The third annual Beyond Belief conference took place recently and the videos are now available for all to see. Sam Harris had something to say about what he sees as an objective scientific basis for morality. It’s a short video and any philosophy or science nut will enjoy it:
thesciencenetwork.org/programs/b … m-harris-1
Discuss.
not very much was said IMO.
Basically he sets a standard of morality based entirely on how successful any given moral system is at promoting human well being…
He comically tries to paint an up beat picture of humanity, saying that more people think cruelty is bad then believe in the theory of relativity (remarkably few people are even able to understand it)
The amount of cruel actions in the world seem to disagree with Mr. Harris…
He also tries to say that most people want the dreams of others to be realized and to live in a fair society… (i wont even respond to that)
One thing he did do was say that we can make rational comparisons and say which moral code is the best by determining which is more successful in promoting human well being…
It’s funny he discredits everything he said by admitting that his version of morality would be “bound to a debatable utility”…
If i could speak to Sam Harris i would say this: “your brand of morality sits in an obscure store on an obscure shelf, the store is called The Self Help Store and the shelf is in the Love Thy Neighbor isle…”
I would say this version of morality is fit for a wide eyed six year old using reasoning like hurt is bad
Not that i mean any disrespect to Mr. Harris, i just see no reason for him to hold up his candle and say this is the right way … By his reasoning we should have social engineers as arbiters of morality,
Sam Harris took a flying leap into the grand canyon…
it can be fun to take flying leaps into the grand canyon from time to time - better to do it in philosophy and make money at it than to do it in real life and just die young.
and as rhetoric, it’s justified even further insofar as it needs to be said.
precisely. now THEY know what it’s like to run up against dogma - that’s a valuable lesson many need to be taught.
Goofy? Hardly. He graduated Stanford with a degree in Philosophy, and is currently completing a PhD in neurobiology. His public speaking abilities are much superior to that of Dawkins or Hitchens IMO, and I think he’s the most open-minded of the three.
Unless you mean goofy looking, in which case I might agree. He looks like the love child of Seth Green and Ben Stiller.
Perhaps best said in one of many popular childrens books…
Welcome to the fun house… Beware of false reflections…
Who’s the dogmatic one again?
ought/is =/ is/ought. This is very important if you want to understand the is/ought fallacy as conceived by a sentimentalist.
Starting with an ought and ending with an is… Sounds like fascism to me 
Sam Harris, in this case.
haha k just makin sure
can’t start with an is, end with an ought - vice versa - it’s like i before e except after c - it’s a rule that’s wrong half the time.
Hey man, if you wanna call Hume a fascist, you can. But fascism is rooted pretty firmly in romanticism, not rationality. Hume’s sentimentalism is the reason he sought to separate ‘is’ from ‘ought’, he wanted to avoid the stagnation of his day. All I am saying is that trying to use that formulation to deny modern dynamism doesn’t make sense. Modern dynamism has other problems. Why badly reconfigure dead philosophers to say that when you can just say it?
what’s modern dynamism?
You would be suprised what i’d be willing to call a fascist… No disrespect to Hume, Harris, or any do-gooder for that matter…
In a democracy i might even say that the majority party are fascists…
Being a pragmatist, i also don’t think that trying to make things better (more oughtty ) is bad…
Heck i might even say that measuring morality on a measure of success in promoting happiness and well being is down right useful…
I just think its a moot point in both senses of the word… Morality is not a quest for success…
I assume modern dynamists are people that would try to do what they think is the best way to do things… Trying to go from an ought to an is…
The problem inherent in that school of philosophy is the “oughts” are highly debatable and uncertain…
But in this case, dragging the definition and quality of morality into a comparison with human success is not an objective step in the progression of morality for moralities sake…
Oughts of any origin are highly debatable and uncertain . . . if you want your oughts to be absolute, then you’d probably better be prepared to make them that way at the end of a gun . . .
