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Author Topic:   Scientific Morality? - (The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris)
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 22 of 34 (677027)
10-26-2012 11:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Jazzns
06-01-2012 3:08 PM


Just Morality
Hello Jazzns,
Thanks for the shameless plug you made in Message 33. Without that I would have missed this thread.
I don't think I fully understand Harris' ideas, so I may be projecting something onto him that he doesn't actually promote. If such is the case, then I apologize in advance.
I think Harris is saying that good/bad is kind of like healthy/un-healthy in that they both have gray areas, but they also both have obvious areas.
I think that such a view is fatally flawed in such that it doesn't give morality the sway it requires. I think this description of morality can lead into too many potentially false views ("a busted leg is always a bad thing") which is the problem with any prescriptive method of morality.
In health, the goal is to "stay alive." Therefore, if someone's heart stops, it is always right to try and start it again.
Harris says "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." Which sort of hints to me that he is thinking that there are situations (regardless of the people involved) that are always right to do something specific.
I think that this general idea is fatally flawed as to what morality involves.
Harris uses this idea of "absolute misery" and "absolute flourishing" in order to avoid having to define "good" and "bad." But, in so doing, he still relies on each individual to describe their personal idea of absolute misery/flourishing and then use that as a guideline in how they act towards other people.
Harris' moral goal is to get closer to his idea of "absolute flourishing." To think that there is one ideal "aboslute flourshing" that would actually work for all people is... orwellian-ly evil.
I must admit that the idea is simple, and better than an absolute moral law-book. But I do not think it captures the important aspect of morality.
I think morality must depend on what other people think about your actions in order for it to be a genuinely valid moral system.
That is, if a situation occured where I did something to another person... and that person (honestly) says "Hey, that wasn't nice of you!"
That's the end of the moral judgement. That was a bad action.
Regardless if I'm able to say "If I did this same action to 99.9% of the rest of the population... then it would get us closer to "absolute flourishing"... therefore it is actually a good action... you're just weird."
It doesn't matter, and it cannot matter. It is still a bad action.
The way I see it, morality is our judgement in how we treat other people. Therefore, we need to get the feedback from those other people to see if our actions were good or bad. Because of this, we never have to perscribe our definition of "good or bad" onto other people... we just let other people define it the way they want to. Because it is subjective. We need to accept that it's subjective, not fight against the reality of the fact.
I also think it is very important for us to make it a personal choice to want to try to be good rather than trying to be bad.
If this is not a peronal choice (if some God charges us with a duty...) this then takes away personal responsibility for being a good person. Therefore, you're not really ever "being good" so much as you're just "following orders." This removes all the hard work that goes into actually being a good person (caring about other people's feelings... empathy... etc.) and removes all honour from it as well.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Jazzns, posted 06-01-2012 3:08 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Jazzns, posted 10-27-2012 4:59 PM Stile has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 28 of 34 (677330)
10-29-2012 9:11 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by Jazzns
10-27-2012 4:59 PM


Re: Just Morality
Jazzns writes:
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.
I like this point. It agrees with the system of morality that I prefer. (And maybe Harris' system and my system agree more than I think, even...)
I don't think the ambiguity exists because of some general "vagueness" about morality, though.
I think morality is very simple and easy to figure out if you've done something good or bad... you just have to ask the people you're dealing with.
However, that's where the ambiguity lies. Sometimes you are not able to consult others before you have to act. This leads us into having to make decisions and "hope" that we are making the right choices. We may not even be able to find out later if the action was good or bad (if the people affected are not available to find out if they liked it or didn't).
That's why I think morality is sometimes ambiguous.
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.
I only think that this is the fatal flaw.
Science and reason are used to show us the single objective answer for the questions that are able to have single objective answers.
Like when dealing with health, if an arm is broken, science and reason tells us how to set it and restrict it's movement so that it can heal. This has one single, objective answer. There may be some aspects of health that are not so cut and dry, my point is that there are a few simple areas (like broken bones, small cuts...) where there are simple, objective answers that are correct all the time.
But this doesn't exist in morality at all. There is not one single simple example where science and reason can show us that there is always a "morally correct" course of action.
