Morality
By
Sam Harris
Edge, September 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
People think it is impossible to speak about moral truth because there is no
intellectual basis from which to say that anyone is ever right or wrong
about questions of good and evil. I want to undermine this assumption. As a
global civilization, we need some universal conception of right and wrong.
In science we are always in the business of framing conversations and
making definitions. There is nothing about this process that condemns us to
epistemological relativism or that nullifies truth claims. We define physics
with respect to the goal of understanding how matter behaves. The fact that
a Creationist "physicist" cannot be brought into our conversation about
physics does not undermine physics as a domain of objective truth.
We
seem to think that because someone can come forward and say that his
morality has nothing to do with human flourishing, there's no such thing as
moral truth. But this is a fallacy. We have an intuitive physics, but much
of our intuitive physics is wrong. Much of our intuitive morality may be
wrong with respect to the goal of maximizing human flourishing and to the
facts that govern the well-being of conscious creatures.
The only
sphere of legitimate moral concern is the well-being of conscious creatures.
Consciousness is the only context in which we can talk about morality and
human values. When we're talking about morally significant outcomes, we are
talking about actual or potential changes in conscious experience. The
concept of well-being captures everything we can care about in the moral
sphere.
The moral landscape is a space of peaks and valleys, where
the peaks correspond to the heights of flourishing possible for any
conscious system, and the valleys correspond to the deepest depths of
misery. Any change that can affect a change in human consciousness would
lead to a translation across the moral landscape. There will be many ways to
move from our present position to the nearest available peak. There are
right and wrong answers to the question of how to maximize human
flourishing.
We must not get confused by the difference between
answers in practice and answers in principle. The difficulty of answering
certain problems in practice does not suggest that there are no right and
wrong answers to these problems in principle. We have convinced ourselves
that science is value-free, but it is not. Good science is the product of
our valuing evidence, logical consistency, parsimony, and other intellectual
virtues. If you don't value those things, you can't participate in the
scientific conversation.
AR I look forward to
Sam's new book on developing a science of morality.
The Moral Landscape
Edited by Andy Ross
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
By Sam Harris
Sam Harris argues that "people who draw their worldview from religion
generally believe that moral truth exists, but only because God has woven it
into the very fabric of reality; while those who lack such faith tend to
think that notions of 'good' and 'evil' must be the products of evolutionary
pressure and cultural invention. My purpose is to persuade you that both
sides in this debate are wrong."
Harris believes that science has a
crucial role to play in assessing moral values according to their observable
earthly consequences. Those who uphold the notion of separate domains want
domain over values for their religion. Neuroscience attempts to explain
human behavior by studying the physical brain rather than by evoking the
existence of a soul. The idea that humans may not possess free will is as
threatening to our sense of human specialness today as Darwin's theory of
evolution was in his time.
By Edwin Cartlidge
Big Questions Online, October 5, 2010
Edited by Andy Ross
Sam Harris says values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures
and that they can therefore be objectively evaluated.
Harris takes it
that morality is about well-being. In his view, it is not right to treat all
cultural practices as being equally valid and maintains that
multiculturalism and moral relativism are wrong. He argues that religious
metaphysical doctrines are false and that dogmatism prevents a better
understanding of what really allows humans to flourish.
Harris
believes that the moral worth of an act depends on its measurable
consequences. He says neuroscience will play an increasing role in assessing
the soundness of alternative courses of action. Measurements of the brain
will reveal a person's well-being more reliably than that person's own
reports of how they are feeling.
Science can be crucial in helping us
make ethical decisions. But scientific data cannot determine our decisions
in ethical matters. Telling us what takes place in certain situations is
fundamentally different from telling us what we should do in response. It
seems simplistic to argue that ethics can be reduced to maximizing
well-being.
The Moral Landscape is unconvincing. Ethics is not
science.
Morality Without God
By Simon Blackburn
Prospect, March 2011
Edited by Andy Ross
Sam Harris holds that "questions about values — about meaning, morality, and
life's larger purpose — are really questions about the well-being of
conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be
scientifically understood." Religion and moral philosophy are unnecessary
now that we can observe and calculate. But it is one thing to know the
facts, it is another to select and prioritize and campaign and sacrifice to
promote some and diminish others.
Aristotle thought that ethics
concerned well-being. But he appreciated the twists and turns involved in
that idea. According to Aristotle, well-being is the state of living well in
the world around one. My successes and failures, knowledge, social
relations, memories, hopes, fears and loves make up my well-being. This
could not be indexed by a brain scanner.
Harris' view of well-being
is nearer to that of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, who saw
it as a simple balance of pleasure over pain. Perhaps sufficient knowledge
of the state of someone's brain could help to measure this ratio. But if
Bentham's hedonist is in one brain state and Aristotle's active subject is
in another, it is a moral, not an empirical, problem to say which is to be
preferred. Even if this were solved, how are we to balance my right to
pursue my well-being against the demand to help maximize that of everyone?
Harris joins the ranks of those whose claim to have transcended philosophy
is just an instance of their doing it badly.
