Science can answer moral questions

[woot]

according to a recent Ted talk by Sam Harris. I'm not sure if I agree with all of it, but I found it to be extremely thought provoking.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on it.

[SoonerCoug]

according to a recent Ted talk by Sam Harris. I'm not sure if I agree with all of it, but I found it to be extremely thought provoking.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on it.

I love talking about evolutionary theory behind: "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine," or even better: "I'll scratch your back, you'll scratch someone else's, and a completely independent third party will scratch mine."

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Personally, I believe that we are capable of sin because we have knowledge of good and evil, and I believe that this conscience was generated via evolution.

CS Lewis liked to argue that the proof that there is a God is in this simple story: A man is walking along and sees another man falling threw the ice. The man has two instincts. One is a "herd instinct" telling him to save the man who is falling through the ice. The second instinct is a "self-preservation" instinct that tells the man to stay away from danger. But in CS Lewis's mind, the proof that there is a God lies in the fact that there is something else which tells the man that the moral thing to do is attempt to save this man.

I completely disagree with CS Lewis. Morality can be very nicely explained by evolutionary theory, and there is no reason to invoke God. Other animals also sacrifice themselves for each other. For believers, it's easy to reconcile these issues by saying that God used evolution to give us a conscience.

[woot]

I love talking about evolutionary theory behind: "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine," or even better: "I'll scratch your back, you'll scratch someone else's, and a completely independent third party will scratch mine."

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Personally, I believe that we are capable of sin because we have knowledge of good and evil, and I believe that this conscience was generated via evolution.

CS Lewis liked to argue that the proof that there is a God is in this simple story: A man is walking along and sees another man falling threw the ice. The man has two instincts. One is a "herd instinct" telling him to save the man who is falling through the ice. The second instinct is a "self-preservation" instinct that tells the man to stay away from danger. But in CS Lewis's mind, the proof that there is a God lies in the fact that there is something else which tells the man that the moral thing to do is attempt to save this man.

I completely disagree with CS Lewis. Morality can be very nicely explained by evolutionary theory, and there is no reason to invoke God. Other animals also sacrifice themselves for each other. For believers, it's easy to reconcile these issues by saying that God used evolution to give us a conscience.

Good thoughts. I'm in the process of writing a paper for a class dealing with kin selection, reciprocal altruism, market forces, and the like.

But what I found so interesting about this Ted talk is that Harris takes it one step further and says that not only is our morality an evolved trait, which is the scientific consensus already, but that through science we can discover the "correct" answers to moral questions. This is a pretty radical stance, I think. He mentions in the talk that the only people who agree with him in his position that moral questions even have right answers are the devoutly religious. That might a bit of an overstatement, but it's probably not too far off.

This is a talk I'll probably watch a few times, as I'm not sure what to think about it.

[Katy Lied]

Woot, there's a paper out there that studied business dealings between LDS businesses in Australia. The paper found that the LDS businessmen were more honest with each other than with the general public.

If you can find it, I think it said that they could afford to be more honest with each other because they came from a common background and had identical beliefs.

IMHO, I think it's because they have an additional enforcement agency, in addition to govt regulation and the criminal system. They have spiritual enforcement in addition.

[woot]

Woot, there's a paper out there that studied business dealings between LDS businesses in Australia. The paper found that the LDS businessmen were more honest with each other than with the general public.

If you can find it, I think it said that they could afford to be more honest with each other because they came from a common background and had identical beliefs.

IMHO, I think it's because they have an additional enforcement agency, in addition to govt regulation and the criminal system. They have spiritual enforcement in addition.

That's interesting. It's reminiscent of the market forces at work in all sorts of animal interactions. If you know more about another individual and know that they'll be sticking around, you're more likely to do things for them because you're more likely to have the favor returned.

This also might have something to do with the "other" mentality, where those not in your group are considered the enemy or at least less trustworthy, because doing so helps maintain social the cohesion of one's own group.

