Via Massimo Pigliucci, this gives us a nice overview of the fundamental objection to Sam Harris’ notion that moral questions can be decided by the empirical sciences.
Wes Alwan
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I enjoyed that video, thanx!
While I am not familiar with Harris’ work outside of being referenced to, I get his ideas from what I have read here. This area of ethics is interesting and so I thought I would question the primary attack by the robot.
The robot uses 2+2=4 as a fact not derived from science, but how can 2+2=4 be a fact first? Doesn’t the fact of 2+2=4 need to be defined empirically, as a scientist would verify it? In order to derive the definition of such a sum it needs to be physically defined with say, 2 stones being grouped with two more stones.
To be more stringent, any arithmetic is going to need to be grounded on some empirical fact before different arithmetic extrapolations can be posited. If we lived in a society that did not use arithmetic, there may be potential in mathematics, but no definition of what those facts about math are, at least not until someone derives the facts empirically and then extrapolates to higher degrees of arithmetic without using physical stones.
In this regard, science is a necessary function for deriving facts. To highlight my reasoning, imagine an integer along the x axis and ask “what is the width of its area?” It has no area until another integer is introduced and area is measured between. So the potential for these facts exist but without definition until empirically defined.
Can’t ethics be treated in the same way, a la Harris?
Glad you enjoyed that!
The distinction between empirical and mathematical truths is uncontroversial among philosophers.
2+2=4 cannot be derived from any empirical fact, notwithstanding the fact that it might never occur to us to assert it unless we had applied it in specific cases. For one, you can’t observe that 2+2=4 in the same way you might observe that an apple is resting on a table. The idea that 2+2=4 does not come in through the senses.
You might be tempted to think that 2+2=4 is a case of induction. So that in the same way you’ve noticed all swans are white, you notice that in cases where two stones are grouped with two stones you get four stones. But again, there are no cases in which you’ve “observed” that two stones grouped with two stones are four stones in the same way that you’ve noticed a swan is white. Consider the fact that “four” is not an observable property of any one of the stones, in the same way that smoothness is, and in the same way that white is a property of a swan. And consider the fact that the sense of sight tells you that a swan of white; which sense tells you that a group of stones has the property “four”?
This is not to say that mathematical knowledge isn’t grounded in the empirical in a broader sense — you might call it part of the structure of our experience (Kant). But truths about the structure of empirical experience are not themselves empirical truths (rather they are … get read to shiver … “transcendental”).
See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/
Thanks for the link to the philosophy of mathematics reading material. I hadn’t thought about the subject until recently studying limits at infinity in Calculus class.
From your response it seems quantity isn’t regarded as something one can understand through any sense, like sight. Does this mean that motion doesn’t count either? That would seem weird to not include understanding motion through the sense of sight, but what makes motion different from quantity since the motion is only quantities of movement?
Color makes sense to me in what you are saying though, since it is a direct apprehension of the senses via light waves jiggling the eye stuff.
See also: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/
That seems like saying that because I can’t observe a unicorn having a horn, unicorns having horns is not an empirical fact.
Of course unicorns have horns, that’s part of it’s definition, so it does not require empirical validation.
How would saying that 2+2=4 be any different then saying that the color green is green? In which case, it’s not a particularly helpful fact in and of itself. In fact, it seems almost like a shadow of a fact.
Of course
“The distinction between empirical and mathematical truths is uncontroversial among philosophers.”
So considering that the “philosophers” have already settled this matter I probably shouldn’t ask.
Ethan — you’re right; mathematical truths are often thought of as something like definitional truths. For the relationship between 2+2=4 and unicorns, google “fictionalism mathematics.”
To qualify the “uncontroversial,” you might be interested in philosophers who challenge traditional views about the nature of the distinction and to try to get us closer to an empirical grounding for mathematics: google Quine, Putnam, and John Stuart Mill on the nature of mathematical truth. In the end I think these widely criticized and problematic views are strongest when reduced to the assertion (as I mentioned above) that mathematics is grounded in the empirical in a broad sense; and regardless, they don’t imply that 2+2=4 into an empirical fact in the way that would provide you with a challenge to Pigliucci’s argument.
Ethan,
I’m sure Wes Alwan and you can handle this conversation just fine. But I would like to be edified by it too, so I’ll say a couple of things:
It seems like if we use something other than our senses to apprehend something, it’s status as an empirical fact is in jeopardy. In the term “empirical fact” we can attack either the former or latter word in the term.
Attacking “empirical”
Perhaps, for example, a fact is empirical or not based on whether we learn it primarily through the operation of the senses (even if the intellect is somehow involved) or primarily by the operation of the intellect (in which experience can still be involved).
Attacking “fact”
Perhaps if something is justified only by definition, then it’s not a fact (or if it is, it’s a fact merely about our opinions, and not about the world it purports to describe).
Thoughts?
All sounds good to me Jeffrey.
I’m just still confused about where something that started our in experience can later on become so removed that experience/empirical fact, no longer have standing?
Ethan,
Well, for now, (at least in this little sub-conversation to this subtopic) part of what we’re going is setting out the categories.
The fact that experience is needed to apprehend something doesn’t mean that it’s an empirical fact, IF an empirical fact refers to the way something must be apprehended (for example, if the senses can only apprehend empirical facts, and empirical facts can only be apprehended through the senses, then it must be that facts that are apprehended primarily through the intellect, like mathematical ones, are not empirical).
Now we could just say all facts are empirical and be done with it if you want, there’s concern over the way something is apprehended (in the history of the question). If you want to say that all experience is the same (1st vs. 3rd makes no difference to you), such that if experience is needed to apprehend something, then it’s an empirical fact, then OK, but you would be using the terms idiosyncratically.
Relevant to the discussion are arguments over whether the senses tell us everything we want to know, or whether some actual truths about existence can be apprehended primarily through the intellect. As Wes was saying, some philosophers have argued that mathematical is empirical in a broad sense.
BUT, they haven’t said, to my knowledge, that rationalistic experience cannot be distinct from empirical experience. Now, I realize empiricism is often associated with experience (without specifying kinds of experience), but rationalists are not burdened with the silly position that babies are born immediately knowing that 2+2=4. Nor are empiricists burdened with the silly position that any kind of experience is sufficient to acquire justified true belief. Divining that 2+2=4 is not the same as finding out that smoking causes cancer.
If you want to say that everything justified true belief must be apprehended by our senses, (or more broadly, by the methods of the natural sciences) well, you may be right, but you would be saying something controversial, I think. If you want to say that perhaps there are things beyond our grasp, but that if something is in our grasp, it is by definition empirical, then I think that would be less controversial, but not totally obvious either.