The Science of Right and Wrong
By H. Allen Orr
The New York Review of Books, May 12, 2011
Edited by Andy Ross
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
By Sam Harris
Sam Harris is concerned with the sorry state of moral thinking. Religious
people are convinced that moral truths are handed down from on high and
secular people frequently believe that morals are relative. Harris hopes to
show that objective moral truths exist and that we can discover them. He is
well aware that science trades in facts and ethics trades in values, and
that a long intellectual tradition says facts can never justify values.
Harris make three main claims:
1
Neuroimaging studies of the human brain at work reveal that the same regions
of our brains are active when people judge the truth or falsity of both
factual statements and ethical statements. In the face of such findings, he
doubts the view that a divide separates facts and values.
2 The good is the well-being of conscious
creatures. This is associated with a moral landscape, a space of real and
potential outcomes whose peaks measure well-being and whose valleys measure
suffering. Different ways of thinking and behaving translate into movements
across this landscape and into different degrees of human flourishing.
3 The moral landscape can be studied by
science. Science can map the landscape and help us climb to peaks of
well-being. Science may not always uncover the relevant facts but they
exist.
I dispute the three main claims.
1 It seems odd to try to assess the
relationship between two ideas or judgments by analyzing whether they
activate the same brain regions. Factual and ethical judgments are obviously
similar and the neuroimaging studies bear this out. But the claim is that
statements about facts cannot justify statements about values.
2 For Harris, morality is a kind of
utilitarianism. But the view that morality concerns the maximization of
well-being of conscious creatures is not science. It is a philosophical
position.
3 Enhancing human
well-being has no bearing on qualms about a science of morality. If you’ve
decided that you want a long life, medical science can help. But medical
science can't prove the value of living a long life.
What really
animates Harris is moral relativism. The well-being of conscious creatures
is a sensible end for ethics and science can help us to attain this end. But
one can deny a science of morality without relativism. Moral truths may be a
priori, like mathematical truths.
On Sam Harris
By Jackson Lears
The Nation, April 2011
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist. Against the menace of mobilized religious
dogma, he says our only defense is to reject both religion and cultural
relativism, and to embrace science as the true source of moral value.
Harris claims that experiments in neuroimaging reveal that the brain
makes no distinction between judgments of value and judgments of fact. From
this finding he concludes that fact and value are the same. He does not
consider the idea that perhaps the elusive process of moral reasoning is not
reducible to the results of neuroimaging.
Harris ignores the messy
realities of power. His books display a stunning ignorance of history. The
End of Faith, written in the wake of 9/11, argues that the attacks
demonstrated the mortal danger posed by dogmatic religion and that we must
remake the Mideast in the name of science and democracy.
Harris says
that pragmatism and relativism undermine our capacity to acknowledge our
moral superiority to most of the rest of the world. He treats the
recognition of legitimate moral differences as a sign of moral incompetence.
He dismisses not only Islam but also all the Western monotheisms as
“dangerously retrograde” obstacles to the “global civilization” we must
create if we are to survive. He espouses the Enlightenment master narrative
of progress.
Harris: “It is also true that the less competent a
person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his
abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance
that is very difficult to correct for.” The glove fits.
A Guide To Sam Harris
By Scott Atran
The National Interest, March-April 2011
Edited by Andy Ross
According to Sam Harris, neuroscience points the way to a "science of human
flourishing" in "a global civilization based on shared values" where
religion and other primitive beliefs are banished forever.
Harris
says the division between facts and values is unsustainable and moral
relativism is a bad thing. He pretends to refute the distinction between
what is and what ought to be by adopting hedonic utilitarianism. But there
are intractable problems with any general standard of happiness. Moral
relativists say we should tolerate the behavior of others if it makes sense
relative to their cultural traditions.
Harris aims to prove that we
can increase moral enlightenment by moving away from religion and toward
science. But every cultural group entertains sacred and transcendent values
that defy calculation and motivate commitment. Human rights are anything but
natural. Conceptions of freedom and equality were originally legitimized by
their transcendent sacredness. Universal monotheisms created individual free
choice and collective humanity to extend moral salvation to all peoples. The
secular isms of modern history have all tried to continue the drive to
advance human rights.
Harris imagines that religious beliefs are
fixed propositions with truth values. But core religious beliefs are
impossible to understand based on the meaning of the words alone. Their
meaning remains open to interpretation and can vary according to context.
Religion is cognitively contagious because its miraculous and supernatural
elements grab attention, stick in memory, readily survive transmission from
mind to mind, and prevail in the competition for ideas. Like other human
productions that are easy to think about and good to use, religious beliefs
reoccur across cultures in similar forms.
Harris ignores or disdains
analyses of religion as attempts to find a way through our existential
dilemmas, to manage the contradictions of human nature, and to maintain
cohesion among genetic strangers. Religion may no longer be necessary for
any of this. Yet its creative role in getting us out of the caves and
begetting civilization is evident. The strongest human social bonds and
actions are borne of commitments that are sacred and ineffable.
Harris thinks science education is a natural antidote to Islamist terror.
But a majority of al-Qaeda members and associates went to college, and
engineer and medical doctor are the professions most represented in
al-Qaeda. Few Muslim suicide bombers ever had a traditional religious
education. Religion is not a good predictor of who becomes a terrorist.
Thin science, dubious philosophy, and poor rhetoric
My
Amazon review of the book
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