Even something as simple as opening a door for someone. On the surface, it may seem like this is always the right thing to do.
But it's not... whether or not it's the right thing to do depends on how the person reacts to the situation.
If I hold the door for someone, and they tell me that they did not like it because they have been trying very hard lately to work on their independence and really want to do some of these things for themselves, therefore it annoyed them that I held the door open...
That means that holding the door open for this person was a morally bad action.
I do like the "peaks and valleys" description. I just think it's important to understand that the peaks and valleys represented actually real people (who react differently to different situations). Not some sort of "inherently unknowable ambiguity." It is knowable (if you are able to communicate with the people you're dealing with). It's just different for different people.
Science and reason cannot deal with these sorts of situations. That's because morallity is subjective. Whether or not we help or hurt someone is dependent entirely on how that person views the situation... not on how we view it. We can make our best guess, we can try to do what we think is best... but other people are the final authority on how our actions affect them. How can it be any other way?
A genuine moral system needs to accept this subjectiveness. Recognize it and understand it, not try to work around it.
Science cannot predict subjectiveness. It can help us in trying to do our best to help others. But we can never us it as an excuse. I can never say "well, maybe you didn't like me holding the door open for you, but everyone else likes it so there's nothing I could do... therefore I didn't do anything wrong."
That is rationalizing away the error in the situation. Starting down that road is morally bad. It can lead to worse rationalizations that "seem okay given certain facts."
It's okay to screw up, it's okay to be wrong, the correct course of action is to acknowledge we did something wrong, learn from it, and do better next time (that is, stop holding the door open for that particular person). It is not correct to rationalize away other people's feelings when the entire point of morality is how to deal with other people!
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.
Thank-you for the tip, but I'm not that interested in it
Perhaps one day I will have the time, but not in the foreseeable future.
I like to talk (ramble?) about morality, but research isn't exactly my cup of tea. I don't intend my posts to be "arguing against you, personally" so much as I intend them to be a simple discussion.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by Jazzns, posted 10-27-2012 4:59 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by Jazzns, posted 10-29-2012 9:57 AM Stile has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 30 of 34 (677348)
10-29-2012 10:43 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by Jazzns
10-29-2012 9:57 AM


Re: Just Morality
Jazzns writes:
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.
Ah... "personal" human interaction vs. non-personal?
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 distinction between these extremes is it?
Of course not.
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?
Let's say (for some strange reason) that no one ever complained about being owned... that people even liked being owned. Do you think that the abolishment would still have been created? Who would have proposed the idea? Who would have backed it, and pushed it forward?
Again with genocide. Are you saying that people have never voiced their opinions that they would not like to be killed?
But it is quite easy to declare some acts to be universally and objectivly immoral.
I do not think that it is.
I think it is simply quite easy to guess-correctly that people do not want to be hurt.
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.
But... you've included my pre-requisite right in your example.
If the girls are trying to go to school then obviously they do not want acid thrown on their faces. Communication is more than just speech.
If you want to frame horrible situations, then we would have to do so in context:
Let's say there's an evil all powerful overlord controlling some place.
Let's say there's a young teenage mother with a child that does not like this land.
Let's say the evil overlord will allow the mother and child to leave and live elsewhere if you throw some acid on the mother's face.
Maybe then the young girl would want you to throw acid on her face.
We might have to guess at what other people want. And most the time we do.
My point is that sometimes we don't have to, and always, always, the people being affected have the final, highest authority on whether or not the action being done to them was good or bad. Regardless of whatever you or I may think, regardless of whatever background experience you or I may have.
There are much more interesting gray areas such as if we should allow abortion!
Agreed. Using my method, we would have to ask the mother and the baby how they feel about it. Without being able to communicate with the baby, we would have to seek such guidance through the mother (as we do with living babies). And because we sometimes cannot trust our communication with mothers and children, we have certain laws and restrictions in place to attempt to protect children until they reach an age where we are able to communicate with them as an adult.
I'm certainly not saying that there's an answer for every question (or that we have everything right). In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm saying that a whole lot of moral questions simply do not have answers available to us (if we cannot communicate with those being affected). That doesn't mean we can call our actions good or bad based on anything else.
