Discussion of the Intro to The Moral Landscape
Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 10:10 pm
Discussion of the Intro to The Moral Landscape
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I think this might give the impression that Harris' project is weirder than it actually is. Harris defines "science" very broadly, whereas most people, when they hear the word, picture professionals called scientists doing research of various kinds. While this kind of science comes into play as a tool to guide our goal-setting in the arena of morality, Harris in fact believes that we already have a scientific basis for much of what we believe to be moral. Saying that acting with kindness towards others supports the well-being of conscious creatures is a scientific statement that has already been tested. It doesn't even need to be tracked to the ultimate source of truth in physical changes in the brain that can be observed under the condition of the world that we would label "being treated with kindness." But of course, as the science of the mind progresses, we will be able to define better what positive emotion looks like in the brain and how positive emotions differ from one another. This research will be confirming much of what people just know and always have.Robert Tulip wrote: Sam Harris has a goal that is perhaps the most important thing in our world today, to establish a scientific basis for morality.
He places "well-being" at the end of that sentence, not "facts." Here I think you are beginning to use "facts" in a way he doesn't intend. The facts that exist--without any doubt, he says--are facts about states of the conscious brain. These facts relate to what we experience physically as joy, fear, love, hate, anger, etc. We then sort these out according to whether or not in the situation of the individual they are supporting well-being.values are only worth holding if they are based on facts.
The facts that values translate into are facts about our emotional responses, as Harris goes on to say after the words you quote. If we only would respect these facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, then a large part of our moral confusion would be lifted, as the example of corporal punishment shows. But as you mention, educated people want to say that factual answers to moral questions don't exist, so they have no way of proving that corporal punishment is not just something they don't believe in, but wrong as well. Harris elsewhere points out the inconsistency in the common attitude that moral reasoning must be categorical and airtight for all situations, or else it is invalid; whereas when science is incomplete and not in a state of consensus, the situation is normal and simply an indication that more research is needed. However, even with more research, perfect consensus never arrives, and that is okay, more than good enough.Harris says ‘values translate into facts’ (p1). However, he observes that muddy thinking about morality has led many to confuse the imprecision of ethical claims for an argument that questions of value admit of no answers in principle (p3). He gives the example that evidence shows corporal punishment produces worse outcomes as a moral question of values that may be difficult but in principle can be studied and answered as a matter of fact.
Some facts about food, facts that are based in human physiology, transcend the vagaries of culture, so we can say some true things about good and bad food. So too, some facts about well-being transcend mere cultural preferences; they're true regardless of what culture we're talking about, so we can say that some cultural practices are good/right or bad/wrong. If cultures automatically adapted themselves to whatever promotes maximum well-being, we'd have great moral health, but none of them do.The separation of science from morality, what Harris rightly describes as the Hume-Popper firewall, is shown as incoherent by the example of health – just as we know some food is poison and some is good, we know some conduct is moral and some is not. How does this analogy hold up? So far so good, but Harris starts to get shaky when he asks neuroscience, his own specialty, to do more of the intellectual heavy lifting than it really can, by locating morality within a precise science of mind. What does the fact that neglect affects brain development really say about morality? Harris says (p10) that meaning and measurement must be reconciled, but then draws the unjustified conclusion, in a tactical stiletto argument aimed at the heart of his real opponent, that “science and religion … will never come to terms”. The invalid logic here involves the claims that because science values consistency, evidence and simplicity in its assessment of factual truth, “a clear boundary between facts and values simply does not exist” (p11), and that “religion and science are in a zero-sum conflict with respect to facts” (p24).
It helps to have his explanation for the statement from p. 14: "To really believe either proposition is also to believe that you have accepted it for legitimate reasons. It is, therefore, to believe that you are in compliance with certain norms--that you are sane, rational, not lying to yourself, not confused, not overly biased, etc. When we believe that something is factually true or morally good, we also believe that another person, similarly placed, should share our belief. This seems unlikely to change. In Chapter 3, we will see that both the logical and neurological properties of belief further suggest that the divide between facts and values is illusory." As for the need for condemnation of cruelty to be absolute and universal, this might be traditional in philosophy, but Harris has always said we won't have this in ethics, do not need it, and that it is not implied when we say that cruelty is wrong. Again, science doesn't give us universal agreement and consistency, either. I don't know why "cruelty is bad" needs to be seen as any less factual than "water is 2 hydrogens and one oxygen." Certainly from a practical standpoint, every human being is in a position to verify the facts of the first statement, while few can personally verify the second.The central error at the foundation of Harris’s argument is presented in his claim that “factual beliefs like ‘water is H2O’ and ethical beliefs like ‘cruelty is wrong’ are not expressions of mere preference.” (p14) The implication is that condemnation of cruelty should be absolute and universal. The choice here of the statement about cruelty as a universalizable moral claim is very revealing about the weakness of the overall argument. While all should share a goal of moving towards a less cruel world, the simple statement as presented that cruelty is wrong is in fact different in kind from the simple statement that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. The statement about cruelty is a value, a sentimental preference, while the statement about water is objectively and absolutely true by definition. The cruelty statement needs to be hedged around with qualifiers to become anything like as universal as any statement of objective fact. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. A lion kills the offspring of rivals in cruel fashion, but we do not say the lion is wrong. The idea that cruelty is wrong produces the perverse view that all must have prizes because separating winners and losers is cruel.
Of course, Harris would be well aware of the categorical imperative, but what use would he want to make of it if it obliges him to separate facts and values, precisely the fault his book argues against? I think that for him the "transcendental imagination" is roughly equivalent to our innate moral intuitions, which he doesn't slight in any way and doesn't say that science must somehow show us how to overturn. You charge that hostility to religion biases him to "transcendence in logic," but I'd ask you to define this and then to show how its absence nullifies his argument. The is/ought argument is one that he handles as well, capably I think, but that will be for another time.Harris hints here at Kant’s categorical imperative, the idea that we should always act in ways that we would like to be universal (cf p.82). But Harris does not follow through the logic, that the categorical imperative separates facts and values, in Kant’s distinction between the starry heavens above and the moral law within as the twin sources of wisdom, with morality grounded in transcendental imagination rather than in factual observation. As with his relegation of Aristotle’s eudaimonia (flourishing) to a footnote (n9, p.195), Harris does not properly locate his claims within a recognition of how philosophy has previously analysed them. The result is sloppy logic, a worthy rhetorical argument that may be plausible and even persuasive but is far from compelling. His antipathy to religion produces an irrational antipathy to transcendence in logic, an invalid elision from description to recommendation, a continuation of the muddy waters that confuse the social schematics of the logical categories of reason and evidence in philosophy.
Looking forward to that.This main problem of the inability to properly define the source of values lead Harris to make erroneous statements about evolutionary ethics and the status of religion, which I will address in subsequent posts.