[SeattleUte]

Is this debatable? The world has never been better off since major parts of it adopted the scientific method as the public means to determining truth. Once humanity awoke to this, kings, priests, etc. all were in trouble. You can't disavow our religious roots as having no role whatsoever in our sensitivity to and high value on human rights, etc. But recognition of the scientific method as our predominant public mechanism for decideing what's true and false--from the court system, to in the context of legislative initiatives, to development of consumer products, to funding research scientists, etc. etc. etc.--has led to an era of prosperity, liberty and good health and longevity that is off the grid relative to human history. We should make all our moral choices based on the evidence, not what clerics tell us to do.

[LA Ute]

Is this debatable?

I don't know about you but the needle on my skepticism meter always acts up when someone suggests an issue is "not debatable." A remnant from that liberal education I received way back when . . . .

[SeattleUte]

I don't know about you but the needle on my skepticism meter always acts up when someone suggests an issue is "not debatable." A remnant from that liberal education I received way back when . . . .

lol. It's not debatable that empiricism or scientific method can help us make moral choices (I choose to define science as a method or process, not a community or certainly not a dogma or belief). The evidence is overwhelming. A lawyer of all people should believe that to the marrow.

[LA Ute]

. . . empiricism or scientific method can help us make moral choices . . . .

I agree with this. I am just poking you for your love of sweeping statements. A lawyer of all people should distrust those to the marrow.

[woot]

lol. It's not debatable that empiricism or scientific method can help us make moral choices (I choose to define science as a method or process, not a community or certainly not a dogma or belief). The evidence is overwhelming. A lawyer of all people should believe that to the marrow.

Harris is proposing that science can allow us to determine "correct" morality, as in objective right and wrong, not just to be generally informative in the discussion. This is not a normal position. You should watch the video.

[creekster]

Foundationally it's way off base. My comment is similar to Anders Emil Hansen's comment on that website. He says: "science will never be able to answer "why" questions. Those are in the domain of philosophy and not of science..."



How would Harris apply science among the competing (philosophical) theories of ethics? Do you toss out Deontological ethics altogether? Utilitarianism? Some new alternate theory of ethics? Please, Harris, educate contemporary philosophers of ethics. They wait with bated breath...

Harris has an educational gap here.

To be honest, your position might be more persuasive oif you actually provided some anlaysis rather than conclusory assertions using two-bit words dripping with unjustified contempt.

Just my opinion.

[woot]

Foundationally it's way off base. My comment is similar to Anders Emil Hansen's comment on that website. He says: "science will never be able to answer "why" questions. Those are in the domain of philosophy and not of science..."



How would Harris apply science among the competing (philosophical) theories of ethics? Do you toss out Deontological ethics altogether? Utilitarianism? Some new alternate theory of ethics? Please, Harris, educate contemporary philosophers of ethics. They wait with bated breath...

Harris has an educational gap here.

Harris is talking nuts and bolts. Please do the same. How is anything that you just said applied in real life, and how specifically does it differ from Harris' position?

[ERCougar]

I love talking about evolutionary theory behind: "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine," or even better: "I'll scratch your back, you'll scratch someone else's, and a completely independent third party will scratch mine."

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Personally, I believe that we are capable of sin because we have knowledge of good and evil, and I believe that this conscience was generated via evolution.

CS Lewis liked to argue that the proof that there is a God is in this simple story: A man is walking along and sees another man falling threw the ice. The man has two instincts. One is a "herd instinct" telling him to save the man who is falling through the ice. The second instinct is a "self-preservation" instinct that tells the man to stay away from danger. But in CS Lewis's mind, the proof that there is a God lies in the fact that there is something else which tells the man that the moral thing to do is attempt to save this man.

I completely disagree with CS Lewis. Morality can be very nicely explained by evolutionary theory, and there is no reason to invoke God. Other animals also sacrifice themselves for each other. For believers, it's easy to reconcile these issues by saying that God used evolution to give us a conscience.

Since I'm not on the clock right now, I don't have 23 minutes to watch the video, but I'll get to it when I work on Thursday. However, I can't resist a good Lewis argument, so I'll put in my two cents here.

