Sam Harris’ Moral Assumptions
A few weeks ago I made some posts discussing the role science can play in describing our moral values and their origins. I took pains at every point of the way though to point out that I was not prescribing any moral behavior, or defending our evolved morality as “right”. This is not to say that science does not have a role in prescriptive moral behavior, but what exactly is the nature of this role? Sam Harris is one of most vocal writers around today promoting the strong relationship between scientific knowledge and morality. Not only does Harris believe that scientific knowledge can inform moral decisions, but he asserts that science can determine moral values. He’s not the only figure making these claims, but he’s definitely the most prolific. And with an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a PhD in neuroscience, he’s certainly well situated to make and defend these sorts of claims.
This is a pretty controversial claim to make though, and Harris is often attacked both by religious figures AND scientists. Ever since David Hume put words to the notion that you can’t derive values from facts, that you can’t derive what “ought” to be from what “is”, philosophers and scientists have behaved with this idea as a presupposition in all their dealings. Science describes facts about the world, science cannot tell you what is important or how to live your life. Some of the biggest names in moral research have concluded that all science can do is describe and explain the moral behavior of human beings, but is overstepping its bounds when it attempts to prescribe what to do, or to determine values.
Harris argues that this is-ought distinction is fundamentally mistaken, and I actually agree strongly with him in that. And while I agree with a vast majority of Sam Harris’s arguments, they are not problem free, and they are themselves based on some assumptions that need to be made explicit if we’re to make an informed decision about the quality of his overall argument.
Harris’s basic premise is this: If ethics is about anything, it is about the conscious states of organisms able to experience consciousness. Any other definition is meaningless. Any action that has no actual or potential affect on the conscious state of an organism is by definition valueless. I think we can accept this claim as long as we are responsible about thinking about the broader affects that stem from our actions. If my action isn’t immoral to me, or you, or anyone else in the world, or anyone that may ever come along, if it causes no pain or suffering to any creature able to experience those states of consciousness, if there is no one around to care one way or the other, then what could possibly be immoral about anything?
Harris’s next point is a simple small jump. If ethics is about the conscious states of organisms, then this must by definition translate into facts about brains and their interaction with the world. This also seems uncontroversial. Assuming conscious states have a neurophysiological correlate (an extremely grounded assumption), then it’s obvious that science can give us a complete account of the ever evolving dynamic states of consciousness, the very thing that ethics is about. It’s worth pointing out that when Harris uses the word “science”, he is not talking about double blind research carried out in labs by people wearing white lab coats. Harris is defining science in the broadest way imaginable, as a process with respect for the scientific method, incorporating reason and logic and proper justification for beliefs (I sometimes think his definition of science is just “philosophy”, a label and pursuit he tries to keep himself separate from). Agree or disagree with his definition, just keep it in mind when evaluating his assertions, since many who disagree with him tend to ignore his encompassing view of science.
But this can’t be it right? Ethics isn’t simply about conscious states; it’s about a certain type of conscious state. And here is where we start running into some conceptual problems, which to some degree I hate myself for having. Sam Harris’s next point is that ethics must specifically be about maximizing the well being of conscious organisms. On the one hand, this also seems uncontroversial. Moral concerns about the well being of other people very obviously translate into facts about how our thoughts and behaviors affect these people. Science can thus describe the result of this endeavor, and based on our goal of maximizing well being, determine what it is we ought to do.
Did you see the problem? Science can determine moral values if we accept three assumptions.
1) Ethics is about the conscious states of organisms. (okay)
2) Conscious states of organisms are within the realm of science. (okay)
3) Ethics is about maximizing the well being of conscious organisms. (hmmmm)
I think you’ll see why I dislike even having to question this last assumption, since generally I agree with it. But is this statement itself something that can be determined by science or not? And if it is, can science determine the specific nuances that go into it? Sam Harris, true to form, again defines “well being” in the broadest way possible. He does not mean simply physical health. And also doesn’t simply mean “happiness”. Sam Harris is using a definition of well being that itself is, or would have to be, the result of a very nuanced philosophical argument through this process of scientific exploration. This would involve taking into account the motivation for being kind and caring towards others, understanding the effect it would have on their mental states, on your mental states, and on the mental states of others. This is not a simple one to one relationship. This is a convoluted story that needs to incorporate the affect behavior may have on broader social, political, and economic systems, and how those systems themselves affect other people, and the resulting mental states of those people due to those changes.
