet, you can't do this. That's why we once couldn't turn "the sky looks blue to me" into "the sky is emitted specific frequencies of light that have certain specific effects".

The core difference is that "hydrogen is flammable" solely describes reality, while "murder is bad" describes feelings one has ABOUT a reality (murder). Surely you must be able to see the value in distinguishing between the two? Because even though those feelings are part of reality, they are different from person to person?Sure, but height is different from person to person. Relationship facts can differ from person to person, that doesn't make them less facts.

Go back to "it's raining out". If you understand that to really be saying "I have evidence that justifies my believing that it's raining out" (which is what anyone who says "it's raining out" means), it now becomes different from person to person. You may have no reason to believe it's raining out.

Are you serious? Are you really saying that "hydrogen is flammable" is a subjective statement because it has to be witnessed by a human? So "the sun is going to come up tomorrow" is subject to human opinion?Yes, as much as "murder is bad" is. That's precisely what I'm saying. That the fact/value distinction is not fundamental. Fact statements and value statements can be freely interconverted with an understanding of what facts and processes underlie the value.

It's not. Reality is not influenced by human opinion. That is what reality MEANS. "Reality is that what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it".Nope. Our opinions are just as much part of reality as rocks and rivers are. Statements about our beliefs are just as capable of being objectively true or false as statements about rocks and rivers. Our brains are not magic. A part of reality does go away when I stop believing in it, that part of reality that was that belief.

Are you really serious, or are you just messing with me? Because I don't get how you can say that hydrogen being flammable is subject to human opinion. If that were true, then all of reality would have to exist solely in our minds. And if you made that assumption, then you'd essentially have to throw out all of science.You choose to see one side of the equivalence I'm arguing. I'm saying that there are only facts. Opinions are a species of fact. This also means that humans can only get to facts through their opinions regarding their truth, but those opinions are themselves facts.

No, no, no. You don't get it. A person who says murder is bad is not making a statement of fact about murder itself. The only fact he describes is that he feels about murder in a certain way.That is only because you choose to view it that way. You could equally well choose to view it as "murder itself has precisely the properties needed for me to consider it bad". Now it's about murder itself. There is no difference between "I am so constructed as to think that murder is bad" and "murder is constructed such that I will think it's bad". These are, again, relationship facts, just like "hydrogen is flammable" which states that hydrogen is such that it will interact with oxygen (which exists and is precisely what it is) in a particular way.

Likewise, the person who says he likes icecream is not making a factual statement about icecream but rather his personal preference for it. If another person says that they hate ice cream they are not WRONG, they simply have a different preference. That makes it different from objective fact: it varies from person to person.But it doesn't differ from person to person. I, JoelKatz, like ice cream does not conflict with you, Sophronius, do not like ice cream. This is no different from "I am six feet tell". These are relationship facts. It can be a fact that your relationship to ice cream is different from mine, just like I can be in a room and you can be outside it.

[Democracy Simulator]

That you no longer are capable of even recognizing that 'health' is analogous is perhaps the best argument in favor of Harris' proposal. Once 'health' is wrested from the grip of teleology, it doesn't even occur to us to question the idea that one can make reference to the physical world in order to answer health questions.
Linda

fls, consider the following analogy which I posted earlier:

If I assumed a priori that God existed and that the minds of conscious creatures were a reflection of the mind of God, I could then study the minds of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about them which would give me the knowledge of the mind of God.

How is this different from?:

If I assume a priori that moral truth exists and that the well-being of conscious creatures was the key to understanding moral truth, then I could study the well-being of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about this well-being which would give me moral knowledge.

How useful are these analogies in being able to justify 'a science' of anything?

Yet we are unable to tell whether being vaporized in a nuclear blast would be perceived as good for everyone? I find that a bit hard to believe. :)


Do you think that for a suicidal person, being vaporised instantly would be a 'bad' thing? Of course, it would be unhealthy for them:)
Also, I'm not sure what 'perception of good' has to do with objective good?

I think this is your strongest argument against the idea that Harris is proposing utilitarianism - i.e. you have shown that his proposals fail to be meaningful or provide some of the necessary information if you try to force them into that particular slot.


One of my arguments is that Harris is proposing a kind of moral realism, yet his argument actually backfires in that it ends up supporting moral relativism via 'the worst possible misery', rather than providing an objective basis for moral knowledge. What do you think of this argument? What moral knowledge can we gain from 'the worst possible misery universe'?

Also, I'm confused by your comments. Harris doesn't think that the well-being of conscious creatures should be the basis for deciding what is good or bad? That's the assumption I was making. If he does, has he defined what he means by conscious? If he is including all creatures which have a capacity or otherwise for well-being (which would seem sensible), then don't the problems I outlined arise?

[fls]

fls, consider the following analogy which I posted earlier:

If I assumed a priori that God existed and that the minds of conscious creatures were a reflection of the mind of God, I could then study the minds of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about them which would give me the knowledge of the mind of God.

How is this different from?:

If I assume a priori that moral truth exists and that the well-being of conscious creatures was the key to understanding moral truth, then I could study the well-being of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about this well-being which would give me moral knowledge.

How useful are these analogies in being able to justify 'a science' of anything?

I don't think they are different. Which is why I have spoken against the axiom-based approach taken by philosophers, and why I have said that a science-based approach should not take this form.

Do you think that for a suicidal person, being vaporised instantly would be a 'bad' thing?

So are you saying that the existence of suicidal persons negates the idea that some actions can be considered unhealthy, just like the presence of suicidal persons negates the idea that the vaporization of humans can be considered undesirable?

Of course, it would be unhealthy for them:)

How can that be?

Also, I'm not sure what 'perception of good' has to do with objective good?


About the same as 'perception of health' has to do with the absence of disease and impairment. There is some correspondence between the two, but obviously perceptions can differ. The subject who thinks they are healthier because the salicylates they took for their abdominal pain has temporarily relieved the pain from the gastric ulcer caused by the salicylates, or the subject who has achieved balance in their humours by the letting of blood, or the parents who think that sex is unhealthy for their children and deliberately withhold vaccines against diseases which are transmitted sexually, would be examples where science differs from our intuitions/perceptions.

One of my arguments is that Harris is proposing a kind of moral realism, yet his argument actually backfires in that it ends up supporting moral relativism via 'the worst possible misery', rather than providing an objective basis for moral knowledge. What do you think of this argument? What moral knowledge can we gain from 'the worst possible misery universe'?

What JoelKatz was referring to - as a thought experiment, areas of consensus allow us to recognize those properties relevant to what our intuitions imperfectly discover. I suspect there is more consensus on misery than well-being. :)

Also, I'm confused by your comments. Harris doesn't think that the well-being of conscious creatures should be the basis for deciding what is good or bad? That's the assumption I was making. If he does, has he defined what he means by conscious? If he is including all creatures which have a capacity or otherwise for well-being (which would seem sensible), then don't the problems I outlined arise?

I don't think that Harris is proposing that the well being of conscious creatures forms an axiom from which we derive morality.

Linda

[Ivor the Engineer]

<snip>

I don't think that Harris is proposing that the well being of conscious creatures forms an axiom from which we derive morality.

Linda

:confused:

So what axiom is he proposing?

[Sophronius]

That's precisely what I'm saying. Hydrogen is flammable also expresses feeling I have about hydrogen. Murder is bad also describes things that will happen if you perform certain acts. One is written in an normative way and the other is written in a descriptive way, but as I argued, you can push in from both sides to fuzzy boundary.

This makes no sense. "Hydrogen is flammable" is not a statement meant to convey feeling. No person alive, other than apparently yourself, would take it that way. Likewise, "murder is bad" is generally not meant to describe the factual reality of murder. You can ask anyone who says that murder is bad what they mean by it and you will generally find that they are conveying opinion, not describing facts.

I can see the mistake you are making now, however. You say "But that they have that opinion is a fact! So it's the same kind of statement." But that is missing the point. The reason that "murder is bad" is not a factual statement is because there is no "I think that" attached to it, and because "Bad" is not expressed in practical terms. This is an important distinction that you are ignoring in order to make your point. But the simple fact of the matter is that phrasing the statement to remove the element of opinion makes it a different statement. So no, "murder is bad" and "Hydrogen is flammable" are not the same kind of statement. Rather they differ in the same sense that "Murder is bad" differs from "Murder causes people to die".

I see no sensible reason to try to equivocate the two by means of saying "But really, murder is bad IMPLIES a reality about murder which is objectively true, so that makes the entire statement objective truth." No. That is simply bending logic in an attempt to make a point. The distinction is there.


Not quite. What I'm saying is that opinions are relationship facts. We simply state them in the 'primitive' way because that's the must useful.

You seem to be saying that people are currently expressing themselves in a subjective way because they do not understand the underlying reality enough to make purely factual statements that express the same thing.

