[MD] A Science of Morals

[Steven Peterson]

Hi All,

Here is Sam's attempt to bridge the is/ought divide:


Sam Harris:


The Worst Possible Misery for Everyone
(Getting from “is” to “ought” 1.0)


FACT #1: There are behaviors, intentions, cultural practices, etc.
which potentially lead to the worst possible misery for everyone.
There are also behaviors, intentions, cultural practices, etc. which
do not, and which, in fact, lead to states of wellbeing for many
sentient creatures, to the degree that wellbeing is possible in this
universe.

FACT #2: While it may often be difficult in practice, distinguishing
between these two sets is possible in principle.

FACT #3: Our “values” are ways of thinking about this domain of
possibilities. If we value liberty, privacy, benevolence, dignity,
freedom of expression, honesty, good manners, the right to own
property, etc.—we value these things only in so far as we judge them
to be part of the second set of factors conducive to (someone’s)
wellbeing.

FACT #4: Values, therefore, are (explicit or implicit) judgments about
how the universe works and are themselves facts about our universe
(i.e. states of the human brain). (Religious values, focusing on God’s
will or the law of karma, are no exception: the reason to respect
God’s will or the law of karma is to avoid the worst possible misery
for many, most, or even all sentient beings).

FACT #5: It is possible to be confused or mistaken about how the
universe works. It is, therefore, possible to have the wrong values
(i.e. values which lead toward, rather than away from, the worst
possible misery for everyone).

FACT #6: Given that the wellbeing of humans and animals must depend on
states of the world and on states of their brains, and science
represents our most systematic means of understanding these states,
science can potentially help us avoid the worst possible misery for
everyone.

FACT #7: In so far as our subsidiary values can be in conflict—e.g.
individual rights vs. collective security; the right to privacy vs.
freedom of expression—it may be possible to decide which priorities
will most fully avoid the worst possible misery for many, most, or
even all sentient beings. Science, therefore, can in principle (if not
always in practice) determine and prioritize our subsidiary values
(e.g. should we value “honor”? If so, when and how much?).

FACT #8: One cannot reasonably ask, “But why is the worst possible
misery for everyone bad?”—for if the worst possible misery for
everyone isn’t bad, the word “bad” has no meaning. (This would be like
asking, “But why is a perfect circle round?” The question can be
posed, but it expresses only confusion, not an intelligible basis for
skeptical doubt.) Likewise, one cannot ask, “But why ought we avoid
the worst possible misery for everyone?”—for if the term “ought” has
any application at all, it is in urging us away from the worst
possible misery for everyone.

FACT #9: One can, therefore, derive “ought” from “is”: for if there is
a behavior, intention, cultural practice, etc. that seems likely to
produce the worst possible misery for everyone, one ought not adopt
it. (All lesser ethical concerns and obligations follow from this).

Steve:
My post to comments follows. (He has been requesting feedback on
Twitter and Facebook and on his website presumably to try to avoid
errors before publishing his next book.)



Hi Sam,

I don't think you should be claiming that you've bridged the is/ought
abyss so much as arguing that the is/ought problem is not really such
a deep problem for the possibility of a science of the mind informing
us about morality as people tend to think it is.

The is/ought problem is not that we can't reason about "oughts" at all
or that "oughts" have no relation to assertions of fact about the way
the world is. The is/ought problem concerns the fact that if you want
to apply reason to derive new "oughts," your reasoning must include
some appeal to at least one other "ought." In your reasoning you have
appealed to the fact in #8 that we "ought to avoid the worst possible
misery." The fact that this particular "ought" is unquestionable or
questioning it is unintelligible is to say that it is no more
controversial than any fact about the way the world is we can think
of. However, the presence of this appeal to an "ought" means that you
have not successfully bridged the gap. What the unintelligibility of
the denial of this "ought" means is that the jump over the is/ought
gap that is needed is nothing for anyone to fear.

If someone is willing to express doubt in your premise that we ought
to avoid the worst possible misery, then they would need not accept
whatever conclusions you would draw from combining this
"ought"-premises with other "is"-premises. You will still have an
argument with anyone willing to bite that bullet, but it will be easy
to dismiss such people who do not think that we ought to avoid the
worst possible misery as either straw men or "brain in a vat"
philosophical bogiemen (or sociopaths) who we no longer need to fear
after C.S. Pierce taught us that such doubts (what Pierce called "fake
doubts") themselves require justification. Anyone who doubts that we
ought to avoid the worst possible misery is obliged to justify the
assertion that this is a claim that though while widely believed still
ought to be doubted and with good reason. In the absence of such good
reasons, we do well to dismiss this fake doubt skepticism as a
sometimes beneficial thought experiment that didn't pay off this time.

Also related is the notion of a "competent observer." We generally
call scientific knowledge “objective,” since scientists are in
agreement on what is knowledge, while ethical knowledge called
“subjective” when we can’t get agreement with such hypothetical
conversation partners as “the Nazi” and “the sociopath” and “the
Cartesian skeptic” who is not so sure whether or not he is a brain in
a vat. Physicists are competent to judge the outcome of experiments
that would be meaningless to me. Scientists aren’t expected to have to
answer for such bogey-men, while moral philosophers are. Scientists in
one field are only expected to be able to convince other scientists
who have been acculturated into the same narrow field with specialized
training. Kuhn pointed out that scientific training involves
door-keeping where only those who see things largely the same way get
in at all, so it is no wonder that they are in agreement on one
another’s work. “The Nazi” or “the sociopath” or a small child isn’t
expected to be able to go into a lab and evaluate an experiment that a
scientist has just performed to verify the truth of what the scientist
has claimed. They are not and should not be considered to be competent
observers. Yet, in ethics, we have been taught to demand a foundation
for arguments that will make them so convincing as to convince even
these moral incompetents of their truth. We should stop demanding such
a foundation for knowledge in ethics if we are satisified in claiming
knowledge using a less universal standard in science.

In short, though I am not convinced that you have bridged the is/ought
divide, I think that what you have demonstrated is that it is possible
to reason from noncontroversial facts and values--ones that would be
unreasonable even to doubt--to new knowledge of how to achieve greater
human well-being. Such knowledge can include knowledge about what we
ought to do to achieve greater well-being, however, to get there we
will always need to presuppose the noncontroversial fact that
achieving greater well-being for sentient creatures is what we ought
to do. Such a simple self-evident truth is all that it needed to link
morality to the rest of human knowledge and can lend as much epistemic
standing to morality as a few such axioms have done for mathematics.

Best,
Steve