Can science determine human values? Utilitarianism vs relativism, etc

[C C]

http://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews...mon-ground

EXCERPT: Sam Harris sets out an ambitious project for himself ["The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values"].

Harris -- a neuroscientist and atheist who has argued militantly against religious belief -- hopes to meet head-on a common response to the atheist position, that, as Dostoyevsky famously put it, in the absence of God anything is permitted. The fear is that without religious belief to guide us, we are flung at once into the quicksand of moral relativism dispossessed of any firm footing upon which to claim that anything is truly right or wrong. [...] Harris wants once and for all to vanquish the challenge of moral (and cultural) relativism. Unfortunately (and I mean that sincerely), the assault of moral skepticism upon the notion of objective moral truth cannot be swatted away quite as easily as Harris implies.

[...] The problem with this is that, for all its intuitive appeal, utilitarianism offers no clear justification for its foundational claim: that everyone’s interests should count equally and that we cannot privilege some people’s interests—including our own—over the interests of others.

[...] The ugly foundational question at the heart of normative ethics remains: why not me over you? Why does your hunger count equally as my hunger? Why is your pain as terrible as mine? Utilitarianism fails to properly deal with this question—what we may call the problem of subjectivity. Utilitarianism’s strongest conceptual punch—that pleasure and pain is the basis of value (this hedonistic account of course may be substituted with more elastic concepts, such as preference satisfaction, well-being, or human flourishing)—does not support the proposition that everyone’s interests should count equally. It does not follow from this that we are morally obliged to maximize the well-being (or what have you) of the greatest number. That is a leap in logic. The philosopher Simon Blackburn does not mince his words: This "argument is so bad that the conclusion not only fails to follow, but actually seems to contradict the starting point.”

[...] Harris’s scientism does nothing to advance the discussion. Harris wants to use empirical facts to determine normative truths. However, the relativist challenge that Harris must defeat is (in its most popular form) the notion that moral judgements are only true or false from the standpoint of the individual or a group of individuals, and do not exist out there in the empirical universe the same way as salad bowls, tornados, and hardcover books. Moral value, the relativist argues, is not absolute: moral judgements are essentially no different than my view that pistachio ice cream is disgusting.

While my dislike of pistachio ice cream may be a perfectly measurable brain state, a natural phenomenon fully constrained by the laws of the universe, this still does not show that pistachio ice cream is objectively disgusting. And conversely, what fact in the universe could possibly show that I am mistaken? What could be the foundation of such a claim? All the empirical data in the world on pistachio ice cream—its flavours, precise texture, nut composition, etc.—can never prove that this green goo is objectively delicious.

Likewise, what are we to do if I am simply unmoved by the suffering of others? What empirical data can you produce to show that I must weigh the anguish of others equally with my own? There is of course an empirical answer to the question as to how to maximize the collective well-being of humanity—no one is disputing this. However, so long as the problem of subjectivity remains unsolved, there is no answer to the question of why we should do so. For Harris’s entire project to work, he must first solve the problem of subjectivity and show us why we are compelled to adopt the ‘point of view of the universe.’...

[Magical Realist]

However, so long as the problem of subjectivity remains unsolved, there is no answer to the question of why we should do so. For Harris’s entire project to work, he must first solve the problem of subjectivity and show us why we are compelled to adopt the ‘point of view of the universe.’...

This is what thrills me about philosophy. That it can take some of our most cherished assumptions, like the pleasure of others is more important than my own, and hold them up to a spotlight of ruthless scrutiny. Why should I sacrifice my time and effort for others who are less fortunate? Well, perhaps I'm in a place now that I can help with minimal loss. Perhaps it suits my mood at the time, providing psychological healing to my dysfunctional nature. Or maybe I just freely choose to do it. In any case, philosophy asks the unanswerable questions, and keeps us honest and true to ourselves and our standards of rationality.

[Yazata]

EXCERPT: Sam Harris sets out an ambitious project for himself ["The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values"].

Harris -- a neuroscientist and atheist who has argued militantly against religious belief -- hopes to meet head-on a common response to the atheist position, that, as Dostoyevsky famously put it, in the absence of God anything is permitted.

Dostoyevsky assumes (along with most theists) that god is relevant to ethics and to our human decisions about how to behave. To make that argument, we would have to introduce new premises that god defines good and that we should do what is good. The problem then would be justifying those new premises.  

Why should we assume that god's will is somehow definitive of what is good? And why should we always be good? What argument can be given for why we shouldn't be bad?  

The fear is that without religious belief to guide us, we are flung at once into the quicksand of moral relativism dispossessed of any firm footing upon which to claim that anything is truly right or wrong. [...] Harris wants once and for all to vanquish the challenge of moral (and cultural) relativism.

It sounds to me like Harris is trying to reinvent the wheel. Evolutionary ethics has been around for a long time. Darwin speculated about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics

Unfortunately (and I mean that sincerely), the assault of moral skepticism upon the notion of objective moral truth cannot be swatted away quite as easily as Harris implies.

Evolutionary ethics doesn't have to justify objective moral truths that hold good for everyone in any circumstance. (Do objective moral truths that strong even exist?) It just needs to provide some explanatory account for why human beings have moral intuitions, for why those intuitions take the form they do, and for why human beings feel that their moral intuitions have prescriptive force in governing what people should do.