If that's what you're saying, you give people too much credit by far. A person why says "god is good" is not expressing an underlying reality in a primitive way. He is not expressing anything meaningful. His statement is rooted in ignorance and as far from objectively true as it is possible to be. A person who says "murder is bad" generally means to express the same sentiment. It is not based on reason. It is only marginally more meaningful than the previous statement. It is still subjective.


For example, consider "it's raining out". What could be a more descriptive, factual statement? But if someone says "it's raining out", how is that any different from "I have collected facts and evidence that, in my opinion, justify concluding that it's in fact raining out"? See how fact statements and opinion statements can each be pushed in towards the other from either side? You just have to figure out the facts and processes that lead to the opinion, and then you can turn the opinion statement into a fact statement.

I see your point, but disagree with the conclusion. "It is raining out" is an honest attempt to present facts about reality. "Murder is bad" is generally NOT meant to do that. No, it's not even an honest attempt to express feelings, which are indeed part of reality, because in that case "I think that" would have been added to it. "Murder is bad" is often an attempt to present someone's feelings AS objective facts about murder itself. It is misleading in this way.

It is true that you can turn the statement INTO a fact statement by changing the wording. But then it means something else from what it was intended to mean. You are making a mistake by assuming that all opinions are honest efforts to present facts about reality. And even if they were all intended to do just that, those that fail horribly could still not reasonably be called factual statements. There is such a thing as a meaningless statement, you know.

There are several ways to discuss murder. One is to honestly present the facts. Another is to present one's opinion and claim that it is fact. (NOT: fact that they have that opinion). The second is clearly different from the first, and your attempt to equivocate the two does nothing but remove useful information.

Sure, but height is different from person to person. Relationship facts can differ from person to person, that doesn't make them less facts.

Okay. If I say "People are tall", is that a factual statement? Is it true? Is it false?

Of course not. People are only tall relative to other things. Furthermore, the difference in height varies a great deal from person to person. This kind of blanket statement can never be universally true or false, not when discussing something like "tallness".

The exact same holds for murder. "Murder is bad". Really? For who? When? What is meant by bad? Is this statement true or false? Are people who disagree right or wrong? It's neither.

Go back to "it's raining out". If you understand that to really be saying "I have evidence that justifies my believing that it's raining out" (which is what anyone who says "it's raining out" means), it now becomes different from person to person. You may have no reason to believe it's raining out.

Yes, but regardless of whether it is successful or not, it is an honest attempt to convey fact. "Murder is bad" is not. It's an entirely different kind of statement, that cannot be true or false. This is because "Bad" is not defined in any objective fashion: Its meaning varies from person to person. Therefore it's subjective.

Yes, as much as "murder is bad" is. That's precisely what I'm saying.

No, this is simply wrong. Hydrogen is flammable, regardless of what anyone thinks of it. You can test if hydrogen is flammable by igniting it. It will subsequently be inflamed, regardless of what anyone thinks of it. There is no human interpretation necessary.

Nope. Our opinions are just as much part of reality as rocks and rivers are.

The belief exists, obviously. But the belief itself does not directly affect reality (OTHER THAN ITSELF). It is simply ludicrous to claim that one's beliefs affect whether or not hydrogen is flammable or whether the sun will come up tomorrow. It is false. It is absurd. It is absolute insanity.

If you insist on claiming this, then there is nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. If you insist that your beliefs will determine reality, then this discussion is pointless.

You choose to see one side of the equivalence I'm arguing. I'm saying that there are only facts. Opinions are a species of fact.

This is false. It is a fact that humans have opinions. That does not make the things that the opinions are expressing facts. If my opinion is that red is really blue, then that is not a fact. If my opinion is that a certain band is good, then it's a fact that I have that opinion, but the opinion itself is not fact.

That is only because you choose to view it that way. You could equally well choose to view it as "murder itself has precisely the properties needed for me to consider it bad". Now it's about murder itself.

No. Those statements are completely different. Someone who says that "Murder is objectively bad" is NOT trying to make a statement about the properties of murder that makes them consider it bad. Those properties can be inferred, yes. But that is not what the statement is meant to say.

There is no difference between "I am so constructed as to think that murder is bad" and "murder is constructed such that I will think it's bad". These are, again, relationship facts, just like "hydrogen is flammable" which states that hydrogen is such that it will interact with oxygen (which exists and is precisely what it is) in a particular way.

Sure, but the first two statements are ones you just came up with, and not the topic of discussion. We were talking about "murder is bad", which is entirely different from "I think murder is bad" or "Murder has certain properties that make me consider it bad".

But it doesn't differ from person to person. I, JoelKatz, like ice cream does not conflict with you, Sophronius, do not like ice cream.

So the enjoyment of ice cream does differ from person to person. So the enjoyment of ice cream IS a subjective matter. Otherwise it could not vary from person to person. So the statement that ice cream is enjoyable is subjective.

You seem to be confused with the statement "I enjoy ice cream", which is a factual statement, and entirely different from the statement "Ice cream is enjoyable" (which makes a general statement that cannot be true for everyone). Of course, if a clause "For most people" were to be added, it would become a factual statement again.

Now, if someone says that ice cream tastes good, they do usually mean "for me" or "for most people". This does not hold for someone who says that "murder is objectively bad", as the word objectively is meant to indicate.

[JoelKatz]

You seem to be confused with the statement "I enjoy ice cream", which is a factual statement, and entirely different from the statement "Ice cream is enjoyable" (which makes a general statement that cannot be true for everyone). Of course, if a clause "For most people" were to be added, it would become a factual statement again.

Now, if someone says that ice cream tastes good, they do usually mean "for me" or "for most people". This does not hold for someone who says that "murder is objectively bad", as the word objectively is meant to indicate.I think you are just completely hung up on how people choose to express themselves rather than the thoughts that they are actually trying to convey. There is absolutely no difference between a person who says "murder is objectively bad" and a person who says "It is my opinion that murder is bad". This is just the same as someone who says "it is raining out" is simply using a short sequence of words to express the complex notion that they possess evidence that they believe justifies believing that it is raining out.

Sure, a person may say "No, I just wanted to express the fact that it is actually raining out". But the way human beings express facts is by stating their opinion that the fact is correct.

You think this somehow denigrates facts to the level of opinions. But the reverse is true, it elevates opinions to relationship facts. Humans can only express facts by indicating some relationship they have to that fact. That's the limitation we suffer because we are not omniscient.

In most cases, it makes no difference. We can freely convert. However, there are some cases where we lack sufficient understanding to convert. Not understanding color vision, we could not easily convert "the sky is blue" to what they were really saying. It is not just "the sky looks blue to me". We similarly lack an understanding of proscriptive morality. So we cannot easily convert proscriptive moral claims to their underlying relationship facts. If there are none, then such claims are not just subjective but arbitrary. In which case, the only rational response to them is to ignore them.

Of course, we shouldn't ignore them now. Even though we don't understand them, we have no choice but to use them until we do. This is precisely the same as how we could certainly use our color vision even before we understood what physical information it was giving us. It worked, so we used it. We do the same now with proscriptive morality.

[JoelKatz]

There is absolutely no difference between a person who says "murder is objectively bad" and a person who says "It is my opinion that murder is bad".Actually, this part of my argument is not correct. There is a difference between these two things. There is no difference, however, between someone who says "murder is objectively bad" and someone who says "I have reasons to believe that murder is bad independent of whether anyone thinks it is bad".

The problem arrives, however, when we analyze his claim. We're not particularly interested in whether he believes murder is bad or whether he has evidence that he believes justifies him believing murder is bad. What we want to know is -- does the evidence justify us also believing that murder is bad? And to do that, we need standards for whether or not murder actually is objectively bad. If there are no such standards, then we are not justified in accepting that claim. (Although, of course, sometimes we may have to take actions or make decisions even without sufficient evidence to determine with confidence which choice is the best. We shouldn't accept that no choice is the best though, just that we don't know which and have no choice but to act anyway.)

Again, if there is no way in which murder can objectively be bad, then we are never justified in accepting that it is in fact bad. If 'oughts' cannot be objectively justified, they should not be accepted. (Except perhaps as the best we can do in a circumstance in which we admit we have limited information or knowledge.)

So the enjoyment of ice cream does differ from person to person. So the enjoyment of ice cream IS a subjective matter. Otherwise it could not vary from person to person. So the statement that ice cream is enjoyable is subjective."Enjoyable" means capable of being enjoyed. If some people in fact enjoy ice cream, the claim is objectively true. At worst, the claim is imprecise because it doesn't state who is doing the enjoying. If it means "all people enjoy ice cream", it is false. If it means "many people enjoy ice cream", it is true. I don't see how you can get it to be subjective other than by making it imprecise.

