the assumptions are the very questions at hand.

Likely just because you believe nature-nurture can be resolved by declaration.

Sure it does, on many levels. Personally, I'm convinced that the particular measure of left prefrontal cortical activity relative to right prefrontal cortical activity that is used in studies of well-being (don't know the details offhand) is a sufficient and reliable measure in most cases.

It correlates extremely well with subjective well being. In the rare cases in which it doesn't match subjective well being, other factors are almost always present that are both conventionally associated with well being and are themselves correlated with subjective well being (the strung-out addict with poor physical health and no social support who claims he's "just fine" or the monk who is always gently smiling and seems to get along great with everyone and shows visible appreciation of his morning tea but doesn't claim to be unusually happy). People with damage to the right cortex end up showing depression and misery, people with damage to the left often become blissful or lose all indication of anxiety, sadness, and anger. Stimulation of the cortex based on this hypothesis shows promise in treating depression. Etc.

Of course, psychopaths not only have relatively low subjective well being (few of them describe themselves as happy or joyful, and many claim not to even understand what the words mean) as well as low scores on these types of objective measures and low values of other consistent correlating factors (such as rich social support networks).

The evidence isn't as well developed as we'd like it to be, but all of it points very firmly and directly toward psychopaths being miserable human beings.

Being personally convinced and being true are not the same thing. I'll grant "reliable" but on what basis are you claiming to be convinced of the SUFFICIENCY of this particular measure?

I think you missed the point. I would agree that psychopaths are usually miserable people. But how are you going to use the evidence (even if you had it) to convince me that our perception of them being miserable implies that we have authority over them to declare them to be miserable if they believe otherwise? It doesn't even matter that many psychopaths might admit to being miserable... that's not the underlying issue.

Go back to the tinnitus. If the person claims not to hear a ringing sound, does the doctor have the authority to override that person's subjective experience of not hearing a ringing sound (based on physical observations) and declare that person's subjective experience to be void?

It's one thing to confirm a subjective observation with physical evidence. It's another thing to override it.

In the scientific sense? It seems on the stronger side as psychological conclusions go. In the philosophical sense? It's sufficient because it's well-defined and measurable.

Well, that depends on what we mean by "miserable." I'm describing it as a state of human psychology, and I'd like to describe it as a state of human physiology (but I can't, yet). Either way the perceptions aren't relevant unless you want to get into metaphysics again.

If you're talking about some kind of basic subjective phenomenon, eh, I'm not convinced that we have reason to believe in those in the first place, so I'm certainly not making claims about them.

I don't think we need to deal with subjective experience at all in order to tell a person that he is hearing a sound (regardless of whether he claims to hear it). Naturally my claim that he's hearing the sound will not be a claim about his subjective experience, but I think our measurements of a person's brain are as reliable an indicator of that as his self-reports.

Science can't tell us how to define morality, but if we define morality on the basis of properties that science can tell us about, then science can inform our moral system.

This is a decent point and seems like the valid piece of what Sam is saying. Everything else sounds a lot like bull**** to me and I'm kind of disappointed at how he's presenting this.

Cite something or something. (Edit: In particular, someone in the field who is claiming SUFFICIENCY of this type of measure.)

By this standard, I can claim sanity by the size of one's foot because it's well-defined and measurable. I don't think you understand the implications of your position.

If you have authority to define the subjective experience for another conscious creature, then what does it mean for that creature to be conscious?

Yeah, I think this is an excellent way of putting it.

I haven't watched it, but from what I've read about it elsewhere (I'd read Carroll's argument against it a couple of days ago) it seems like it's going for something stronger than what you write above.

I'm the one making the claim, and even I wouldn't make it on that level. I would say that very few psychological claims have been scientifically established, and this isn't one of them. But just because I wouldn't have claimed continental drift was scientifically established before we found a mechanism, I still would have been convinced by continental drift. Patterns of correlation around the original measure of subjective well being are just not going to meet any kind of scientific standard. That doesn't mean we can't make use of them or that they aren't sufficient for these purposes.

No, it mean that you can claim moral value by the size of one's foot. And you absolutely can. I can easily construct a utilitarian moral system in which utility is based on foot size.

I said I don't have authority to talk about subjective experience, and that I'm not sure it even exists.

As for "what does it mean for it to be conscious?" That it engages in a set of processes involving deliberation, awareness of self (ie its processing system uses models that include the processing system itself in some form as a component of the models), and centralized information management.

I'm interested in this, too, and not just as a step in the argument. I honestly cannot conceive of what could possibly be "good" or "bad" about a situation that doesn't involve the experience of a conscious being.

If there is a locked room across the hall, and nothing in that room is awake and aware, then I don't think it means anything for me to make "moral" judgments about what happens in that room. (Unless, of course, it will indirectly cause a change in some creature's mental state.)

Sam is saying that any ethical system worth its salt will eventually reduce to this kind of care for the conscious observer.

Now, what does "worth its salt" mean in that context? This is where it gets interesting. Sam is saying that we apply much, much more skepticism to morality than we apply to any other field. We are comfortable using systems of mathematical axioms that don't really let us express all true statements, or inductive reasoning that doesn't really prove what we say it proves. But when it comes to morality, we push the skepticism all the way and end up claiming that nothing can be said.

Is Sam right that there could be moral axioms that are in the same ballpark as mathematical and scientific axioms? I'm not sure, but I at least think it's possible.

EDIT: Oh, and click on the Q&A that was posted earlier where a smart guy asks the "How does wellbeing = value?" question.

For what purposes? Your own or what Harris is advocating?