In the split between rationalists and empiricists, they could, in principle at least, agree on the nature of reality (both sides could be monists, for example) but disagree on whether the senses were sufficient to apprehend all parts/entities in this reality (rationalism v. empiricism can be involved in much larger disputes as well, but for now, this formulation is enough).
The question is if *sensory* experience is sufficient (and here we can’t define sensory experience however we want). I guess we could debate whether mathematics is science (I’m not so interested in doing this, and I bet you aren’t either) but it would be a stretch to call it an *empirical* science. I think math is hard, and I respect people who can do it at a high level, but it’s deductive/conceptual/imaginative. You don’t find out stuff by running experiments, even if scribbling long equations on a chalk board (or whatever the hell they do) is a kind of experience.
I guess I want to say, to stop beating around the bush, that if we simply define every fact as an empirical one, we’re changing the subject (I’m not totally opposed to defining all facts this way eventually, but only after we’ve had the whole conversation). See empiricism has traditionally referred to the methods of the natural sciences (and maybe more recently can include the social sciences). If you want to expand the range of experience that can be included, I’m all for that, but beware that some have even tried to latch onto Williams James’ discussion of “radical empiricism” to use empiricism broadly to include religious experience. Thing is, that’s not what people usually mean by empiricism.
The reason all this is relevant (though a better writer could have said it all more succinctly) is that we don’t need to consult a scientist to find out if 2+2=4 is true. There’s no experiment that proves or disproves it. IF such beliefs are justified and true, then they aren’t so by virtue of an experiment, and hence are not an empirical facts. Now the option to deny that such statements are true (or at least to deny that they could be justified by rationalistic means) is available.
You’ve said in another thread that Sam Harris has side-stepped meta-ethical issues. If that’s true, that means that Sam Harris is simply saying moral facts are a kind of descriptive fact, and we could ask, say, a cognitive scientist which neuron firing causes a moral sentiment like “murder is wrong.” I had thought Harris was saying much more than that, even going so far as to challenge the historical descriptive/normative distinction. (Hilary Putnam, in his book, Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, nimbly points out that normative considerations interplay with descriptive enterprises much more than is commonly appreciated, but he’s stopped well short of where I, and many others, see Harris going). But we’ll get to that more in the lower thread, I suppose.
For now, the key thing to work out is whether you believe 2+2=4 is true, and if so, why.
Blasts, it didn’t look that long when I typed it. Sorry.
Ethan,
I know I should just be quite and let you chat with Wes Alwan, and I see that you’ve answered the question in my last sentence (of the very long post) in the other thread we’ve got going, but I can’t resist saying,
People don’t believe that 2+2=4 because of their sensory experience. Now, I know some tutored philosophers and scientists, if the day ever comes when such mathematical facts are in the sole province of the natural sciences (hard to imagine, but hypothetically, let’s say) then tutored thinkers will say the reason they believe 2+2=4 is because of the experimental evidence in favor of the proposition. But between you and me, I think they’ll be putting us on (they’ll be displaying their intellectual piety, rather than their gut view, in my humble opinion). I suppose next they’ll tell us that the reason they think their dog is alive is because the vet scientist told them so.
For the time being, suffice it to say that people believe 2+2=4 just because it seems a priori true. In fact they believe this so strongly that it’s difficult to get people to understand how anyone could even challenge it (in other words, how anyone could be an mathematical anti-realist). They’ll simply show you a pencil to show you the existence of “1”. This shows, I think, that people are, in their untutored condition, rationalists when it comes to mathematical entities.
Contrast this with the way people view unicorns. They understand what it means for a unicorn to have necessary features, but they won’t object when you question the existence of unicorns. So definitional truths may be declared true because we’ve decided that the fictional entity has such imaginative features (but people don’t confuse this kind of existence with real existence).
We could ask people if there’s any difference between saying 2+2=5 on the one hand with unicorns have two horns, on the other. People may grasp for definitional justifications in both cases, but if we tease out their beliefs further (by saying on the one hand, “unicorns don’t exist,” and “numbers don’t exist,” on the other) then I think we’ll see that something being definitionally true is not enough for something to be real, in people’s minds.
I think the fact that you are willing to expose your rationalistically justified beliefs to future empirical dis-confirmation indicates that you have strong intellectual principles, but for the time being, I think we shouldn’t skate past the state of affairs: you believe in some truths that you didn’t gain just through the operation of your senses, and that haven’t been confirmed (or disconfirmed) by the natural sciences. Presumably, since you believe in these things, then you believe you are justified in believing these things. If you are justified in believing in these things but didn’t get them merely from sensory experience or from information gained from natural science, then you are a rationalist, at least in a moderate form (which isn’t inconsistent with certain forms of empiricism). That said, I’m going to step back from the computer and I’ll be back in a couple of days, if you can wait that long on Sam Harris.
That was a lot.
I’ll pick this part:
“The reason all this is relevant (though a better writer could have said it all more succinctly) is that we don’t need to consult a scientist to find out if 2+2=4 is true.”
Who/what would you consult then?
“For now, the key thing to work out is whether you believe 2+2=4 is true, and if so, why.”
I do believe it true. I agree that I can know this formalistically. That is, I know some concepts through experience, and these concepts then allow me to know this mathematical truth.
Yes, I’d be fine with saying that certain things are non-empirical, in that they are not directly gained through empiricism (only indirectly) even though they can be defeated by further information gained through empiricism. In that way, I see such truths as both predicated on some empirical foundation, and subject to empirical denials.
As far as me misunderstanding the definition of empirical. That probably is. Though I think the confusion probably could be found in what each of us means by the “senses” or “sensory” information.
I would treat “intelligence,” as a sense. A person “feeling” and object is a certain event, but I’m not sure a person thinking of something is so very different. But revolve at their core around the interactions of molecules and particles. So me feeling the warmth of the fire, similar in some essential ways, to me recalling my multiplication tables or deducing a third fact from two previous ones.
Gosh, the typos are getting worse, sorry.
Ethan,
I don’t mean to set the rules arbitrarily, but not only is it that the tradition has understood words like “sensory” in certain ways important, but I humbly submit what controls is the way in which the words will apply to the video. If intelligence in the broad sense is a sense as you consider it (which is certainly sensible enough at first glance, if you ask me), then we’re still left with whether this is the kind of evidence the natural sciences uses as determinative. If it’s not, (I don’t think it is, as empirical science uses experimental results, at least in theory) then there are objective facts that are not determined by the natural sciences, like the video said.
