Sam Harris has recently given a talk at TED entitled “Science Can Answer Moral Questions“. This talk has garnered a lot of attention, and has been fairly controversial, as Sam Harris’s opinions tend to be in general. Sean Carroll has weighed in over at Cosmic Variance. I posted a lengthy comment there detailing my thoughts, which I repost below.
Hi Sean, interesting comments here, but I mostly disagree with you. By the way, Sam is soliciting criticism of his talk over at http://www.samharris.org/ted_talk, so I’d suggest you link him to this post.
Now, to the disagreement. It’s true that one will never be able to derive moral principles without making some assumptions, like axioms, at the base of everything. You are aware of this, stating “But what if I believe that the highest moral good is to be found in the autonomy of the individual, while you believe that the highest good is to maximize the utility of some societal group?” Clearly if you begin with different goals you will reach different conclusions about what are the most moral actions. And of course those conclusions should be informed by the facts of the matter – for example, there may be ways to enhance “the autonomy of the individual”, and if you’re wrong about what those ways are, then you will fail in your goal.
But science is no different! Of course the Big Bang is based on facts, but it’s also an inductive generalization, and nothing in the facts tells us that any particular prediction of Big Bang theory is guaranteed to be right. At the base of science there are assumptions, for example, assumptions about how much confidence we should place in inductive generalisations. It’s mostly just an intuition, but that’s enough to get started, and we can make great progress once we stop worrying about the fact that our foundations are not absolutely set in stone. The foundations are solid enough to make progress, and we should not obsess too much over them. Your reaction to Sam’s talk seems to me to be equivalent to a radical sceptic thinking you’re wrong about the Big Bang because it’s impossible to have perfect knowledge.
In ethics, I think the situation is much the same. Once you decide on a goal (for example, wanting conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states), the methods you should use for deciding what actions are moral are basically the methods of science. I see this as Sam Harris’s main important point, but there is another. Now, of course you could choose a different goal and then you would get different conclusions about what constitutes acting ethically. Here, I think Sam makes a second major point (that I also agree with): that wanting conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states is implicitly the goal of the vast majority of moral systems. Even religious ones: for example, a fundamentalist Christian who believes in a literal hell may be justified in quite radical acts here on Earth – and this would be right if it was expected to prevent future eternal suffering of conscious beings. The error here is scientific: the evidence for a literal hell is so weak that there almost certainly isn’t one. Also, people who advocate individual freedom, or strong communities, do so because they think it produces the best lives for people – not because it’s an end in itself.
The foundations of ethics, and science, are not absolutely rock solid – but that’s okay. They’re solid enough to make progress. There is a place for intellectual hand-wringing about foundations, but that doesn’t mean that anything goes and that we may as well give up.
Your point that “that wanting conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states is implicitly the goal of the vast majority of moral systems” is probably true, and explains why agreement on moral values is almost always easy. And your point about science teaching us how to reach our moral goals is a good one.
However …
I think I’m with Sean on this one. The difference between science and morality is not the goal, as you put it, but the existence of an objective reality which the mind is attempting to grasp.
A good definition of reality is “what you run into when you’re wrong”. Brick walls are real, because if I pretend they’re not then I get a broken nose. In science we are dealing with physical reality. This table really exists, independently of the mind. Quantum mechanics showed us that the “real” universe might be wierder than we think but, unless you’re an instrumentalist, there is still a real universe that we can be wrong about. I am not 9 feet tall, the moon is not made of cheese, for example. (And if you are an instrumentalist … what are you thinking?)
So the question is: are there any extra-mental moral realities? And, if physical reality is all there is, I don’t see how there can be. Moral principles are of an entirely different category to physical facts; you can observe how the world is all you like and it will never tell you how the world ought to be. Even an evolutionary account of morality only gives us a description of our behaviour. There is no scientific reason to act in accordance with instincts whose only rationale is the survival of our ancestors.