When you invoke this animal sacrifice example, all you're really pointing to is the herd instinct. But Lewis points out that there seems to be another nearly universally adopted moral code at work that doesn't quite fit the definition of an instinct. For one, it's learned. For another, it's not a code that is universally followed. Those two factors make it very difficult to fit into a nice evolutionary mechanism.

This code prescribes all kinds of behavior that could work against both our self-preservation and herd-preservation instincts, including racial equality, kind treatment of our enemies, caring for the sick and poor, sexual fidelity, etc. The fact that there are so many violations of this code throughout human history (nearly every great human culture was built on the backs of slaves and/or plundering our enemies) makes it hard to imagine how it could be evolutionarily advantageous; if anything, meekness and love for enemy would have been squashed out.

Lest anyone think that the numerous violations of it are evidence that this code isn't universal, consider that when our resident atheist lauds the enormous advances that science and rational thought have brought to the world and its cultures, even he is pointing out the presence of some sort of standard that we all are using to determine "goodness", a standard that we all seem to accept.

I'm not sure that you can ever prove your way to God, and the evolutionary basis of moral behavior may just be this century's version of intelligent design, a source of questions that will eventually be answered. Even if they are answered, it certainly doesn't proclude God, as you point out. However, at this point, I'm far from satisfied by any of the answers.

[woot]

Harris has responded to the initial wave of criticism:

http://www.project-reason.org/newsfeed/item/moral_confusion_in_the_name_of_science3/

After watching the TED talk again, I'm still not sure how to feel about it, but I'm attracted to his ideas and think they have merit, and could even be revolutionary. I'll definitely be reading his book on the topic when it comes out later this year.

[Rosebud]

Loved the video Woot. This guy thinks a lot like I do. I pretty much agree with everything he said. To, me science can help us make moral decisions and it's as frustrating as he11 when people tend to believe that religion and philosophy are the only routes to determining the difference between right and wrong. I tend to get frustrated here on CUF when the defenders of religion and the defenders of science fight 'cause I don't see why embracing the moralities demonstrated to us by science needs to be so threatening to the religious or why the scientists feel the need to believe that everything is relative when, to me, science clearly demonstrates that some values really are superior to others.

I believe that God exists (but I don't expect everyone else to) and I don't see how defending traditional religious ideas instead of the facts proven by science brings us any closer to him. To me, God is science and science is God. (No, I'm not saying that God is not a person, I'm saying that this is his world and that he clearly understands this world and therefore understands science better than Ed Witten.) Religion is a great way that we can try to come closer to God and religion and philosophy could grow so much if they would dare to embrace scientific thought or, IOW, God-like thought.

Yeah, I understand why the ideas Harris shares are considered radical and dangerous to some who will lose power and influence, but IMO the less frightened people become of them, the better chance we have of creating a better/safer global society. These ideas don't need to be threatening. They're just logical. Likewise, scientists don't need to be afraid of admitting that there are some values that are better than others and that science itself can prove it.

I love talking about evolutionary theory behind: "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine," or even better: "I'll scratch your back, you'll scratch someone else's, and a completely independent third party will scratch mine."

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Personally, I believe that we are capable of sin because we have knowledge of good and evil, and I believe that this conscience was generated via evolution.

CS Lewis liked to argue that the proof that there is a God is in this simple story: A man is walking along and sees another man falling threw the ice. The man has two instincts. One is a "herd instinct" telling him to save the man who is falling through the ice. The second instinct is a "self-preservation" instinct that tells the man to stay away from danger. But in CS Lewis's mind, the proof that there is a God lies in the fact that there is something else which tells the man that the moral thing to do is attempt to save this man.

I completely disagree with CS Lewis. Morality can be very nicely explained by evolutionary theory, and there is no reason to invoke God. Other animals also sacrifice themselves for each other. For believers, it's easy to reconcile these issues by saying that God used evolution to give us a conscience.

What I like about Harris' ideas is that they make it so that it doesn't matter whether consciousness was generated via evolution or intelligent design or both. Consciousness clearly exists and can clearly be defined and it is therefore possible to make moral judgments based on its existence. When both scientists and religious people can accept this, they'll be able to work together to make positive societal changes.