I think he’s way overconfident in assuming that everyone is or has to be concerned with the “well-being of conscious creatures.” Some people do not think that the suffering of all conscious creatures counts, morally. Some people think that suffering ennobles. Some people think that there is such a thing as just punishment (not to prevent further suffering, but purely as retribution.) You’re not going to prove those people wrong with science!
On the other hand, there are areas of broad agreement, especially within a society. Usually it’s enough to say “But that will cause thousands of deaths!” or “But that leads to lifelong psychological trauma!” or “But that will destroy the economy!” It’s so common to assume that death and poverty are bad, that objective facts can usually advance moral discussions. But those assumptions are not universal. Sam Harris can’t persuade the Taliban that women are worth caring about. All he can do is to persuade the rest of us not to tolerate the Taliban.
There’s a certain unity—not universal unity, but broad unity—in what people value. Sociopaths do not have empathy, but most people do. There’s even more unity in the common values of modern industrialized democracies. But there are correspondingly more dissenters—people who could not be persuaded to be concerned for women or children or the families of murderers. Science can tell us a lot about the consequences of actions; it doesn’t tell us if we should care about the consequences.
I think that Sam Harris is actually advocating for more confidence on the part of those of us who care about the “well-being of conscious creatures.” He’s broadly a humanist; he doesn’t like unnecessary suffering, and he thinks that the suffering or joy of any conscious creature counts. I have the same views. But you can’t prove those views are worth having. At best you can say, empirically, that they’re pretty common. You can say that the direction of history moves towards recognizing those views more and more fully.
Sam Harris can’t persuade the Taliban that women are worth caring about. All he can do is to persuade the rest of us not to tolerate the Taliban.
I dunno, if the Taliban magically became convinced of the “objective fact” that their god didn’t exist, I suspect that they’d be more willing to listen to arguments about the value of girls’ schools and such. If there really were an evil bastard deity out there sending people to hell for not following the rules that the Taliban imposes, then, well, it would be better to force women to wear burqas and keep them out of school than let them end up as yet another victim of said evil deity.
Despite their apparent disagreement, I think that the things that Harris and Carroll are saying are not so different. I agree with Carroll that science can’t provide us with the most basic moral assumptions. But I don’t think that Harris is really trying to say that science provides us with the most basic moral assumptions (even if it does sound like he’s saying that). I think that what Harris is trying to say is that in practice, there’s enough overlap between most people’s basic moral assumptions so that often that there is a “fact of the matter” as to whether each member of a pair is right or wrong if they disagree—an assessment of the situation which they could share if they had enough factual knowledge. In this respect I agree with Harris.
To be sure, there are some genuine moral gray areas in real life, particularly when there’s “not enough to go around” for everybody’s needs to be met. But many political disagreements between people boil down to different factual assessments of situations: Does handgun control increase or decrease violent death of innocents? Is there a Christian God who will send people who engage in homosexual behavior to hell for eternity? On average does welfare encourage laziness among the poor or does it enable them to become more productive members of society? Will the health care reform that just passed increase or decrease health care costs relative to what they otherwise had been? etc.
I also think that there are many instances in which people appear to differ in their most basic moral assumptions but do not in actuality. People can be confused about what’s important to them. When they’re concerned they sometimes misattribute where these concerns are coming from. For example, for a number of years I was deeply disturbed by (what I thought to be) the absence of absolute morality. Only over the past few years have I realized that my anxiety was not rooted in the absence of absolute morality, but with the fact that I have a tendency to internalize strongly vocalized world views that I don’t agree with and when this happens it’s very unpleasant for me. I had unconsciously concluded that the only way that I could get around this problem was to find objectively true moral principles that substantiated my values. Thus, the problem came to seem hopeless and I spent a lot of time upset about this. Once I realized what my real concern was (that I was doomed to internalize unpleasant world views), addressing it became much easier.
I think that something analogous is going on when, for example, people in the American heartland exhibit xenophobia toward Mexican immigrants—their hatred of Mexicans is not actually a core value on their part—they’re substituting (concerns about losing their jobs, being surrounded by an influx of new people who they can’t relate to, etc.) with (hatred of Mexicans), a substitution which probably doesn’t help them address their actual concerns.
I agree with Sam Harris that intellectuals should be more willing to form and to vocalize moral views. Whatever reservations one has about adopting a voice of authority must be counterbalanced by the fact that someone will be adopting a voice of authority in any case. Intellectuals are undoubtedly “out of touch” with a large portion of the population, but the same can be said of most demographies. I think that intellectuals do know more on average (not in every case) about the “matters of fact” that are relevant to coming to conclusions that derive from ubiquitous basic moral assumptions, and that it would be in many people’s interest to pay more attention to them.
(Note that Carroll subsequently wrote more about the topic, for example here).
I’m with Carroll here; I’m also with you, in the sense that I think there are areas of pretty broad agreement on the moral basics, where questions of fact become very relevant.
One thing I wonder about sometimes is what to do about people who have a pretty alien moral system—but not completely alien. Fundamentalist Christians, for example. Or people in Asian or African societies where they place a higher value on tradition than on freedom.
Are these people “wrong”? That’s a lot of people to place outside the pale of reasonable discussion. There are a lot of non-humanists out there—at least, to some degree or another. On the other hand, if they start to make things morally worse, by my lights—if they drive gay teenagers to suicide or cut off girls’ clitorises—then I’m not going to say “meh, to each his own.” I don’t think we have to let just anything stand unchallenged, in the name of tolerance. On the other hand, if we don’t have some notion of tolerance of disagreement, we could become pretty dogmatic and dangerous. I do not want to live in a world where some measure of happiness was maximized ruthlessly without my say-so.