How to balance various issues like civil liberties, individual privacy, free speech, and the importance of keeping citizens safe to maximize well being, surely has an answer, even if the complexities of it lay forever out of our reach. Harris is quick to point this out often. Harris isn’t arguing that science has all the answers, but that science can conceivably determine all the answers with enough information and enough time. But even accepting this we find ourselves in a dilemma, because this pursuit depends on a definition of well being that is itself part of the pursuit, and how those factors discussed weigh in a well being scale. How we define well being, how our conscious states change for the better is not solely dependent on biology, on genetics, it is also dependent in a very strong way on our values and beliefs (some of which are there for evolutionary reasons, yes). And as human beings who are prone to error, we know we can wrong about values and beliefs. If your neighbor believes they are the reincarnation of Jesus, we’re likely to assume they’re wrong. Someone might value money above all else, someone else might value respect for authority above all else, and someone else might value open mindedness above all else. Whether we can objectively determine which of these values should be preferred over others and by how much isn’t necessarily the point. The point is that as it stands, people currently value those things in different ways, and their conscious states will change differently based on the presence or absence of those things.
If somehow science determines that free speech should be weighed above the safety of the citizenry as a means to maximize well being, but the majority of the population values safety over freedom, their conscious states will not be maximized, because of the nature of their neurophysiology and psychology. Is the right thing to then disregard the scientific data? Or implement it regardless? What if science determines that the wearing of Hijabs by women in the Islamic faith is in fact a practice not conducive to maximizing well being, what do we do? A woman who has grown up in this culture and with this belief and value system believes this is the right way to live. Do you force her to take it off? Wouldn’t that objectively lower her well being since her entire psychology is geared towards reacting negatively to that? This process of moral persuasion and system implementation is itself a moral endeavor. Sure, it’s not the focus of Harris’s book, but it’s absolutely essential to a deeper conversation about morality.
How can we go about answering these questions through the process of science and empiricism? One problem is inherent in Harris’s espousement of utilitarianism (morality lies in the consequences of an action). Where is the point of evaluation of a utilitarian argument? Is it how the action will affect the recipient immediately? Is it how the action will affect everyone alive on the planet through the vast web of interconnectedness that the nature of cause and affect necessitates? What time frame do we judge by? Immediately? One year? 100 years? A million? Imagine I criticize you in some way that has the immediate affect of lowering your state of well being. But then after two weeks and some reflection you realize it was actually a good thing and it has helped you out and it raises your level of well being. But then a year from now it turns out this criticism and the changes it has made in you have actually drastically lowered your well being. How do we evaluate something like this? And how do we evaluate all the people you affected during that time with the mental states that I helped create? Further, how do we compare various forms of well being and suffering against each other? How do ten headaches compare against one broken bone? Ten jailed innocents vs. the hunger of 1000 children?
Life and morality do not consist in snapshots in time. Life is a temporal process, and ever flowing process, and yet an evaluation of “maximizing well being” necessitates a point of evaluation. I’m skeptical whether these are questions a utilitarianist approach is capable of addressing due it’s sole focus on outcomes. No matter how much consideration for outcomes a person takes into account, a decision can only be made in the now, with insufficient information.
Even had Sam Harris chose a different moral theory, we can argue that whichever theory is chosen relates to his other points about science in the same way. My argument is that whichever theory we choose will have the same problems for his argument. Science has to determine the rightness of the theory itself. A theory is only as good as the facts it’s based on, and so this topic strays into what philosophers call epistemology, or theory of knowledge. How do we know anything about the world, and what warrant and justification do we have for believing things. Part of this process involves determining what is right and good to value, and providing justification for the very goal of morality. I don’t think this is impossible. In fact, using Harris’s broad conception of science (what I would define as philosophy) I’ll even grant we can provide good reasons for being able to do this, since this endeavor of defining what is worth valuing will itself undergo a process that must respect the scientific method, rationality, logic, and justification for beliefs. What we value, how we act, and towards what ethical goal we are progressing is all intertwined, and arguably should not be separated in pursuit of morality. The problem is that Sam Harris doesn’t focus on this, and it leaves what I find to be otherwise impressively strong arguments with a hole waiting to be filled.
15 Responses
11:17 am
Harris is mounting the nearly impossible task of just *starting* the conversation. The “gaping hole” is merely the next step after the broadest yet still meaningful brush strokes are on the canvas. So I find your framing of Harris’ talk somewhat counterproductive.
