Watch the video again -- this will give you a chance to see it in its entirety.
In your comments, go to http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/03/can-science-answer-moral-questions-sam-harris-makes-the-case.html and read the comments. Copy a section of someone's comment and respond to what he or she (or they if whether they are male or female is ambiguous) says.
The central issue is whether the talk shows that science can create a language that supports and defines moral values.
Happy viewing.
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I have to post this comment as two parts, because the computer will not accept it as one post:
ReplyDeletePart I:
In trying to prove that the dichotomy between fact and value does not exist (or at the very least, is much smaller and more benign than people generally think), Sam Harris fails to acknowledge that if society were to rely on science to help answer moral questions, then society would show a lack of respect for people’s and culture’s traditional values. The beauty of values—especially the values that are often seen as ancient and outdated, such as those of Islam, Opus Dei, etcetera—is that they pay tribute to the human thinking and rationale that existed long before science was reliable. The problem with relying on science is that science makes it too easy to simply discard centuries of human thought and passion. For me, the most frightening example of the “union” of fact and value that Sam Harris suggests is that he hopes that years from now, scientists will be able to scan the brains of Islamic women to determine whether or not veiling themselves in the traditional manner is truly beneficial to their well-being. From the results of these brain tests, Harris suggests that society can then universally agree to value complete veiling of women in a certain way, either to support or oppose the practice. In other words, Harris believes that some graphs and charts of the brain on a computer screen, unable to be interpreted by the average person, could potentially overturn thousands of years of traditional beliefs and values. Frankly, I do not believe this could ever happen, and I am confident that it should never happen!
In responding to Sam Harris’s lecture, M73 wisely questioned, “Even assuming science could give us an answer, would we be willing to accept scientific advice, no matter what?” Society, by nature, rarely wants to listen to scientific rationality, because society had to build itself up long before science could give any reliable rationale. Thus, in founding societies, people had to rely on their passions and instinctive beliefs, even if those beliefs were irrational: something is telling me that this is right and that is wrong, even if it does not make sense and I have no evidence, and because I and the rest of my society has to live with the decision that I make, I am going to rely on my passions. For example, even if Harris is correct and in a few years brain scans suggest that veiling women is harmful to their well-being, most of the Islamic society, including many of the women, would not accept any change, because a change would go against their traditional values. There is something immensely inspiring and awing for people to go on living in the same way in which their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived, even if science can prove that other methods are more logical or rational. The ability for an individual, or, even better, an entire society, to hold on to his, her, or its roots despite modern changes and advancements, builds character and integrity, and is humbling, proving to an individual that he or she is merely one small part of a much larger, timeless picture of the universe.
Part II:
ReplyDeleteThe goal of society should be—and is for most people—to continually grow towards better understanding itself, its purpose, and its place in the universe. All decisions that society makes should push it towards this ultimate goal. For this reason, the fact-value dichotomy has to exist (even in the instances in which science and morals are in unison) because traditional values must always be held above the rational advice provided by science. Data, evidence, and brain scans can show society the rational, logical choice in most situations. However, this information is useless because, in the end, people have to rely on the instinctive, traditional beliefs of society; it are these beliefs—unpolluted by the damaging rationality of science—that truly put society in touch with its roots, with, in the words of John Steinbeck’s character Jim Casy, “the human sperit—the whole shebang.” Only by relying on that “human sperit” can society hope to achieve its goal of flourishing in harmony, of pushing forward without losing sight of Truth or human passion.
Morals aren't scientific. Science is secular and mostly unbiased. With morals, certain groups will be discriminated against, often to a negative aspect that will impact the entire group in a bad way. Using secular reasoning, a situation can be effectively and logically analysed, and any problems can be predicted and avoided easily.
ReplyDeleteIf morals were viewed with science, it can be found that science conflicts with many morals, despite beneficial results.
I found Sam Harris to contradict himself at times. Near the beginning, he says that there are many right ways to go about living life. He compared it to the idea of 'Which food is the Right food to eat?'. Later, however, Sam Harris mentioned that the world needs to converge to a certain set of morals. If multiple ways of living can all be right, then people should be able to live in different ways. It is not imperative that we standardize the way people live.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in his response to the comments on hi video, Sam Harris said:
'One of my critics put the concern this way: "Why should human well-being matter to us?" Well, why should logical coherence matter to us? Why should historical veracity matter to us? Why should experimental evidence matter to us? These are profound and profoundly stupid questions. No framework of knowledge can withstand such skepticism, for none is perfectly self-justifying.'
The last part is important. Sam Harris is trying to prove that universal morals exist and are attainable (moral realism). However, he also admits that his 'proof' is not based in reason alone; he assumes that well-being matters, which causes his system to be not universal, but subjective and based in his personal beliefs.
Perfectly good systems of ethics could exist without the idea that human (or any conscious being's) well-being matters (think world domination by robots; the robots don't care about humans or themselves, since they are replaceable and know it). Therefore, Sam Harris's assumption is not required and brings him away from the objective and toward the subjective.