"Over six feet tall" varies from person to person. Is it subjective? When you call something "subjective", it seems to just mean that it is a relationship fact that is imprecise about one end of the relationship. -- "Jack is tall" compared to what? "Ice cream is enjoyable" by whom? Is "The Sun is bright" subjective because the Sun is not as bright as some other stars?

If moral claims are not capable of objectively being true, we should just ignore them the same way we ignore other claims that are not capable of being true.

[Egg]

If moral claims are not capable of objectively being true, we should just ignore them the same way we ignore other claims that are not capable of being true.
egg:smiloe: Such as that sentence?

[JoelKatz]

egg:smiloe: Such as that sentence?I don't believe that moral claims are incapable of being objectively true. But if they were, then yes, including that one. ;)

If we have limited knowledge or limited time in which to make a decision, we may have to act on the basis of claims whose truth we are not thoroughly convinced of. But that is a very different from acting on the basis of a claim we believe is not even capable of being true.

If a claim is no better and no worse objectively supported than the contradiction of that claim, it is irrational to act on one rather than the other.

[Egg]

I don't believe that moral claims are incapable of being objectively true. But if they were, then yes, including that one. ;)

If we have limited knowledge or limited time in which to make a decision, we may have to act on the basis of claims whose truth we are not thoroughly convinced of. But that is a very different from acting on the basis of a claim we believe is not even capable of being true.

If a claim is no better and no worse objectively supported than the contradiction of that claim, it is irrational to act on one rather than the other.
I think my quibble with this lies in the point that the moral claims we're talking about are entirely reliant on some kind of value axiom. The value cannot be true or false since it's a value and not a claim.

If we take your sentence as an example:
"If moral claims are not capable of objectively being true, we should just ignore them the same way we ignore other claims that are not capable of being true."
My guess is that the "should" here is based on the axiom of valuing truth. Perhaps knowing the truth might be considered to have intrinsic worth, perhaps it's value lies in better reaching some other value (such as well-being or happiness). For the sake of argument, let's say you consider truth to have an intrinsic value.

My next point is really an issue of language and of how we might state this value. Firstly, I think we should deal with turning it into an objective statement by making it something like "JoelKatz values truth". While such a statement can clearly be either true or false, it's a different statement from the axiom behind the "should".

We can state this value in a way that makes it appear like an objective statement or claim by saying "truth is intrinsically valuable". But the problem here is the one you touched on in your previous post with your "by whom?" question to "ice-cream is enjoyable". As far as we're aware truth can only be intrinsically valuable to somebody. The statement expresses an idea and not a fact about the universe and, as such, cannot be true or false.

I think you're probably right to say that it would be irrational to act on some claim no better supported than another. Since we all rely on such axioms as well-being or truth or family having intrinsic value, perhaps ultimately we have to face that at the heart of all our reasoning lies irrationality - that we need some irrationality to form something to base our rationality on.

[JoelKatz]

My guess is that the "should" here is based on the axiom of valuing truth. Perhaps knowing the truth might be considered to have intrinsic worth, perhaps it's value lies in better reaching some other value (such as well-being or happiness). For the sake of argument, let's say you consider truth to have an intrinsic value.Yes, I do.

My next point is really an issue of language and of how we might state this value. Firstly, I think we should deal with turning it into an objective statement by making it something like "JoelKatz values truth". While such a statement can clearly be either true or false, it's a different statement from the axiom behind the "should".I agree.

We can state this value in a way that makes it appear like an objective statement or claim by saying "truth is intrinsically valuable". But the problem here is the one you touched on in your previous post with your "by whom?" question to "ice-cream is enjoyable". As far as we're aware truth can only be intrinsically valuable to somebody. The statement expresses an idea and not a fact about the universe and, as such, cannot be true or false.Only because it fails to state by whom. The statement actually fails to express an idea at all. It's just vague.

You can easily fix it by interpreting it as "truth is intrinsically valuable to me, and to the extent other people are constructed similarly to me, I'd expect it to be valuable to them." This sort of helps and sort of doesn't, because it's not clear what it means to say that truth is valuable to me. Yes, it helps me thrive, but if thriving is not justifiably valued, then why does it helping me thrive justify me valuing it?

That is, the ambiguity about who values it is not the real problem. The problem is -- at root, what precisely is a value?

I think you're probably right to say that it would be irrational to act on some claim no better supported than another. Since we all rely on such axioms as well-being or truth or family has intrinsic value, perhaps ultimately we have to face that at the heart of all our reasoning lies irrationality - that we need some irrationality to form something to base our rationality on.I disagree. It is entirely rational, we just don't fully understand it yet. This is precisely the same as why it was always entirely rational for us to rely on our color vision even before we understood how it worked or what objective properties it was measuring.

The mere agreement between people on colors (even though imperfect) was sufficient to justify relying on color vision to distinguish objective facts, even in the absence of understanding what those facts were. The evidence that moral claims measure objective properties is nearly overwhelming and there is no alternative that is even comprehensible.

[Egg]

Only because it fails to state by whom. The statement actually fails to express an idea at all. It's just vague.
It seems to me that you're trying to box up the idea in such a way as to make it a claim that can be true or false. Yes, it fails to state by whom, but I don't think it's vague or not expressing an idea. "Truth is intrinsically valuable" is an idea that you can agree or disagree with. Some people might state the value (or some similar idea) as if it were an objective fact about the universe and consider somebody who disagreed to be "wrong", but it's not something that can be proved scientifically either way.


You can easily fix it be interpreting it as "truth is intrinsically valuable to me, and to the extent other people are constructed similarly to me, I'd expect it to be valuable to them." This sort of helps and sort of doesn't, because it's not clear what it means to say that truth is valuable to me. Yes, it helps me thrive, but if thriving is not justifiably valued, then why does it helping me thrive justify me valuing it? If it were only valuable because it helped you thrive, it wouldn't be intrinsically valuable - it would be the thriving that had intrinsic value. I think you capture the issue by saying "thriving is not justifiably valued". When you get down to intrinsic values, I don't think there is any justification for the actual value. Perhaps your point about expecting similarly constructed people to hold similar values outlines how we could justify why someone might hold a certain intrinsic value, but not the value itself.


I disagree. It is entirely rational, we just don't fully understand it yet. This is precisely the same as why it was always entirely rational for us to rely on our color vision even before we understood how it worked or what objective properties it was measuring.

The mere agreement between people on colors (even though imperfect) was sufficient to justify relying on color vision to distinguish objective facts, even in the absence of understanding what those facts were. The evidence that moral claims measure objective properties is nearly overwhelming and there is no alternative that is even comprehensible.
I understand your analogy about seeing colours, but I don't see how it works as a logical argument to suggest that we can therefore expect to understand morals in an objective way in future. Perhaps there's a suggestion from the analogy that we might, but not necessarily that we will.

If a whole group of people were brought up in an environment that made them think that another were inferior, would you say it would be rational for them to treat the other race as inferior beings?

What sort of evidence are you talking about to suggest moral claims measure objective properties?

[Democracy Simulator]

I don't think they are different. Which is why I have spoken against the axiom-based approach taken by philosophers, and why I have said that a science-based approach should not take this form.
Linda

fls, I'm not sure you understand the point of my analogy. The second example is what Sam Harris has done:

If I assume a priori that moral truth exists and that the well-being of conscious creatures was the key to understanding moral truth, then I could study the well-being of conscious creatures, with the claim that I could find scientific knowledge about this well-being which would give me moral knowledge.

You seem to be arguing against this approach now as not being a 'science-based approach'. Yeah, well I agree with you. Has your support of Harris weakened somewhat?

The point of my analogy was to demonstrate that if Harris' analogy with health actually achieves anything, then we must also accept the 'Mind of God' example as analogous to health and that such a study could also be legitimised as science. I'll ask you again:

How useful are these analogies with health in being able to justify 'a science' of anything?

So are you saying that the existence of suicidal persons negates the idea that some actions can be considered unhealthy, just like the presence of suicidal persons negates the idea that the vaporization of humans can be considered undesirable?

No, I am saying that the existence of suicidal persons does not negate the idea that some actions can be considered unhealthy for everyone (therefore we have an objective basis for studying health), whereas the existence of suicidal persons does mean that vaporization is not always 'bad' for everyone.

How can that be?

Under what circumstances is vaporization healthy for anybody? In contrast, if we were talking about the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of vaporization there are some circumstances where an individual might view their own (or others) vaporization as a 'good thing'.

Anyway, this part of the discussion is only necessary if Harris' analogy to health achieved anything, which it does not.