I happen to think that if something is true, and we apprehend it, ultimately, we’re apprehending everything in roughly the same way, even if there are interesting cognitive distinctions to make. And I believe that the reality that we apprehend, even if there are interesting seeming levels, is all the same reality.
Nevertheless the distinctions we make and the names we give them are useful, and in this case useful because the important issue is whether we can apprehend objective facts in a way that can’t be wholly explained by reference to our “sensory” experience, or that natural science has demonstrated through experiment for us.
That said, I’ll take the opportunity to say something I said in our other thread, because I think it belongs up here:
Though I enjoyed it and agreed with it, I think the video could be improved a bit. What I mean is, simply understanding arithmetic doesn’t make it true. If it did, then there would be no distinction between “2+2=4” and “unicorns have one horn.” Certainly the example of unicorns doesn’t contradict Sam Harris.
So, math and unicorns are distinct if math is true. If not, then though there may be some differences, we’re only dealing with self-imposed definitions in both cases. If we’re merely talking about our self-imposed definitions, then we may not be dealing with objective *facts* in the right way (meaning, in order to count as analogous in the relevant way, we must be talking about mathematical objects that are true not only about our own self-posed definitions, like with unicorns)
“This is not to say that mathematical knowledge isn’t grounded in the empirical in a broader sense — you might call it part of the structure of our experience (Kant). But truths about the structure of empirical experience are not themselves empirical truths (rather they are … get read to shiver … “transcendental”). ”
Sorry Wes, didn’t see that first time around. But now I’m really troubled. If the grounding is still in the empirical, what’s to stop a different grounding from different experiences from changing the resulting structures or formalistic truths?
If these truths are broadly grounded in our experience of facts about the world, why would those same facts not have some reverberating effect later on, up the reasoning chain?
I know the feeling. And to think, this site makes us give our name! I’ll be back to get more specific on Harris. In the meantime, I’m sure and Wes Alwan can shed light on the subject.
It’s somewhat misleading to use the term “empirical fact”. We do not experience “facts” in the empirical world – we simply have sensory experience. The concept of a ‘fact’ comes into play when we make a judgement about our experience.
So when we make a judgement that ‘x is y’, if we can appeal to the empirical world to determine if it is true or not (or holds/obtains – pick your terminology), then we say it is an ’empirical fact’. Science is just a systematic way of collecting these kinds of facts about the empirical world and creating new judgements about them.
For example:
1. There is a glass of water on my desk
2. All apples are red
3. The earth revolves around the sun
4. f = ma
In the above cases, we can use either our direct sensory experience or construct experiements using empirical objects to determine whether the statements are true or false. Note that #3 is actually contrary to direct experience and #4 is not something that anyone every experiences directly. However, they all require recourse to the empirical world for verification in one way shape or form.
Now let’s think about whether there are judgements that don’t require recourse to the empirical world. Sticking with the working example, ‘2+2=4’.
* Is it like #1 above? Probably not. There is no 2+2-4 ‘thing’ I can look at and see is true or false.
* Is it like #2? Again, probably not. I’m not going to verify that it’s true by looking at all of the ‘2s’ in the world and seeing if, when paired together, they make ‘4s’.
* #3 & #4 both require resource to mathematics to create the “meta” judgement about the empirical world. In other words, the reasoning chain from empirical experience to abstract ‘law of nature’ presupposes the validity of mathematics.
So the question is, can you conceive of an empirical experiment or situation, where you could test or prove that 2+2=4? We certainly can imagine the empirical world differed in such a way that physical laws were different or physical constants had different values, but can we imagine the empirical world differing in such a way that 2+2 did not equal 4?
Most philosophers think not and that is what Wes meant earlier in the thread. Mathematics is part of the structure of our experience – we experience the world as objects we can number and measure, but ‘number’ is not an empirical thing in the world like dogs, trees and debit cards. If it were, we’d be able to either have a sensory experience of it or be able to reason to it from empirical objects without using it.
Thanks Seth, this was a clear and detailed explanation. I get why it works for the robot to use the 2+2=4 example now.
Thanks Seth. But that still doesn’t deal with the formalistic critique, that you can’t observe unicorns or imagine a world in which they didn’t have horns because that would be self refuting.
“So the question is, can you conceive of an empirical experiment or situation, where you could test or prove that 2+2=4?”
I think part of the problem is assuming that the experiment or situation must come second. The whole point for creating 2+2=4 is that it mirrors prior experience.
you used the example of F=MA. Why would 2+2=4 be any different?
I think of all the children who learn to do math by first counting their fingers. Or the number of students who add two numbers together by counting. It hardly seems self evident to them.
I’m still unclear on why no one thinks the mathematical abstraction isn’t observable or knowable through observation.
No one is saying that 2+2=4 is a priori or self evident correct? So if that’s the case, why must it not be dependent, at some point, on actual experience?
Is it plausible that a human being devoid of all sensory input and having no ability to connect with the external world would be able to learn, or even recognize the above mathematical concept?
F=MA assumes that we’ve seen bodies move and have mass. But we take 2+2 to equal 4 in spite of the fact that no one has ever observed (or, if Heisenberg’s principle is valid, will observe) a thing in motion or not in motion that is perfectly identical to itself, which would have to be the case for the (mathematical) statement to be accepted as “true.”
Philosophers frequently say that math in this sense is a priori in the sense that it is self-evident to (or cannot be denied by) beings that can be said to be conscious of the fact that they exist. Very young children and most other animals (none of which we would deny have sense impressions of the world) are not typically considered to be self-conscious in this way.
And if mathematics is just an abstraction of experience, changes in experience would change the mathematics.
At the same time, if 2+2=4 is out of the realm of experience, how can it have any power to inform us outside it’s formalistic consequences, which are, by definition, fixed and limited to mathematics?
OK. Maybe math can’t fully “inform us outside of its formalistic consequences.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not a part of how we–as opposed to other animals who observe their digits–structure our world (that is, all of our experiences understood to us as experiences).
Every time you try to speak to someone, you imply the validity of, at least, the principle of non-contradiction (approx.: A cannot be both A and not-A), which follows from the law of identity (A is A). This is the same thing that allows us to believe in the necessary validity of mathematics (and, I would argue, the Golden Rule.) But, as far as I know, nobody has ever proved through empirical experiments that any of this stuff “exists” somewhere outside of our minds. It all just has to be taken as true or else we have stopped being able to communicate. (Which, I think, we want to do: try, for example, to see if you can make sense of the statements, “This sentence is false” or “I want to be wrong.”)
The point is not that we knew this stuff before we were born or before we had experiences. The point, which is getting lost, is that it is not plausible to suggest that scientific discoveries in any recognizable sense are going to change all of this up beyond recognition.
