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Author Topic:   Scientific Morality? - (The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris)
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 1 of 34 (664582)
06-01-2012 3:08 PM


I just finished reading Sam Harris' book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.
I consider Harris to be the most progressive (not in the political sense) of the so-called New Atheists and this book has reinforced my opinion on that matter. In it, Harris dismantles the framework that seems to be the cause of so many absolute versus relative morality debates. There is another way to think about morality that is distinct from the former dichotomy and has the potential to give us a common language for talking about morality. Harris presents a notion of a moral landscape, a conceptual space that has peaks and valleys that correspond to higher and lower states of well-being for people. Morality consists of the actions and behaviors we take that allow us to move away from valleys and toward peaks. Moreover, because well-being relies upon facts about the universe, science can be used as a tool to help us navigate inside this landscape.
I transcribed a few sections of the book because I think Harris describes it well. Emphasis is mine.
Sam Harris writes:
Even if each conscious being has a unique nadir on the moral landscape, we can still conceive of a state of the universe in which everyone suffers as much as he or she (or it) possibly can. If you think we cannot say this would be "bad," then I don't know what you could mean by the word "bad" (and I don't think you know what you mean by it either). Once we conceive of "the worst possible misery for everyone," then we can talk about taking incremental steps toward this abyss: What could it mean for life on earth to get worse for all human beings simultaneously? ... All we need imagine is a scenario in which everyone loses a little, or a lot, without there being compensatory gains (i.e. no one learns any important lessons, no one profits from others' losses, etc). It seems uncontroversial to say that a change that leaves everyone worse off, by any rational standard, can be reasonably called "bad," if this word is to have any meaning at all.
We simply must stand somewhere. I am arguing that, in the moral sphere, it is safe to begin with the premise that it is good to avoid behaving in such a way as to produce the worst possible misery for everyone. I am not claiming that most of us personally care about the experience of all conscious beings; I am saying that a universe in which all conscious beings suffer the worst possible misery is worse than a universe in which they experience well-being. This is all we need to speak about the "moral truth" in the context of science. Once we admit that the extremes of absolute misery and absolute flourishing are different and dependent on facts about the universe, then we have admitted that there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.
The concept that Harris refactored in my mind was the notion that morality must be independently prescriptive and/or founded on some kind of deep philosophical principles, standards that we do not hold to other useful pursuits. He makes a compelling analogy to physical health that prompted me to read the book in the first place after hearing him make the same argument in a video I saw.
The video is well worth watching:
Here is also a debate between Harris and William Lane Craig on this very topic. What is very interesting is how Harris fields challenges. Very well worth watching in full.
But if you don't have the time, some relevant quotations from the book are here:
Sam Harris writes:
However, many people will continue to insist that we cannot speak about moral truth, or anchor morality to a deeper concern for well-being, because concepts like "morality" and "well-being" must be defined with reference to specific goals and other criteria -- and nothing that prevents people from disagreeing about these definitions.
...
The definition of "life" remains, to this day, difficult to pin down. Does this mean we can't study life scientifically? No. The science of biology thrives despite such ambiguities. Again, the concept of "health" is looser still: it, too, must be defined with reference to specific goals -- not suffering chronic pain, not always vomiting, etc. -- and these goals are continually changing. Our notion of "health" may one day be defined by goals that we cannot currently entertain with a straight face (like the goal of spontaneously regenerating a lost limb). Does this mean that we can't study health scientifically?
I wonder if there is anyone on earth who would be tempted to attack the philosophical underpinnings of medicine with questions like: "What about all the people who don't share your goal of avoiding disease and early death? Who is to say that living a long life free of pain and debilitating illness is 'healthy'? What makes you think that you could convince a person suffering from fatal gangrene that he is not as healthy as you are?" And yet these are precisely the kinds of objections I face when I speak about morality in terms of human and animal well-being.
Science cannot tell us why, scientifically, we should value health. But once we admit that health is the proper concern of medicine, we can then study and promote it through science. Medicine can resolve specific questions about human health -- and it can do this even while the very definition of "health" continues to change. Indeed, the science of medicine can make marvelous progress without knowing how much its own progress will alter our conception of health in the future.
I think our concern for well-being is even less in need of justification than our concern for health is -- as health is merely one of its many facets. And once we begin thinking seriously about human well-being, we will find that science can resolve specific questions about morality and human values, even while our conception of "well-being" evolves.
It is essential to see that the demand for radical justification leveled by the moral skeptic could not be met by any branch of science. Science is defined with reference to the goal of understanding the processes at work in the universe. Can we justify this goal scientifically? Of course not. Does this make science itself unscientific? If so, we appear to have pulled ourselves down by our bootstraps.
That last part is particularly important to me because I always struggled with some of those thought problems that people pose. Harris' mentions some of them such as, if you could switch a track so a runaway train to save or kill certain people in certain circumstances. The notion that we don't NEED to have a morality that answers ALL of these questions in order to have it properly grounded in reality is my big takeaway from Harris.
Harris also talks about how we might justify an active morality in this way.
Sam Harris writes:
The moment we admit that consciousness is the context in which any discussion of values makes sense, we must admit that there are facts to be known about how the experience of conscious creatures can change. Human and animal well-being are natural phenomena. As such, they can be studied, in principle, with the tools of science and spoken about with greater or lesser precision.
...
The fact that it could be difficult or impossible to know exactly how to maximize human well-being does not mean that there are no right or wrong ways to do this -- nor does it mean that we cannot exclude certain answers as obviously bad.
...
The difficulty of getting precise answers to certain moral questions does not mean that we must hesitate to condemn the morality of the Taliban -- not just personally, but from the point of view of science. The moment we admit that we know anything about human well-being scientifically, we must admit that certain individuals or cultures can be absolutely wrong about it.
I would go further than I think he does to say that I believe this is what we already do. Even people who believe in a divine absolute morality will respond in ways that suggest they unintentionally respect this principle in areas not clouded by their religion. For example, I know many Christians who would likely reject Harris' accounting of their moral frame of reference while also fiercely advocating for the rights of a child to an education on the basis that it improves the well-being of society as a whole.