About the same as 'perception of health' has to do with the absence of disease and impairment. There is some correspondence between the two, but obviously perceptions can differ. The subject who thinks they are healthier because the salicylates they took for their abdominal pain has temporarily relieved the pain from the gastric ulcer caused by the salicylates, or the subject who has achieved balance in their humours by the letting of blood, or the parents who think that sex is unhealthy for their children and deliberately withhold vaccines against diseases which are transmitted sexually, would be examples where science differs from our intuitions/perceptions.

Well, you see you agree with me after all. All of these examples can in principle be solved by recourse to the facts. Isn't that why anti-vaccers like to put forward lots of 'evidence' for their position?

Yet, as even Sam Harris admits, there are many moral disagreements which cannot be in principal solved by recourse to the facts. Because morality is a different beast to health. I really think Harris should have called his book, 'The Scienitific Study of Well-Being'. I know it's a bit of a boring title, but it would have been a more accurate reflection of the work within. Also, his analogy to health would then be useful.

What JoelKatz was referring to - as a thought experiment, areas of consensus allow us to recognize those properties relevant to what our intuitions imperfectly discover. I suspect there is more consensus on misery than well-being.

That doesn't really blunt my criticism as my criticism here is directed towards the insufficiency of the consensus view. The people whose worst misery looks a bit different from 'the norm'; they're 'wrong' are they? Also, I'm still not sure what you think about the well-being of conscious creatures? Which creatures' well-being is worth including in this 'scientific' morality? Do we admit tadpoles?

I don't think that Harris is proposing that the well being of conscious creatures forms an axiom from which we derive morality.

Here's what I wrote that prompted that comment:

Also, I'm confused by your comments. Harris doesn't think that the well-being of conscious creatures should be the basis for deciding what is good or bad?

I'll ask Harris what he thinks:

1. Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world—and there clearly are—then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

[Democracy Simulator]

Again, and this is simple, Sam Harris said that science wasn't the only way but just one more.


Again, from Harris:

1. Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world—and there clearly are—then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.


Sounds like 'it's my way or the highway', unless by 'wright and wrong answers', Harris means that his right and wrong answers are not better than anyone else's right or wrong answers, but of course he doesn't mean this as it would be nonsensical claptrap and he's written a whole book explaining why his way is the best.

Simply put, Harris thinks that science is the right way and that is what the argument has been about.

[JoelKatz]

I understand your analogy about seeing colours, but I don't see how it works as a logical argument to suggest that we can therefore expect to understand morals in an objective way in future. Perhaps there's a suggestion from the analogy that we might, but not necessarily that we will.My point is that there is no coherent alternative. That leaves two possibilities, objective truth, or something else that we don't yet understand. In either case, it would be science that would be the tool since there is no other.

If a whole group of people were brought up in an environment that made them think that another were inferior, would you say it would be rational for them to treat the other race as inferior beings?Not unless the other race were in fact inferior in some meaningful way. That is, the validity of their treatment would hinge on objective facts that could justify the disparate treatment -- or not.

What sort of evidence are you talking about to suggest moral claims measure objective properties?The existence of broad areas of agreement. The utility of such claims. The necessity of moral reasoning. Facts we understand about how conscious entities actually work.

If they were literally arbitrary, there would be no agreement more than you expect by chance. If they were not based on objective facts, they would have no utility.

Why do we find moral reasoning subjectively helpful? If it didn't tell us something about how the world really is, what good would it be?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures.I think Harris is right, I just don't know why. It's much the same way as we all know that color vision must relate, at some level, to the light that comes off a colored object (even if we didn't understand the details of color vision).

If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world—and there clearly are—then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.This is the problem when you guess what morality is based on. A "happy pill" might effectively seek happiness and avoid misery. However, most people's moral sense do not agree at all that this is right nor can they do a very good job of explaining why. Morality does not just measure happiness/misery, it measures more than that. In fact, I would argue that finding happiness and avoiding misery is a consequence of moral action, not its defining characteristic, just as making objects pop out of the background is a consequence of color vision, not its defining characteristic.

[fls]

fls, I'm not sure you understand the point of my analogy. The second example is what Sam Harris has done:

You seem to be arguing against this approach now as not being a 'science-based approach'. Yeah, well I agree with you. Has your support of Harris weakened somewhat?

No. The difference is that you think Harris is attempting an axiom-based approach and I think he is not.

The point of my analogy was to demonstrate that if Harris' analogy with health actually achieves anything, then we must also accept the 'Mind of God' example as analogous to health and that such a study could also be legitimised as science. I'll ask you again:

How useful are these analogies with health in being able to justify 'a science' of anything?

Not useful if they fail to be understood. :)

No, I am saying that the existence of suicidal persons does not negate the idea that some actions can be considered unhealthy for everyone (therefore because we have an objective basis for studying health), whereas the existence of suicidal persons does mean that vaporization is not always 'bad' for everyone.

Under what circumstances is vaporization healthy for anybody? In contrast, if we were talking about the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of vaporization there are some circumstances where an individual might view their own (or others) vaporization as a 'good thing'.

ETA: This presupposes that we have no way of guessing that vaporizing humans may be bad other than by taking a poll about what humans think about the idea, yet we have no trouble presupposing that vaporizing humans is unhealthy for those humans, regardless of what our poll of suicidal persons shows. It seems foolish to think this presupposition is correct.

Anyway, this part of the discussion is only necessary if Harris' analogy to health achieved anything, which it does not.

I agree.

Well, you see you agree with me after all. All of these examples can in principle be solved by recourse to the facts. Isn't that why anti-vaccers like to put forward lots of 'evidence' for their position?

Yet, as even Sam Harris admits, there are many moral disagreements which cannot be in principal solved by recourse to the facts. Because morality is a different beast to health. I really think Harris should have called his book, 'The Scienitific Study of Well-Being'. I know it's a bit of a boring title, but it would have been a more accurate reflection of the work within. Also, his analogy to health would then be useful.

No. Then it would no longer be analogous to health.

That doesn't really blunt my criticism as my criticism here is directed towards the insufficiency of the consensus view. The people whose worst misery looks a bit different from 'the norm'; they're 'wrong' are they?

Consensus doesn't tell you what set of circumstances equals ''misery" equals "bad", and which do not. Consensus tells you that there are characteristics of circumstances other than "some humans do not value them".

Also, I'm still not sure what you think about the well-being of conscious creatures? Which creatures' well-being is worth including in this 'scientific' morality? Do we admit tadpoles?

Would facts about the richness of the internal experience of tadpoles alter our perception on how they should be treated? Are there reasons that we treat dogs differently than tadpoles which go beyond a tally of how many people like dogs?

Linda

[fls]

Again, from Harris:

Sounds like 'it's my way or the highway', unless by 'wright and wrong answers', Harris means that his right and wrong answers are not better than anyone else's right or wrong answers, but of course he doesn't mean this as it would be nonsensical claptrap and he's written a whole book explaining why his way is the best.

Simply put, Harris thinks that science is the right way and that is what the argument has been about.

He doesn't mean that science is the right way. Just like we can be right or wrong about whether a particular action will make us healthy (say taking a vaccine against a disease which can be transmitted sexually), we can be right or wrong about other questions which are currently treated as moral questions. Science is simply a very good way of discovering which ideas are right or wrong. It's not the only way. It's just far better than anything else we've tried.

Linda

[fls]

This is the problem when you guess what morality is based on. A "happy pill" might effectively seek happiness and avoid misery. However, most people's moral sense do not agree at all that this is right nor can they do a very good job of explaining why. Morality does not just measure happiness/misery, it measures more than that. In fact, I would argue that finding happiness and avoiding misery is a consequence of moral action, not its defining characteristic, just as making objects pop out of the background is a consequence of color vision, not its defining characteristic.

I think that's a very good point. I don't know if you've read Harris' book, but I think the chapters where he discusses what happens in our brains with respect to moral action show that there is more richness to this idea than simply "happiness" or "misery". The terms really seem to just serve as placeholders until we have a clearer understanding of what it is we are guessing at.

Linda

[The Man]

I think that's a very good point. I don't know if you've read Harris' book, but I think the chapters where he discusses what happens in our brains with respect to moral action show that there is more richness to this idea than simply "happiness" or "misery". The terms really seem to just serve as placeholders until we have a clearer understanding of what it is we are guessing at.

Linda

Absolutely, the frontal lobe would seem to be the place to look for such brain responses in moral considerations. It would seem rather incongruent if such functioning of the brain were not based on facts about the brain.

[Dani]

Well, everything we think happens in our brains, included our scientific thinking.

What happens in our brains when we do logic? Should we think about changing terms such as inference or conclusion based on what happens in our brains?

[Paulhoff]

Your Brain = YOU, to talk as if it is separate don't make sense, so it should be stated as, “What happens within ourselves when we do logic?

Paul

:) :) :)

[fls]

Well, everything we think happens in our brains, included our scientific thinking.

What happens in our brains when we do logic? Should we think about changing terms such as inference or conclusion based on what happens in our brains?