I think he’s way overconfident in assuming that everyone is or has to be concerned with the “well-being of conscious creatures.” Some people do not think that the suffering of all conscious creatures counts, morally. Some people think that suffering ennobles. Some people think that there is such a thing as just punishment (not to prevent further suffering, but purely as retribution.) You’re not going to prove those people wrong with science!
On the other hand, there are areas of broad agreement, especially within a society. Usually it’s enough to say “But that will cause thousands of deaths!” or “But that leads to lifelong psychological trauma!” or “But that will destroy the economy!” It’s so common to assume that death and poverty are bad, that objective facts can usually advance moral discussions. But those assumptions are not universal. Sam Harris can’t persuade the Taliban that women are worth caring about. All he can do is to persuade the rest of us not to tolerate the Taliban.
There’s a certain unity—not universal unity, but broad unity—in what people value. Sociopaths do not have empathy, but most people do. There’s even more unity in the common values of modern industrialized democracies. But there are correspondingly more dissenters—people who could not be persuaded to be concerned for women or children or the families of murderers. Science can tell us a lot about the consequences of actions; it doesn’t tell us if we should care about the consequences.
I think that Sam Harris is actually advocating for more confidence on the part of those of us who care about the “well-being of conscious creatures.” He’s broadly a humanist; he doesn’t like unnecessary suffering, and he thinks that the suffering or joy of any conscious creature counts. I have the same views. But you can’t prove those views are worth having. At best you can say, empirically, that they’re pretty common. You can say that the direction of history moves towards recognizing those views more and more fully.
I dunno, if the Taliban magically became convinced of the “objective fact” that their god didn’t exist, I suspect that they’d be more willing to listen to arguments about the value of girls’ schools and such. If there really were an evil bastard deity out there sending people to hell for not following the rules that the Taliban imposes, then, well, it would be better to force women to wear burqas and keep them out of school than let them end up as yet another victim of said evil deity.
I wrote up some thoughts about this to an acquaintance last March after seeing Harris’ TED talk and reading Sean Carroll’s initial response. I’ve pasted these thoughts below.
Despite their apparent disagreement, I think that the things that Harris and Carroll are saying are not so different. I agree with Carroll that science can’t provide us with the most basic moral assumptions. But I don’t think that Harris is really trying to say that science provides us with the most basic moral assumptions (even if it does sound like he’s saying that). I think that what Harris is trying to say is that in practice, there’s enough overlap between most people’s basic moral assumptions so that often that there is a “fact of the matter” as to whether each member of a pair is right or wrong if they disagree—an assessment of the situation which they could share if they had enough factual knowledge. In this respect I agree with Harris.
To be sure, there are some genuine moral gray areas in real life, particularly when there’s “not enough to go around” for everybody’s needs to be met. But many political disagreements between people boil down to different factual assessments of situations: Does handgun control increase or decrease violent death of innocents? Is there a Christian God who will send people who engage in homosexual behavior to hell for eternity? On average does welfare encourage laziness among the poor or does it enable them to become more productive members of society? Will the health care reform that just passed increase or decrease health care costs relative to what they otherwise had been? etc.
I also think that there are many instances in which people appear to differ in their most basic moral assumptions but do not in actuality. People can be confused about what’s important to them. When they’re concerned they sometimes misattribute where these concerns are coming from. For example, for a number of years I was deeply disturbed by (what I thought to be) the absence of absolute morality. Only over the past few years have I realized that my anxiety was not rooted in the absence of absolute morality, but with the fact that I have a tendency to internalize strongly vocalized world views that I don’t agree with and when this happens it’s very unpleasant for me. I had unconsciously concluded that the only way that I could get around this problem was to find objectively true moral principles that substantiated my values. Thus, the problem came to seem hopeless and I spent a lot of time upset about this. Once I realized what my real concern was (that I was doomed to internalize unpleasant world views), addressing it became much easier.
I think that something analogous is going on when, for example, people in the American heartland exhibit xenophobia toward Mexican immigrants—their hatred of Mexicans is not actually a core value on their part—they’re substituting (concerns about losing their jobs, being surrounded by an influx of new people who they can’t relate to, etc.) with (hatred of Mexicans), a substitution which probably doesn’t help them address their actual concerns.
I agree with Sam Harris that intellectuals should be more willing to form and to vocalize moral views. Whatever reservations one has about adopting a voice of authority must be counterbalanced by the fact that someone will be adopting a voice of authority in any case. Intellectuals are undoubtedly “out of touch” with a large portion of the population, but the same can be said of most demographies. I think that intellectuals do know more on average (not in every case) about the “matters of fact” that are relevant to coming to conclusions that derive from ubiquitous basic moral assumptions, and that it would be in many people’s interest to pay more attention to them.
(Note that Carroll subsequently wrote more about the topic, for example here).
I’m with Carroll here; I’m also with you, in the sense that I think there are areas of pretty broad agreement on the moral basics, where questions of fact become very relevant.
One thing I wonder about sometimes is what to do about people who have a pretty alien moral system—but not completely alien. Fundamentalist Christians, for example. Or people in Asian or African societies where they place a higher value on tradition than on freedom.
Are these people “wrong”? That’s a lot of people to place outside the pale of reasonable discussion. There are a lot of non-humanists out there—at least, to some degree or another. On the other hand, if they start to make things morally worse, by my lights—if they drive gay teenagers to suicide or cut off girls’ clitorises—then I’m not going to say “meh, to each his own.” I don’t think we have to let just anything stand unchallenged, in the name of tolerance. On the other hand, if we don’t have some notion of tolerance of disagreement, we could become pretty dogmatic and dangerous. I do not want to live in a world where some measure of happiness was maximized ruthlessly without my say-so.