When one gets to the bottom of it, “right and wrong” is, very frequently, a matter of invoking the principle of non-contradiction to the extent that we can apply it to ourselves and others. Try to think of how a “decent” person behaves: he or she tries to obey the same rules he or she would have others obey. That notion has been around for a while in its essential form, and the whole point of this debate has been to wonder whether it really makes sense to point to the trajectory of natural scientific discovery and say the exact same thing is happening in both cases.
I really don’t think we can be honest with ourselves and maintain the identity of scientific discovery (as the intellectually rigorous quest for something like an objectively valid description of the natural world, i.e., seeking principles) and whatever it is that teaches us to be moral (or committed to being decent, upright people, i.e., out of principle).
If we assert that they amount to the same thing because they both involve some kind of experience of the world, all we do is overlook an obvious difference.
Brian,
I think that’s good stuff, and you get at some of what I only awkwardly could.
But I would like to ask if you could humor me on something. See, this discussion has been going on for a while, and it would be nice if it started to bear fruit. I suspect that sometime after the beginning of the argument, things start to get glossed over and the argument never reaches a reasonable stopping point because of it.
OK, so, when discussing morality and science, you say,
“If we assert that they amount to the same thing because they both involve some kind of experience of the world, all we do is overlook an obvious difference,”
I wonder if you could trace that back to the original argument a bit more? See I think Ethan is of the view that Sam Harris is saying that experience in the broadest possible sense is what is needed to learn things, whether those things are reasoned to just by sensory experience, or by rational deduction/intuition, like with numbers. So to address that, we have to either show that Sam Harris means more than that, or that even if that’s all he means, he needs to do more to justify his overall thesis.
I don’t mean to delegate, it’s just that I’ve been trying (see the thread under Simon Blackburn vs. Sam Harris) unsuccessfully. It seems like things are getting stalled, and I’m getting no where. You seem more articulate than I am about some of this stuff, so I thought maybe if I pointed back in the direction of the original argument, it might help something stick.
Incidentally, I think Ethan would want to say that he doesn’t need scientific discovery to amount to the *exact* same thing as whatever teaches us to be moral, only that there’s enough similarity to show that Harris is right in clumping them together. So if they’re different at all, what the salient difference that justifies you denying that Harris can legitimately clump them together (or Ethan Gach’s Harris, at least)?
I guess my question for Ethan comes down to what he thinks are the relevant implications of the main thesis being argued about by Harris / Blackburn.
If he thinks Sam Harris is just saying that we need experience to learn things, this is primarily an epistemological controversy, and it makes sense to delve into the details of what philosophers mean when they say a type of knowledge is better described as discovered through some particular experience (like when I say something is red and not blue) or as something our minds impose on all experiences (like when I say I have been the same person my whole life).
But a conversation like this doesn’t need to be titled “can science teach us right from wrong.” It seems to get away from what folks like Harris and Blackburn seem to be arguing about. Maybe nobody is going so far as to say no differences between scientific discovery and moral learning exist, but it seems like the clumping together in question would have to go significantly beyond the basic epistemological quesion to justify talking about it in the terms Harris and Blackburn have chosen.
The salient difference I had in mind is just the difference we immediately perceive between the motives of a scientist qua scientist and those of a moral actor qua moral actor. I think this is the difference we have to confront if we want to say something concrete about the relationship between something we call science and something we call morality.
To take us back to the basics, as Jeffrey was requesting.
My take is that Harris is saying all facts about the world are known through experience. “Science,” in it’s most general sense, appears to be our best way of getting at facts about the world. Secular reason, empiricism, experience taken with a grain of salt, etc.
If that is the case, then morality is a particular group of those facts, or it is based on groups of those facts. In either case, if it holds, science as one of our best means of discovering those facts would have at the very least, SOME say in matters of morality, even if science in its strict sense doesn’t have the “last” word.
So while the topic is, “can science teach us right from wrong,” the controversy is at its roots, an epistemological one. With the main issues at hand being, at least to me, is whether or not morality is based on facts about the world, and by what means are those facts about the world derivable (for instance, if their are the two sets of facts that Blackburn points to, then surely science would be cut off from deciding those epistemological questions).
Ethan,
I won’t address the post you address specifically to Brain, but I’ll jump in here and say that answering moral questions is a matter of justification, not mere explanation.
Now, Harris isn’t merely saying that science should have SOME say in morality, because that’s consistent with science not being able to answer any moral questions. Why you have interpreted Harris’ thesis to be as moderate as you have, I really can’t say.
Moving on, morality is unquestionably based on facts about this world. That gets us nowhere. We want to answers moral questions, so we need justifications for those that disagree with us, not just more facts.
And, while we have experience before we develop views like 2+2=4 or “murder is wrong,” as it’s been eloquently pointed out, we don’t reason to those beliefs from our observation of objects in the world. In other words, our mathematical and moral beliefs are not justified empirically. You can insist that these views could be empirically disconfirmed in the future if you want, but you’re ignoring the important fact that we don’t derive these views from anything other than themselves; they are directly apprehended, either rationalistically or sentimentally (if we’re skeptics about math and/or morality, then the word “apprehended” is misapplied, but that’s good enough for now).
As for whether we apprehend these things differently (objects empirically, mathematics rationalistically, morality sentimentally or perhaps also rationalistically) then that *might* be that there are different kinds of facts out in the world, but it might not; it could simply be that our cognitive apparatus is what it is, aside from the world’s structure (which leaves open the possibility for skepticism or dualism).
In other words, Ethan,
I grant that morality, as a whole phenomena, is based on facts about this world that we can experience. But moral *justification* is what’s in question if Harris can deliver on what he promises. The kind of justification in question is a very particular part of the whole phenomena of morality, (moral discourse, moral belief, etc). So simply asking if morality is general is a result of *some* sort of fact in the world misses the point. Justification is not fully encapsulated by explaining the phenomena the in way you want to explain it. If, for example, an anthropologist were to explain the religious beliefs of an aboriginal tribe, that would not justify them. Sam Harris is saying that we can be *right* about the answers to moral questions we can get from science. This, then, is about justification, not merely about explanation. He’s also asserted that moral relativism is no threat and that we can be right about condemning actions even of people who ascribe to different moral paradigms than we do. That’s a lot to promise.
Would you say that science uses justification for it’s beliefs? And in what ways would moral justification and factual justification differ?
“The salient difference I had in mind is just the difference we immediately perceive between the motives of a scientist qua scientist and those of a moral actor qua moral actor.”