You provide a perfect example: it is good for conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states. How could this be a scientific fact? Do we write out the wavefunction for a pleasant brain-state and that for an unpleasant one and then apply a goodness operator? What if I disagree? Why should I care about your brain-state? What if my maximally pleasant brain-state involves torturing you, or small children? If I decide that New Zealanders are automata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_other_minds), can I enslave them?
I find this whole area fascinating because it has been used by some theists as an argument from morality:
1.) If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2.) Objective moral values and duties exist.
3.) Therefore, God exists.
Premise 1 is agreed to by Sean, and I think you agree also. And premise 2 only needs one example to be true. Thus, we could replace it with:
2′) The holocaust was wrong, even if no one thinks so.
Frankly, those are two rather disturbingly plausible premises …
I would hestitate to call this philosophy “objective morality” because it depends on the existence of minds to experience things, before there can be a ranking of experiences according to preference.
No, in my worldview.
It’s not, it’s more of a premise. Same with taking into account other beings’ experiences. I don’t think any concept worth the name “morality” could do without these premises.
Torture is pretty much the worst state of existence there is, so it would dominate the decision. It’s immoral to trample others for your own benefit – especially when the amount of suffering is so huge (and presumably, the benefits so small to your psychopathic doppelganger) as in this example.
Yes, I think you could. And people do this already – usually not with other humans these days (the evidence is pretty strong that they have minds, despite the philosophical problems), but certainly with various kinds of animals. However, I think all of this talk is very premature, pending a solid understanding of consciousness. We should err on the side of caution because the consequences of enslaving a country (or producing meat on industrial scales) are pretty bad if we misjudge their range of experience!
Regarding your last post with propositions (1), (2) and (2′), I think (1) is debatable (what if "God" did not exist but some other "spiritual plane" did?)
Regarding (2), I don’t think they do exist, except in the sense of Harris, that certain actions are known (by scientific* means) to increase/decrease the wellbeing of conscious beings. By this standard, (2′) is also true because genocide causes conscious beings to suffer.
* To me science basically means honest inquiry. Not just lab coats and double blind trials, although they are useful tools for conducting honest inquiry.
I think we’re basically in agreement. Your point is that, given the moral axiom: “it is good for conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states”, we can answer the question “what causes pleasant brain-states?” in a scientific manner.
My point is that if your moral axioms are subjective, then any moral principles you derive from them are subjective. Even “we should apply our moral principles consistently” is itself a moral principle. I see the stirrings of utilitarianism – a psychopath shouldn’t torture children because the suffering caused outweighs the pleasure experienced. That follows from the principle: “act in order to produce the greatest total happiness among sentient beings.”
If moral axioms are simply personal preferences that I am free to accept or reject, then, as Dostoevsky (perhaps http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/cortesi1.html) said, “everything is permissible”. You simply reason as follows:
A. I want to do X.
B. X is forbidden by moral axiom Y.
C. Y is just a personal preference, so I’ll choose to reject it.
D. Axiom Z permits X.
E. I choose to follow axiom Z instead.
F. Thus, I am morally permitted to do X.
This works for any X.
E.g.
A. Bob wants to torture children
B. Utilitarianism forbids torturing children.
C. Utilitarianism is just a personal preference, so Bob rejects it.
D. Personal hedonism – “My pleasure is the most important thing” permits the torture of children, so long as Bob enjoys it.
E. Bob chooses to be a personal hedonist.
F. Thus, Bob is morally permitted to torture children.
If I can choose my axioms, then I am morally unconstrained. Bob cannot be criticised on the basis of utilitarianism or “do no harm” or any other axiom, because that’s just your personal preference against his.
Moral experience (moral data, if you will), on the other hand, screams that premise F is false, that torturing children is objectively wrong. Then, reversing the steps of the argument, we must reject the idea (Premise C) that moral axioms are subjective, personal preferences. Which brings us back to premise 2 …
“wanting conscious beings to be in more pleasant brain-states is implicitly the goal of the vast majority of moral systems”
I think we have many other goals besides pleasant brain-states. This is argued for here:
http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2010/04/sam-harris-concept-of-flourishing.html
http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2010/04/sam-harris-health-and-well-being.html