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03/28/2010 12:54:26 PM · #1726 |
I must have been distracted by the title of his talk: SCIENCE can answer moral questions. I guess I assumed that meant he was going to talk about the particulars. I was probably further distracted by his opening paragraph where he says, "So I am going to argue that this is an illusion, and the separation between science and human values is an illusion."
If the whole crux of his argument was to merely declare values to be "a certain kind of fact" and thus science (and only science) is equipped to deal with them, then I am, again, underwhelmed. |
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03/28/2010 03:38:34 PM · #1727 |
I'm not sure he argued that "science and only science" can deal with moral questions, rather that science should deal with moral questions. I would not be surprised to think, however, that his opinion is that science would be the only vehicle that can, at some future date, definitively answer questions of a moral character. I did not hear him suggest that time was now.
Another good analogy made concerned insects. Why, generally speaking, are we not concerned with the suffering of insects? Because, generally speaking, we don't believe they have the range of conscious experience that human beings or other mammals have. This is certainly a question of values. If, at some point in the future, we should scientifically discover that we were wrong about that, that insects have incredibly rich interior lives, then our moral behaviour would surely change. Science would have addressed a moral question and affected an outcome of which most people are currently completely unaware.
The talk was nothing but the role of science in moral outlooks. |
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03/28/2010 03:50:14 PM · #1728 |
Originally posted by Louis:
The talk was nothing but the role of science in moral outlooks. |
I guess I just wished there was more meat about this and less "Top 10 religious views Sam Harris disagrees with"... |
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03/28/2010 04:18:06 PM · #1729 |
Not to continue the tit-for-tat, but I counted exactly one (Muslim) religious view he disagreed with. Two if you count his aversion to beating children as exhorted in the bible and reinforced in the public schools of red states.
It's kind of unfortunate that your disagreement with this talk is so personalized, because there was nothing in it that was any kind of radical idea. One gets the sense that this is going to be one of those historical oddities, where future scientists will watch this talk and say, "We wonder how they survived as long as they did without coming to conclusions which now seem patently obvious." |
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03/28/2010 05:26:44 PM · #1730 |
Originally posted by Louis:
Not to continue the tit-for-tat, but I counted exactly one (Muslim) religious view he disagreed with. Two if you count his aversion to beating children as exhorted in the bible and reinforced in the public schools of red states.
It's kind of unfortunate that your disagreement with this talk is so personalized, because there was nothing in it that was any kind of radical idea. One gets the sense that this is going to be one of those historical oddities, where future scientists will watch this talk and say, "We wonder how they survived as long as they did without coming to conclusions which now seem patently obvious." |
3. Suicide bombers
4. Beating muslim daughter's with lengths of steel
5. Throwing battery acid in their faces
6. Murdering a raped daughter
7. Gay Marriage as a topic of moral discussion
8. My gay son is going to hell
Sorry. :) I didn't make it up to 10.
Look at the very last thing he has to say when the host asks him, "if the results come out that actually they do (fathers love their daughters while forcing them to wear burkas), are you prepared to shift your instinctive current judgement on some of these issues?" Harris answers, "Well, yeah, modulo one obvious fact, that you can love someone in the context of a truly delusional belief system." In other words, he's saying if the mind scan data supported the idea of wearing burkas, it would be wrong anyway because it was part of a delusional system.
So to sum up:
1) Forced veiling is wrong.
2) Science will one day have the tools to show that it is wrong.
3) If the data turned out to show the opposite, it would still be wrong.
???
Harris' whole topic, which he does a poor job of covering, is self-admitted to be radical. In his opening statement he says, "It is generally understood that questions of morality...are officially questions about which science has no official position...most people think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life, questions like 'What is worth living for?' 'What is worth dying for?' 'What constitutes a good life?' So, I am going to argue that this is an illusion."
What's your definition of "radical"? If this isn't, then what is? |
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03/28/2010 06:34:50 PM · #1731 |
| BTW, don't view me as being antagonistic about this. I just didn't quite see what the breakthrough was. |
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03/28/2010 08:29:31 PM · #1732 |
Oh, sorry, I didn't view those issues as religious so much as insane. Burka-wearing is mandated by certain Muslim sects; the rest is culturally reinforced psychopathy (with the exception of the gay issue, which is merely a minor delusion).
You are exactly wrong in your assessment that he is saying that science will one day show that, for example, wearing the burka is wrong (I hope not disingenuously so). Recall that he himself says he is explicitly not saying that when giving the analogy of consultation with a supercomputer.
I'm not so certain how new this idea of science ultimately answering moral questions is (cf. Dawkins), but even so, not every new idea is radical in the strictest sense of the word. Advocating for less human suffering and more flourishing of human communities is hardly the stuff of radicalism.
Unless you urgently need to do so, no need to reply; I understand your antipathy to virtually every atheist thinker, and your opinion on this video is now plain. I think it's time for you to answer Ray's question, since I have been plainly inadequate in trying to put forward any defense of the arguments Harris made. |
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03/29/2010 06:49:12 PM · #1733 |
Sam Harris answers critics of his TED talk. The objections all appear to have taken on the same drab patina. He skewers them all. A sample of what he's heard so far is below (read the article to find his rebuttal).
