Repost from RGT.

Sam Harris' did a TED talk that was recently released. His talk is here: Science can answer moral questions. Since this talk has been released he's been criticized... most notable is Sean Carroll's article - The Moral Equivalent of the Parallel Postulate. Harris has responded to his criticisms here - Moral confusion in the name of “science”.

I'm not going to pretend I'm familiar with all of the details in which they are arguing over so it would be good to get some opinions from here... scientifically and philosophically. Is Harris wrong and why? The same question goes for Carroll's criticism.

I didn't make it all the way through the Harris talk, but my main impression halfway through (after which I got bored) comports completely with Carroll's criticism, which essentially is that Harris is assuming his own conclusion.

I wonder what Carroll's comments would be on Harris' actual argument. Perhaps we'll get one in a while since Harris is asking for a solid attack on it.

Did he not present his actual argument in the video? If he did, he sure was taking a long time getting around to delivering it — unless it was his assuming-his-conclusion argument.

It needed to be so concise that a lot of listeners, Carroll included, ended up arguing against what they expected to hear rather than what was being said. Harris addresses the non-critique by Carroll in his response.
There are soft spots in Harris' argument, they just aren't the ones Carroll thinks he sees.

I tried to read all of Harris' essay, but couldn't bring myself to finish it. I don't feel it's all that well written.

I get the impression that he has defined "morality" in a silly way:

In essence, he defines morality as behavior that is intended to increase wellbeing. He seems to go on to defend this thesis, but I found his argument confusing.

In order for this to be a sensible argument, he must somewhere define "wellbeing" in terms of the specific manifestations he's using. Otherwise, he's just pushing the concept of "morality" (which is a system of "right" conduct) backwards onto a system of "forms of wellbeing" which has the same problems as "morality" has when it comes to claiming some objective standard.

Why is the psychopath envisioning a straw man? Does he not actually experience the "state of wellbeing" that he desires when he kills people?

Harris tries to address this:

So by ignoring the problem, it goes away? How do we choose who we ignore? Do we ignore them simply because they disagree with us? It's like he's getting ready to go down a path of moral relativism. "This behavior is wrong because we have agreed that it's wrong." And this throws all of his attempt at making his understanding of wellbeing to be some standard that is devoid of "consensus."

It's clear that 2+2 = 5 is an aberrant belief because we have DEFINED what the symbols mean. He has not DEFINED (in even the vaguest sense) what "wellbeing" (or "aspects of wellbeing") are the ones that are worth pursuing, and which ones aren't, and how one even begins to weigh one against the other.

Maybe he addresses this further down, but I stopped reading after this paragraph. I didn't find his argument to this point to be particularly coherent, and have no desire to try to make sense of the second half.

Carroll now has a response to Harris response appropriately named - Sam Harris Responds. He also cites some other people "who know what they are talking about and surely articulate it better than I (Carroll) do".

Harris addresses your objection be contrasting well being with physical health. I think it might hold if you would just consider wellbeing to be akin to moral health. Instead of 2+2=5 try the statement "eating rocks is a good source of nutrition." Our psychopath is the moral equivalent of someone eating paint, plastic, or rocks. We can ignore the paint eaters opinion on nutrition and taste. Even if we can't determine if vanilla tastes better then cookie dough.

I think you want Harris to define well-being. I believe he is diliberately obfuscating the specifics you mention, because his points stand no matter what well-being entails.

It seems to me that Harris is not at all answering how science can answer questions of morality, but that he is redefining (or defining) morality in a way that we could in theory text it with science.

So he is not answer the question at all, but changing the question so that it fits with his answer.

If I have time I'll give my analysis sometime this week.

People criticising Harris's definition of morality should probably provide one of their own.

I disagree,

Are you arguing that Harris is just making the claim that morality is connected to well-being, no matter what well-being is. If so, sure, he can make that claim, but his rationality for it seems to be....well, it's obvious. If this is his only claim, he did a terrible job of stating that and waxed on about many other matters.

The problem is, as a poster said above, if he pushes morality to simply mean, whatever maximizes well-being, good luck ever defining well-being. It's impossible. He says, with advances in neuro. it might be. Well, what if some well-being is associated with a supernatural afterlife, a realm inaccessible by science. It could be the case that sacrificing some well-being now, might greatly increase it later in an afterlife.