The problem with this is that, for all its intuitive appeal, utilitarianism offers no clear justification for its foundational claim: that everyone’s interests should count equally and that we cannot privilege some people’s interests—including our own—over the interests of others.

There does seem to be a sliding scale, where we favor our selves, children and closest family over the more abstract claims of strangers halfway around the world that we have never met. A particular kind of leftist-moralist does argue that the stranger in Somalia has just as much moral claim on our behavior as those closer to us, and that we are just as obligated to that stranger, but most people don't feel that way.

The ugly foundational question at the heart of normative ethics remains: why not me over you? Why does your hunger count equally as my hunger?

So stop worrying about trying to justify that strangely unrealistic vision of normative ethics.

Remember that the existence of god has nothing to do with it. One can easily ask the same kind of question of god that this author asks of the utilitarian: 'why do god's desires have any moral authority over my desires'?

Utilitarianism fails to properly deal with this question—what we may call the problem of subjectivity.

What happened to Harris? The target of this review seems to have shifted over to being an attack on a certain kind of (perhaps caricatured) utilitarianism. Is Harris' project a form of utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism’s strongest conceptual punch—that pleasure and pain is the basis of value (this hedonistic account of course may be substituted with more elastic concepts, such as preference satisfaction, well-being, or human flourishing)—does not support the proposition that everyone’s interests should count equally.

Ok.

Harris’s scientism does nothing to advance the discussion. Harris wants to use empirical facts to determine normative truths.

I can't comment on Harris' ethical project, since I'm unfamiliar with it. But I don't think that evolutionary ethics needs to use empirical facts to determine normative truths at all. Evolutionary ethics is a metaethics. It just needs to explain why human beings intuit feelings of moral obligation, and provide some account of why those feelings arise in the situations they do and why they take the form they take. Actually applying ethics to particular cases would be a matter of attending to our (not always coherent) moral intuitions about right and wrong in those cases.

However, the relativist challenge that Harris must defeat is (in its most popular form) the notion that moral judgements are only true or false from the standpoint of the individual or a group of individuals, and do not exist out there in the empirical universe the same way as salad bowls, tornados, and hardcover books.

Theistic ethics just pile the same relativism into the person of god.

Moral value, the relativist argues, is not absolute: moral judgements are essentially no different than my view that pistachio ice cream is disgusting.

Not necessarily. I think that human beings everywhere would agree that putting our hands on a hot stove is a very bad idea. But that feeling is still relative, though not as variable as our reactions to the taste of ice cream. It's just that the sense of self preservation and the ability to feel pain is pretty much universal among human and other sentient beings with nervous systems.

Likewise, what are we to do if I am simply unmoved by the suffering of others?

I'm not sure what 'we' he's talking about or who those 'others' are. Speaking for myself, if this guy is unmoved by the suffering of his own child, I'd probably think that he's a heartless bastard and an unfit parent. If he isn't particularly moved by the thought that some unknown person is likely suffering somewhere in the world right now, I'd probably just shrug. That's the human condition.

The metaethical question would then be to explain why I feel those ways and why people make the ethical judgements that they do. I think that evolutionary ethics is perfectly capable of explaining that. We have innate social instincts that motivate us to be concerned for the welfare of those closest to us, those upon which the survival of our genetic line depends. Human beings live in and no doubt evolved in mutually-supportive groups.

What empirical data can you produce to show that I must weigh the anguish of others equally with my own?

None. But the evolutionary ethicists can provide explanations, or at least outline possible explanations, for why people might share social instincts, share intutions of fairness and reciprocity, and share concern for the welfare of others (some more than others, usually). They can produce reasons for why people experience those intuitions as obligations, as having prescriptive force for their own and other people's behavior, and for why we make judgements about the morality of other people's actions based on those kind of intuitions.

That's still relative to human beings, and by extension to animals like dogs that appear to share social instincts very similar to our own. There are species of wasps that use their sharp ovipositors ('stings') to lay their eggs inside caterpillars. When those eggs hatch, the wasp larvae find themselves surrounded by food. They eat their hosts alive, from the inside out. (That idea was employed in the science-fiction movie 'Alien'.) It's hard to imagine anything more horrible, but that's looking at it from our human viewpoint.

If human beings ever encounter intelligent social space-aliens, their social behavior might not seem in any way ethical to our eyes, but it will probably still make evolutionary sense in their context. (Would organisms that live solitary lives have anything like ethics?)  

There is of course an empirical answer to the question as to how to maximize the collective well-being of humanity—no one is disputing this. However, so long as the problem of subjectivity remains unsolved, there is no answer to the question of why we should do so. For Harris’s entire project to work, he must first solve the problem of subjectivity and show us why we are compelled to adopt the ‘point of view of the universe.’...

Beings like ourselves have social instincts. We experience them as feelings of obligation, as a sense of fairness and reciprocity. And we experience them as prescriptive, they motivate us to make judgements about how people (ourselves and others alike) should behave.

I don't think that these intuitions constitute a fully explicit set of moral rules for any situation. They are basic principles upon which our reactions to moral situations rest. Our reactions may not be entirely clear if our moral intuitions conflict. (Fairness isn't always consistent with compassion, for instance.) The result is that our various moral intuitions can be weighted in dramatically different ways. Societies formalize this stuff in culturally-defined moral codes.