Friday, September 20, 2013

Sam Harris And The Science Of Morality

Sam Harris has made a challenge around his book The Moral Landscape. Lots of internet talk about it. Leah Libresco. Ross Douthat. The challenge is to write an essay that convinces Harris he is wrong. Good luck with that. He is wrong of course. The trouble is he can't see it. The problem is not that he is not smart enough or that he is dishonest. The problem is assumptions he has made and cannot question because he does not know they exist.

What he starts with is the idea that humans seem to have some moral impulses embedded in them. He has noticed that moral thinking has not really focused on those impulses over the centuries. It has not ignored them but the focus of moral reasoning has been around other moral inputs. Around revelations from God, around attempts to construct a rational model for morality, around duties and virtues and utility and on and on. There has been very little study around our moral selves.

Harris thinks that if we really understood our moral impulses and where they come from then what is moral or immoral would become obvious. This gives another reason why it is hard to prove him wrong. How can you know something won't become obvious after much study? I think we can know that but only because I accept some things about morality that Sam Harris does not. So I can prove it if he gives me a premise or two but my expectation is he won't do that. In fact, he has explicitly denied some of the premises I would assert.

First of all, morality has to have some foundation that points to goodness. He wants to use the human person as a foundation. That is not always bad. The trouble comes when you couple that with evolution. Actually even evolution is not a problem. It is evolution that lacks teleology. That is evolution that is not ordered towards something good but just happens to go where it goes.

If you find something in the human person. Say they love life and hate death. How did that thing get there?  Now if you say man was created in God's image then you know that got there because God loves life and hates death. That makes it a moral principle. If you believe in an evolution without a goal then that means a lot less. It means sometime in the history of our species there was a survival advantage to loving life and hating death. It does not mean it is good for us now. It just means it is easy for us. We are equipped to do it. It does not even mean it was ever good for us in an absolute sense. It just means it helped in survival in some situations. Not that it was the best thing or even a noble thing. Just that it was a useful thing at some point in time. 

But what happens when somebody says he has discerned some higher good and we need to kill people in the service of that higher good? We know we have an impulse not to kill. So what? People have always had that impulse and still many killings happen. We know where our impulse comes from? We are assuming greater scientific knowledge so say we know what gene it is associated with and what  brain dynamics are going on when we feel this impulse. Does that help? Maybe a little. We might be able to see that killing permanently damages the brain. That we can't just put the soldier or the torturer back into society and expect all to go well. So that science might give us something to think about.

What science will not be able to construct is a firm moral principle. A simple principle like, "Thou shalt not kill" can't be the result. Science can only describe cause and effect. It cannot say the effect is wrong. Something else needs to tell us that. It can make us understand the consequences of killing better and that is a good thing. Still it can never tell us the impulse not to kill is right and we should trust it more than we should trust these guys who promise us a better society if we just kill a few people.

So what Sam Harris calls  the science of morality isn't really morality at all. It is simply saying that moral issues will go away if we understand the brain a little better and understand other cause and effects a little better. Salvation through science.

Behind that we have an assumption that moral feelings don't point to some bigger reality of moral goodness. That moral feelings point to nothing at all. They just are. If we manipulate them we don't have to worry about making sure they lead you into what is right. We just have to worry about the feelings themselves bothering you.

So if you feel bad because you lied the problem is not that lying is inherently bad. The problem is the feeling itself. Telling the truth is one way to feel better. What if science could give you a pill that made you stop feeling guilty after lying? Would that make lying OK? I don't know if Harris would say Yes but under his understanding of he should say Yes. The human moral impulse is gone so the moral issue is gone.

It is a bit like people have tried to do with sexual morality. If you can deaden you conscience on sexual matters then the moral issue is just gone. They call it getting over your hangups or just growing up. But what you have done is the same thing as taking a pill to make you stop feeling guilty about lying. You have not changed the moral nature of the act. You have just changed your feelings.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Randy,

    You accuse Harris of being wrong and suggest it is because of his presuppositions. You believe this is so because of your presuppositions. This isn't really an argument. It is just the statement "I am right, you are wrong" state with considerably more words.

