Robert Tulip said what I have titled this post.

First, lets have a quick review of what "scientism" is:

Scientism is defined at wiki as..,

Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints

Robert's quote is in my opinion a perfect example of an argument that is so bloated with conceptual difficulties that it makes the argument invalid.

"Flourishing" can be defined much differently from person to person, making it too vague a concept to be used with any precision.

When you use vague concepts in precise arguments you end up with distortions.

What is the precise formulation of what "flourishing" is for each person?

I'm sure "flourishing" or "happiness" can be defined by social psychologists and to some extent studied empirically. There has been a lot of research on human happiness in the last few decades. Jonathan Haidt discusses exactly how social scientists look at human happiness in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis. Social scientists quantify and measure human happiness by first establishing various definitions and assumptions about how we measure happiness. Such a discussion must include the latest science on the how the human brain functions. And Haidt also looks at different personality types to see which are more apt to experience happiness.

To be sure, the social sciences are only way to look at human happiness (flourishing). Philosophers have been looking at this from the dawn of time. There are metaphorical ways of examining and exploring human happiness through poetry and imagery that elicits feelings. The Buddha had a lot of ideas about human suffering and human happiness that are still relevant and amazingly compatible with a modern scientific understanding of the human brain.

Here's a passage from Haidt's book that introduces the idea of a happiness hypothesis . . .

Buddha, Epictetus, and many other sages saw the futility of the rat race and urged people to quit. They proposed a particular happiness hypothesis: Happiness comes from within, and it cannot be found by making the world conform to your desires. Buddhism teaches that attachment leads inevitably to suffering and offers tools for breaking attachments. The Stoic philosophers of Ancient Greece, such as Epictetus, taught their followers to focus only on what they could fully control, which meant primarily their own thoughts and reactions. All other events—the gifts and curses of fortune—were externals, and the true Stoic was unaffected by externals.

Neither Buddha nor the Stoics urged people to withdraw into a cave. In fact, both doctrines have such enduring appeal precisely because they offer guidance on how to find peace and happiness while participating in a treacherous and ever-changing social world. Both doctrines are based on an empirical claim, a happiness hypothesis that asserts that striving to obtain goods and goals in the external world cannot bring you more than momentary happiness. You must work on your internal world. If the hypothesis is true, it has profound implications for how we should live our lives, raise our children, and spend our money. But is it true? It all depends on what kind of externals we are talking about.

Interestingly enough, Haidt discusses some of the evidence that suggests that people who hold "pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions." I always tell my wife that she suffers from positive bias (a real thing). Though I'm more pessimistic by nature and probably less happy, I'm probably better than her at seeing the world as it really is.

I checked on this and found an abstract, plus an initiative by the Templeton Foundation for child flourishing.

http://www.internationaljournalofwellbe ... e/view/286

The source of the quote in the opening post is at http://www.booktalk.org/post133411.html#p133411
Readers will see I address flourishing in a more complex light than just material reductionism, although of course I do defend quantifiability.

This references a discussion about the moral theories of Sam Harris that I started at http://www.booktalk.org/post81239.html#p81239

Interbane picks up this question of whether 'human flourishing is good' can be understood as a moral axiom. Flann 5 says "Attempts by Harris to be robust about morality are commendable, but imagining science can determine right and and wrong and defining flourishing is erroneous."

So the religiously-minded participants in the discussion, ant and flann, want to leave the concept of flourishing as some vague spiritual feeling, not amenable to evidentiary analysis. Such an unscientific approach conflicts with the moral theories that policy should be based on evidence, and that we should assess what is good by measuring consequences. A robust approach to systematic evaluation should really be at the heart of moral theory, because otherwise we rely on spin and repeat our mistakes.

I didn't read through the article I linked until after I posted. It's interesting, but there's still the issue of self-declaration of happiness levels. I've seen some philosophical discussions on how this is overcome, or made more trustworthy(shrinking the margin for error), but I have no clue where.