Brian, could you elaborate on what that difference is more? For instance, if I don’t immediately perceive a difference, what would you say it is? It seems like you’re saying that the difference between scientist and moralist is the difference between scientist and moralist. That is the very difference Harris is trying to collapse. So just stating that there is one doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. Though you probably mean to do more than that and I’m just misunderstanding/misinterpreting what you wrote. Please help me clear up my confusion.
Ethan,
You asked,
OK, well, I want to say first off that there may be sophisticated Wittgenstienian and/or confirmational holist ways of showing that we use normative standards to police all our forms of discourse, and they’re all on similar footing because of it. That option is not available to you, because Sam Harris, and the New Atheist movement, are a more scientistic movement than that, and hold a much more common sense realist view of reality. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, let’s shelve it, I doubt we’ll have to come back to it anyway.
So, moving on, if someone disagrees with the facts of evolution, we show them the evidence. On the other hand, when someone disagrees with what we assert are moral facts, what do we show them?
Remember, people can stubbornly refuse to believe just about anything, that’s not the issue. I mean, I could stubbornly refuse to believe that even a very well defined and precise Dungeons and Dragons game is anything other than fantasy, but that’s no analogy to those who stubbornly refuses to believe evolution.
The difference is that in the case of evolution, there’s something to adjudicate the dispute.
Now, I can’t just sit back and defend myself all day. You have to do it too. Tell me what you would say to a person that disagrees that evolution is true, and then what you would say to a person that said murdering women who have been raped is morally permissible, and show me how the evidence you use in each case is similar to the other. Hint: I don’t believe you can do it.
How would I do it?
To the person that doesn’t believe in evolution:
Here, look at these facts.
To the person that doesn’t believe daughters should be comforted after they’re raped, but instead should be killed:
I think you’re a horrible person.
Surely you see the difference, right? The first instance, the scientific one, refers to evidence that goes beyond our selves, and beyond our language game (or at least claims to), the second doesn’t refer to any reductive evidence, and expects the murderous man to understand the self-evident nature of his wrongness. When he doesn’t, we just call him names. True enough we do the same to the people that don’t believe in evolution, but we refer outside our selves and ostensibly outside our cultural standards by pointing to scientific evidence. We don’t use evidence the same way in morality, even if we believe we’re 100% right in our judgments. Referring to brain states, cultural opinions, and the like doesn’t capture everything we mean when we say throwing battery acid in the face of little girls is wrong.
Now, your turn.
I think this is a central issue in our dispute.
“The difference is that in the case of evolution, there’s something to adjudicate the dispute.”
I still don’t see what that something is. The whole point is, if someone remains unconvinced, we leave them alone and they will probably be ignored in the future.
But even scientific evidence can’t be justified or compelling in the way you say. And if you allow that it is, simply saying that moral belief is different, because, well, people disagree, well the whole point is that in science, we accept certain fundamental values and go on our way. Now why you are willing to accept certain fundamental values in science, but not with regard to morality, is what confuses me. Both are just as vacuous. We just set the floor with regard to science, arbitrarily adhering to values of “objectivity,” “evidence,” and things like “non-contradiction.”
Now perhaps you think the whole project of science is illigitimate. A perfectly fine position to take. But unless you do so, I don’t see how you can also maintain that any sphere of morality must remain bogged down with meta-ethical questions.
“the second doesn’t refer to any reductive evidence, and expects the murderous man to understand the self-evident nature of his wrongness.”
Well yes, ultimately scientific argument/explanation is irreducible as well.
Ethan Gach,
Not only will those that remain unconvinced be ignored, but they will be ***wrong***
Now, it may be that there is another conversation (for another day) about whether there is ample reason to think of radical skeptics as ***wrong*** but suffice it say for the time being, we DO take our overwhelming sensory experience day to day to count as evidence to justify a warranted belief in an external world. Science is the discipline that studies and reports back to us on the nature of this external world, and so we rack up our warranted beliefs. We can all want it to turn out that Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is false, but the results can frustrate our desires. If someone denies Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, we can look to the external world, and to the discipline that studies the external world. They don’t just make stuff up, they find out stuff that is the way it is whether we want it to be that way or not. *Maybe* it’s all wrong, but that’s neither here nor there; the point is that there is something robust outside of our collective desires; something with it’s own laws and behaviors, that will behave as it will in ways we can only sit back and try to understand. You really think that’s analogous to morality? Well look, this is on you now, why do you think the above is like moral discourse and the authority we place on one another? What do we appeal to that is analogous to scientific evidence, when we try to convince someone of a moral position, or what we condemn someone for think it’s right to kill their daughters that have been raped? Please, I’m anxious for an answer.
And I’m not willing to accept fundamental values in science; I don’t know what would motivate you to think otherwise.. I am, however, willing to accept instrumental value in science. I don’t believe that everyone deciding that something is true is a matter of fundamental value (at least not in a realist sense, which is what Sam Harris is shooing for). We don’t just accept fundamental value willy-nilly. I think what you’re getting at is that we take the external world to be true, indubitably. We defer to our overwhelming instinct that there are real objects in the world, and they behave according to predicable and repeatable ways. There’s nothing moral there. Now, maybe we’re wrong to do so, but that’s ***what we do***. Sam Harris can’t just say that we should defer to all our instincts and remain an advocate of scientism. There is a view in the history of philosophy that we all just police our discourse and hold each other accountable, so morality, law, science, etc are all just normative practices at the end of the day, but that’s not realism, and that’s not enough to refute moral relativism, OK?
As for whether scientific argument/explanation is reducible, remember, you are defending Sam Harris here, so you can’t just impose any view to make his thesis consistent. What do you mean by irreducible, and are you sure Sam Harris agrees? I think at the very least I’m entitled prima facie surprise that the reductionist New Atheists think scientific explanation is irreducible.
I still think you should demonstrate how you would convince someone that killing their daughter is wrong, and then convince someone that evolution is true, and then show how it’s ultimately the same kind of evidence being appealed to.
I meant, at the beginning to my last post, that those that are unconvinced *of evolution* will be wrong. We’ll say the same thing about those that kill their daughters. But what you haven’t grappled with is *why* we consider each case of mistake to be wrong, and what kinds of things we would say about and to such people and their arguments.
“As for whether scientific argument/explanation is reducible, remember, you are defending Sam Harris here, so you can’t just impose any view to make his thesis consistent. What do you mean by irreducible, and are you sure Sam Harris agrees? I think at the very least I’m entitled prima facie surprise that the reductionist New Atheists think scientific explanation is irreducible. ”
He says it in the debate. Something like, even science can’t justify itself, we do it using rules about identity, non-contradiction, evidence, parsimony, etc. but there is no reason why any of those should be, but we accept them for whatever reason (maybe because they allow us to do things, etc.)
