[MD] A Science of Morals

[Ham Priday]

Steve, Platt, Mary, and All --

On Friday, April 2nd, Steve launched a dialectical debate based on Sam 
Harris's claim that "there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, 
... that science can help us understand what we should do and should 
want-and, perforce, what other people should do and want in order to live 
the best lives possible."

This brought a retort from Platt, who said:
> Science proposed a social morality a hundred years ago.
> It was called "eugenics."  The result was disastrous.
> Now Harris wants to get science into the act again.  His
> proposal: an undefined goal of human "well being," the
> motive of eugenicists, communists, socialists and brutal
> authoritarians of all sorts.  Thanks Harris, but no thanks.

I'm totally with Platt on this criticism.  But then, in a grand gesture of 
praise
to Pirsig, Platt throws the ball right back in Harris's corner:
> The great step forward taken by Pirsig was to free morality
> from its social cage and show how it is the basis of the world's
> order.  Now there's a theory worth investigating. When Harris
> understands that physical laws are moral laws, then perhaps
> he will have something worthwhile to say.

Isn't that precisely the premise Harris is fostering?  In fact, neither 
Harris nor Pirsig support a concept that will "free morality from its social 
cage."  Social morality IS a conventional precept, not a science or a cosmic 
principle.  As long as morality is thought to be "the basis of the world's 
order," it will never represent the value preferences of the individual 
choicemaker.  Contrary to Steve's (Harris's?) FACT #8, no "ought" an be 
derived from "is", and ideological attempts to do so -- e.g., 
authoritarianism, collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism -- demean human 
freedom.

For me, at least, the star in the controversy over Harris's speech was Sean 
Carroll, a fellow scientist and his primary antagonist.  Here is what 
Carroll said:

"But what if I believe that the highest moral good is to be found in the 
autonomy of the individual, while you believe that the highest good is to 
maximize the utility of some societal group?  What are the data we can point 
to in order to adjudicate this disagreement?  We might use empirical means 
to measure whether one preference or the other leads to systems that give 
people more successful lives on some particular scale - but that's presuming 
the answer, not deriving it.  Who decides what is a successful life?  It's 
ultimately a personal choice, not an objective truth to be found simply by 
looking closely at the world.  How are we to balance individual rights 
against the collective good?  You can do all the experiments you like and 
never find an answer to that question."

Carroll also had this to say, which was not quoted by Harris:

"There are no objective moral truths (where "objective" means "existing 
independently of human invention"), but there are real human beings with 
complex sets of preferences. What we call "morality" is an outgrowth of the 
interplay of those preferences with the world around us, and in particular 
with other human beings. The project of moral philosophy is to make sense of 
our preferences, to try to make them logically consistent, to reconcile them 
with the preferences of others and the realities of our environments, and to 
discover how to fulfill them most efficiently. ...Which is why it's a shame 
to get the whole thing off on the wrong foot by insisting that values are 
simply a particular version of empirical facts."

This makes me want to read Carroll, rather than more nihilistic nonsense 
from Harris.

It also coincidentally ties in with Mary's recent assertion that "society is 
built on discreteness, that we are unique individuals who come together to 
achieve common goals that may or may not support biological survival." 
That's what morality represents.  It is not "fixed" in universal principles 
or physical laws, but is a social accommodation to values freely chosen by 
the autonomous agents of existence.  I submit that only the realization of 
this concept will set man free to fulfill his role in existence.

Essentially speaking,
Ham