This simply means that the action will remain "morally unknown" until we can get such communication. It may very well remain morally unknown forever.
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.
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.
No, I wouldn't rephrase my statement as it was, but if we're going to add "incomplete information" into it, then obviously science and reason may only be able to lead us to a best guess.
I actually do endorse using science and reason to form our "best guess" for moral situations.
My point is to recognize the limits here. Science and reason can never be used to identify something that is actually good or actually bad. When morality is involved, science and reason will always have incomplete information.
The final piece of information is the communication from those affected.. if they feel helped or hurt. And science can never determine such a thing.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by Jazzns, posted 10-29-2012 9:57 AM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 31 by Jazzns, posted 10-29-2012 6:11 PM Stile has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 32 of 34 (677501)
10-30-2012 9:10 AM
Reply to: Message 31 by Jazzns
10-29-2012 6:11 PM


Re: Just Morality
Jazzns writes:
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.
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.
All I'm trying to say is that if we forget that morality deals with other people... and that those other people are the final arbitrators... we can fall into an easy trap of thinking "we know best" for other people. This is a troublesome caveat that is easily avoided by understanding that only other people can say what other people are feeling, not us.
It's easy to say "I know genocide is wrong" or "I know that throwing acid in other people's faces is wrong."
It's difficult to explain exactly why.
If your explanation is "Because I know that it brings us closer to lowering the overall moral landscape for humanity..." you can easily fall into the trap when trying to deal with everyday practical issues.
If you think that throwing acid in someone elses face is wrong simply because you, personally, have decided that it's wrong... it sets you up to fail when dealing with normal issues.
Like opening a door for someone.
If you open the door, but the other person didn't like it...
To say "well, opening doors for other people generally raises the overall moral landscape for humanity, therefore I'm going to just keep doing it and you're simply weird..." Is wrong. It's talking for other people and ignoring what every-day morality is supposed to be about... dealing with other people and other people's feelings.
The correct answer is "Oh, gee, I'm sorry. I was trying to be nice. Obviously you don't like it, though... I'll try to keep that in mind."
Notice how the correct answer takes into account the feelings of the other person, regardless of the initial idea that opening the door is "likely" the right answer.
Well, I think you are picking a fight over so much semantics.
Of course I am. That's what discussions of morality are about, including pretty much any other philosophical discussion. If we didn't have the time to discuss the semantics, we wouldn't have the time to discuss about morality in the first place.
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.
Fair enough. I've already admitted that I may not be discussing Harris' ideas. But as long as you indicate you have an issue with the ideas I propose, I would like to continue discussing those... until I can understand the problem with them. Maybe I need to change my position.
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.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 31 by Jazzns, posted 10-29-2012 6:11 PM Jazzns has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by Jazzns, posted 10-31-2012 11:55 AM Stile has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 34 of 34 (677664)
10-31-2012 1:13 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by Jazzns
10-31-2012 11:55 AM


Feedback Loop
Jazzns writes:
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.
I was just trying to focus on whatever I guessed you wanted to talk about.
The point about feelings works just as well for opening doors as it does for genocide, slavery and acid.
It seems to me that you seem to be talking about the initial side of morality - the point where we decide what we should do on our own. And I completely agree with using scientific reasoning of past experience to guide our decisions. Then I'm talking about the other side of morality - understanding if it was actually good or actually bad after the action has been completed... and the only way to do this is to communicate with the person being affected. You can "try" to be good or bad before the action, but to "know" if you were good or bad after the action... the only way to be informed of that is to ask the people involved. Because morality is subjective, I think it's impossible to "know" if an action is going to be moral or immoral before the action has completed.
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.
I consider it to be "trying to do what is right."
The only way we'll ever know if it's actually moral or not is after the action is completed. After the women have been educated and they understand what's happened. You and I both seem to agree that it is likely they will be pleased with the efforts. In that case, I would say the action was then moral. However, it's possible that after they have been educated, and they understand the situation... they do not like the position they find themselves in, maybe in some kind of "why would you ever interfere with our culture!?? Now we are simply a copy of you instead of being able to figure such things out in our own way!" type of thing. If such a thing were to happen... then I would say that it was an immoral action.
