Part 4 of the Heathen’s Progress is out. It’s about how atheists shouldn’t think science is their BFF, because it will stab them in the back sooner or later.
Julian is harsh about Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape.
What’s worse, however, is when atheists talk of science as though it is the source of all the knowledge and wisdom we need to live. The most egregious recent example of this is Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, with its subtitle “How science can determine human values”. It’s hard to imagine a more hyperbolic claim about the power of science…
It is rather.
When Harris sounds convincing is when he is attacking the batty view that science has nothing to say about human values. Scientific evidence might indeed reveal morally important facts, such as that inequality as well as absolute levels of wealth affects wellbeing; that different “races” are not that different and not really races; that some animals do feel pain, and of what kind it is; and so on. Science can also reveal the physiological and neurological mechanisms that underlie the things we value in life, like achieving states of flow or avoiding pain. But science could never tell us what we should value, because when it tells us how things are, we are always left with the question, what ought we to do about it?
That link is in the original, and it was probably inserted by Andrew himself (which is a little shaming, since it goes to something he wrote). I can tell you that when I publish articles by other people on B&W the website, I don’t insert links to stuff I wrote. I would think that rude and intrusive.
However, since I’m writing this post, I will insert a link to something I wrote, because it’s pretty much exactly what Julian said. I expect he got it from me. (Joke!)
It’s from the review I wrote of Harris’s book for The Philosophers’ Magazine.
It’s easy to get people to agree that well-being is good; the hard part is getting them to agree on what that implies they should do, and getting them to do it.
Harris spends most of the book hammering home the point that morality is about the well-being of conscious creatures, which means he spends far too little time considering the difficult questions that arise even if everyone agrees on that.
See? Very like what Julian said.
The rapturous reception Harris’s book received from many atheists – though thankfully far from all of them – is a symptom of an unhealthy desire to raise science to the level of our saviour.
Actually I think it’s much more a symptom of excessive admiration for Harris himself combined with a total unfamiliarity with meta-ethics. Anyway, the effect was the same.
‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’
Better still the earlier formulation (of Confucius, Hillel…):
‘Do not do to others what you would not have others do to you.’
Arguably, timeworn principles like those can be derived from human psychology and behaviour, rather than through faith in selected ancient writers.
Does this make such imperatives scientific? Probably. Fact is, the second formulation has wide respect. Even Gaddafi would probably have agreed. His famous last recorded words were (to those who dragged him out of the drain pipe): “what have I ever done to you?”
Ian,
Statements like “do unto others…” are not scientific. You can scientifically test the outcomes of behaving according to a given standard and that can help sort out spurious claims from accurate claims, but it can’t tell you whether such a behaviour is morally right in the first place.
We’re in complete agreement on Sam Harris’ book.
Do you really think it rude to put in a link like that? It doesn’t seem out of place or intrusive to me. It would never occur to me that people object. What bothers you about it?
I like Julian’s little sceptical project, but I don’t think humanism is our savour either. Humanists might have a good point in pointing out the limitations of naturalism, but are they willing to examine their own position? Time will tell.
Chris @ 2,
What do you mean by ‘morally right’?
I would say that the only worthwhile imperatives are the hypothetical ones. They at least are open to scientific testing.
Further, I would say that ultimately, all moral systems appeal to reason. Even those which deny the validity of reason.
I’m not sure. I think it depends on context, such as whether the link was added by a section copy editor, or whether it was added by a blog owner to a guest post. The difference is subtle but I think it is cognizable.
A newspaper may link to other articles in the same paper, especially other Op/Ed or blogs in the same category. In this case the link is from one Comment Is Free blog to another. In that case it wouldn’t surprise me if a Guardian copy editor inserted the link.
However, a link is a bit like text emphasis, or, more analogously a footnote. When adding so much as bold to a quote it is conventional to add “[emphasis added]”, so to add a link, which implies the authors opinion that the linked source is relevant, should really be noted with an explicit editor’s comment. If I modified a quote, I’d note it.