That's a good question. For example, we value loss differently from valuing gain. We will preferentially avoid an activity couched in terms of loss and preferentially undertake an activity couched in terms of gain, even though the actual value of the thing lost or gained remains the same in the two scenarios. Our brains tell us the physical properties are different, but objective measures of the physical properties tell us that they are the same. Yet we don't see philosophers suggesting that a bit of gold gains mass when it is given to someone and it loses mass when it is taken away.

Linda

[Dani]

That's a good question. For example, we value loss differently from valuing gain. We will preferentially avoid an activity couched in terms of loss and preferentially undertake an activity couched in terms of gain, even though the actual value of the thing lost or gained remains the same in the two scenarios. Our brains tell us the physical properties are different, but objective measures of the physical properties tell us that they are the same. Yet we don't see philosophers suggesting that a bit of gold gains mass when it is given to someone and it loses mass when it is taken away.

Linda

I'm not sure I understand you, in particular the highlighted bit. Can you put a practical example?

[fls]

I'm not sure I understand you, in particular the highlighted bit. Can you put a practical example?

Take the example I used - a gram of gold. A person will give up more to avoid losing that gold than they will give up to buy the gold in the first place. That is, the gold has greater value once they own it than it did before they owned it. Since gold has a specific value based on it's weight, one would have to guess that alterations in its value meant that its weight altered (if it has to be based on our values).

Linda

[AlBell]

What does that have to do with a discussion about morals.

How about an on topic example?

[Dani]

Take the example I used - a gram of gold. A person will give up more to avoid losing that gold than they will give up to buy the gold in the first place. That is, the gold has greater value once they own it than it did before they owned it. Since gold has a specific value based on it's weight, one would have to guess that alterations in its value meant that its weight altered (if it has to be based on our values).

Linda

I see. But this doesn't mean that our brains tell us that the physical properties of gold vary depending on whether we own it or not.

And anyway, I don't see how this has anything to do with my observation.

[fls]

I see. But this doesn't mean that our brains tell us that the physical properties of gold vary depending on whether we own it or not.

It does if we claim that that something depends only upon our values.

And anyway, I don't see how this has anything to do with my observation.

Well, why don't our intuitions about logic change the meaning of inference or conclusion?

Linda

[Dani]

It does if we claim that that something depends only upon our values.

Honestly, I'm lost.



Well, why don't our intuitions about logic change the meaning of inference or conclusion?Same here.


To clear things up, the underlying idea of my observation is the following:

Happiness and misery are abstract concepts that we use to describe mind states which are subjectively experienced by human beings.

When we recognize these mind states, we can find a correlation between them and their physical substratum by observing the brain activity that is occurring at that moment.

Locating the physical substratum that causes happiness and misery doesn't give us any further information about these abstract concepts. That's because we've already established these concepts, and then found their physical correlate, not the other way around.

Similarly, physically locating moral thinking doesn't give us any additional information about the concept.

[fls]

To clear things up, the underlying idea of my observation is the following:

Happiness and misery are abstract concepts that we use to describe mind states which are subjectively experienced by human beings.

When we recognize these mind states, we can find a correlation between them and their physical substratum by observing the brain activity that is occurring at that moment.

Locating the physical substratum that causes happiness and misery doesn't give us any further information about these abstract concepts. That's because we've already established these concepts, and then found their physical correlate, not the other way around.

Similarly, physically locating moral thinking doesn't give us any additional information about the concept.

Okay. So other than their physical location in the brain, happiness and misery are unconnected to any physical events.

It makes you wonder why jail is considered a punishment if misery is unconnected to imprisonment. Oh well.

Linda

[Earthborn]

Take the example I used - a gram of gold. A person will give up more to avoid losing that gold than they will give up to buy the gold in the first place. That is, the gold has greater value once they own it than it did before they owned it. Since gold has a specific value based on it's weight, one would have to guess that alterations in its value meant that its weight altered (if it has to be based on our values).I think you conflating two different concepts of value:
The value something has to single person -- which depends on whether one tries to gain it, or whether one tries to avoid losing it.
The value something has on the market, which be have a specific value based on it's weight, and is more or less an average of the values individuals ascribe to it as they try to buy it, try to sell it and try to hold on to it.
The first is subjective, the second intersubjective. Objective science will never tell us what the correct value of gold is supposed to be.

[Dani]

Okay. So other than their physical location in the brain, happiness and misery are unconnected to any physical events.

It makes you wonder why jail is considered a punishment if misery is unconnected to imprisonment. Oh well.

Linda

:confused:

I'm talking about the information we can obtain from the observation of the brain. I think I was being clear enough. I didn't even mention any other (external to the brain) physical events, which are irrelevant to my point , so I don't know how you reached that conclusion.

[fls]

I think you conflating two different concepts of value:
The value something has to single person -- which depends on whether one tries to gain it, or whether one tries to avoid losing it.
The value something has on the market, which be have a specific value based on it's weight, and is more or less an average of the values individuals ascribe to it as they try to buy it, try to sell it and try to hold on to it.
The first is subjective, the second intersubjective. Objective science will never tell us what the correct value of gold is supposed to be.

Silly me. What a person is willing to give up in order to gain something or avoid losing something is an entirely different concept from what two people are willing to give up in order to gain something or avoid losing something. Thank you for clearing that up.

Linda

[fls]

:confused:

I'm talking about the information we can obtain from the observation of the brain. I think I was being clear enough. I didn't even mention any other (external to the brain) physical events, which are irrelevant to my point , so I don't know how you reached that conclusion.

When you said this:

Locating the physical substratum that causes happiness and misery doesn't give us any further information about these abstract concepts. That's because we've already established these concepts, and then found their physical correlate, not the other way around.

If the physical correlates which cause happiness and misery are acausal (since you deny that locating the physical substrate tells us anything about a cause, only a result), then it is decidedly odd for us to expect misery over something like imprisonment.

Linda

[Dani]

I'm talking about the brain. You must've missed this:

When we recognize these mind states, we can find a correlation between them and their physical substratum by observing the brain activity that is occurring at that moment.

Mind states and their physical correlation in the brain.

[JJM 777]

Just wondering, are the people _skeptics_ who expect "ought" morals to exist in the same way as blue colour exists?

It makes you wonder why jail is considered a punishment if misery is unconnected to imprisonment.
Imprisonment used to be misery decades ago. Nowadays it is a nice social place that you can get used to.

[Dragoonster]

Just wondering, are the people _skeptics_ who expect "ought" morals to exist in the same way as blue colour exists?

I think they do...after of course the is/ought problem has been ignored/dismissed/sidestepped by declaring "morality must be about the well-being of conscious creatures" as an objective truth.

Then anyone who holds morals which don't attend to the well-being of conscious creatures is objectively/scientifically "in error" as anyone who sees the sky as orange is "in error".

A sensible and rational claim would be "If most people believe morality must be about the well-being of conscious creatures, then..." and one could propose morality based on utilitarianism, absolutism, whatever, depending on how they quantify or value individual/group well-being, etc.

That wouldn't be making a factual claim about morality itself, just about the tendency of human belief. Of course, this is already obvious. What differs seems to be the blank in "Most people believe morality must be about ______"

In a Sharia society it might be "Allah's teachings", and it may be true that most people in that society believes this. In a Christian society "God's Law". In a society in a territory of constant war over not enough resources, "the well-being of our tribe", with that tribe having no problem massacring women and children of competing tribes.

Similarly perhaps a local society is color-blind or has a genetics that causes them to percieve blue as orange. Which they'd be perfectly right to believe is an objective truth, until a different and/or stronger society comes along who sees it as blue, and tells them they're "factually wrong".

Imprisonment used to be misery decades ago. Nowadays it is a nice social place that you can get used to.

And some seem to prefer imprisonment to free life, if Shawshank Redemption and other tales have any merit.

[Dragoonster]

That reminds me, how do Harris-type thinkers describe something like murder?

Is murder scientifically wrong?



Is seeing blue as orange scientifically wrong?



Is holding a minority belief/perception scientifically wrong?

Is holding any majority belief/perception scientifically correct?

[fls]

That reminds me, how do Harris-type thinkers describe something like murder?

Is murder scientifically wrong?

Is seeing blue as orange scientifically wrong?

Is holding a minority belief/perception scientifically wrong?

Is holding any majority belief/perception scientifically correct?

What characteristics of murder increase and/or reduce misery?

What characteristics lead someone to perceive an object as orange?

What are the effects of diversity in beliefs/perceptions on societal stability?

Linda

[AlBell]

I give up. What did you have in mind as answers?

[Paulhoff]

Is murder scientifically wrong?
You are kidding right? Science wouldn't come up with that, geezzzz.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Dragoonster]

What characteristics of murder increase and/or reduce misery?