It is because of arguments like this that, to the best of my understanding, Harris' claim seems to be rendered useless.

Thanks for the response. You start off with "I disagree". I'm not really sure where you disagree. I don't believe he is just making the banal claim "morality is connected to well-being, no matter what well-being is. He is making several claims.

I'm pretty sure he would agree with everything you wrote except for the rendered useless bit, a realm inaccessible by science part and that he wants to distinguish between impossible in practice and impossible in principle.

Good point,

Ok, so to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, could it be said that Harris' point is that morality should be defined as the actions that maximize the well being of nature?

As best I can tell, this could only be useful in two ways. 1) that he postulates that one could quantify the idea of well-being, and thus this mechanism could be used to determine morality, or 2) that one could approximate what the greatest well being would be and thus choose actions based on this. Both of these have problems. Is he arguing a third type of way to use his idea?

So we should ignore the psychopath's views about killing bringing him exhilaration because he doesn't actually feel excitement from killing people (and we can somehow "measure" his excitement level to demonstrate this)? Or is it because his type of excitement isn't quite as good as our type of excitement (and we can somehow "compare" his excitement to ours)?

I don't think this works.

Can you summarize his points? Not his entire argument, but just his specific claims that he justifies under his redefinition of morality. I didn't really follow his argument that well. It just sort of meanders without giving me a sense of forward progress.

My impression thus far is that your claim about Harris' position, if true, is also vacuous. Regardless of the ability to say anything concrete about 'wellbeing' his assertion that "wellbeing is associated with morality" stands.

*grunh* i thought his ted talk was uber fail. he is heading down the wrong path and doesnt know it >.<

well... ?

As I have posted in the RGT threat, I think that people who are claiming Harris is wrong, don't understand his position or are arguing from ignorance.

1. He has not stated what his "goal" for morality is outside of well being, which he has not defined a measure for
2. if the goal and measire can be found, it can be found and defined through science.

I found the Q&A from the google talk to be revealing. same talk as ted, Q&A at 40:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrA-8rTxXf0

At the very least we will gain significant knowledge in the area of morality and psychology, and if he right, well then he is right.

I believe it's a fair enough summary.

Prolly replace of nature with of conscience beings. And and "local" to maximize in some way. As to include his term "many peaks on the moral landscape"


This doesn't really answer your very straight forward 2nd part of your response. I believe he makes the case that it might be impossible at present to quantify well - being in practice. But in principle moral truths exist.

We can dismiss the psychopath's claim that killing people is a very good way to bring about well-being. Even thought we can even say that his well being is improved in some way, It's still a very poor way to improve his moral health. He just doesn't know better. We can say that because we have evidence that the psychopath has brain damage.

Here are some points that hold regardless of how well being is defined.

Conscious beings are not an arbitrary starting point for the basis of morality.
We can state certain facts about the experience of conscious beings.
We can state certain facts about the state of the world, nature of reality.
Any moral claim most have to do with the experiences of conscious beings, their relation with other conscious beings and the state of the world.

Harris does lose me at points as well, and I'm not sure he does anything more than - "I feel bad about things, therefore those things are wrong. Here is some ex poste facto reasoning."

nope

I guess that's sort of the point. He's presuming the existence of a standard (which is fine), but does not use anything to justify his standard other than some arbitrary (ie, non-empirical) conception. How is this formulation any more grounded in "science" (as per his book title, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values") than some other conception of morality?

Going back to his tinnitus example, let's say that he has the same physical conditions (damage to his cochlea), but doesn't hear a ringing. Does his otologist have the authority to say, "You should be hearing a ringing sound in your ear. And if you don't, then you don't really understand what a ringing sound is."?

Okay, but none of this seems to establish anything in particular.

I don't disagree with his definition of morality. I rather think human happiness and wellbeing is an excellent foundation for morality. The key difference here is that I don't think this system of morality is epistemologically knowable as true, nor that it follows from an empirical investigation without being circular in nature.

y?

Harris' theory sounds awful.

The psychopath example, or the example of the tribesman who feels glorious after slaughtering his enemy, or a zillion others you can think of.

There's a reason Judaeo-Christian morality had to be invented. It is not imprinted in our genes. (Although our natures are susceptible to its teachings.)



/Haven't read any of the primary materials and may be completely missing the point.