“The point is that as it stands, people currently value those things in different ways, and their conscious states will change differently based on the presence or absence of those things.”
This is merely the subjective cost of change towards an ideal. It’s a “problem” but it’s a problem in the sense of just being the next challenge. If wearing a burqa or prizing money above all else really was the best way to pimp the human condition, I would very much like to know about it. The question has to be broken down into common denominators. It’s not like the perils of such things aren’t relatively well known. What is the honest to goodness list of pros and cons of each lifestyle? How does it all add up? If someone is genuinely not becoming a hollow shell of a person by valuing money over say friendship and kindness to humanity, then I guess there’s just no down side is there? That gets the “just another peak” label doesn’t it? Do you honestly think there’s a high probability that genocide is going to be the best tool for maximizing human happiness? If it is, then why are we complaining? And if it isn’t, which obviously it isn’t, then why are we complaining? Either your complaints are reality based or they are spurious.
So it appears you are asking questions that we already know some of the answers to. And people can’t just arbitrarily claim that overvaluing x, y, or z is just as good as anything else, because obviously that’s not true. It’s just people self-justify at the expense of the evidence. It’s not like the evidence actually supports them. “But people are stuck in the mud” just isn’t an important objection. People in this conversation are either willing to break things down and dispassionately assessment the psychological terrain or they are exiting themselves from a conversation about reality.
You seem to also be missing another conceptual distinction for whatever reason. Science can possibly give us an ideal, but it can also evaluate tools for navigating through non-ideal circumstances. What is the best way to approach die-hard Muslim women when we have the textbook on morality “complete.” Why wouldn’t there also be a chapter or two on the ethics of moral persuasion? Michael Shermer recently seemed oblivious to the possibility of a science of moral compromise between entrenched political ideologies like Barack Obama isn’t in the White House leading the way on that philosophical front. What’s the deal folks?
We’re not going to change the world overnight, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some of the right answers right now. Yeah, things are going to get complicated like predicting the weather, but so what? Reality is complicated. The world of conscious creatures is dynamic and changing. We still have to navigate that world and science has the means to at the very least improve that standing even if nothing can ever hope to master it.
Ben
9:32 pm
I’m not quite sure why you think my post is counterproductive, counterproductive to what?
As I mention, I agree with the vast majority of Sam Harris’s arguments, and I always really enjoy his books. And even though he continuously downplays the importance of philosophy, I find his arguments to be incredibely philosophically astute. End of Faith was, in my opinion, a brilliant book on the nature of belief and the role it plays in cognition and human behavior. The Moral Landscape can be seen to continue this exploration in the moral sphere. On the whole I found his new book to be excellent. Particularly the chapter on belief and the section on free will. I was also very impressed with his own exploration of the deficiencies in utilitarianism.
But what exactly is it about choosing to focus a blog post on the weak points of his argument that you find counterproductive. Sam Harris is not perfect, and though I fully support his endeavor, I also want it to be based on as firm ground as possible. The things I point out are not insurmountable problems. In fact, I even explicitily state that science as broadly defined by Harris can determine what the goal of moral action and moral judgment is. I happen to think that this endeavor needs to be pursued conjointly with the one Harris is doing.
Yes, some of my problems are problems that I’m sure Sam Harris is aware of and has chosen not to write about yet. But a good chunk of my criticism is against his chosen theory of utilitarianism and the conceptual problems that come along with it. That is something that won’t go away with more time to flesh out his arguments. And I think it’s an incredibly important point, since it’s the very goal that he is arguing science can work us towards that I find to be the conceptual problem with his argument.
If you still find these ideas to be counterproductive, I’m not sure what to tell you. What you find counterproductive is my very way of thinking, and you haven’t quite convinced me to change that yet!
12:39 am
Alright, well perhaps I misread your post. The emphasis seemed more like it belonged in the “philosophical sabotage” department than “let’s have a productive conversation about the next step” department.