Not sure what you mean by characteristics. Cleary in the "well-being of conscious creatures" paradigm, if characteristics of a particular murder include rape, torture, amputation etc. but this increases the well-being of the murderer more than it decreases the well-being of the murdered, then in that case rape, torture and amputation would reduce misery. Right?

Or you can further explain Harris' definition of misery and well-being. Is it one person's vs one person's, one person's vs society's, societies' vs societies'...what? How is it calculated? How is it compared?

If you just mean the characteristic of murder is that one person is dead from the act and the other alive, so clearly the dead one has suffered more...there's the "Would you murder Hitler" retort.

Again, what do you call murder, scientifically?

What characteristics lead someone to perceive an object as orange?

One's belief that an object is "orange"; whether because their eyes percieve it thusly, or their society/themselves have labelled it as orange.

Science can demonstrate that different rods/cones whatever tend to respond to different wavelengths; science can never substitute itself for a human perception of these wavelengths to say which perception is "scientifically correct" and which is "scientifically wrong".

Again, is perceiving "blue" as "orange" scientifically wrong? Answering questions with questions is a poor tactic.

What are the effects of diversity in beliefs/perceptions on societal stability?

Linda

Huh? This sounds like a sociological question and answer. I'm interested in scientific answers to moral questions, which is Harris' claim.

Can science answer moral questions or not?

Why does this response of yours not simply end the debate forever because you show tons of scientific, indisputable answers to my questions?

[Dragoonster]

I give up. What did you have in mind as answers?

ditto

The onus sure is on Harris to spell things out very convincingly to those who are morally wrong. Or clarify just WTF he's actually claiming.

[fls]

Not sure what you mean by characteristics.

Stuff like whether murders are private affairs between individuals, or whether they are systematic and public against groups. Which groups it is directed at. Consequences. Stuff like that.

Cleary in the "well-being of conscious creatures" paradigm, if characteristics of a particular murder include rape, torture, amputation etc. but this increases the well-being of the murderer more than it decreases the well-being of the murdered, then in that case rape, torture and amputation would reduce misery. Right?

Or you can further explain Harris' definition of misery and well-being. Is it one person's vs one person's, one person's vs society's, societies' vs societies'...what? How is it calculated? How is it compared?

If you just mean the characteristic of murder is that one person is dead from the act and the other alive, so clearly the dead one has suffered more...there's the "Would you murder Hitler" retort.

I think you are describing a utilitarian perspective. I think I've mentioned already that I don't think this is a useful approach for these kinds of questions. For example, murder would be expected to have an impact beyond the individuals involved, such as an influence on societal stability and security, which wouldn't be amenable to totting up numbers.

Again, what do you call murder, scientifically?

Intentionally killing a human, although specifics may change depending upon the circumstances under study.

One's belief that an object is "orange"; whether because their eyes percieve it thusly, or their society/themselves have labelled it as orange.

Science can demonstrate that different rods/cones whatever tend to respond to different wavelengths; science can never substitute itself for a human perception of these wavelengths to say which perception is "scientifically correct" and which is "scientifically wrong".

Again, is perceiving "blue" as "orange" scientifically wrong?

Science doesn't do that. Instead it would discover what distinguishes someone who calls a colour "orange" from others who call it "blue" and thereby discover differences in colour receptors or a difference in processing pathways.

Answering questions with questions is a poor tactic.

Sorry. That wasn't my intention. You asked how science would see these questions. Science wouldn't come up with the kinds of questions you asked. I changed them to examples of the kinds of questions which are asked instead.

Huh? This sounds like a sociological question and answer. I'm interested in scientific answers to moral questions, which is Harris' claim.

Can science answer moral questions or not?

Why does this response of yours not simply end the debate forever because you show tons of scientific, indisputable answers to my questions?

The problem is that your questions are not valid, not that there aren't scientific answers to moral questions.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

I think you conflating two different concepts of value:
The value something has to single person -- which depends on whether one tries to gain it, or whether one tries to avoid losing it.
The value something has on the market, which be have a specific value based on it's weight, and is more or less an average of the values individuals ascribe to it as they try to buy it, try to sell it and try to hold on to it.
The first is subjective, the second intersubjective. Objective science will never tell us what the correct value of gold is supposed to be.Just as objective science will never tell us what a person's height is. It can tell us the height of any particular person, it can tell us an average height, but there is no such thing as "a person's height" as an actual measurement independent of the person whose height is being measured.

As you are using the term "subjective", it is a type of objective measurement that differs from person to person such as height, weight, age, and so on.

[Dragoonster]

Stuff like whether murders are private affairs between individuals, or whether they are systematic and public against groups. Which groups it is directed at. Consequences. Stuff like that.

So some murder is scientifically fine (aka "reduces misery")? Still don't understand the distinction.

I think you are describing a utilitarian perspective. I think I've mentioned already that I don't think this is a useful approach for these kinds of questions. For example, murder would be expected to have an impact beyond the individuals involved, such as an influence on societal stability and security, which wouldn't be amenable to totting up numbers.

So what? "society stability and security"--sure sounds utilitarian to me.

Intentionally killing a human, although specifics may change depending upon the circumstances under study.

I'm asking for your defintion per Harris and Science Answers Moral Questions.

Is murder scientifically wrong? Right? Can science answer this or not?

Science doesn't do that. Instead it would discover what distinguishes someone who calls a colour "orange" from others who call it "blue" and thereby discover differences in colour receptors or a difference in processing pathways.

Well yeah. Science would do the same thing for people who view morality differently. That's my point.

Again though, are you differing with Harris here? I have no problem with science evaluating why particular humans see morals in their particular way. I have a HUGE problem with Harris insisting that his or the majority way is the right scientific (objective) way.

He's not making a small claim here. He's making a HUGE claim and should provide ovewhelming a) logical; b) scientific, c) moral, d) philosophical "proof". So far he hasn't come close to any of these.

Sorry. That wasn't my intention. You asked how science would see these questions. Science wouldn't come up with the kinds of questions you asked. I changed them to examples of the kinds of questions which are asked instead.

Science wouldn't come up with moral questions to definitively answer?

What in the hell does "science can answer moral questions" mean? Is it a baking recipe?

The problem is that your questions are not valid, not that there aren't scientific answers to moral questions.

Linda

I disagree...but for the sake of argument...

Present a single valid Moral Question that Science can Answer.

Show scientific proof of course, otherwise your reply will make no sense.

[fls]

So some murder is scientifically fine (aka "reduces misery")? Still don't understand the distinction.

It's not a particularly remarkable observation. Scenarios were someone was murdered because of an act of self-defense are distinguished from someone who was murdered to satisfy sadistic pleasures.

So what? "society stability and security"--sure sounds utilitarian to me.

I don't know why you hear that. Maybe the mention of consequences is confusing (since utilitarianism changes one or a few consequences into a metric)?

I'm asking for your defintion per Harris and Science Answers Moral Questions.

Yes, that's what my answer was directed at.

Is murder scientifically wrong? Right? Can science answer this or not?

If you ask a real world question about murder, rather than the sort of useless question you offer above.

Well yeah. Science would do the same thing for people who view morality differently. That's my point.

Like discovering that psychopaths lack empathy and in what ways it alters their responses to questions.

Again though, are you differing with Harris here? I have no problem with science evaluating why particular humans see morals in their particular way. I have a HUGE problem with Harris insisting that his or the majority way is the right scientific (objective) way.

He's not making a small claim here. He's making a HUGE claim and should provide ovewhelming a) logical; b) scientific, c) moral, d) philosophical "proof". So far he hasn't come close to any of these.

That's because Harris isn't making that claim.

Science wouldn't come up with moral questions to definitively answer?

What in the hell does "science can answer moral questions" mean? Is it a baking recipe?

More like, moral questions do not take the form that you presented.

I disagree...but for the sake of argument...

Present a single valid Moral Question that Science can Answer.

Show scientific proof of course, otherwise your reply will make no sense.

What characteristics distinguish scenarios in which the death penalty is used for egregious crimes from those in which it is not? If retribution/punishment, fear, cost-effectiveness, or deterence are those characteristics, are they satisfied by the use of the death penalty? What characteristics distinguish crime for which the death penalty is proposed from those where it is not? What socio-political characteristics are associated with the use of the death penalty? What socio-political characteristics are associated with access to resources, life expectancy, and the presence of positive experiences?

Linda

[Dragoonster]

It's not a particularly remarkable observation. Scenarios were someone was murdered because of an act of self-defense are distinguished from someone who was murdered to satisfy sadistic pleasures.

Okay, I'm not understanding your definition of "murder". In your example of self-defense, it wouldn't be "murder", at least according to Western legality.

Can you give any examples where non-selfdefensive murder would be good for human well-being? Oh...or do these not exist and any non-selfdefensive murder is morally/scientifically bad? Why?

