[MD] A Science of Morals

[Steven Peterson]

Hi All,

Sam Harris responded to my comment to my comment as follows:


Harris:
> @Steve #39
>
> Very interesting comment. You echo many of my own thoughts about the false standard to which ethical statements are held. I'm not ready to abandon erasing the Is/Ought gap just yet, however. When you write:
>
> "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..."
>
> I'm hoping that some formulation of my Fact #8 makes it clear that one cannot actually bite this particular bullet. It seems to me more than merely perverse to deny that the worst possible suffering for everyone (including oneself) ought to be avoided. I don't think one can actually have a valid concept of "ought" is allows one to deny this (just as one cannot have a valid concept of "round" which would withhold this attribute from a "perfect circle").
>
> Further thoughts?


Steve:
What do you think? Can Fact #8 be formulated to make it impossible to
bite the bullet?

Best,
Steve



On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>