Happily, Harris has written a book on the subject of science and morality to be released soon, titled "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values".
He also pokes fun at Hume's is/ought stuff, which I believe has come up here or somewhere, calling it a "lazy analysis of facts and values", and mocking its supposed universality as though it were "the last word on the subject of morality until the end of time".
The bulk of the objections, in his words:
"My critics seem to think that consciousness and its states hold no special place where values are concerned, or that any state of consciousness stands the same chance of being valued as any other. While maximizing the wellbeing of conscious creatures may be what I value, other people are perfectly free to define their values differently, and there will be no rational or scientific basis to argue with them. Thus, by starting my talk with the assertion that values depend upon actual or potential changes in consciousness, and that some changes are better than others, I merely assumed what I set out to prove. This is what philosophers call 'begging the question.' I am, therefore, an idiot. And given that my notion of objective values must be a mere product of my own personal and cultural biases, and these led me to disparage traditional religious values from the stage at TED, I am also a bigot. While these charges are often leveled separately, they are actually connected."
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03/29/2010 09:02:47 PM · #1734 |
| Science just got a little closer to understanding the mechanisms of morality. |
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03/30/2010 12:02:17 AM · #1735 |
| Hey Louis, I don't get Harris' reply to your last paragraph. Is it not in your post (and on the link instead)? It just seems like it stops with no rebuttal. |
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03/30/2010 01:01:50 AM · #1736 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Hey Louis, I don't get Harris' reply to your last paragraph. Is it not in your post (and on the link instead)? It just seems like it stops with no rebuttal. |
Originally posted by Louis:
A sample of what he's heard so far is below (read the article to find his rebuttal). |
Message edited by author 2010-03-30 01:02:54. |
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03/30/2010 01:21:38 AM · #1737 |
Thanks.
I'll read it tomorrow.
Here's what I don't get. For YEARS I have been preaching Universal Morality to an unsympathetic audience. But now that Sam Harris says it's cool we're all Universalists? Is that literally what I'm seeing happening here? |
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03/30/2010 05:52:55 AM · #1738 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Thanks.
I'll read it tomorrow.
Here's what I don't get. For YEARS I have been preaching Universal Morality to an unsympathetic audience. But now that Sam Harris says it's cool we're all Universalists? Is that literally what I'm seeing happening here? |
...it's all in the delivery Doc...what can I say. :O)
Ray |
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03/30/2010 09:52:11 AM · #1739 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
For YEARS I have been preaching Universal Morality to an unsympathetic audience. But now that Sam Harris says it's cool we're all Universalists? Is that literally what I'm seeing happening here? |
Nope. Harris' opinion is that reducing suffering should be a universal, objective standard for determining morality, but the historical standards of morality have very clearly been relative to (and dictated by) society and subject to frequent change. From his POV, morality is sort of like taste or sense of smell in that it may be technically possible to determine what tastes or smells good to humans by measuring activity in the pleasure center of the brain for each sample. However, like morality, societal pressures complicate the situation so that one group might enjoy eating grubs or cow's blood while another is repulsed at the thought of consuming lobster. The idea that reduction of suffering should be the standard of morality is hardly new, but people's "tastes" are likewise relative to their culture and role models. |
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03/30/2010 10:26:37 AM · #1740 |
Originally posted by scalvert:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
For YEARS I have been preaching Universal Morality to an unsympathetic audience. But now that Sam Harris says it's cool we're all Universalists? Is that literally what I'm seeing happening here? |
Nope. Harris' opinion is that reducing suffering should be a universal, objective standard for determining morality, but the historical standards of morality have very clearly been relative to (and dictated by) society and subject to frequent change. From his POV, morality is sort of like taste or sense of smell in that it may be technically possible to determine what tastes or smells good to humans by measuring activity in the pleasure center of the brain for each sample. However, like morality, societal pressures complicate the situation so that one group might enjoy eating grubs or cow's blood while another is repulsed at the thought of consuming lobster. The idea that reduction of suffering should be the standard of morality is hardly new, but people's "tastes" are likewise relative to their culture and role models. |
It's hardly new, but it's a Universal Moral standard. I think your "tastes" line is confusing absolute and universal morality. (correct me if I'm wrong.) |
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03/30/2010 10:32:03 AM · #1741 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Here's what I don't get. For YEARS I have been preaching Universal Morality to an unsympathetic audience. But now that Sam Harris says it's cool we're all Universalists? Is that literally what I'm seeing happening here? |
Since I've been the only one talking about this, I'd like you to point out where I've written that since Sam Harris argues for a kind of universalism, I now think it's cool and have changed any past position I may have given on the subject; or that Sam Harris' opinion on morality is now my new religion; or even something as banal as, "I accept his argument."
I would also like you to point out how anything I've written lately is in any contradictory to things I've written in years past here:
"There are no universal human rights as far as I'm concerned."