Ben
4:56 am
[…] and articles upon a vast swathe of topics, from “Rorty and rape culture“, to an examination of Sam Harris’ moral assumptions, to what sort of Christmas gift you might have received from […]
2:50 pm
[…] gotten right what those problems are. However, via the latest Philosophers’ Carnival, I found an analysis of Harris’ book by Greg of the Cognitive Philosophy blog that said roughly what I was going to say, probably more […]
12:52 am
Greg, I’m somewhat intrigued by your rejection of Hume’s is-ought distinction. This has always made complete sense to me, and very much underpins my own thinking on morality: it’s a choice, not a matter of truth. Many of your criticisms of Harris’s argument seem to point in the same direction, and while I completely understand your concerns with utilitarianism, doesn’t the role of science in “determining” morality become even more suspect in the context of alternative moral theories?
Personally I would happily reject utilitarianism in favour of an alternative theory that deals with these issues better, but so far I have not come across it. So I am left with a strong commitment to Hume (i.e. I regard myself as a moral subjectivist, not a moral realist) and a more tentative commitment to (rule) utilitarianism. We need the rules to make utilitarianism practicable, and there are indeed choices to be made about how far ahead into the future you look, how you define well-being etc, but as long as we indeed regard them as choices, and not a matter of absolute right and wrong, this should not worry us unduly.
1:43 am
Hey Peter, it’s unlikely that I’m philosophically astute enough to create an acceptable defense behind my rejection of the is/ought gap. But my understanding from a few philosophers that I’ve read that have touched on it is that Hume’s statement only says that you can’t derive an ought from an is, but if we can create a logical argument that epistemology is not at root a process of derivation, if for instance we can put the primary focus on inference to the best explanation (as an example), then it would follow that morality is not dependent on derivation, and thus not constrained by Hume’s is/ought gap.
If we can be wrong about facts we can be wrong about morality. And if we can be justified in our beliefs about facts, we can also be justified in our belief about values. I have some issues with some other presuppositions, such as the focus on “knowing that” instead of “knowing how” in epistemology. I think that biology shows us that knowing how is primary, and that knowing that emerges from the former. I happen to espouse some version of evolutionary epistemology, with virtue epistemology being a sort of higher level abstraction of that, which thus leads me to virtue ethics. I espouse some version of evolutionary epistemology (notice the emphasis), in terms of an interactive process of variation and selection and functional presuppositions and truth conditions. This view I think gives us the best hope of explaining representation, mental content, how normativity can arise from non normative physical stuff. In so far as the theories I support can explain representation (better than any other competing theories), the rest of these points of view seem to flow from them.
I have an essay I just wrote on virtue ethics. It’s roughly 15 pages double spaced (some of it would be rehash from this post and my most recent free will post, and my reply to you over at practical ethics, but much new content as well). It was mostly written for me to be able to think through some ideas I’ve had floating around in my brain, so it should be viewed as a rough draft. But if you’re interested, I can send it over to you.
Thanks for stopping by!
3:05 pm
Many thanks for this Greg. I’m most definitely interested in you essay, especially if it addresses in more detail the way you see virtue ethics emerging from your thoughts about evolutionary epistemology (which at first glance seem pretty convincing to me).
My interest in these issues is at this stage essentially an amateur one, but in a general sense I’m really interested in discussing big-picture issues that are or maybe important for the future of humanity, and the issue of whether there can be some kind of (more-or-less) objective grounding for ethics seems pretty fundamental in this context!
3:28 pm
I’ll send it long Peter. I don’t go into any detailed defense of evolutionary epistemology, but the basic elements are there. I’ve written elsewhere about evolutionary epistemology and epistemology in general. And I’ve also written about the problem of representation. So since this was an essay to clear my thoughts, I didn’t rehash stuff I had a handle on already. If you find that you’d like to read these other things I’d gladly send them along.
11:28 pm
I am amused. I am pretty up on philosophy of mind, upon which all the candidate proponents and theories for physiological basis of psychology have discredited each others’s theories without me putting my two cents worth. I am also aware of Benjamin Libet’s experiments (and those who following who performed a theme and variation of it) and know where the conceptual flaw is.
Please tell me on what empirical and rational grounds you can say “conscious states have a neurophysiological correlate (an extremely grounded assumption)”?
12:22 am
I’m not sure what the Benjamin Libet experiments have to do with this post about morality. But we can talk about them in one of my free will posts if you’d like. I agree that the Libet experiments are flawed, or, at least many of the conclusions that are drawn from them are flawed. I don’t think those experiments actually tell us anything particularly interesting about free will.
