Thanks. I"ve read it. The book did not seem to address current issues with morality. It simply traces the God belief back to genetic sources.
The Language of God.
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Thanks. I"ve read it. The book did not seem to address current issues with morality. It simply traces the God belief back to genetic sources.
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but ier consider that this guy has come to terms with religion and science…and he didn’t just talk…he accomplished
a monumental task of leading the genome project…this is an example of positive not negative…
It seems to be he is promoting reductionist nonsense.
Whilst the propensity for culture and morality is hard-wired, the expression of it and the practice of it is not.
There is no scientific theory that could ever predict the fall of a dice, nor yet the complexities of human interaction.
He ought to know better, being a person that would have to intellectually deny the possibility of moral absolutes, being an atheist.
I wonder if you are giving his idea justice? Whilst I agree that brain states determine what we are and what we do, that is not the same as saying that brain states what we could, or ought to do. It would imply determinism without change. And whilst person A might think a thing IS the case, does not make it so that it OUGHT to be true. Either Harris misses the point that Hume was making, or he is mired in a intractable determinism tantamount to fatalism.
Thanks, H. C., I’m only a fifth through the book. What I am finding is that he is a reductionist, believing that neuroscience and fMRI investigations can present what is subjective in an objective way. The closest he gets to a moral absolute is in favoring Kant’s “moral imperative”, with the well-being of all humans as its final end. Although he quotes Dennett, Searle, et. al., philosophy seems to leave a bad taste in his mouth. He veers toward the Churchlands in his arguments., i.e., the bottom line of human actions and thoughts can be detected through neuroscience.
So I detect four philosophical positions in his argument.
- An ought can be derived from an is.
- there is no subjective/objective dichotomy.
- Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy” is wrong.
- Perspectivism is a moral cop out.
Thanks, I think this goes along with the same sort of naivete that we see in Dawkins too.
For me, I think there will always be a gap between what we experience and the objective description of it that science has to offer.
Eg. Love is the firing of neurones and he release of hormones. Nothing in that description could ever tell us what being in love is like. It’s like Mary the Monochrome scientist seeing a red flower for the first time,- whilst she knows that red exists objectively, nothing in the science could have ever prepared her for the experience of actually seeing red.
None of this should make us feel we have to reject the findings of science, but must allow us to “mind the gap”.
Again, thanks Hobbes. Your post makes sense. I once did a thread about the possibility of “isolate” qualia and found a neat debate on the subject between Changeux and Ricouer (“What Makes Us Think”). This discussion presents much that could prompt ideas for debate; however, it is my experience that many here become silent when the discussion becomes in depth about such philosophical issues. Most would rather post about pagan rituals than about philosophical ideas.
You don’t have to read Harris in order to post here. I’ll appreciate any takes on my interpretations of his ideas. That may help me read him more correctly.
He is a reductionist. To some extent, so am I. I read such material in order to agree or disagree.
I heard this forensic entomologist on the radio this morning who reminded me of the “Mary” thought experiment. She said that no matter how much information they gave her before entering the room where there was a dead body, it never prepared her for the shock. She also said she preferred working with bodies that were further along in the decomposition process rather than the freshly dead. The freshly dead reminded her too much that this body had only recently been a living person. Dennett seems to want to explain consciousness away. Is Harris in his camp?
I really do not think that Dennett is wanting to explain anything away, as such. I think it is important to show that consciousness if in fact physical. If he has an aim it is to dismiss the range of bogus pseudo-explanations that we have have since before science was born, that describe things that explain nothing, but increase mystical reflection.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has Dennett a moderate eliminativist:
If you agree with Dennett, what commonly accepted features of consciousness can you explain away?
Thanks, Felix, for your input. I don’t think Harris is trying to eliminate consciousness as such. He’s not as deep a thinker as is Dennett. He simply wants to reduce consciousness to a combination of brain-states and environmental conditions. He agrees that consciousness is physical. That being said, the problem with morality entails both personal qualia and societal memes. Can there be any such animal as a moral imperative for all humans? Have we evolved enough to believe something in the brain of individuals is concerned with the survival of the human race? Or is such a concern watered down by perspectivism and relativism?
