Email to Sam Harris:

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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jupiviv
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Email to Sam Harris:

Post by jupiviv »

Sam Harris is holding an essay contest on his site. Here's my entry:
I will try here to address what I perceive to be the main arguments of your book. For the record, I’m an atheist myself and I agree with you that religion has no place in any sphere of human doings. I am opposed to some of the points you make in the book, but not from a religious or even necessarily moral standpoint. Rather, my opposition is solely philosophical.

The first point you make is that ethical questions are “really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures”. You go on to suggest that this statement is one of observable fact (like cancer or cholera) rather than one of judgment. I would like to point out that this is, in fact, an ethical judgment made independently of any scientific/empirical observation.

We must *define* what “well-being” actually means before we can go about observing or realizing it, and that definition itself is necessarily formulated without any empirical observation.

The reason for this is quite obvious - we cannot observe what we haven’t yet defined. This doesn’t of course mean that definitions are necessarily independent of sense perceptions, since in order to define something in the empirical world, which is itself defined as the world that is perceived by our senses or measuring devices, we have to have some kind of sensory perception. But sensory perception is not the same as observation in the scientific sense, which requires objects of observation, goals, methods, etc., which are all the products of consciousness. These all require definitions that are made independently of empirical observation, since no empirical observation relevant to them can have been made before they were formulated. Indeed, the definition of the empirical world is itself made without any reliance on empirical observation, for the reason I mentioned above.

The only way anybody could object to this is if they believed that things have value independently of conscious minds, and can therefore be observed to have value without any need for value judgment prior to observation, which would be the same as saying they have inherent value. That would be a contradictory idea, as it effectively means that the person averring it has judged things to have value independently of whether he has done precisely that.

I’d like to make a clarification here. By saying that definitions are made independently of empirical observations, I don’t mean that they are independent or inherently separate from the empirical world. From a logical point of view, all things are connected by cause and effect, and consciousness – the source of definitions – is no exception.

You say that your premise in the book is that since human well-being is determined by natural events, there must be scientific truths to be known about it. I agree that human well-being, as well as anything else, is wholly determined by natural events, but it doesn’t follow from this fact that we can understand it scientifically. Nature encompasses many things that are beyond the province of science, like philosophical truths about the nature of existence, or morality. There are probably things that no conscious human is observing at this very moment, and there are things that no conscious human will ever observe, but conscious humans can nevertheless make absolutely valid statements about those things without requiring any empirical observation whatsoever.

Human well-being can only be determined by philosophical thought and reasoning, which by its very nature must be independent of empirical observation. Any scientific facts about human well-being must conform to a definition of well-being formulated independently of any scientific fact or observation, for the reasons stated above.

Thus, while the premise of your premise is correct, its conclusion is not.

I will now address your definition of “well-being”. The first problem I find with it is that it isn’t very clear. You seem to admit this and compare the definition of well-being with that of physical health. Physical health is defined to be anything that allows a person to continue living. While the application of that definition to particular instances may be complex or difficult, the definition itself is clear and simple (a living human is generally a very easy thing to observe). Moreover, that definition is formulated independently of any empirical observation. The existence of living humans is as much a fact as that of dead ones. The positive valuation of the former is not derived from its observation. Nowhere in the book do you posit a similarly clear and simple definition of “well-being”.

From what I could gather, you define well-being to be the highest possible happiness for all conscious beings, and contrast it with the worst possible misery for the same. This definition would be clear if you had clearly defined what happiness and misery means, but you don’t seem to have done so anywhere in the book. However, if your definition of those two terms are anything like the conventional ones, I would say that you define pleasure to be inherently good, and pain to be inherently bad. I say “inherently”, because one cannot value either pleasure or pain, in any form, to be good or bad unless one considers them to be inherently so.

Both pleasure and pain, in all of their forms, prevent rational thought. This fact is readily observable. People do not want to be aware of anything that would make them not want to possess or avoid things that give them pleasure or pain (respectively). Therefore, the only way anyone could value either of them as being good or bad is by experiencing them. However, in doing so, they would not be thinking rationally, so their valuation of either must occur beyond rational thought, which is the only way one can understand the nature of things. The only other option, therefore, is to consider either of them to be inherently valuable, which would be nonsensical for the reasons stated above.
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Urizen
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Urizen »

You make a sound argument. But it reaches deeper still. You can't even have truth without positing a timeless Reality beyond the phenomenal world. Supposing his theory of ethics is true, then where does its truth reside? How can he presuppose the principle of truth while believing that there is nothing beyond the changing flux of physical phenomena? The New Atheists just don't think about these things. They are philosophically illiterate and lack insight. Nietzsche at least understood this problem (thought he never found the correct solution, which of course is traditional metaphysics; for modern Westerners, the solution had to wait until the arrival of Guenon and Schuon).