I don't know why you hear that. Maybe the mention of consequences is confusing (since utilitarianism changes one or a few consequences into a metric)?

"Murder would be expected to have an impact beyond those involved". Maybe it's utilitarianism, or I was wrong and it's consequentalism, or some hybrid.

...or maybe my labels don't matter at all and you and Harris should simply say what science has calculated on the "murder" issue. And thus do away with all these silly philosophical/ethical labels. Waiting...

Yes, that's what my answer was directed at.

Okay. I would've preferred you answered with some actual science answering moral questions, since that's the topic.

If you ask a real world question about murder, rather than the sort of useless question you offer above.

WHAT THE ****.

What are you advocating for here? Science's ability to answer "real world questions" in which case I'D LIKE A SCIENTIFIC ANSWER.

Or are you advocating for Harris' claim of SCIENCE CAN ANSWER MORAL QUESTIONS in which case I'D LIKE A SCIENTIFIC ANSWER.

Is "is it okay to murder?" a moral question? YES/NO.

Can "science answer moral questions?" YES/NO.

Can "is it okay to murder?" be answered with science? YES/NO.

Like discovering that psychopaths lack empathy and in what ways it alters their responses to questions.

They "lack" what? "Empathy" is a revered scientific value? What is your scientific rationale for empathy mattering at all?

Are you saying "empathy" is as scientifically designated as "blue"? Please expand.

That's because Harris isn't making that claim.

...

"Science can answer moral questions"

YES/NO (?)

More like, moral questions do not take the form that you presented.

Okay, give me a moral question as you and Harris present it, and demonstrate why/how it's scientifically answered.

What characteristics distinguish scenarios in which the death penalty is used for egregious crimes from those in which it is not? If retribution/punishment, fear, cost-effectiveness, or deterence are those characteristics, are they satisfied by the use of the death penalty? What characteristics distinguish crime for which the death penalty is proposed from those where it is not? What socio-political characteristics are associated with the use of the death penalty? What socio-political characteristics are associated with access to resources, life expectancy, and the presence of positive experiences?

Linda

These questions are typically answered by a moral consideration, with input from sociology, religion, etc. They are not answered by science (except ancillarily as a tool for sociologists, and believe it or not theists).

Not that "typically" is a defense of the norm. But if one seeks to upend the norm, one should certainly bring a lot. What has Harris brung? What have you?

"Murder is right"

How are you going to scientifically going to tell me it's wrong? There are a literal world of religious, sociological, anthropological, legal, evolutionary, psychological reasons murder is not "right". And yet there's a smaller world of humans who thinks it is "right".

If you or Harris wants to join these various institutions/agents you certainly should substantively demonstrate whether, why, and how murder is right or wrong. And if you're going to hold your own view as the One True View, good grief, you REALLY need to bring it.

Obviously you should not cull from sociology or evolution for your stance. It should solely be from Science. Tall Order. Incredibly, Impossibly Tall.

Or you or Harris can admit that every argument you make is based on some axiom that's as arbitrary as the Ten Commandments. "Thou Shalt Not Deprive Another of Well-Being". With "well-being" just as undefined as multiple Biblical imperatives and phrases.

eta: or even if it's defined, still arbitrary and completely unconvincing

[JoelKatz]

Or you or Harris can admit that every argument you make is based on some axiom that's as arbitrary as the Ten Commandments. "Thou Shalt Not Deprive Another of Well-Being". With "well-being" just as undefined as multiple Biblical imperatives and phrases.

eta: or even if it's defined, still arbitrary and completely unconvincing
But this is a universal refutation of everything. Every argument a human being makes is based on his senses and perceptions. If you wish to call the result of these perceptions 'arbitrary' or 'axioms', then all input is arbitrary or an axiom. There is no output without input.

Our moral sense is just like our vision. We 'look' at the world and we 'see' aspects of it which we then become aware of and can process. That these senses are 'correct' is an axiom without which there is no science.

Note that these are necessarily correct in a very technical sense. Just as there are optical illusions, blind spots, colorblind people, and so on, our moral sense is almost certainly capable of similar defects and limitations. It is for science to find these defects and limitations, but the input is sacred. There is no science if you reject sensory input's inherent validity. (Of course, *what* it means is a scientific question.)

It is for science to explain why we see what we see. It is for science to explain what in the world accounts for what we see. But it is incoherent and unscientific to reject the input as arbitrary or unjustified. It's the input!

When you look at something, you see things. You put what you see into words. And you present those words to other people as the input from which you reasoned. Others can certainly question the validity of the process you used to put the input into words. And others can disbelieve your claim to have received a particular input.

If I say I saw the inside of a UFO with aliens, you can claim I'm lying. You can claim I'm hallucinating. You can claim I saw something but misinterpreted what I saw. But if I'm not lying, then some scientific explanation of why I saw what I saw must exist -- of course it need not involve UFOs or aliens. It does no good to tell me, again assuming I'm not lying, to say "That's just an axiom. You can't prove you saw it. It's arbitrary." The purpose of science is to explain and predict what we will sense. Dismissing it is the opposite of science.

I sense that torturing children for pleasure is wrong. You can call me and almost everyone else in the world liars, and imagine some vast conspiracy to misrepresent moral senses. But to dismiss it as arbitrary is nonsensical. (And you can reject any scientific conclusion by imagining a vast conspiracy to misrepresent results.)

[JoelKatz]

Harris is arguing: "Because a pencil half-submerged in a cup of water looks disjoint, it must actually be disjoint."

Dragoonster is countering: "Because you cannot prove a pencil half-submerged in a cup of water really is disjoint, it is unreasonable for you accept that it looks disjoint."

Both positions are wrong. That a pencil half-submerged in a cup of water looks disjoint is undeniable, unless you think everyone who has ever looked at such a thing is lying. And even if you look at one yourself and for some reason it doesn't appear disjoint to you, there's still the fact that it looks disjoint to everyone else. Whether or not this means the pencil actually *is* disjoint, however, is a purely scientific question. (Or even whether "is disjoint" is meaningful. Something scientific explains why it looks disjoint. We just have to figure out what.)

[AlBell]

Some people strangely seem to believe social conditioning is as amenable to scientific truth as is physics. Orange is a specific set of wavelengths; refraction and diffraction are also fully describable.

Human moral choices, no such demonstration has been yet made.

[JoelKatz]

Some people strangely seem to believe social conditioning is as amenable to scientific truth as is physics. Orange is a specific set of wavelengths; refraction and diffraction are also fully describable.

Human moral choices, no such demonstration has been yet made.Right, and that's the whole point of science. I say something looks orange to me and it's science's job to figure out what's going on when I say that. But the only way science can come back and say "it may seem orange to you, but it's not really orange" is if science can define what it means to "really be orange".

Science in fact did this. It identified a kind of "real orange" as emitting a particular wavelength of light. And a "seems orange to me" as emitting combinations of wavelengths that stimulate human vision the same way pure orange light does. And now we understand a meaningful sense in which something can seem orange to someone and not really be orange.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Right, and that's the whole point of science. I say something looks orange to me and it's science's job to figure out what's going on when I say that. But the only way science can come back and say "it may seem orange to you, but it's not really orange" is if science can define what it means to "really be orange".

Science in fact did this. It identified a kind of "real orange" as emitting a particular wavelength of light. And a "seems orange to me" as emitting combinations of wavelengths that stimulate human vision the same way pure orange light does. And now we understand a meaningful sense in which something can seem orange to someone and not really be orange.

Science did no such thing. Science determined the wavelengths of light that are described by most people as "orange".

What is the precise definition of "orange"? 3x8-bit RGB codes for colours percieved as "orange" are somewhere between "red" (255-0-0) and "yellow" (255-255-0).

All that exists are distributions on which humans as a group mostly agree to place fuzzy vertical lines on to allow classification of behaviour as "right" or "wrong". The positions of the lines are dependent on genetic and environmental factors and move around over time and between sub-groups.

[fls]

Okay, I'm not understanding your definition of "murder". In your example of self-defense, it wouldn't be "murder", at least according to Western legality.

The definition I used was "intentionally killing a human". This would include someone who has killed a person in self-defense. I think your definition of murder would involve something like "killing which is wrong"? But this presupposes the issue, which I wanted to avoid, since obviously we treat some intentional killing as good and some as bad.

Can you give any examples where non-selfdefensive murder would be good for human well-being? Oh...or do these not exist and any non-selfdefensive murder is morally/scientifically bad? Why?

Wars. The death penalty. Whatever the runaway train scenario exemplifies (whereby a large person is pushed onto the tracks to divert a runaway train from killing six people).

"Murder would be expected to have an impact beyond those involved". Maybe it's utilitarianism, or I was wrong and it's consequentalism, or some hybrid.