So what do you all think? Has anyone else come across this idea before? Can we have a science infused morality?
I think the appropriate place for this would be in the Is it Science? forum.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-02-2012 11:13 AM Jazzns has replied
 Message 5 by Dr Jack, posted 06-02-2012 2:23 PM Jazzns has replied
 Message 22 by Stile, posted 10-26-2012 11:54 AM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 9 of 34 (664623)
06-03-2012 10:28 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Dr Adequate
06-02-2012 11:13 AM


But there are other problems. What is well-being? Is it to be measured only in endorphins? Most people would stipulate other conditions as desirable, such as liberty, dignity, sanity, and so forth. Doubtless a heroin addict with a lifetime's supply of heroin would be happier than me on a continuous basis, but I wouldn't trade places with him, nor with a madman whose delusions made him happy. These are extreme cases, but then there are the gray areas. If a social system took away liberty in order to promote prosperity and happiness, would that be OK? How about depriving people of truth in order to promote contentment, as Plato would have done in his ideal Republic, deliberately inculcating a myth into his citizens for the sake of social stability?
I think the important point that I took away was that the existence of the gray areas doesn't change that there many things we can know. Harris also took certain pains to make sure the reader understood that even if there are questions we cannot currently answer, that does not mean no answer exists similar to paradoxes in science/math.
Then again, there's the old problem of summing utilities. Would it be worth sacrificing one human life to cure a million people of a mild headache? No? How about dropping a brick on his foot? Or suppose that you could make everyone in the world but one as happy as they could possibly be --- at the cost of consigning that one person to the nadir of misery? OK then, what if it was a different person each day, selected by lot?
Harris does discuss this in the book but for life of me I can't remember it. It must not have left that big of an impression on me.
I don't think there is one single metric of morality similar to how there is not one metric of health.
In some senses though, don't we already accept some real situations like this? I am personally a staunch advocate of vaccination policy when simply by bad luck will cause certain children misery who are allergic to them.
The main point I think is that while my feelings on this seem rational, justified, and moral; science cannot currently tell me why because we currently have no science of morality. In many cases Harris does in fact seem to punt. He is advocating for a science of morality in recognition of its current absence.
Well, those are just some disjointed thoughts at random. I should really take another look at the book.
I think I will also have to read it again to remember some of these finer points that you brought up. But its due back at the library and I'll probably just go buy it once I can get around to it.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-02-2012 11:13 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-03-2012 1:45 PM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 10 of 34 (664624)
06-03-2012 10:36 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Dr Jack
06-02-2012 2:23 PM