Robert Tulip wrote:So the religiously-minded participants in the discussion, ant and flann, want to leave the concept of flourishing as some vague spiritual feeling, not amenable to evidentiary analysis. Such an unscientific approach conflicts with the moral theories that policy should be based on evidence, and that we should assess what is good by measuring consequences.

I don't think anyone is saying that scientific information cannot be useful in relation to decisions that have a moral aspect.
Harris is defining moral good and evil in terms neurological states and physical and psychological happiness or misery. Robert talks about measuring consequences.There are problems with this approach.
Police,doctors and social workers often have to break bad news to people which can make them unhappy and even miserable.
This act would normally be considered morally good but the consequent misery on Harris's terms makes it morally bad.
The psychopath apparently achieves neurological highs by torturing someone. Clearly wrong, but Harris's neurological test makes it good if only for the psycho.
An extremely arrogant person may be publicly humiliated out of cruelty and malice by someone else.This may be beneficial in inculcating humility in the recipient.Does this make the malice morally good?How is all this measured?
There are lots of problems with Harris's ideas.
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/iss ... -morality/

Those are all valid problems Flann. Each can be reasoned through individually. But imagine having to reason through a billion of them just for an assessment. I think Sam Harris is arguing that flourishing is measureable in theory, if not so accurate in practice. But what's possible in theory will eventually be possible in practice.

For social workers breaking the news of a death, the moral harm would be weighed against the even more harmful event that the family finds out by watching the news or getting a frantic phone call.

The psychopath's torture is obviously weighed against the pain felt by the person being tortured.

Malice against an arrogant person is only good if that arrogant person's future actions have a resulting reduction in harm done to others, and that reduction in harm is greater than the harm of his humility. I would say that without a doubt it is. Not only because it's the arrogant man that is measured, but everyone who hears the story and is more introspective and self-aware as a result.

We can reason through how we would measure these scenarios, but actually doing the measuring is nigh unpossible.

I agree with a lot of the criticisms of Harris's book, his notion of well-being is fuzzy and I don't think is much help to decide hard cases of morality. But no theory or source has an answer to all moral questions. Certainly not a book from thousands of years ago with advice about your slaves and your donkeys.

http://listverse.com/2007/10/21/top-10-moral-dilemmas/

Harris's analogy with health is a good one. Our definition of peak physical health is nebulous and changing. But we continue to make progress in medicine, nutrition, etc.

Moral decisions deal with the mental, physical well being of conscious entities.

So every decision can be dealt with in moral terms by an assessment of the objective facts involved in the well being of others.

A psychopath really, REALLY enjoying the torture of another cannot be good because there is another conscious entity involved, the person being tortured, and their experience needs to be weighed.

One person having the BEST possible time they can imagine while another suffers unnecessarily, and as a direct consequence is a bad thing and it can be demonstrated objectively within the framework of morality.

I say within the framework of morality, because like math it is a construct we have created to deal with reality as it is. It has correlations with reality, but is not necessarily intrinsic to reality. All the same having set up definitions things can be right or wrong within that framework and people who argue to the contrary don't have "another valid alternative". They are wrong.

2 + 2 cannot equal 7. If you say it does, then you are using the incorrect definitions of those symbols.

Torturing an innocent for the pleasure of another is wrong. If you say it is right, then you don't understand the concepts that underlie morality and you are wrong. You don’t have another valid alternative of morality. It means you are failing to take the experience of others into account. You are using other factors that are not a part of morality to judge the impact of your actions. Failing to account for others means an incorrect assessment of the moral impact of your choice. For instance, the psychopath might say, "well, they are just a (minority they hate), so they aren't really people and it's ok to torture them."

Some people are actually tempted to say that there is nothing we can actually say to show this statement to be wrong. But that is false. Positive moral choices do not negatively impact the physical and mental well being of conscious entities, and they minimize the exploitation of any individual while allowing them to live as they see fit. It is a framework for cooperative societies. The person who argues it is ok to torture fails to take into account the experience of others in the society and because they have not accounted for all the variables they are just plain wrong. Just as you would be wrong when trying to count all the corners in a room but refuse to turn around and look at the ones behind you.