Thread: TED: Sam Harris on science and morality

I mean don't get me wrong, I hate just about every moral relativism and moral absolutism there are going. Ok, that's not true I'm somewhere between Kant, Camus and Catholicism.
I just think that when this guy speaks against relativism he chiefly a)says something which is superficially quite nice but has ugly implications b)says something so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist that it makes my skin crawl (protip:any view that is intellectually fashionable is 99.9% likely to be wrong) c) flaps his jaw and makes noises without his propositions actually committing him to any position whatsoever.

Just going off of what is present in the video and nothing else external to this (as this is all I know of Sam Harris):

Originally Posted by Think

a)says something which is superficially quite nice but has ugly implications

What, pray tell, are the ugly implications you are speaking of in particular?

Originally Posted by Think

b)says something so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist that it makes my skin crawl (protip:any view that is intellectually fashionable is 99.9% likely to be wrong)

I'm confused here I suppose. This talk is rather superficial, and some of the details are sort of silly, but frankly I expect nothing less from TED talks (namely, cocktail philosophization which makes the viewers feel real smart). I don't, for example, believe necessarily that corporal punishment (when delivered by the parents at any rate) is "wrong" in any obvious objective way.

But beyond that... it's also intellectually fashionable to oppose racism. On that note, it's intellectually unfashionable to scientifically inquire into the potential physiological and genetic trends and differences between racial, supraracial, or subracial groups. I think the former in principle is a correct attitude, and the latter is an incorrect attitude.

Just because an attitude or belief is intellectually fashionable doesn't make it wrong (do you really believe that entire races might be subhuman?), but it does make it subject to all sorts of excesses that more thoughtful people must always be vigilant against. And just in this talk considered in isolation, he doesn't get into the niceties enough to indicate whether he really is taking this attitude in any way to excess or not.

Also, I question just how intellectually fashionable it his to harbor this sort of attitude towards morality. It seems to me that it is more fashionable to write off differences in a culture's moral teachings compared to your own just as a cultural difference without making a value judgement either way, though I might be wrong.

And at any rate, yes, his messages are so broad that he's avoiding the difficult and fraught questions that inevitably come from holding any principle at all.

c) flaps his jaw and makes noises without his propositions actually committing him to any position whatsoever.

He's merely outlining how to consider morality outside of a religious context without giving into moral relativism. It's not completely devoid of content, but I suppose his points are obvious to you. As silly as it may seem, they might not be to everyone. I've known of plenty of people who contend that all atheists are sociopaths since they have no moral code because they don't believe in a god.

Originally Posted by Syme

It's treated as axiomatic because people have come to realize that morality is a purely social construct whose terms and ideas and starting assumptions don't reflect anything that actually exists in reality. No matter how self-evident it is to you that correct morality consists of whatever you think it consists of.

Yes, morality is a societal construct, but you can't say that the entire content of all moral codes are simply arbitrary, can you? You're not even going to admit that there are built-in propensities for certain behaviors as well as certain conditions which tend to make individuals content and certain conditions which tend to make them suffer? This sort of human preprogramming can serve as the basis for a moral code or at least the pattern for what would constitute a sound moral code.

Humans are not just born as blank slates which can be socially engineered to any arbitrary degree. Just ask a neurologist if you don't believe me.

Originally Posted by sycld

Yes, morality is a societal construct, but you can't say that the entire content of all moral codes are simply arbitrary, can you? You're not even going to admit that there are built-in propensities for certain behaviors as well as certain conditions which tend to make individuals content and certain conditions which tend to make them suffer? This sort of human preprogramming can serve as the basis for a moral code or at least the pattern for what would constitute a sound moral code.

Humans are not just born as blank slates which can be socially engineered to any arbitrary degree. Just ask a neurologist if you don't believe me.

Sure, I agree that such propensities exist. And of course I agree that some conditions make people happy while others make them unhappy!

What I disagree with is the attempt to jump from these facts to abstract moral truth claims which people try to pretend are "correct" in some objective way. If you think that morality is about human happiness, great. That's a fine interpretation of morality and a fine basis for a moral code. But don't try to pretend that it correctly reflects some universal moral truth and that moral codes which hold otherwise are somehow "incorrect". Because the decision to associate morality with human happiness in the first place is an arbitrary one with no basis whatsoever in "the real world". Someone could just as easily say "No, morality has nothing to do with human happiness, morality is all about X instead".... and how could you argue with them in terms of concrete correctness or wrongness? There's nothing real or factual you could point to that proves you right and them wrong, no matter how self-evident or reasonable you think it is to draw that line connecting morality to human happiness, and no matter how objectionable you think it is to connect morality to something else. Because morality, being purely a social construct, being purely an abstract invented by human minds, and reflecting nothing in the real world that's subject to examination or verification by an observer, is totally outside the field of subjects that be discussed using terms like "correct" or "incorrect", or "valid" or "invalid". Discussing the "correctness" of a moral idea is EXACTLY the same as discussing the "correctness" of a phrase like "blue is a pretty color". But people who make comments like the one gwahir has made would seem to be suggesting that it IS somehow possible to detect and tap into some objective/universal moral truth that's out there floating around in space somewhere (whether it's "morality is about happiness" or anything else), and by comparing various real-world moral codes that objective truth, determine whether they are wrong or right based on whether they square up with it. That's what I'm saying is bogus.

TLDR: I'm not saying it's impossible (or bad) to construct a moral code in which morality is associated with human happiness, I'm just saying that you can't claim this moral code is more objectively valid than the moral code of a person who throws acid on women who don't wear hijab. There's no point of reference for such a claim. Claims of objective validity or rectitude need a reference point.

Originally Posted by Syme

TLDR: I'm not saying it's impossible (or bad) to construct a moral code in which morality is associated with human happiness, I'm just saying that you can't claim this moral code is more objectively valid than the moral code of a person who throws acid on women who don't wear hijab. There's no point of reference for such a claim. Claims of objective validity or rectitude need a reference point.

You're right. My thought was getting muddled. And I agree that what standard one determines whether an action is moral or not is invented rather than set out as a cosmic absolute. (I prefer saying "invented" rather than "arbitrary," but yeah I'm agreeing with you completely.)

What I should have said was that there are certain social behaviors "programmed" in us that allow us to live in social settings at all. For example, society is impossible if every one of its members goes around killing other people randomly.

On the other hand, "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal" aren't exactly the most profound statements on morality, so perhaps using humans' natural pro-social behavioral tendencies as a basis for a social moral code isn't going to buy you very much.

Perhaps it is possible to go one step further and perform the same mental experiment that the British empiricists did: What would people do and what activities would they pursue outside of the more stringent stricture of civilization? Of course, such a question probably would just produce answers that reflect your own cultural bias and nothing more... And anyway this question is still an arbitrary standard for moral precepts.