Harris is criticized quite a bit for a lot of things some of which are true and others not.
For the purposes of this discussion, those things do not address the idea at all. Harris could be a notorious drug lord and that wouldn't change the value of the ideas.
I don't revere Sam Harris because I have made a change in my life that doesn't put anyone on a pedestal for their own sake. The only reason he needs to be mentioned at all in this discussion is because he seems to be the originator of the idea.
So if you have something to say about the idea, please join us. If you are only interested in attacking the person with claims of his own personal failings (which others seem to have questioned) then please do that in a different place.
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Dr Jack, posted 06-02-2012 2:23 PM Dr Jack has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by marc9000, posted 06-03-2012 3:44 PM Jazzns has replied
 Message 15 by Dr Jack, posted 06-03-2012 8:52 PM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 12 of 34 (664631)
06-03-2012 2:21 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Dr Adequate
06-03-2012 1:45 PM


Science as a toolkit
Well, but it may well mean that. If his demonstration that for some questions there is a definite moral truth is based on the fact that we can all agree on the answers, then given that we cannot agree on other answers to other questions it looks like there is no definite truth.
Right. I think he even says as much although I can't seem to find the exact quote. The search for "definite truth" is a distraction. There are many important moral truths (in the real scientific meaning of the word "truth") that are sufficient to help us ascend peaks on the moral landscape in a practical manner. We don't need to know the definitive answer to the moral question of these various population paradoxes to know that throwing acid in the face of Afgan girls for the "crime" of getting an education is in fact immoral from the perspective of the moral landscape. Just like in science, some questions will be answered to sufficient degrees while others may remain intractable forever.
If he had some other reason for asserting the existence of such truths, that would be a different matter. But when his basis for doing so is that we all agree, then aren't we obliged to conclude that where there is no such agreement there are no such truths?
I don't know when you read it but I think you may be mischaracterizing his argument. I think I even recall him saying that it is clear that a science of morality may discover "moral truths" that are not popularly accepted in the exact same way that some other scientific truths (evolution, global warming, etc) are not popularly accepted.
I don't think he mentioned it but I can imagine the topic of euthanasia fits that category just fine. It seems to me that forcing people to live through horrifying and painful terminal illness against their will is not promoting well-being and yet the popular opinion is that it should be illegal.
I guess we can all agree with Sam Harris that it would be good to increase the well-being of everyone, but in more complicated cases we have to start making value judgements --- judgements such that even complete knowledge of the facts, and a quantified linear scale of suffering thrown into the bargain, would not allow us to resolve with an easy conscience that we had made the right decision.
Sure. But I think there is something to be said about being confronted with those situations WITH complete knowledge of the facts rather than without. The science of morality, like other science, is a toolkit not a prescription. THAT to me is what is profound about this idea.
This is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to issues that contain ambiguity. Our strategies for dealing with complicated, ambiguous, or nuanced situations are really bad. Often times we don't even go with what is popular! All you have to do is take a look at the wretched state of the worlds financial systems to see evidence of that. Science is well equipped to deal with ambiguity or at the very least, it is the best of our intellectual tools we have created thus far.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-03-2012 1:45 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


(1)
Message 14 of 34 (664634)
06-03-2012 4:08 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by marc9000
06-03-2012 3:44 PM


I don't think you are accurately describing the moral landscape idea at all. Did you read it or see either of the videos?
In fact, Harris' specifically notes that proper scientifically discovered "moral truth" may or even should transcend our evolved tendencies.
The example he uses in the book is the well studied notion that people's moral outrage does not scale when it logically should. People tend to react equivalently to various disasters that causing human suffering regardless of the scale of the suffering. Charities know this and appeal to our in-group tendencies which focus on personal stories/faces/anecdotes.
If we were to stick to sociobiology as a framework for morality, we might identify this behavior as "good" while according to the moral landscape, the inability of our altruism to scale is in fact "bad".
So-call "New atheism" is also not a moral framework. It is also neither new nor do all the people who are put in that category happy with the term "atheist".