The world that we are living in now is very different from the world that Hume lived in. In the middle of the 18th Century, philosophers were pretty much exclusively born into excessive wealth. Not just that, but the society just wasn’t that different from eras preceding it. This is pre-American Revolution, pre-French Revolution, even the Industrial Revolution didn’t really start making an impact until very late in Hume’s life. When Hume was writing in the 1750s, the world he was living in wasn’t really all that different from the 1650s, and from a social standpoint the difference was pretty much nil. Naturally, many thinkers in his social strata decided that the way things are, are also the they way things ought be. The world is unchanging, and that is good so! Not only did Hume see the world as constantly engaged in the process of change, but he also saw no reason that current conditions ought to have moral weight attached to them. So both of those positions (is/ought and change) are more reactions to his conditions as opposed to the fully radical statements they are made out to be.
This is important, because the modern world changes so incredibly quickly (modern dynamism) that it is hard even for moderns to keep up. The world right now is very different than the world was even in the '80s and '90s, let alone the '60s and '70s! And the differences between 2008 and 1908 are unimaginably vast. So in this context of rapid change, we are tempted to reverse Hume’s formulation and say “ought/is” because what “is” is constantly changing so the only seemingly guiding factor would be an “ought”. In Hume’s world, the “is” was quite static, but “oughts” were many and in the process of refinement. So the whole is/ought thing is often used out of context and without meaning by moderns.
I usually don’t like listening to these Carl Sagan wanna-be’s, they generally have little more to say than what any new-found atheist says, with the exception that they use more nuance and science. I’ll stick to the philosophers who said it 100X more brilliantly, and build beauty out of it.
However, it is nice to hear a distaste for the “firewall between facts and values” penetrating into the scientific community. “It has made science in principle appear divorced from the most important questions in human life”. That is, perhaps, the most profound thing that could ever be puked out of his mouth. I haven’t finished the clip yet, but I felt a welling up that needed to be written down. I hope his ideas embody his sentiment.
I have an article that I wanted to post, but it can only be had in PDF format, so no link is possible. Instead I give you a google link, and you have to take the extra step of clicking on the first result to get to the paper.
google.com/search?hl=en&q=Th … h&aq=f&oq=
I’ve studied under this guy, and as far as philosophy is concerned he is everything I don’t like, nor do I draw the same conclusions from his research that he did. I saw it in quite an opposite light, but the research and conceptualization is quite good, and deserves a thorough read.
I also present to you the anti-firewall. plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
Xun, i can believe that in Hume’s time things were allot more stagnant, which would have made choosing an ought allot simpler…
But still, what would happen once the first ought became an is? Would a better more concise ought come into play? Even barring the subjectivity of “oughts”, if you could design something to benefit every person on earth, making it a universally positive “ought”, for what reason is it right in terms or morals other than popular belief? (a fallacy). (assuming morality isn’t tied into popular belief itself)
Morality might not allow us to flourish, it might require that we slow ourselves down or even change our intrusive ways.
In Hume’s time i understand the importance of bringing up oughts in an effort to stimulate change, but in todays world we have allot more change and allot more oughts…
Sam Harris made a case for utilitarianism being a basis for forging, grading and employing morality.
How can you rebuke the fact that judging morality based on how well it promotes wide spread happiness is totally ignorant of the foundations of morality itself? (which i assume are fairness and right and wrong)
I wonder how successful Scientology is by Sam Harris’ measure… How successful is Christianity?
If promoting wide spread well being and happiness is the question, I only wish we could speak to the great leaders of the past who have brought their visions of wide spread happiness to fruition…
Morality itself is supposed to be a measure of right and wrong, in a sense. And in that it is predominantly aimed at not causing pain or displeasure to others (note its relation to that act and promoting wide spread well being and happiness), but if you totally forget about the process and focus on the outcome not only are you doomed to failure in a world which changes so rapidly and with such contrary views, but you are also throwing ethics right out the window…
I don’t think morality was ever a social mechanism, it is more like a set of rules we refer to as a means to ease our conscience, it helps us sleep at night. Morality does not, in my opinion, dictate that i join a collective in working to promote well being and happiness.
As i said before, no disrespect to propel on the lookout for the next big ought, I’m on the lookout myself, but for the love of reason why should morality be graded on it’s function and success in making people happy?
Am i no longer morally allowed to be in it for myself? 