
Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions - winthrowe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
======
ugh
I think it’s not quite as simple as that. When we discussed the scope of
science in a university seminar one of my fellow students said: “If scientists
where to find out that rooms which are painted yellow make students happy,
couldn’t we then say that the university ought to paint its rooms yellow?
Isn’t then science able to answer one of those pesky ‘ought’-questions?”

The logical slip is a subtle one. The ‘ought’-question to answer is not
whether the rooms ought to be painted yellow, it’s whether students ought to
be happy. Sure, if you know that what you want are happy students or a
flourishing human society, morality becomes a problem that is easily
accessible to the tools of empiricism or science. But that first step is a
problem.

I don’t, however, think it’s a big problem. Humans are remarkably similar –
most of us want the same things: flourishing societies and rather more
happiness than suffering. And that’s pretty much all it takes to lay your
foundation. After that it’s all smooth sailing with the tools of science.
Sure, there are edge cases (abortion, euthanasia, death penalty and so on) but
to claim that religion has any kind of edge in answering those cases is
completely ridiculous.

~~~
billswift
Ronald Merrill suggested a couple of decades ago that "normative ought" and
"instrumental ought" are likely two sides of the same issue which he called
the "unification of oughts" (rather like Maxwell's unification of electricity
and magnetism, Merrill was an engineer). That "normative ought" in morality is
an instrumental ought with an understood object (for example to improve your
or someone else's life); and I would suggest the proper study of morality may
be to understand, make explicit, and rank/prioritize those implicit objects.

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rgejman
Sure, science can answer moral questions IF you have a pre-scientific moral
framework. For instance, "the suffering of conscious beings should be
avoided." Then science can help you figure out who/what are conscious beings,
under what circumstances they suffer and how to end their suffering.

Unfortunately, the speaker misses the fact that science _alone_ gives no basis
for morality.

~~~
ThomPete
The point is that you can have a moral (whatever that means) society without
religion.

Mirror neurons is what allow us to put ourselves in others place, thus feeling
empathy with them. This and this alone is the basis for the possibility of
some sort of social dynamics.

I have people in my life I love and don't want anything to happen to so I can
recognize that there are other people who feel the same about some they care
about.

I am therefore willing to make a deal with these other people that we don't
hurt those who other people love and they don't hurt who we love.

It's really that simply but of course the emergent complexity of this is much
bigger.

~~~
andrewcooke
his caricature of religion was awful. i think most religious people in an
educated audience like a ted talk would think of it more as encoding communal
priorities than delivered over a phone line from a guy with a beard...

...and an emergent system that can encode ideas in persistent forms cannot be
decoupled from its history. you are pretty much going to have some kind of
activity close to religion. if you listen to the talk, where he's arguing for
universal truths, and domain experts in morality, it's surprising just how
close he is to arguing for a rather traditional religious approach...

~~~
ThomPete
I don't agree.

From what I know of Harris having followed quite a few of his debates his
point simply is that to the extent that you can talk about right or wrong
moral systems, science actually allow you to back up your claims.

This is in grave contrast to the moral systems that base their logic on
premises that have no merit at all.

I would much rather live in a society where moral claims can be accessed and
debated than in one where it can't.

Not to because I believe that science leads us to a more correct version of
morals but because it's accessible to everyone.

Religious moral systems aren't hindering bad moral behavior, people are. So
studying people would in my mind give us a much better basis to discuss morals
than consulting 2000+ year old books.

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TomOfTTB
Honestly as someone who has spent the better part of his life studying Ethics
it’s sad that something like this is given credence. Not because he’s
completely off base but because he’s an amateur whose put no study into the
actual field. He’s repeating things that Immanuel Kant and Sir Thomas Aquinas
thought up centuries ago but doesn’t know it because he’s never bothered to
look past his own echo chamber.

His theory basically boils down to “morality is acting in a way that creates
the least human suffering” and his scientific twist on this is that technology
such as neuroscience can objectively gauge suffering for us.

The problem with his theory is that it’s simplistic and is in fact the moral
philosophy that’s usually debunked on day one of a good Ethics class.
Generally the counter argument is something like this…

Yes suffering is bad. But say you have a child who has been found torturing a
small animal. Statistically that child has a 90% chance of turning into
someone who does great harm to human beings. Given that would a society be
morally justified in killing all children that are found torturing small
animals? It would unquestionably save the world the most suffering the only
cost would be killing one innocent kid for every 9 who would turn in to a
monster. Is that an acceptable loss?

Questions like that are where serious moral discussions begin. Bottom line:
Sam Harris treats secular morality as if it’s some kind of new concept and it
just isn’t. People have been studying it since at least 400 B.C. (namely
Aristotle) and anyone talking about a topic while ignoring 2,410 years of
previous thought towards that topic is nothing more than a fool.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I've noticed an interesting internet trend over the years.

1) I spent several hundred hours chasing down some topic I like, such as
ethics, philosophy of science, global warming, The Crusades, whatever

2) Joe Blow the famous internet guy gets a bug stuck in his butt about the
same topic -- perhaps he saw it on Oprah or read it on a discarded cocktail
napkin. Who knows.