I see the case of Mary as an exception to the rule, not as a refutation of the general rule. I do not believe in an isolate quale, one belonging only to an individual subjective consciousness. It is by agreement that we prove that the subjective can be considered objectively. I see red. Your seeing red is synonymous with my seeing red, otherwise we might as well discard colored crayons. Since we have the same genetic background, we cannot say that we have quales that nobody else has . Reading Edelman and Damasio on consciousness, I found both claiming that quales are isolate. They claim that both you and I, on witnessing a beautiful sunset on a beach, have individual experiences. I don’t think so. I think we are programmed to have synonymous experiences; otherwise, we could essentialy be unable to communicate what each of us has experienced.
I think one interesting consequence of this thought is that although we can agree that crayon X is red, we have no warrant to believe that our experience of it is the same.
Furthermore, there is ample evidence that people do in fact see colours differently, and in verifiable ways. There are degrees of so-called colour blindness. The most common form is not an inability to see colour in any sense, but a difference in the emphasis that different parts of the spectrum are given by their visual system. I myself have the most common form.
But there are also cultural differences that would suggest the the majority of humans are deficient in not being able to distinguish colours that some ‘genetic’ groups can distinguish.
I disagree entirely that you can say at all that any two people can have the same experience of a sunset. It can be similar, but not identical. You cannot harbour the exact same assumptions and prejudices about the meaning os a sunset, nor can you stand in exactly the same place. There is also a thing that human sight does, especially at times when the sky colour changes, that is learned through life-experience. This adjusting effect can be demonstrated clearly with cameras.
It’s a sad fact that our visual system filters out most of the red of a sunset, but we all do it to differing degrees. It’s the same system that shows us that the inside lit by bulbs is virtually the same as daylight. Anyone with photographic experience will tell you you need filters - the brain adds it own.
That gets to the heart of the matter. Changeux in “What Makes Us Think” believes that without some synonomy of individual quales, we could not communicate. It is through communication that we can present and verify personal beliefs to some extent. Science cannot progress from what cannot be communicated. It cannot progress from he said/she said.
fMRI reveals the activity of the brain as it thinks. It does not tell what thoughts actually are, but it describes them as physical simply by their activations of brain areas. This activation can be communicated; and, both the military and the business world are interested in these experiments. It does not seem to fase them that these activities are responses to words; they do not translate as words. They may be used in brain-washing.
Harris and Changeux believe that a science of morality is possible.
I haven’t read the book but Amazon has a question and answer piece with Harris about it here: amazon.com/The-Moral-Landsca … sam+harris
Harris’ use of the term well- being makes me wonder if the purpose of morality is to produce well-being, how is well-being defined and measured? Is “well being” really a legitimate scientific concept? To me, Harris’ thesis seems to be old utilitarianism in a new neuroscience clothing. I’m good with it as far as it goes. But I have to ask, what is the scientific origin of the premise that science is all we need for morality? Isn’t the actual basis of it, Harris’ need for a response to the axiom that no is is an ought? Without a better response he has a debate weakness when he goes up against a well-prepared theist. The will to power explains a lot. How good is the science?
I imagine you are not replying to me?
You understand well what Harris is proposing–better living through science, his of course. For those interested, Harris devotes 14 pages (pp160-174, Free Press edition) to scathing refutations of Francis Collins’ ideas. I suspected that Harris would not get very far in writing this book without getting on his hate-religion hobby horse.
I was responding to what you posted. I find the Harris book interesting in its explanations of brain activities. You and I differ on the concept of isolate qualia.
I imagine you think they are god given so we can all enjoy the same thing.
Is that how you account for arguments the world over, where people are willing to kill each other for their own point of view.
It seems to me that you are much closer to Harris than you would like to admit.
This pretty much establishes my view.
I’m telling you now, when I see a sunset it is not the same as yours.
There are really good reasons for that, which you seemed to dodge.