"The only foundation for ethics is that which eschews the suffering of others."
"Again, I see no inconsistency in applying my moral framework to those that I deem are harmful to others. This is a perfect, and sound, synchronization of a relativist view with an inbred concept of reciprocity.... None of these relativistic flavours addresses the condition of reciprocity on which my (personal) moral framework is based."
"I do not believe in absolutes of any kind. I do not wish to impose my views or my moral framework directly on anyone. However, this is different from expressing shock at the behaviour of others in the context of my own moral framework, or in desiring change in the behaviour of others based on an ethic that is, to all appearances, a biological imperative."
Wrote that last one at the beginning of January. I haven't changed my position one iota.
However, I can be accused of reading and digesting others' arguments and books, even those I can accurately predict will forever be opposed to my world view. And I can be accused of being persuaded by evidence to change my view of a particular issue -- say, should we ever scientically discover the processes in the brain by which certain moral values will always fall a certain way, for example. Lastly, I will admit it is true that I will never be moved to change a position I hold by a voice in a whirlwind. |
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03/30/2010 05:45:42 PM · #1742 |
On a related topic, it seems reasonably clear that morality is not independent of human biology:
Magnets can manipulate morality: study.
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03/30/2010 06:34:20 PM · #1743 |
Didn't we already know that with alcohol? ;)
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03/30/2010 06:37:07 PM · #1744 |
Shannon's been Yankod! More importantly, I get to see Yankoing in action! |
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03/30/2010 08:25:34 PM · #1745 |
OK, I perused most of Harris' reply (it was LONG), and two things jump out at me right away:
1) He broadens the definition of "science" to be just enough to encompass what he wants. ("Science simply represents our best effort to understand what is going on in this universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn. There are many tools one must get in hand to think scientifically—ideas about cause and effect, respect for evidence and logical coherence, a dash of curiosity and intellectual honesty, the inclination to make falsifiable predictions, etc.—and many come long before one starts worrying about mathematical models or specific data.") Would Harris consider String Theory to be science? probably. Speculation about the multiverse? possibly. Intelligent design? I highly doubt it, although one could argue that some subset of ID research is equivalent to a nascent field of research where speculation and rational thought experiments are more important than empirical data. (Don't get hung up over this, I don't want to argue about ID.)
2) He admits more than once that science may only, in principle, be able to answer such questions and not in practicality. This is quite a step back from advertising your talk as "Science can answer moral questions". I'd be disappointed with that if I spent money on the TED ticket only knowing the title of the talk.
3) All of Harris' rebuttal arguments are rational or philosophical. He doesn't present any actual "science" to back himself up. Why?
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03/30/2010 10:23:19 PM · #1746 |
Bonus question for the evening:
Sam had this to say in his talk, "If we are more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of happiness and suffering." and "there is no version of human morality...that is not a concern about conscious experience and its changes."
With this in mind, comment on where the following actions fall on the moral/immoral continuum. Are they equivalent?
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone in a persistant vegetative state.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone under general anesthesia waiting for a simple surgery.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on a normal adult without their explicit consent.
Follow up bonus question:
How would Harris' hypothetical brain scanner view each action and what would this say about their moral quality? |
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03/31/2010 12:49:37 AM · #1747 |
| Would your opinion change if they were practicing prostate exams instead? |
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03/31/2010 01:08:51 AM · #1748 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Bonus question for the evening:
Sam had this to say in his talk, "If we are more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of happiness and suffering." and "there is no version of human morality...that is not a concern about conscious experience and its changes."
With this in mind, comment on where the following actions fall on the moral/immoral continuum. Are they equivalent?
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone in a persistant vegetative state.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone under general anesthesia waiting for a simple surgery.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on a normal adult without their explicit consent.
Follow up bonus question:
How would Harris' hypothetical brain scanner view each action and what would this say about their moral quality? |
SOMEONE has to take one for the greater good. |
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03/31/2010 01:44:05 AM · #1749 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Would your opinion change if they were practicing prostate exams instead? |
I can't quite tell if this is a real question Paul. :) No, it wouldn't change. |
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03/31/2010 08:27:56 AM · #1750 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Bonus question for the evening:
Sam had this to say in his talk, "If we are more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of happiness and suffering." and "there is no version of human morality...that is not a concern about conscious experience and its changes."
With this in mind, comment on where the following actions fall on the moral/immoral continuum. Are they equivalent?
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone in a persistant vegetative state.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on someone under general anesthesia waiting for a simple surgery.
Medical students practicing pelvic exams on a normal adult without their explicit consent. |
I know you're a doctor, so in that context the question you've posed is probably a perfectly normal thing for you to think about. But I've got to tell you, from my point of view it's awfully creepy.
I'm not sure how the third scenario unfolds with a normal, adult woman who is awake. Why would the medical students not have sought her explicit consent? It's certainly immoral from that standpoint because it implies some type of coercion.
Assuming consent was not sought beforehand in scenario 2, my answer is the same.
There is obviously no consent in scenario 1, so again the same answer. |
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