I am saying that currently, as the action is on-going, we cannot say if it is moral or not. We can say we're trying to be moral, and give our scientific reasoning (documented past experiences) to show that... but we cannot know if it's moral or not until the action is completed and we are able to communicate with those who are affected. Without that... if we just say "it's moral because we think it's best for women to have rights!"... then we're speaking for the lives (and culture) of other people (sort of like a Star Trek Prime Directive kind of issue). I would say we have an extremely high chance of being correct, and I endorse the proposed actions... but this doesn't give us the right to say that we know what other people's subjective feelings are going to be. And if we do start doing that, then we might start thinking it's okay for us to tell other people what's best for them in other not-so-obvious issues, like forcing capitalism on them, or something like that...
There is also the situation of the medical procedure that I brought up in my previous post which you did not respond to.
-----
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.
-----
My posts tend to get long and rambly... I try to keep them short, but I generally fail. For this, however, my answer is the same:
We cannot know if the action was moral or immoral until after the action is completed and we're able to communicate with the patient.
Let me expand into the following possible scenarios:
1. We ask patient if they want to stop - patient says "yes."
After procedure is stopped and patient goes home, we ask them if they are happy with the stopped procedure - patient says "yes."
--I deem the action of stopping the procedure to be moral.
2. We ask patient if they want to stop - patient says "yes."
After procedure is stopped and patient goes home, we ask them if they are happy with the stopped procedure - patient says "no."
--I deem the action of stopping the procedure to be immoral.
We can say it's not "fair", we can say the patient is to blame... we can say a lot of things. But morality isn't easy, and it's not straightforward. And it may very well be impossible to get everything right all the time.
3. We ask patient if they want to stop - patient says "no."
After procedure is completed and patient goes home, we ask them if they are happy with not stopping the procedure - patient says "yes."
--I deem the action of not stopping the procedure to be moral.
4. We ask patient if they want to stop - patient says "no."
After procedure is completed and patient goes home, we ask them if they are happy with not stopping the procedure - patient says "no."
--I deem the action of not stopping the procedure to be immoral.
I hope this helps to show where I'm coming from.
If the situation was presented to me, I would try to be moral and not stop the procedure as I would assume the patient wanted the procedure in the first place, is simply under the stress of the immediate situation, and will like the procedure to be completed as normal.
However, I cannot say that this action "is moral" without learning how everything unfolds. The answer to whether or not it "is moral" is always up to the person being affected by the action. Even if they change their mind.
That's why morality is so complicated and difficult... because no one ever does know the answer until the action is completed, and even if they do know... it's subjective... therefore it's able to change.
Anyone who's ever spent time thinking about morality knows that it's not cut-and-dry, it's not simple, and it can be extremely confusing.
I'm just trying to describe a system that actually describes the confusion and difficulties instead of throwing up my hands and going "oh... morality just gets strange sometimes..." which seems to be what every other system I've ever heard of does eventually. Including Harris' with his landscape of peaks and valleys. Harris and I seem to agree that the peaks and valleys exist due to the subjective, difficult, confusing nature of morality. I'm just adding in that they way to precisely understand each peak and every valley is to communicate with those individuals and find out. Maybe Harris even agrees with that? Generally, people explaining a moral system leave it at "well, it's difficult..." and move on to more generalized advice (like "moving away from universal evil.")
I think it's important to note that "it's okay to be wrong." If we try to force a system where we can always win... we can end up rationalizing away the times we were actually wrong. That's a really bad thing.
I think it's important to actually find out if some of the things we do actually were good or bad. After communicating with others and figuring it out, our moral system becomes a feed-back system where we use this new information to further refine our "scientific reasoning" in order to make better guesses at trying to be moral in our actions.
As we try to be moral, and feedback positive/negative responses into the system, the system will move ever closer to being "fully moral."
This doesn't eliminate errors (mistakes), but may very well be impossible with the subjective nature of morality anyway. This does, however, provide a way to get as close as possible to being as "good" as possible.
Thanks for the discussion by the way.
I'm always looking for a way to improve the system I currently use. Or even a way to better describe the system I use...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by Jazzns, posted 10-31-2012 11:55 AM Jazzns has not replied

  
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