So you recognize that one of the implications of this system is that it's completely arbitrary? You can see the problem of trying to "determine" human values in this way.

Claiming that the person is hearing a ringing sound when he is claiming he isn't is a rejection of self-awareness (because apparently his claim that he isn't hearing a ringing sound can be rejected).

I don't think this conversation is going to go anywhere, because I think you're rejecting and then redefining the basic terminology.

Think more in terms of blind-sight to get on the track others are on.

Given the basic moral premise, what he's advocating.

Whether it's arbitrary is beside the point. But no, it doesn't have to be arbitrary. I can entertain the possibility that the absolute moral system dictated by God himself is based on foot size. I can entertain the possibility of societies in which foot size determines social status and in which morality is based on social status. I can conceive of plenty of possible cases in which foot size as the determinant of moral value is far from arbitrary. Ultimately that isn't what this conversation is about. Maybe it should be, the question of what makes a particular moral system the "right" moral system is exactly the question that Harris has failed to answer directly, but it has no bearing on the validity of the system in question.

His claim is less credible than my objective results. That doesn't reject self-awareness. But self-awareness is awareness of the self, it isn't perfect knowledge of everything that the self is experiencing.

Split-brain patients can experience a condition in which one half of their brain knows a particular thing and the other half doesn't. A split-brain patient may verbally claim that he's feeling no discomfort, while writing with one hand that he's uncomfortable. The reality we've observed is that he's uncomfortable, but the side of his brain responsible for speech has no access to that fact (the other side of his brain, which controls his writing hand, does and is able to communicate it).

The fact that every part of a split-brain patient doesn't have perfect absolute omg awareness of everything that patient is experiencing hardly implies that the patient isn't self-aware.

Even if we assume there is some kind of "special" subjective experience, the words a person speaks are only a clue to that person's experiences (at best). You think if an accused murderer at his trial claims "I never felt a single negative feeling toward the victim," we should naturally 100% believe him or else we're rejecting his self-awareness? That's absurd. I believe that a person's self-reports are not always the most reliable form of evidence regarding that person's perceptions. This shouldn't be controversial (per the murderer case). Maybe you don't respect medical evidence much, and you don't think that particular class of evidence has more weight than a self-report. I don't think that's always true, but it's a minor point that has no real bearing.

Excuse me? I'm "rejecting and redefining" terminology like "conscious?" There is no single accepted definition of that term (it's pretty controversial), but my definition is consistent with a wide variety of scientific standards of consciousness. Care to give me the definition you're using that is somehow more solid?

What is the basic moral premise, and what do you think he's advocating? (Maybe if you answered this, I might be able to make better sense of what you're saying. I'm starting to suspect that we're not talking about the same thing.)

I carry that to the extreme in my daily life. Want to know if Hortense enjoys X more that Y? ask his wife and friends ... Hortense's answer is the least reliable of the bunch. We bs ourselves so much it's like we live in a dream world.

Given that we assume "well-being" is the basis of moral value, I think a neurological standard of "well-being" is as reasonable as any other we have available (self-report, income, etc).

Especially valuable if you are Hortense (and have very honest wife and friends).

My wife and family are very helpful in that regard, "haven't you ever noticed how you... " when I make some self-assessment that doesn't jibe with the observed evidence. I feel sorry for people who don't have those crew members on the observation deck.

I've only watched the TED talk, but I don't think Harris has much patience with people whose chief interest is parsing moral philosophy. (C.f. how he chokes up while mentioning honor killings.)

I hear him as saying: much of our current moral discourse (*cough* religion *cough*) doesn't even pretend to have evidence that it advances human well-being. Hence a discourse based on such evidence would be a huge step forward; if only because it would disqualify the worst voices in our current conversation.

I at least support what Harris is attempting, if I understand it correctly. Like others have pointed out, if we link well-being with morality then it can be examined scientifically, and what better tool do we have for getting good answers than science?

I can sense that part of the resistance to these ideas stems from some academics' fears that they should feel obligated to have an empirical yardstick to test their crazy political and moral theories with. A good scientific understanding of well-being could provide a sorely needed boost to social sciences. However, as social sciences are also instruments of power, the issue is complex.

Heh, you beat me to it by 5 minutes .

Must be in the water...(let's hope so!)

Yeah, I think this is right. Let's say that Harris's argument is something like...

(1) Value == well-being.
(2) Well-being == physical states in brains.
(3) Physical states in brains are, in principle, measurable.
Therefore
(4) Value is, in principle, measurable.

...now, assuming you disagree with (1) but accept the others - which seems to be a very common combination - you still are likely to agree with a modified version of (1) that says "Well-being is usually what we talk about when we talk about value." And from there you can proceed with Sam and come to many of the same conclusions for many of the same reasons. And to do so would be much better than pretending that you can never say anything about morals.

It seems he was sick while giving the speech... I don't think he was shedding a tear or playing the crowd in that instance. He sniffs and snorts all the way through.

Edit: Oh jesus, upon a second look it looks as if he Glenn Beck'd... or at least I could see someone as interpreting it that way.

Yeah, there are a couple things that read in a strange way to me:

1) It seems you're saying that under this assumption that "self-rapport" and "income" become moral values. I don't think Harris is saying anything close to this, so this might just be your wording. I think he's advocating for a special subclass of measurements to be associated with "moral value" (without defining or describing that subclass).

2) "As reasonable as any other" is an argument that needs to be made in a non-arbitrary system. This is where we went off the tracks a bit with the foot size thing. To claim it's "as reasonable as any other" either implies that they are all arbitrary (in which case it's "as reasonable as" foot size) or requires a supporting argument to make the case (which I don't think has been made).