So, what is reasonable is contextual. Is it done by a copy editor in the routine duties of her or his job? Or is it being done by a blog owner subverting a guest post? I think the difference may matter.
I’m not really familiar with the details of Comment Is Free at the Guardian, but from my un-educated eye, it seems more like a Guardian copy editor inserted the link rather than Andrew Brown. Andrew Brown doesn’t seem to be in charge of Comment Is Free but rather the “Andrew Brown’s Blog” which is a subset of Comment Is Free. Am I missing something?
But, as to the original topic, I agree that Harris’ book vastly overstated the role of science in specifying what are judgment calls. He just shovels the judgment calls under the rug, into his undefined, magic matrix of “greatest good” and acts as if saying “greatest good” over and over again makes it objectively quantifiable.
I pretty sure I could end up in jail if I started doing that. I’m not saying there’s no value to this statement, but I do think it has problems. Many don’t want me doing the things to them that I might want them doing to me, and I’m betting I wouldn’t always want others doing to me some of the things that they want me to do to them.
Better, with fewer problems (that I can think of at the moment). But still not perfect.
I think one of the major problems I have with the direction “Science can’t answer everything” is it tends to be used as “science can’t answer my particular point on my particular subject.”
Noma tends to be used, in other words, to draw lines with the distinct intention of drawing them so as to protect whatever ideology you hold “sacred”.
That said, I think moral objectivism including the moral basis that Harris espouses is deeply flawed.
To me morality isn’t a set group of answers, but rather questions one should have running through one’s mind before you do something. It is inherently skeptical because it challenges you to find real answers to those questions – but it is only scientific as in as answers accumulate you get more questions.
So we end up trending more moral as more information is available – education leads to lower rates of what we would classically term “immoral” because it gives us a greater basis from which to question our own acts and motivations.
@Chris
“… but it can’t tell you whether such a behaviour is morally right in the first place.”
Assuming that’s a meaningful thing to want to know. I wouldn’t assume so.
What I want to know is whether it turns out satisfactory.
The thing that puzzles me is that Baggini rejects the possibility of moral naturalism without any argument whatsoever. He makes statements like:
“But science could never tell us what we should value, because when it tells us how things are, we are always left with the question, what ought we to do about it?”
We’ve known since Frankena’s paper on the Definist Fallacy in 1939 that the “Naturalistic Fallacy” isn’t a fallacy. Showing that Sam Harris hasn’t proven Moral Naturalism true only proves that Sam Harris hasn’t proven Moral Naturalism true, not that it isn’t true. Harris isn’t even a meta-ethicist, so it’s puzzling that his book is taken to be the definitive statement of the claim.
I’m also puzzled by Baggini’s dismissal though because he’s a self-described naturalist. If someone is a naturalist, they have to either accept Moral Naturalism or deny that there are any moral properties whatsoever. If Moral Naturalism is true, then we could simply look to see what the whether an action had the natural properties which make something right and determine that it is right. If there are no moral properties at all, then there is nothing for anyone to determine by any means whatsoever. Either science has something to say on the morality, or nobody does.
Nathan:
“Better, with fewer problems (that I can think of at the moment). But still not perfect.”
None the less, if there is a practical and universal (albeit generally unwritten) moral code operating in the world today, that is it. I suggest that it is what makes international travel possible, except to places like Somalia, where it only operates only within rival tribes and gangs; not between them.
What, by the way, is the ‘perfect’ rule?
You are quite right IMHO about the biblical ‘Golden Rule’. Quite dangerous, especially where Sharia law prevails.
Beth – a link like that, yes, meaning specifically a link to something he wrote himself. I do think that’s rather rude and intrusive, because it’s a little ad for oneself. It would be as if Julian as editor of The Philosophers’ Mag had inserted [cf my book ___] in every article. I can assure you he didn’t do that! And I don’t do it with articles by other people for B&W.
Scote, what you’re missing – Andrew Brown is the editor of the Belief section of Comment is Free. He’s commissioned articles from me as such (though so has David Shariatmadari).