(harris starts 4 mins in)
I appreciate your engagement but please understand the concept of the moral landscape before dismissing it as things that it is not.
Edited by Jazzns, : fixing youtube link

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by marc9000, posted 06-03-2012 3:44 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 17 of 34 (664649)
06-03-2012 9:53 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Dr Jack
06-03-2012 8:52 PM


When Harris is making claims about moral systems his moral viewpoints are not irrelevant personal attacks.
First of all, your claims about his viewpoints have been refuted. Harris himself has responded to those criticisms more than adequately at the link provided by Panda.
Second, a scientist does not destroy the idea of science as tool for discovery by himself holding irrational beliefs. By that same reasoning, Harris would not destroy the idea of the moral landscape should he suddenly become a mass murderer. Ideas have value independent of the people who think them. If they didn't, this world would not function.
So even if your perception of his moral viewpoints was correct, and they are not, it would in fact still be irrelevant.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Dr Jack, posted 06-03-2012 8:52 PM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 20 of 34 (664734)
06-04-2012 4:08 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by Dr Jack
06-04-2012 2:47 PM


But I really can't be arsed to play link footie over the views of a third party.
This is a fight YOU picked. If the man's own response to people's ignorant criticism of his positions isn't good enough for you then there isn't anything that anyone else is going to be able to say to get you to put down your pitchfork.
I'll also note that this is your 3rd post failing to address the substance of the issue or why anyone else should give a damn about your shallow dismissal.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by Dr Jack, posted 06-04-2012 2:47 PM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 24 of 34 (677165)
10-27-2012 4:59 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Stile
10-26-2012 11:54 AM


Re: Just Morality
I don't think you are characterizing Harris' argument correctly.
In health, the goal is to "stay alive." Therefore, if someone's heart stops, it is always right to try and start it again.
That is an incorrect basis in which to see his analogy. I am going through a problem myself at the moment where there is no hope of a cure for my condition. There is only the hope of managing a chronic condition until the day that I die. So sometimes the goal of improving health is not just to avoid dying and in all those areas the ambiguity has almost the exact same difficulties as morality.
And the BIG point I think which that analogy attests to is the point that we OFTEN make decisions to improve health without complete certainty of the downstream consequences. We are used to working with this ambiguous quality called "health" which is not only very hard to measure objectively but also a moving target that has changed greatly over time.
Harris uses this idea of "absolute misery" and "absolute flourishing" in order to avoid having to define "good" and "bad."
I think you are focusing too much on one end of the spectrum. The idea of the moral landscape is that there is this one hypothetical point of absolute misery but that there is NOT necessarily a single point of absolute flourishing. Harris repeatedly speaks about multiple peaks on the landscape and that while at the top of one peak we may never know if we are at an absolute peak or just a local maximum. There also may be many equal peaks of flourishing. I think this point goes to your final criticism.
I think morality must depend on what other people think about your actions in order for it to be a genuinely valid moral system.
An action that increases the misery of some would be represented on the landscape by a path that doesn't go straight up the hill toward a fitness peak. A totally morally ambiguous situation would be represented by moving laterally at a given elevation on the landscape.
But the point is, just because there are ambiguous moral decisions, they do not discount the existence of the peak or valley. We should assume for our own sake that the path up to the peak is discoverable with the same techniques that we have used to "improve" "health", namely science and reason.
If the youtube videos have sparked your interest, I would encourage you to read the book as Harris makes a much more complete argument in print. I was able to check it out at my local library.
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by Stile, posted 10-26-2012 11:54 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Stile, posted 10-29-2012 9:11 AM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 25 of 34 (677166)
10-27-2012 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Tempe 12ft Chicken
10-26-2012 5:05 PM


Re: Atheism leads to immorality?
I think you have done a very good job summarizing the differences in the debate.
Since watching that debate I have wanted to look more into Craig's forceful assertions, based on Hume, that we can't get an "ought" from an "is". Some of this stuff gets into the philosophical weeds for me and just really doesn't pass the bullshit test but I can't quite articulate why.
If it IS true that murder causes suffering then we OUGHT to take measure to stop it. I don't see the illogic in that but I am no philosopher.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Tempe 12ft Chicken, posted 10-26-2012 5:05 PM Tempe 12ft Chicken has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by Omnivorous, posted 10-27-2012 7:42 PM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 27 of 34 (677217)
10-28-2012 1:24 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by Omnivorous
10-27-2012 7:42 PM