    Consider your closing arguments about sexuality. You are brute asserting that there is something that people should feel guilty about but give us no good reason as to what or why. Most moral imperatives can be explained in terms of harm done to others. In terms of sexual morality or other forms of moral command that come from expressly religious sources, it is often not possible to explain the morality, or lack there of, of some of these actions in these terms. It seems more like divine whim that this thing or that is immoral.

    Many of the charges you direct at Harris seem equally applicable to religion. Ignoring for a moment that you simply assume that the religious view is correct (presumably Christianity in your case), you ask
    But what happens when somebody says he has discerned some higher good and we need to kill people in the service of that higher good?
    This exact scenario has played out in the history of essentially every religion.
    If the morality is based on science as Harris puts it and you have to explain why this is a higher good in terms of the "flourishing of conscious creatures", you are going to have a very hard time.
    If, on the other hand, this is simply a revelation from God (or a claim thereof), there is exactly no conversation, no evidence and no appeal to reason that can be convincing. "God says so" ends all debate.
    I find the latter scenario considerably more dangerous and worrying than the former. Islamic extremists are providing the world with a case study in what happens when God commands very nasty things, or nasty things can be claimed to be his will.

    In terms of science telling us what we "should" do morally. I believe Harris is suggesting that if take morality to be: acting in ways that promotes the flourishing of conscious creatures; Science can at least potentially tell us what achieves this end.
    Neuroscience for example can indicate how a human brain is responding to certain stimulus. Longitudinal studies might reveal to us the long term effects. We could derive from solid empirical evidence that behaviour X or Y leads to increased flourishing of conscious creatures or not.

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  2. Hello Mr Hobo,

    Thanks for reading and commenting. As far as presuppositions go,sure. Sam Harris and I have different presuppositions. That is why he won't send me any money for this argument. But my point of view is clearly stated. I am Catholic. Still I think the arguments I make are logical.

    Consider your closing arguments about sexuality. You are brute asserting that there is something that people should feel guilty about but give us no good reason as to what or why.

    People feel guilty about sex acts. I didn't say they should. I said they do. That is actually data that Sam Harris wants to dig into. He thinks it holds the essence of morality. I say it points to the essence of morality but that essence is actually outside the human mind. Who is right? Harris' thesis depends on him being right yet he does not prove it. He just assumes it.

    Most moral imperatives can be explained in terms of harm done to others. In terms of sexual morality or other forms of moral command that come from expressly religious sources, it is often not possible to explain the morality, or lack there of, of some of these actions in these terms. It seems more like divine whim that this thing or that is immoral.

    Really? Is lying wrong, even if nobody gets hurt? Is it a divine whim? Or is there something about lying that is just inhuman? Harris would go that far? But then is the goodness of truth a property of human beings or does it go deeper? That if human beings ceased to be lovers of truth then they would be defective or would that just be? Would truth cease to be good because humans ceased to make it good or would truth remain good and humans would simply be poorer for not recognizing it? If truth remains good regardless of human recognition then Sam Harris is not going to find the essence of truth just by doing a scientific study of humans.

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  3. But what happens when somebody says he has discerned some higher good and we need to kill people in the service of that higher good?
    This exact scenario has played out in the history of essentially every religion.
    If the morality is based on science as Harris puts it and you have to explain why this is a higher good in terms of the "flourishing of conscious creatures", you are going to have a very hard time.


    What definition of "flourishing of conscious creatures" would be used. Why couldn't this somebody just change whatever definition is out there and make up his own? That would mean he just has to explain why under his own terms. Not very hard to do at all.

    If, on the other hand, this is simply a revelation from God (or a claim thereof), there is exactly no conversation, no evidence and no appeal to reason that can be convincing. "God says so" ends all debate.

    People should not accept anything as revelation from God unless there is good reason to do so. We know that many religious claims are frauds. But just because it is possible to make false claims about God does not mean God does not exist or that the claims of the Catholic church are false.

    I find the latter scenario considerably more dangerous and worrying than the former. Islamic extremists are providing the world with a case study in what happens when God commands very nasty things, or nasty things can be claimed to be his will.

    When you remove God from the picture is does not eliminate the potential for nasty things. The fact is that many modern dictators don't claim revelation from God yet they commit all sort of atrocities. Atheism actually makes this worse. If you can't say to a government that it is violating God's law then how do you say your opinion of what should be done is right and his is wrong? If Assad thinks slaughtering civilians is OK what makes him wrong?

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