Ian…well for some people international travel isn’t fully possible. For women for instance. I wouldn’t dream of going to Saudi Arabia, for one, and right now I would also be very leery of going to Pakistan, Iran, and quite a few other Islamist places (including, as you say, Somalia).
Wait – what? Seriously? If The Moral Landscape isn’t about meta-ethics then what the hell is it about?
I mean, surely the fact that Harris undertakes to settle meta-ethics without apparently having a clue what that requires is just what critics think is wrong with the book.
I think Harris should be criticized to writing a book that didn’t justify his claims. However, Baggini didn’t restrict himself to criticism of Harris. He made a substantive claim that is equivalent to denying moral naturalism, given that if moral naturalism were true, science could tell us what we morally ought to do. When people make claims, they ought to give reasons for those claims. Baggini gave none. Moral naturalism is the Rodney Dangerfield of meta-ethical theories, it gets no respect. I understand why woo-peddlers like Andrew Brown dislike it, but I expect that self-described naturalists who are philosophically trained like Baggini would do a little better.
Ophelia:
For many, international travel is not financially possible either. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia and a few others are among the places I would not go to. I only go to countries which have a reasonable justice system. Not that I do much travelling.
I have been to Iran, where the law says men must be covered at all times except for their faces and hands, and that women must wear head covering as well. But apart from that, one can get around quite easily. This is why so relatively few tourists get into strife abroad. It is not as if one were going to the planet Tralthamidor: where EVERYTHING is markedly different from home. A reasonable assumption is that what is illegal or morally offensive at home is likely to be so abroad, and that the negative (Confucius, Hillel…) form of the Golden Rule will get you by.
Daniel Lafave
The problem with moral naturalism or super-naturalism (divine command theory for example) is you need to first come up with what the ideal state is, and then work out how to get there.
This is problematic because for one thing, what one considers ideal is often due to cultural biases. Do we consider maximum wellbeing for minimum suffering good, or maximum sustainability?
Do we consider a society which produces the best via competition or cooperation better? In other words do we embrace the red in tooth and claw competitive capitalism of the Republicans, or the blue ocean innovative capitalism of the pro-science crowd?
Because recognise the difference in those two is the difference between a society that rewards “winning” versus a society built on “everybody wins.”
We tend to forget that there is a culture of win-lose being seen as morally good, and I am just using the example of a highly simplified American culture clash here.
Science can only really act on that which is adequately defined, we do not at this moment have adequate non-subjective definitions of good or evil. Harris’ attempts to find adequate definitions for these terms, however his attempt is bound up in his own cultural baggage and thus doesn’t come out as being satisfactory.
Sorry, Bruce, but Moral Naturalism requires no such thing. Take a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia article. I’m not advocating Moral Naturalism myself. I just get tired of the dismissals and bad arguments that are put forward.
Daniel Lafave
Oh really? Moral naturalism is the belief that moral facts are natural facts about things or actions. So for example, to say something is good is to say one of its natural traits is that it is good.
The problem comes in when you try to define good, which is an ideal state. By what measure do you call something good? How do you establish a given “Moral fact” about something?
You first have to define good for your moral facts to have meaning – which means coming up with what your ideal state is.
I don’t feel comfortable saying SCIENCE can formulate or determine human values; but I can say that some form of RATIONAL INQUIRY can, and does, help to determine what most humans consider right or wrong. If we observe that certain actions are consistently beneficial to individuals or to the community as a whole, we conclude such actions are “good.” And if we observe that certain actions are consistently and predictably harmful, in ways that can be easily identified and described; or if we observe that most people have a gut-level aversion to letting such actions be done to them or their loved ones; then we conclude that such actions are “bad,” and we take action, individual and collective, to stop or prevent such actions from being taken. It’s not advanced lab-science, but it’s the same sort of rational inquiry, practiced by amateurs and experts alike at the level of individual needs and experiences.
Bee, quite – and if Harris had put it that way, his book would have been less irritating.