And of course, any moral philosophy is the same. But why should flourishing be preferred? Such a position is a non-starter…I mean, where do you go from there? The question is at the brink of an abyss from which one can not recover. Harris analogizes to this as the “medical” example. Is medicine justified in seeking to alleviate pain/extend life? I don’t know that anyone could give a satisfactory response, outside of something like, well we have this think called medicine which is, by definition, about extending life/alleviating pain.
And so we have this thing, science, which is by definition about gaining knowledge about the world.
And we have this thing called morality which is by definition about flourishing/suffering, because any idea of morality outside of those things becomes needlessly confusing.
What does it mean to live a good life? I’m not sure exactly, but I think we could get somewhere on that question, no matter what your culture is.
What does it mean to live “the right” life? That is a question that I can’t see the bottom of.
Would you disagree, if I said that part of the problem seems to me, to be the conflation of rightness and goodness? I use the terms colloquially as well, unaware of their more precise philosophical definitions, so correct me where you see fit if it is actually I doing the conflating.
At least in the following demonstration, if goodness is likened to health, we can say, we’ve picked x direction and we’re moving in that way. At this point someone would say, well why have you picked that direction. And there might be some preliminary reasons, some intuitions, etc. but ultimately we’d have to say that it’s somewhat arbitrary. We just said, hey, health good, let’s be healthy, and then met weaker civilizations and tried to force this direction on them. But then at some point, someone said hey, what if these weaker civilizations don’t want to be healthy, you have arbitrarily chosen that goal yourself, and forced it on them. And then it all get’s very complicated.
And Harris admits this, which is why he posits his rather weak thesis, that there are x number of peaks or high points or directions to move in, that will be more “moral” because they lead to some optimization of a general field of values, the primary value being positive conscious experience. But what the hell might that be. Well it might be something like brainstate x. And we could delve more into the particulars if you like, but I think you’re more interested in the fact categories and meta issue.
So on that, ethics, or the science of morals, would like any other science, be predicated on certain base values that are not themselves given any strong justification.
And it must be a science, because the universe consists of facts, including us, and if you can’t get an ought from an is, than you can’t get oughts, because there only exist is’s, but if you can get oughts from is’s, then while extremely interesting, the distinction seems more subtle and not the one you want to make…well?
“I still think you should demonstrate how you would convince someone that killing their daughter is wrong, and then convince someone that evolution is true, and then show how it’s ultimately the same kind of evidence being appealed to.”
Killing daughter wrong.
-why?
Because you don’t actually enjoy it.
-Yes I do.
Then because she is a conscious creature, and to not respect one conscious creature is to not respect any, and so in allowing you to not respect her, I/you are undermining me/yourself.
-Lies!
She is a conscious creature. You are a conscious creature. You would not like to be killed, by killing her you are killing yourself.
-What are you talking about?
Would you like to kill yourself.
-Sure.
Then you could have done that first and saved her the trouble.
-But then I couldn’t have killed her.
Exactly.
-But I like death.
But involuntary death is bad.
-Why?
Because it is undesirable.
-I don’t think so.
The earth orbits the sun.
-How do you know?
I checked through a telescope. I saw the movement of the other planets and their positions don’t make sense unless it is the earth orbiting the sun.
-What if your telescope was faulty.
I used four others and got the same results.
-Have you tested every telescope?
No
-Then you have no proof.
Yes, but it seems likely.
-Why?
Because for the last ten years I have observed the planets’ positions at various times, and made out a discernible, predictable pattern.
-How do you know that the night sky isn’t fake, -and that there are no planets, or that there are -planets, but they actually are behind the -celestial facade watching the sun as it orbits us?
I have no evidence to believe it is fake.
-why should evidence matter?
Because it has allowed me to make other useful predictions.
-Why should that justify the use of evidence? -Why shouldn’t we trust the non-evidence?
Because by definition that would be a mis use of the word evidence.
-So? Why can’t I misuse it?
Because then it would mean itself and not itself, and that would make it a useless term.
-Why does it matter if the term is useless?
Now I know both of these examples seem ridiculous to you. My question is why does the latter seem more ridiculous than the former?
Ethan,
I only have a minute this morning, so I’ll just say in passing (leaving the rest for later) that asserting that flourishing is *the* definition of morality “because any idea of morality outside of those things is needlessly confusing” is not a legitimate method for defining morality.
Morality is what it is, whether you find it needlessly confusing or not. If people commonly presume functions and/or definitions of morality that you find needlessly confusing, that’s a call for you to be an error theorist (a kind of moral skepticism, no realism). Now, if you think part of what people commonly mean makes sense, and part doesn’t, then the call is for you is to have no meta-ethical theory, but instead have only a normative theory, combining virtue ethics and utilitarianism or to be at least a partial error theorist. But see when one is tying to appeal to the broadest number of intellectual laymen as possible, and overcome the nihilism and moral relativism that atheism has popularly been associated with in the past, then it’s in your interest to gloss over any morally counterintuitive implications of your thesis.
Saying that you can sift through appropriate definitions because many are “needlessly confusing” is not the way to define things. That’s an idiosyncratic personal desire imposed on the sway words are used. If Sam Harris wants to say that here’s here to sharpen up our sloppy usage of moral tersm, so be it, but he’s not saying that. Instead, he’s saying that he can show us that we can have everything we want out of morality through the language of scientific justification.
Now, I seriously do feel like I’m chasing my own tail, and that we’re not taking stock of the argument as we’re going along. So, please indulge me, so I don’t fear that there are all these concerns you can pull out whenever you want. Earlier, you said your view was that Sam Harris had side-stepped meta-ethics. I denied this. Now, we’re here talking about the justification of moral beliefs. If that’s not meta-ethics, then nothing is. So, you recognize that Harris has not side-stepped meta-ethics, right?
Also, having a bottom to justification is not the same thing as something being irreducible. I can see how the confusion arose though. Even scientific justification has to stop somewhere. If that’s all you were saying, fine. But for whatever it’s worth, naturalistic-reductionism is the favored method of the New Atheists (Sam Harris actually said moral facts are “reducible” in his talk) . This is an *ontological* position about the world. The fact that justifications have to stop somewhere is an *epistemological* issue. So we may be talking past each other a bit here.
That said, I agree that we are honing in on the central issue between us, but I think the issue of the definition of morality is much closer to the target.