...or maybe my labels don't matter at all and you and Harris should simply say what science has calculated on the "murder" issue. And thus do away with all these silly philosophical/ethical labels. Waiting...

I very much agree. I haven't used the labels and I have protested against them, as it seems like people then alter the ideas in order to fit the labels (at which point I'm obliged to argue against the alteration) instead of simply addressing the idea. I didn't bring up utilitarianism or consequentialism, I responded when someone else brought them up (in this case, you).

Okay. I would've preferred you answered with some actual science answering moral questions, since that's the topic.

The question you asked was for the definition of "murder". I can't understand what your response has to do with that. Unless you hoped the definition is what distinguishes right from wrong?

WHAT THE ****.

What are you advocating for here? Science's ability to answer "real world questions" in which case I'D LIKE A SCIENTIFIC ANSWER.

Or are you advocating for Harris' claim of SCIENCE CAN ANSWER MORAL QUESTIONS in which case I'D LIKE A SCIENTIFIC ANSWER.

Is "is it okay to murder?" a moral question? YES/NO.

Can "science answer moral questions?" YES/NO.

Can "is it okay to murder?" be answered with science? YES/NO.

Ah yes. The fallacy of the undistributed middle. :)

The point is that what we call moral questions can be formulated in ways that are useless and ways that are useful. Rather than trying to answer useless questions with science, it seems reasonable to ask our questions in ways that are useful instead. The list of questions I gave are examples of useful questions.

They "lack" what?

Understanding and entering into another's feelings.

"Empathy" is a revered scientific value? What is your scientific rationale for empathy mattering at all?

Are you saying "empathy" is as scientifically designated as "blue"? Please expand.

It refers to a brain process present in humans which involves the medial prefrontal cortex. It can be distinguished by asking "is it okay to give Sally an apple if I get the teacher's permission?" and "is it okay to hit Sally if I get the teacher's permission?", for example.

...

"Science can answer moral questions"

YES/NO (?)

Yes, when we realize that they do not need to be formulated as useless questions.

Okay, give me a moral question as you and Harris present it, and demonstrate why/how it's scientifically answered.

These questions are typically answered by a moral consideration, with input from sociology, religion, etc. They are not answered by science (except ancillarily as a tool for sociologists, and believe it or not theists).

I'm sorry. I thought it was pretty obvious that the questions I posed would be answered using facts. For the first question, "what characteristics distinguish scenarios in which the death penalty is used for egregious crimes from those which don't?" (I gave some examples of potential characteristics in my next question...each question was related to the preceding question), scenarios that differ in terms of specific characteristics would be presented in order to determine whether people answer differently on the basis of those characteristics or whether their answer stays the same. For example, a scenario in which the escape of a violent, serial murderer in the community is likely vs. one in which incarceration is very secure may change someone's answer about whether violent, serial murderers should be killed. Please note that the answer doesn't mean that they should, it just indicates the kinds of characteristics people are identifying with their moral intuitions. Similar approaches would be used to attack the rest of the questions (i.e. relevant facts would be gathered).

Not that "typically" is a defense of the norm. But if one seeks to upend the norm, one should certainly bring a lot. What has Harris brung? What have you?

"Murder is right"

How are you going to scientifically going to tell me it's wrong? There are a literal world of religious, sociological, anthropological, legal, evolutionary, psychological reasons murder is not "right". And yet there's a smaller world of humans who thinks it is "right".

If you or Harris wants to join these various institutions/agents you certainly should substantively demonstrate whether, why, and how murder is right or wrong. And if you're going to hold your own view as the One True View, good grief, you REALLY need to bring it.

Obviously you should not cull from sociology or evolution for your stance. It should solely be from Science. Tall Order. Incredibly, Impossibly Tall.

Or you or Harris can admit that every argument you make is based on some axiom that's as arbitrary as the Ten Commandments. "Thou Shalt Not Deprive Another of Well-Being". With "well-being" just as undefined as multiple Biblical imperatives and phrases.

eta: or even if it's defined, still arbitrary and completely unconvincing

All it requires is an interest in our own activities. Intentional killing interferes with human activities in ways which would be discovered by answering the questions I posed. Sure, you can claim that we ought not have any interest our activities if you want. But that seems a bit of a hard sell considering all the interest shown in a far more trivial matter by your years spent posting here. And I suspect you'd duck if I tried to hit you on the head with a hammer. :)

Linda

[fls]

Harris is arguing: "Because a pencil half-submerged in a cup of water looks disjoint, it must actually be disjoint."

I guess that answers my earlier question. :)

Harris specifically addresses and denies this interpretation. That is, he says that science would investigate why it looks disjoint.

Linda

[JoelKatz]

Science did no such thing. Science determined the wavelengths of light that are described by most people as "orange".It did much more than that. It showed us precisely what people were measuring when they judged something to be orange. It allowed us to quantify the range of colors a particular person was willing to judge as orange. It provided us an objective way to compare the color judgments of different people. In effect, it made orange more than "seems orange to me".

What is the precise definition of "orange"? 3x8-bit RGB codes for colours percieved as "orange" are somewhere between "red" (255-0-0) and "yellow" (255-255-0).What is the precise definition of "car"? Definitions of things don't work that way. Many concepts have fuzzy boundaries around them. That doesn't change the fact that some things are squarely inside the concept and some are squarely outside.

More importantly, if two people disagree about whether or not something is orange, they can now do much better than just say "well, it looks <not> orange to me, and I'm sticking to that". They should be able to precisely agree on what range of frequencies they are both seeing and that one of them judges it orange and the other doesn't. That is, they should be able to understand exactly what in the physical world accounts for their difference in judgment and they should be able to agree on what is really there. Science should eliminate their disagreement about whether or not something is "really orange" by letting them understand *why* the concept of "really orange" doesn't quite apply.

All that exists are distributions on which humans as a group mostly agree to place fuzzy vertical lines on to allow classification of behaviour as "right" or "wrong". The positions of the lines are dependent on genetic and environmental factors and move around over time and between sub-groups.And yet, any given light source has a precise mix of frequencies that we can now scientifically determine. Thanks to science, we no longer are left with "it looks orange to me, but if you say it looks green to you, all I can say is that you're broken or lying". We can do much better than that now. We can say "I judge it to be orange because it has this particular mix of light frequencies and these are a close match to the stimulation patterns of light in this particular range of frequencies and the term used in English for that range of frequencies is in fact orange. If you judge it differently, you are misusing the term orange, or your color vision is not standard."

We can now defend our judgment of something as orange on the basis of objective facts. But, of course, the range of things that span "orange" is fuzzy. But that's true of everything. Give ten people a measuring tape and ask them to measure the same stick and they may disagree whether it's close enough to six feet long to be called "six feet" or not. This doesn't mean "six feet" isn't an objective measurement. (It also spans an imprecise range of measurements.)

Science left us nothing about colors to argue over. If I think something looks orange and you don't, we should now be able to agree on exactly why this is and what is really there. This will leave no disagreement. However, without a scientific understanding of color, all we could do is each assert it looked a particular way to us.

If I judge something to be good and you judge something to be bad, with a full scientific understanding of exactly what we're both doing, there should similarly be nothing left to argue over. I will know precisely why you describe it as "bad" and you will know precisely why I describe it as "good" and we should be able to agree on what the actual facts are in totality.

[JoelKatz]

I guess that answers my earlier question. :)
Harris specifically addresses and denies this interpretation. That is, he says that science would investigate why it looks disjoint.
What I should have said is that Harris is being claimed to have argued that.

[Egg]

The point is that what we call moral questions can be formulated in ways that are useless and ways that are useful. Rather than trying to answer useless questions with science, it seems reasonable to ask our questions in ways that are useful instead. The list of questions I gave are examples of useful questions.

Useless in what way? I would think many people find use in having principles which they try to live by. Unless by "useless" you just mean "questions that science cannot answer" and solve the is/ought problem by dismissing ought questions as invalid in some way.

[Paulhoff]

So, where do these morals come from now, that is what I like to know. Some old farts reading some old books based on some old religious ideas that are clueless to the making of the real world?

Paul

:) :) :)

[JoelKatz]

Useless in what way? I would think many people find use in having principles which they try to live by. Unless by "useless" you just mean "questions that science cannot answer" and solve the is/ought problem by dismissing ought questions as invalid in some way.Well, science cannot answer the question of precisely which colors should fall under the term 'orange'. It's a useless question. Ultimately, what we choose to call 'orange' is arbitrary.

However, science can allow us to analyze precisely what frequencies of light something is emitting. When a person says "it may look orange, but what is it really", it may seem like they're asking the useless question science cannot answer. But what they really want to know is what's going on in the world that accounts for, explains, and makes rigorous the types of assessments humans do when they judge something to be orange.