But that conscious states have a neurophysiological correlate, I’m not sure how to respond to you. I’m not a dualist. I, and most of the scientific community, believe that there is some relationship between the brain and consciousness. If there is no neuronal firing, there is no consciousness. If your brain is damaged, your conscious states are altered. If you take hallucinogenic drugs that alter your brain functioning, your conscious states are altered. If we knock out the neuronal functioning in one of the areas of the brain using transcranial magnetic stimulation, conscious states are altered. I’m not saying that conscious states should be “reduced” to neurophysiological states, at least not in certain ways of talking about reduction. And I’m not saying we know everything about the relationship between consciousness and neurophysiology. But yes, it seems like the entire endeavor of cognitive science backs up the notion that conscious states have neurophysiological correlates.
I should also add that while there are certainly detractors, the vast majority of philosophers of mind are not dualists. And most of those are functionalists of some sort or other. So I’m not sure what philosophy of mind you’re reading that says that dualism is the majority opinion.
12:09 am
Great article Greg – you raise some very interesting points, I especially like how you lay out Haris’ 3 main assumptions. However, I’d like to understand a little bit better your qualms with the 3rd assumption. In your conclusion you summarize the hole in Harris’ argument as failing to answer the next big question of “what is worth valuing” (at least as I understood you). What do you mean exactly? Are you essentially talking about the dilemma you mention in one of your mid paragraphs that this new science of morality will have to simultaneously figure out how to increase “human flourishing” as well as what “human flourishing” actually is? A little like trying to design your scientific apparatus while you’re still trying to figure out what you’re even trying to study. If this is what you mean, what do you see as the primary difficulty? 1) How to effectively operationalize our intuitive understanding of human flourishing or 2) How to answer the larger philosophical question of what “goodness” is in the metaphysical and epistemological sense (ie the truth of ethical naturalism)?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
11:19 am
Hi Scott, thanks for the comments and questions. Sorry for the late reply.
That’s a large part of it yes. My concern is twofold. The first is that to maximize well being, or flourishing, we have to know what it is. And if it’s not simply happiness (itself not quite so simple of a concept. happiness now or happiness overall? Phenomenologically/subjectively or objectively defined? etc.), how do we go about determining what it is? I’m skeptical about science, in the narrow sense, being able to address that. Philosophy has had a hard enough time with this endeavor, and value theory is still one of the livelier debates in philosophy. Surely empirical research in the sciences informs this endeavor, but it can’t define it. The second problem is not so much about figuring out how to increase human flourishing (though I think the notion of ‘maximization’ is terribly problematic, as I discuss in the post), but rather, about whether “maximizing X” is the proper goal of an ethical theory, whatever X ends up being. Maybe that’s right, but it’s not clear to me how science can decide the truth of this.
Now, as I point out, I think science, broadly construed to include philosophy, can eventually do this. But Harris has imported these commitments into his argument, and has not proved or defended them.
As to your last questions, that’s tricky. They’re both problematic. And I’ve flip flopped back and forth while writing this in regards to which is the tougher nut to crack. So I’ll have to pass on answering the question for now. 🙂
5:06 pm
Right. How do we go about determining “what is good”? We need an ethical theory (or value laden theory) to decide what “is good” but how can we know what is a good ethical theory until we have some notion of what we want, what is “good”? It’s a circular puzzle, which makes me wonder if a hermeneutic perspective could be useful in this situation but that whole viewpoint has always been a little opaque to me. Thanks for the response Greg
3:48 am
“Maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures” is a moral axiom, chosen arbitrarily/subjectively. That claim has no scientific basis whatsoever. Harris’ arguments would work (read: not work) just as well if he asserted “Maximizing devotion to God” is the foundation of ethics and what morality should strive for. Or “Maximizing the well-being of turnips”. Everything else he says beyond that is uninteresting mostly because it’s trivially obvious. It isn’t contentious that science could help maximize well-being of conscious creatures; or maximize devotion to a particular religion’s tenets; or maximize turnip health. Science can be used to maximize whatever axiomatic thing humans want it to. This again, is trivially obvious.
There doesn’t really need to be much more said, and your objections, though firmly logical if we ignore that massive problem, are irrelevant. Harris is wrong. Science cannot decide moral values, because moral values are impossible without a first completely nonscientific moral axiom. He’s chosen well-being, others choose different things. Science can never tell us which is right; it can’t even be asked the question. This is a category error. Normally intelligent people have wasted untold hours actually thinking Harris found something new.