And on meta-ethics, I don’t mean to be a schoolmarm, it’s just that we don’t know each other outside this exchange, and when intermediate points are made without dealing with each one, one or both parties may start to feel like the goal-posts are being moved around on them. So I would just like to know that we agree that as we’re talking about moral justification, we’re talking about meta-ethics, and so Sam Harris actually hasn’t side-stepped meta-ethics, even though he said he’s not saying anything controversial.
“Morality is what it is, whether you find it needlessly confusing or not.”
I didn’t mean to impose my def. of morality. Pick any def. you want.
What I really meant was that things occur in the world, and the words come after, so rather than say, well what is morality, cause everyone has different names for it, I’m saying, well if what you mean by one word is different then what I mean, clearly we are doing one another a disservice by pretending we both mean to use the same word. Isn’t that the pitfall with talking about truth? And then searching for the word rather than the phenomenon?
So if everyone wants to claim morality for themselves, fine, perhaps instead of calling it a science of morality we might call it a science of human flourishing. And you might say that leaves something out of the idea of what morality is, and I would agree, but whatever that other thing is, that perhaps encompasses but surpasses just human flourishing for some people, needs to be separated out and unpacked.
You obviously know much more about knowledge structures of contemporary philosophy, so I’ll ask, is there a meta-science of science? That seeks to evaluate different versions of science, or compare sciences with different underlying values?
Ethan Gach,
Call it a science of human flourishing. That would be fine with me. I trust that you would define it precisely and admit that it’s not everything we mean when we talk about, or want from, morality. Sam Harris could learn a thing or two from you. As it is, I would expect you to stop Harris from saying things like “well if morality isn’t flourishing, what is it?!” And by that I don’t mean that there is any serious possibility that morality is simply a can of beans. More on that at the end of this note. For now…
Analytic philosophy is the leading candidate for meta-science, but it’s not itself a science. Epistemology/philosophy of science is quintessentially analytic, and it evaluates whether correspondence to the external world is what we’re after in science, or coherence, or simply pragmatic manipulation of our surroundings, etc.
Onto more important matters, there is something that those influenced by Harris seem to be in the habit of doing, that I find troubling, and that’s to overestimate the importance winning meta-ethical arguments by simply referring to definitions. But clearly that’s not everything. I haven’t been able to get a good answer to this question, but I holding out hope anyway, so here goes:
If someone is using a different definition, then it seems like we’re just talking past each other, but clearly we’re not always talking past each other when we disagree. For example,
View A) Morality is what’s praiseworthy, what’s condemnable, what’s to be avoided, what’s to be cultivated, etc. What’s most moral is for fathers to kill their daughters when their daughters are raped, because she has brought dishonor on the family for such a thing.
View B) Morality is what’s praiseworthy, what’s condemnable, what’s to be avoided, what’s to be cultivated, etc. What’s most moral is for fathers to love and care for their daughters, especially when they’re going through tragic and trying times, of which being raped most certainly applies.
View C) Morality is how much torque tires get when the car they’re attached to drives uphill.
Now, do you believe that all three of these are equally different? Meaning, do you think
1 – Views A and B are using similar definitions, but chose to apply their praise to different things, while View C is using an odd definition
or
2 – Views A, B, and C are all just using different definitions, and therefore are not in direct disagreement.
??? Call me curious…
Incidentally, once the goal of truth is fixed for what the purpose of a venture is, you’re well of your way of adjudicating between better or worse ways of reaching your goal. Whether the goal is itself a good one, well, that’s another matter altogether.
When we say whether scientific understandings are better or worse than some other, that’s “better” or “worse” in relation to the original goal. We can quibble over what the original goal should be, but there’s no fact of the matter that we can naturalistically discover that would decide for us. We can even quibble over what the goal actually *is* as people sometimes do.
So, I’m trying to answer your question about fundamental value, and do it thoroughly, because I don’t think we’re using the term in the same way. I don’t believe science has *intrinsic* value, and intrinsic is a word that I think approaches the meaning of fundamental. But truth is fundamentally desired in science, if you ask me. And so once that happens, we can say which propositions or theoretical systems achieve that goal (and there does seem to be an external world up to the job of telling us actual information). When people disagree, they are either using their words weirdly, (for example, maybe they mean falsity when they say truth) or maybe they actually have a direct disagreement. In which case they are either right or wrong.
Speaking of direct disagreement and/or using words weirdly, I am anxious to hear your views on my question in my last post.
1 and 2!!
Haha but in all seriousness, I agree, number 1 is what is most often meant. Though I think if we have fundamentally opposed definitions for morality we must be using the word improperly. For instance, if the definition you give is reduced, and each person had to fill in for their definition, the actual things that were praiseworthy, condemnable, etc. and then compared those, surely we could not think they are using a word correctly if in doing so they refer to diametrically opposed things, i.e. morality means loving your sister vs. morality means killing your sister.
That said, I understand that we really mean by morality is, what different people think is praiseworthy, condemnable, etc.
That is, we think of morality in terms of customs, cultural schemes, etc.
Yet if we said, healthy is being alive and not suffering vs. healthy is being dead or in pain, we wouldn’t say that when both people used the word healthy, they were referring to the same thing.
So I think that perhaps the problem with discussions of morality is that we use the word morality to mean both: the word one uses to denote how one should act…and, how one should act. That is, it refers at the same time both to a (1) particular morality and as well as the (2) category of morality in which we place competing moralities.
As a result, Morality is not something upon which anyone could disagree and be using the term correctly (if to use a term correctly is to use it in its meaning that both parties understand it to have), where as people could disagree about small m moralities.
I’m sure that distinction is common knowledge and uninteresting, but I’m only just making these revelations as we discuss. Thank you for your time and patience, I’m surprised you having any interest in continuing to “chase your tail” as you’ve been saying.
I should add, as far as Harris goes, I wax and wane. I rush to his defense, because it appears that most philosophers just do not like him or his propositions, and are not interested in giving him a charitable read because, understandably so, they already have bucket loads of interesting and probably more serious material to read and reflect on.
I agree, he is pop philosophy to be sure, for better or worse (he might engage some who would otherwise not pick up philosophical projects, while at the same time I wish you would indulge me in the more boring trudgery that most philosophical thought requires).
On the other hand, some of what he has to say in various chapters can help inspire a re-evaluation of current philosophical “non-controversies.” So even if he won’t do the heavy lifting, I am more than happy to try, despite my inadequate understanding of topics and their histories.
*I meant “he” would indulge me, not “you” would indulge me…you have actually been an excellent interlocutor.
Retiring the other thread, and moving your recent post over there to here, along with trying to tie the two together:
“If science showed that flourishing for all people is more or less the same thing, what would you think? Would you deny the legitimacy of such a claim on the part of people employing scientific means.