3) Joe does a TED talk, writes a blog, or some other way tells us his deep
thoughts, most of which sound like a spin-off of The Matrix. Very cool. Very
shallow. And without any historical context.

Everybody oohs and ahs and talks about how cool Joe is.

I'm not saying that has happened here. I'm not saying that I have some kind of
deep insight. God knows I'm Joe to some other schmuck. All I'm saying is that
reading blogs or watching videos in which people say trivial things while
others applaud is getting a bit tiring. I love everybody participating in a
debate! But I wish there was some way to rank the content of the material so I
wouldn't have to go over elementary material -- many times arguing with people
who don't know better. Talk about a waste of time for everybody.

Some kind of difficulty-rating system for internet material would be really
cool. Save us all a lot of time on mis-matched conversations.

~~~
fnid2
I don't think Sam Harris is your Joe. He has an undergrad in Philosophy and a
PhD in neuroscience. He's also written several books, some of which are quite
controversial. He's not as well known as Dawkins or Dennett, but he's not a
quack from the internet either.

But that's beside the point, because I don't think you have to have degrees or
write books to have valid opinions on topics. Some of the most insightful
people I know have no formal education at all and I gain a lot by listening to
them. Some are overconfident and lacking in topical knowledge, but if that is
the case, then I still don't attack that person (sometimes I do if they attack
others -- or me, I'm still learning how to communicate effectively). I just
talk to them and try to get their opinions. In a debate like this, opinion is,
for now, just about the best we can expect to share no matter how educated you
are or how many books you've read -- there are no clear answers -- only
choices.

I know my opinions of morality really differ quite a lot from most -- that
doesn't make me wrong and it doesn't make _them_ wrong. Moral relativism is
the first the we should accept before engaging in a debate about morals or
ethics.

I wish really, we'd address the arguments rather than resort to ad hominem,
which in this case definitely isn't valid. Many would consider him to be an
expert on the topic of modern secular morality.

I highly doubt he hasn't read the famous philosophical discourse on the topic
of morality. Your implication that you need to go over elementary material
with someone as well versed in it as Sam Harris is quite funny really. IMO,
you're Joe right now. No offense.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
No offense taken. The comment wasn't about Sam at all. It was responding to
the feelings of the parent comment and making an observation. Heck I didn't
even RTA.

(Although I continue to make the observation that if by some miraculous means
Sam were Joe to me, we would be having the same conversation. Hence the
frustration in the GP)

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ThomPete
Moral systems have evolved because that is a good way of maintaining the
complex dynamics of a society.

How they work can perfectly well be explained by science if we are too look at
it from a social dynamic point of view with mirror neurons at the center.
Which also will explain why some people don't have empathy.

Science can obviously not explain WHY something is right or wrong but there is
absolutely nothing that indicates that this can or should be answered. As long
as the mechanics work.

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btilly
I'm not sure when it comes out, but he earlier did an authors@google talk on
the same subject, which has been embargoed so the TED version came out first.
My comments are based on that earlier version of this talk.

Sam did a very good job of demonstrating that it would be really good if we
could get morality from science. He did a good job of pointing out that
science can validly inform our decision making. However he misses the fact
that science is about problems that are tractable, not important. And he is
unable to present his variant of Western morality with sufficient force to
convince people who do not start with a morality similar to the one he already
has.

In essence it is the same mistake the social sciences make. The case that
something is important, and that data is a useful thing to have in studying
it, does not suffice to make a compelling case that we are on the right line
of research.

See [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-makes-it-
science.h...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-makes-it-science.html)
for a more detailed explanation of my opinions about what is and is not
science.

~~~
winthrowe
One point at least briefly mentioned in the TED version is the advancements in
brain scanning. I am personally an advocate of the singularity theory of
technology, and I am of the opinion that we will get to a point where the
psychological and social issues will be describable with sound neurology, and
it will become a tractable problem.

~~~
dmfdmf
I think I hold similar views, except I would say "sound epistemology" not
neurology. Do you think P=NP?

------
xenophanes
A better basis for morality is this:

It's immoral to live in a non-error-correcting way because doing so dooms you
to repeat your mistakes (whatever they may be) indefinitely.

~~~
godDLL
That's one negative, and one CS degree. :)

~~~
xenophanes
What do you mean?

~~~
godDLL
Your moral is about forbidding something, not guiding somewhere. Very much
like the christian commandments.

And you need to be of a certain culture to understand the "error-correcting"
part.

~~~
xenophanes
How can we avoid fooling ourselves and correct our errors?

is a constructive question that leads to things like the scientific method,
and to the use of criticism in discussions.

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hubb
i know it's difficult or often impossible to accurately title talks like
these, but this one is pretty far off. he stays somewhat on topic for a while
but ends up drifting really far into compromising western and middle eastern
values. i think "moral expertise" or something along those lines would have
been better.

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mattmiller
The problem with basing your morals on religion (or science for that matter)
is that biblical passages can often be taken out of context to validate any
action, the same way scientific data can be looked at in many different
perspectives (lying with statistics).

Morality is difficult to explain. I think most people just know what is right
and what is wrong. A lot of people look to a higher power (religion or
science) to justify the wrong actions they want to take.