Re: Atheism leads to immorality?
I am glad to have sparked your interest. I can't wait to hear what you think of the book.
I nearly majored in philosophy, but ended up bookending my English major with minors in philosophy and anthropology (and an outlier in E. Asian studies ), partly because I concluded that, as Harris says, "We are being misled by language."
That is a good point to remember and it goes to what I feel about some of these philosophical arguments. Sometimes it seems as though some of our constraints are artificially imposed by our inability to express things properly. In mid thought you rarely realize that a new word for some idea would be better than whatever stream of pseudo-sophistication you ended up trying to shoe horn your idea into.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by Omnivorous, posted 10-27-2012 7:42 PM Omnivorous has not replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 29 of 34 (677337)
10-29-2012 9:57 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Stile
10-29-2012 9:11 AM


Re: Just Morality
I think you are operating under a different, more narrow definition of morality. I don't think we are limited to just how people perceive things at all. That is an artificial constraint that only seems to arise in the subset of morality dedicated to personal human interaction. But there is much more to morality than that.
First of all, more things can be ascribed as moral or immoral than just the personal decisions we make. Abolishing the state sanctioned ownership of people is clearly moral while the genocide is clearly not. I don't think that what you are claiming is that we can't make a moral distiction between these extremes is it?
Again, to Harris' point, it may actually be quite vague to proclaim any particular personal act to be more moral than another, many may be equally moral. But it is quite easy to declare some acts to be universally and objectivly immoral. There is no situation where throwing acid on the faces of young girls trying to go to school such that it increases our fitness on the landscape.
So straining over some gray area about opening doors or the proper way to greet someone seems to somewhat miss the point. There are much more interesting gray areas such as if we should allow abortion!
I also have a problem with one thing you said:
Science and reason are used to show us the single objective answer for the questions that are able to have single objective answers.
I wonder if reading that now you might want to rephrase that statement? Science and reason quite OFTEN end in multiple ambiguous and tentative conclusions based on a known insufficiency of evidence. That is why we may have multiple peaks on the landscape. While there may be a "right" answer, we may never be in a position to know it and in the mean time we will not be able to see the crests of various fitness peaks to decide which is the tallest.
Again, knowing this does not eliminate the existence of the peaks or our ability to notice the local gradient of moving up or down it.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Stile, posted 10-29-2012 9:11 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Stile, posted 10-29-2012 10:43 AM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 31 of 34 (677443)
10-29-2012 6:11 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by Stile
10-29-2012 10:43 AM