Another problem that I found with Sam Harris's argument was that he took to many subjective things in. He assumed that people have a good sense of the well-being of other people and can basically understand what is right and wrong. However, this depends solely on our point of view. What looks oppressive and wrong to us may simply be normal for other people.
One unresolved question that Harris's argument brings up is the question of how to determine how important the individual is compared to the society. Well-being would be largely aimed toward happiness. If you are happy, you are more likely to have a high well-being. If a murder gets pleasure out of killing people, then it is in his best interest to kill people, and it agrees with the idea of well-being. When, however, is the line drawn that says "No, you can't kill more people because it is lessening the well-being of the rest of society"?
Harris's argument leaves a whole range of 'correct' morals, all the way from anarchy to fierce dictatorship.
An argument against this might go "People can see the differences in well-being in these systems, and the middle is the best". However, my argument may be applied again, with the question lying in "How much should we force people to agree with this new system?".
M73 in the middle of the comments section elaborated his point at the beginning referring to David Hume, and then made this statement:
ReplyDelete"Indeed, we often have a scientific answer to the question: which of these two things is better? But only if we have first specified to achieve what end. Science by itself cannot come up with the end. "Well being" (or Aristotle's Eudaimonia) has been offered as a candidate. Surely, well-being is sought universally, and therefore requires no further justification?"
He then shows that well-being is not sought universally by pretty much saying that this only takes humans into account, and not aliens that could live on Earth in the future. J. Hawkins later agreed with M73 and said why, only this time not using the hypothetical aliens:
"I agree with you. I should have said that morality is based on human expediency, and that that expediency is the most rational goal for us. If utilitarianism is that which promotes the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people, then I am proud to be a utilitarian. Isn't that, at least in theory, the goal of democracy - the greatest good for the majority of ordinary people? (Not that any country is a real democracy).
Of course, it would also be rational for an alien race to pursue their own expedient interests. I think it highly unlikely that those interests would include designs on our small planet, however. It's a big universe. By the way, when I say that the well being of humans is a basis for morality (and, in fact, the only possible basis that I can see), this does not imply disregard for other species. We obviously need a healthy planet Earth if we are to enjoy life as humans. Morality, based on human expediency requires us to be caretakers of the planet and its life. We need to do a much better job at this. On the other hand, if an asteroid threatened all life on Earth, there is no other species that would stand a chance of saving Earth by diverting it in space. We could be Earth's heroes instead of the customary villains.
Such an outcome would benefit all living things on Earth even though based on our own interests."
Although they both represent the same argument against Harris's method of arguing, I definitely think J. Hawkins summed it up well without using as hypothetical an example. I can't say whether I agree with either J. Hawkins/M73 (I definitely agree with utilitarianism after finding out what it is) or Sam Harris, although I did find Harris's 20 minute and visual filled presentation quite compelling. I think that the two comments outline why although science may be able to unite the world in moral values that are "better" than others, it wouldn't exactly specify the correct ways to interpret these values. Most religions, although held with mostly the same value by their constituents, have different interpretations. These lead to much different lifestyle and cultural choices by those in the religion. That doesn't mean that they don't all have well-being, but some interpretations make their followers have better lives than others. The moral peaks argument by Sam Harris was very interesting and scientific. Overall, I think that although science CAN create a language that supports and defines moral values, it wouldn't be able to provide a universally accepted way to implement them.
The comment said by J. Hawkins fully includes my ideas and Adam's ideas.
ReplyDelete"Even if moral facts were reducible to facts about well-being, there would still be normative philosophical questions to answer, e.g. what is well-being, how do we know it when we see it, whose well-being matters, how should each of us act vis a vis each others' well being..."
Interesting. And while we spend the next thousand years debating these questions, the Scandinavians have gone ahead and built a society based on well-being. Some things are not that hard to understand, at least until philosophers get involved.
My response: The "well-being" of these things just turn around to lead to the moral things that we all show in our lives. The scientific truth is that our "well-being" is based on al we know with science and how the human body works. All of these things are based on science and proved by scientific matters. We always ask ourself those questions said in the response when dealing with philosophical matters and metaphysical and moral/the well being of many matters.
As an addition to my previous statement, I realized what I meant in the third to last paragraph. Even if Harris gives us morality based in fact, he doesn't tell us if there is any "function" which relates the amount of well-being to the number of people experiencing it. Therefore, we are left with a huge gap unresolved.
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with tonyli when he said "morals are not scientific" that is the truth. morals are feelings while sciences are facts. morality is not scientific. science is also definatly conflicting with morals the two can not go hand in hand and can barely be related. the are two completley different asspects of life tha are unrelated
ReplyDelete"It's a great talk. Harris brings a lot of horsepower to the topic in just 20 minutes.
ReplyDeletePosted by: mrgoodbar | Mar 23, 2010 6:12:43 PM"
I chose this comment because truthfully it was the only one i didn't have to reread multiple times to comprehend and as elementary as it is i think it makes a valid point. TED is able to speak about this broad topic in only 20 min.