~~~
btilly
Everyone _thinks_ they know right from wrong. The problem comes when what one
person "knows" disagrees with what the next person "knows". Society is full of
important debates about moral questions which people legitimately disagree on.
(See abortion.) And Sam's presentation does nothing to help us sort those
questions out. (Well actually he asserts his morality. But that won't convince
people who fundamentally disagree with him.)

Now some people like to point out that evolutionary biology has a lot to say
about why we develop the internal moral compasses we do. Morality really does
seem to be bred into us. But the problem is that the same evolutionary
incentives that breed moral behavior also breed negative characteristics like
xenophobia and a willingness to selectively cheat. So evolution explains both
what we like and dislike about human behavior, and provides no useful way for
us to distinguish them.

~~~
mattmiller
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that allowing 'written' morality
(written in a holy book or written by Sam Harris:)) to supersede personal
morality is harmful because words can often be twisted to mean what you want
them to mean.

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anigbrowl
Good talk, but I can't help feeling that John Stuart Mill said all this more
than a century ago, and most of the history of economics consists of his and
other people's attempts to address the same questions.

On the other hand, with so much ignorance and BS in the world, even in wealthy
societies, restating these ideas as often and fluently as possible is a
worthwhile endeavor.

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itistoday
Careful, of all the places where language makes it easy to trip up and
misunderstand each other, this one is particularly filled with land mines.

Don't get caught up on exactly what words he used, but rather watch the whole
talk and try to get his intent, which I think is well founded.

He is, I think, fairly clear in saying that science does not tell us _what
specifically_ is morally "good" or "bad," but rather that science can tell us
what human activities foster and correlate with human prosperity and
happiness. I'm sure most everyone here will agree that this is not an
outrageous claim. Since moral questions usually deal with issues of prosperity
and happiness, he concludes that we shouldn't be afraid to bring up science in
such discussions.

~~~
lionhearted
> Don't get caught up on exactly what words he used, but rather watch the
> whole talk and try to get his intent, which I think is well founded.

I don't think it is particularly well founded for a reason that hasn't been
mentioned yet:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism>

I believe that deontological ethics - that is, coming to decide right and
wrong actions - is superior to consequentialist ethics, which is to judge
actions by their expected results.

Many people would disagree with me - a lot of people are consequentialists.
But consequentialism usually fails, once you start saying "The ends justify
the means" you get into bad places really fast.

Historically speaking, consequentialism has produced lots of problems and not
much success.

~~~
indrax
I realize this is going to seem a lot like a 'no true scotsman' argument, but
I think there's a problem with saying consequentialism has bad consequences.
If it has had bad consequences, they weren't doing it right. (or _possibly_
they just had very different values)

It's also possible to be consequentialist and still refuse to due certain
things on principle, even if it seems like the right thing to do, because you
know you are prone to be wrong about that kind of thing.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/uv/ends_dont_justify_means_among_hum...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/uv/ends_dont_justify_means_among_humans/)

~~~
lionhearted
> but I think there's a problem with saying consequentialism has bad
> consequences. If it has had bad consequences, they weren't doing it right.

This is a good point, but it appears like the process of attempting to apply
consequentialist thinking almost always leads to bad places. Consider, for
example, Prohibition or the War on Drugs. These were both really well-
intentioned in some ways - they were about having a cleaner, more sober, more
healthy society, with less poverty and more prosperity, and less addiction.
But the end result is creating an underground drug/alcohol trade, giving rise
to organized crime and gangs, and having people now consume less safe
homebrewed versions of alcohol and drugs.

I think most if not all well-intentioned consequentialist thinking goes to
similar places. There were will always be seductively alluring "Works in
theory/destroys the world" type things (separate but equal segregation,
communism, prohibition, price controls) - and many of those are in violation
of basic deontological ethics of giving people choice, letting them live their
lives, and so on. I think the vast majority of drastically bad ideas can be
avoided with straightforward, rule based live and let live type ethics, which
is what I personally favor after searching around.

"Ends justify the means" has historically always led to bad places - and I
think it always will. "Ends justify the means" works in theory, but has
consistently historically failed in the real world.

Edit: Just read the Less Wrong article - quite good and I more or less agree
with Eliezer there.

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marshallp
Another way of saying this would be that you can create a mathematical model
of morality and have it answer your questions of morality in particular
situations. If you come from the viewpoint that there is a mathematical model
of everything (waiting to be discovered) then this is pretty obvious.

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rogermugs
fascinating because he makes an almost religious argument for absolute truth.
he simply calls it objective fact.

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jemfinch
Science cannot answer metaphysical questions, so ethics is entirely outside
its scope.

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cousin_it
So am I morally obliged to push my fat friend off the bridge to stop a train
that will otherwise kill three people? Answer me, science!

And don't even get me started on the Repugnant Conclusion problem...