Re: Just Morality
What I'm saying is that the distinction depends on the people involved, though. When the state-sanctioned ownership of people was abolished, wouldn't you agree that there were many people voicing their
opinion that they did not want to be owned?
....
Again with genocide. Are you saying that people have never voiced their opinions that they would not like to be killed?
I notice that you didn't try to make some rediculous hypothetical situation where people want to be exterminated in the same way you did for slavery. It is sufficient to assume that the well being of these people would improved by not dying and not being slaves. These moral outcomes are not divorced from the perception of the sentient beings that it affects and Harris makes that very clear both in the video and in the book. I just think you are taking it too far.
For example, Harris beings up the situation where there have been studies that if you artificially extend the length of an uncomfortable medical procedure that it reduces the memory of the discomfort of that procedure. So if you ask the person at the time that the procedure is underway if you want it to stop they will undoubtably say yes. But the moral thing to do might be to wait if in the end it reduces the trauma embedded in their memory.
I think the point is, I don't believe you need this imaginary barrier of being able to communicate in order to decide moral questions. I also think that your complaint is in fact captured in the argument for the moral landscape made by Harris.
Yes, in an imaginary realm where we can invent scenarios we can envision some bizarre circumstance where there is a population of people and if we kill them all then the rest of us will all survive. You may even be able to claim that this is moral. But the morality of this contrived circumstance does not change the fact that stand alone genoicde is not moral. The goal of the moral landscape is NOT to try to create a rational version of the 10 commandments, rules that must be followed in all circumstances.
We can choose to be grounded in reality and the innumerable REAL circumstances that we face today. The people who WANT to have acid thrown in their face to escape a dictator and the questions such as, "would you switch the path of a train to save a baby but kill an old man" type of edge case quandries can continue to baffle armchair ethicists while the rest of the world adopts rational principles to solve real problems.
I think it is important to identify when something is morally unknown and make sure that we do not allow others to call something "good" or "bad" when it is unknown. That is a rationalization which leads to bigger problems. We can talk about our best course of action... our best guess to help as much as we can... but to suddenly switch and say "I know that this is actually good to do!" without having the proper communication to actually know such a thing... is fundamentally ignoring what morality is about.
Well, I think you are picking a fight over so much semantics. The principle realization of the moral landscape is that once you are outside of absolute misery that it may very well be arbitrary and uncertain in some circumstances. This is discussed at length in the book but may not be accessable from the video. I know you expressed that you weren't interested in the book but then perhaps you should avoid making pronouncements about the invalidity of ideas for which you aren't familiar with. I am not saying this to be contrary or argumentative. I just think that what you are talking about is something other than what Harris is proposing.
Science and reason are an excellent tool to track our experiences to help us form our best moral "guesses." But the answers are sometimes not linear or logical because they are subjectively dependant on other people's subjective feelings. That is why science and reason cannot ever be our "final tool" in reaching a conclusion. We have to understand that morality is about people, and people are subjective. Therefore, the only way to reach a final conclusion is to communicate with those people.
No one is proposing a "final tool". Finally, no one is proposing that moral decisions be made in absence of the experience of the sentient beings for which it affects.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by Stile, posted 10-29-2012 10:43 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by Stile, posted 10-30-2012 9:10 AM Jazzns has replied

  
Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3901 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


Message 33 of 34 (677643)
10-31-2012 11:55 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Stile
10-30-2012 9:10 AM


Re: Just Morality
Well then, lets talk about real world problems. I wasn't the one who brought up obvious non-every-day issues like slavery, genocide and acid-tossing.
I said real issues not just every-day issues. I was specifically pushing back on these manufactured moral dilemmas that will never actually happen. Slavery, genocide, and acid-tossing ACTUALLY happen or have happened in very recent times. There are international arguments inside some of the most powerful world bodies about what we should do about these things. Some of these discussions are very much about morality, in particular forcing Western ideals upon Afghanistan when there is backlash manifest by civilians who are willing to throw acid in the face of their daughters for going to a school built by western money.
What is not happening at the U.N. for example are discussions about toddlers and senile people wandering around on separate train tracks that are controlled by buttons that average civilians have access to.
Like opening a door for someone...
I understand your point but my feelings on this are best expressed by, "so what?" I perfectly fine with living in a world where there is infinite moral ambiguity about whether it is the right thing to do to open doors for other people. If we are teetering around a particular peak of the moral landscape on these ho-hum moral dilemmas then that is a world I would be very happy to live in.
My mistake, then. You didn't mention anything other than science or reason, and didn't seem to accept my idea of taking into account "the experience of the sentient beings for which it affects" (I thought you were making points against it, even?) Please feel free to elaborate, I'm more confused than anything else as to what we're talking about at the moment. I've just been trying to submit that the final (and most important) piece of the morality puzzle is communication with those being affected by the proposed actions. It seems reasonable to me. But if you already agree with that, then I suppose I don't have any point of contention at all.
Well I think I was confused because of the examples you chose to use. I don't quite know how you could have digested, even from the video alone, that moral decisions could be made in absence of this. But you constructed your criticism around this notion of "communication". You don't need to communicate in order to keep the well-being of people in mind. There is a strong evidence based, while still admittedly subjective, argument to be made that the well-being of the people of Afghanistan will be improved by bringing women out of ignorance and poverty. Yet if you go right now and poll the Afghan people, I don't think programs for women would be very popular. So is what the West doing moral by supporting the education of women in Afghanistan? I would say yes based on the argument made in the moral landscape (among many arguments you could make). But if we go and ask them, based on your original formulation of the problem, you may consider it immoral.
There is also the situation of the medical procedure that I brought up in my previous post which you did not respond to.
Thanks for the discussion by the way.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Stile, posted 10-30-2012 9:10 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by Stile, posted 10-31-2012 1:13 PM Jazzns has not replied

  
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