‘If someone says it only goes 35 on the freeway, we can take it out for a spin and decide the issue.’
What if they were blind, deaf, and dumb? In which case, maybe those who miscalculate matters of morality simply have ill-tuned faculties for such sense perceptions/reasoning.
So what do you mean by the term moral? I have probably been using it in an inappropriate way. What do you refer to when you use the term?”
I would say that if someone were blind, deaf, and dumb, that perhaps they lacked the equipment necessary to apprehend as many true (or at least warranted) beliefs as most of us… They don’t apprehend as much of the world.
The problem, when it comes to morality, is conceiving of what kind of truth there have to be in order for us to adjudicate disputes between the fathers in A and the father in B? When we say the fathers that kill their own daughters to deal with the dishonor of her having been raped are wrong, I submit that we aren’t simply saying that the fathers don’t fit our moral view. In fact, I think we’re saying that the father is wrong, period, and he’s also wrong to prefer his tradition over ours. Notice this isn’t the exact same thing as saying he’s not flourishing. I mean, he’s content with his situation, he doesn’t care if we value certain brain state over his.
As for a science of human flourishing, I think we would have to be clear on exactly what we mean. Is it a certain brain state? If it’s something like that, I would imagine this would be a perfectly legitimate science. We could probably also correlate certain life styles with certain IQ’s, levels of economic achievement, etc. But remember not all moral disputes are a disagreement over whether certain states of affairs correlate to certain brain states and/or lifestyles. It’s not as if the murderous father is motivated by achieving a certain brain state, so why would he be convinced by being shown a brain state we deem better? He also openly declares that he wants to avoid a society like prosperous Western ones, so what good will it do to show him that his society could prosper more with certain behaviors?
I think I mean by the word “moral” what was encapsulated in views A and B (though I object to the content of A). C is using the word strangely, so there doesn’t appear to be a disagreement, at least not with the stated propositions.
Now, if A and B are just using words differently, then that would actually be a bad option for Sam Harris, because that would mean that the only crime of view B was weird talk. You see? It couldn’t be that B was expressing an *immoral* view as much as an irrelevant view. But that would be an unacceptable result, because what we want to say is that B is an **immoral** view not just a weird view. If Sam Harris wants to continue to say such a thing, then he would have to acknowledge that a similar enough definition is being used in A and B so that one can call the other immoral, and so one can be right and one wrong. But if there’s no disagreement to be had because A and B are simply using definitions, then that’s a form of moral relativism, something Harris has claimed to be able to defeat.. All this is the cost of trying to win the debate by mere linguistic triumph.
Thanks for the nice compliments, and sorry if I’ve been too short at times. My experience discussing these things with people sympathetic to Harris’ views have been pretty unpleasant, so I may have been projecting that onto this conversation, unjustly.
Ahh.. crap, too many letters. I meant that View A was the immoral view, and that if the issue is a linguistic one, then View A is merely weird. View B is the one we find morally good. A, B, and C, hard to keep straight, I guess.
Sorry I’ve taken so long to respond.
“It’s not as if the murderous father is motivated by achieving a certain brain state, so why would he be convinced by being shown a brain state we deem better? He also openly declares that he wants to avoid a society like prosperous Western ones, so what good will it do to show him that his society could prosper more with certain behaviors?”
Why are we still relying on stubborn, uneducated people as our benchmark for morality. Why must it be demonstrated to them?
Let me get it clear, are you arguing for moral relativism, some form of anti-realism, or actually in favor of moral realism, but through other means? Because I guarantee that any morality would be incomprehensible/unconvincing to someone. So am I defending Harris or moral realism?
As far as the letters, if we understand that morality is something we use to refer to “the best way to live/act,” and that this def of morality everyone must agree one, or the word is not useful out of narrow communities. If someone says that doing A is moral, even though I disagree, I am only able to disagree because we both understand what that person is saying when they assert that A is moral. I and the other person are both starting from similar ground. But then I might say, oh but you are mistaken about what in fact IS moral (and annoy him with science speak and talk of Harris and human flourishing, etc.).
And so while I would assert that morality, as in, what we understand to be the best way to live, is only meaningful (verificationist understanding of meaningful) if we are referring to something measurable, like brain states, and human health/happiness.
But than my friend with shared understanding of morality but holding morally repugnant (to me), view A, would say, but that’s missing something of what is meant by “best way to live.” Morality isn’t just about living long, healthful, fulfilling lives, it’s something more having to do with the “cosmic right” or something. And that could be true, but in responding to them I would have to say, that’s a dead end. Science can’t justify science, philosophy can’t justify philosophy, and so we’re all in the same boat, and if science can not help determine was is moral, nothing can, because we are searching for a fiction, something that does not exist (i.e. the “right way to live” that is cosmically “right” or “moral”).
Let me know if that “cosmic” adjective makes sense. I can’t think of a better way to articulate what seems to me to be difference between understanding morality as human flourishing (which must have some connection to brainstates) and understanding morality as a higher understanding order thing (where in something is moral in and of itself with no relation to consequences).
Hey everyone, this comment is almost certainly not going to get read, but it concerns an argument of Harris’ which seems to have won a lot of people over, but which I’m not entirely convinced by.
It concerns the objection that “science of morality” would necessarily be grounded on a core value-judgement of some kind – say, the value of human well-being (or “flourishing”), or on a deeper level, the value of life – which would rest unproven by science. (Which rather leads to the question, “As opposed to what?”)
The response he gave to this, as best I can tell, was something like: “In the scientific method, we rely upon value-judgements, such as the value of evidence based thinking…” etc. and concluded thereby that the objection was irrelevant.
But I’m not entirely sure how this works. For starters, to say that science in general depends on values is something of a misrepresentation. Science depends on values not for the truth-validity of the claims that it makes about the world, but simply for a) finding the “motivation” to pursue the truth; and b) the relevance/importance of those claims. If I said that evidence-based thinking was valueless, I would not be disputing the truth claims made by the empirical sciences; I would be saying something more like: “So what?” In short, the de-valuation of the “values” that “lie at the heart of science” would not affect the truth-status of the factual claims that it made. Whereas, by definition, to deny the values that lie at the heart of a value-system would be to deny the very possibility of a value-fact, or network thereof.
In short, for the value-system to be construed as reducible to a series of facts, the “core-values” would, by definition, themselves have to possess a factual status. And how could one possibly objectively measure, say, the value of conscious life? If the measure of value is the extent to which a thing increases well-being, how could one possibly measure the value of well-being, since any parameter for measuring change cannot be the parameter for measuring its own change?
I can’t answer your point, but great screen name.