And though i am unable to agree with what what he said about scientific facts being able to determine decisions moral or immoral. Facts have no value they merely state what has been discovered to be a truth there is no value to the fact. Facts are interpreted and analyzed for their repercussions but fall short in being able to determine anything
I agree with Daniel R. when he stated "The beauty of values—especially the values that are often seen as ancient and outdated, such as those of Islam, Opus Dei, etcetera—is that they pay tribute to the human thinking and rationale that existed long before science was reliable."
ReplyDeleteBefore there was any concept of science, people had basic beliefs, values, and morals. This came from aspects such as religion. Religion comes from faith, or a belief in something that one doesn't know is true by facts. Hence, morals did not come from facts, or science, so as tonyli said, "morals are not scientific."
Now there may be a scientific reason why a human's brain works in certain ways and understands certain concepts, but the ideas of different religions or traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation, that make up one's morals and one's view of right from wrong, comes from other human beings from the beginning of time. These ideas or way of thinking were kept for song long throughout time by storytelling and writing. It was not complete science which gave certain communities the ideas they have to this day on what is moral and what is immoral.
"The utilitarian argument is compelling because it seems to clear away so much metaphysical brush in one stroke. But utilitarian thinking is terrible at distinguishing the good from the normative. What we want and what we ought to want are not always the same. What we know and what we ought to know are not always the same."
ReplyDeleteI read this comment by Chris Schoen and thought it was interesting. Even though I'm not very familiar with utilitarian thinking, it seems that its very nature would make it unable to distinguish good. "Good" seems to be more of a metaphysical concept because the whole word is tangled in value. Utilitarian thinking in my mind, shouldn't even be concerned with a word like that. Also, he mentions the difference between what we want and what we OUGHT to want, and I think this distinction is vital. Because on one level, just talking about what we want, depicts an emperical argument that can be justified with facts. But once you start to question what we OUGHT to want, then you're lying in metaphysical territory. How can you decide what we ought to want without recognizing value in the specific course of desire? It seems to me that you can't, and just in that the whole idea of OUGHT makes any argument metaphysical.
I alos agree with TonyLi when he says that science is non biased and secular while morals incorporates feelings into what they believe. Science is pure fact and so science can not affect these morals. If a person wants to be fully enlightened, they most have a mix between morals and sceience. This way someone can be openminded to things, which is the morals, but also skeptical and go by facts, which would be the sceince part.
ReplyDelete"Well, I thought this was a little philosophically naive, if only in that he seemed to merely state the reducibility of moral facts to facts about well-being. Obviously, if that were true, morality would be a subset of empirical science. Just as obviously, reducibility is controversial in the extreme. The fact that he failed to flag the extraordinary philosophical difficulties attending that move was particularly unfortunate."
ReplyDeleteThis quote says how Sam Harris did not mention the philosophical difficulties that he indeed did mention in his speech. He referenced to the veiling of women in the middle east cultures, and said that we are not to judge wether this is right or wrong. He throughout the whole speech, talks about morality and its connection to well-being. He was not naive in anyway; he was just stating his beliefs very efficiently and with confidence.
Sam Harris made several strong points in his argument. Well being is objective and universal, and it matters. There are many ways to get there like in his "peak picture". When we see the women in the burka, I don't think we should lie to ourselves about how it is right because they are following their religion. Since well-being is universal, there should be some sort of happy medium everyone can follow and be okay. There does have to be some psychological balance that science can find, some sort of moral and balance that all cultures can ultimately live by. I do agree with Jake that he contradicted himself, which made his argument a little confusing, but he made his point of being way against jihadism; he should have made more points to be a little more effective. I definetly agree with Pia about the "ought" being a metaphysical argument.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tonyli when he says that "Morals aren't scientific. Science is secular and mostly unbiased." There must be a right or wrong answer in science. Religion does not have any impact on science and scientists. Morals should not be affecting the way that science is viewed.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Dan Costa when he says that "before there was any concept of science, people had beliefs, values, and morals." Like Sam Harris states in the video, who says that we know enough to judge other cultures? Maybe long before science was even considered, women wore their full burqas and enjoyed wearing them. Who says that we are able to judge their community as a whole? If science says that it is wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean so. If a woman voluntarily covers up her body, then let her do so. It is her right to decide what she wears. On the other hand, in America, women are stripped of their clothes and put on the cover of a magazine. Who are people to say that it is wrong to do that? It is a matter of morals, values, and opinions to say that both of these situations are wrong.
The argument Sam Harris makes is very interesting. One comment by Adam was "Even if moral facts were reducible to facts about well-being, there would still be normative philosophical questions to answer, e.g. what is well-being, how do we know it when we see it, whose well-being matters, how should each of us act vis a vis each others' well being..."
ReplyDeleteThe moral facts could be specified to be about well being, But I also think that we can eventually find out the moral facts about other questions like when we know we see the right well being. If science can create the language to support moral values, then we must eventually be able to find moral facts.
I agree with Aaron in the fact that a equal and well off society must have a balance between morals and nonbiased sciense. Also Sam Harris makes an interesting point about his "moral peaks." He tells us that we shouldn't try to justify things that we know are wrong. We should just accept the way we think.
ReplyDelete