By the way, this may be a mistaken assumption, but while you don't use the word God, you nevetheless presuppose Transcendence. This is none other than God, give it whatever name you will. If you have any idea or knowledge of Trancendence, then you are far closer to the Abrahamic religions than to atheism.

A general comment on Buddhism. This is not directed to anyone specifically, but since Buddhism seems to be the dominant philosophy here, this should be mentioned while it is on the mind. From a metaphysical perspective, Buddhism is fundamentally in agreement with Christianity and Islam concerning the reality of God, doctrinal symbolism notwithstanding. It possesses God in the form of Transcendence and immanent justice. Those who have chosen Buddhism because they don't like the idea of God, have chosen the wrong religion. Their religion should he atheism, not Buddhism. One cannot be an atheist and a Buddhist at the same time.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Urizen wrote: You can't even have truth without positing a timeless Reality beyond the phenomenal world. Supposing his theory of ethics is true, then where does its truth reside? How can he presuppose the principle of truth while believing that there is nothing beyond the changing flux of physical phenomena?
If truth is defined as subjectivity itself (Kierkegaard) and reality as the phenomenal and "space" to reside conceptually and practically our selves, then there cannot be anything "be-yond". This means that absolute truth is the truth about truth, not yet another one. And absolute reality is the truth about the nature of reality, not yet another form of reality. And there does not need an ultimate origin of these truths just as much one doesn't need an origin of the division between subject and object. The idea of origination already implies subject-object just like subjectivity will demand origination or "cause and effect" to be in order.
traditional metaphysics
But there's no such unified thing at all, historically - and it cannot just be willed in existence as solution. If reality, in any meaningful sense, is made up from time and space, we cannot speak of a timeless reality or set of truths from beyond. We can approach the idea with a term like "the infinite" but since it has no dimensions, there's nothing to describe but the nature of anything being "infinite" or absolute. It's these simple, sober metaphysics which have been traditionally expressed again and again as firm philosophy and as well vivid experience. But it contains no solution for any of our problems unless the problem is the stress of not knowing.
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Urizen: By the way, this may be a mistaken assumption, but while you don't use the word God, you nevetheless presuppose Transcendence. This is none other than God, give it whatever name you will. If you have any idea or knowledge of Trancendence, then you are far closer to the Abrahamic religions than to atheism.
Urizen, it were true that there is a reality beyond the phenomenal world then the phenomenal world would be unable to be caused - there would be no phenomenal world. Just because causes (God is the Causality) are unseen/unknown does not make them 'beyond', it makes them unseen and unknown.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
There is only God. Here, now. Visible and invisible. In my words, as my words, in your words, as your words. It is because of the false notion of 'beyond' that the false notion of dualism lives on.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

Given his first eligibility criterion, I'll be surprised if your essay qualifies since, a) you're not going to change his mind as it seems to me that there is an "in principle" agreement there, even if it is dressed up as criticism, and b) your essay actually doesn't attempt to refute the central argument stipulated in the same criterion.
1. You have said that these essays must attack the “central argument” of your book. What do you consider that to be?

Here it is: Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of the universe (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science (in principle, if not in practice). Consequently, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

You might want to read what I’ve already written in response to a few critics. (A version of that article became the Afterword to the paperback edition of The Moral Landscape.) I also recommend that you watch the talk I linked to above.
Depending on how many applicants he gets, I don't think an encouraging reply would be out of the question altogether, though.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by jupiviv »

Leyla Shen wrote:a) you're not going to change his mind as it seems to me that there is an "in principle" agreement there, even if it is dressed up as criticism

Well, I do agree with some of his arguments/points. However I think I've pointed out where (and how) I disagree with him quite clearly.
b) your essay actually doesn't attempt to refute the central argument stipulated in the same criterion.
I wrote:You say that your premise in the book is that since human well-being is determined by natural events, there must be scientific truths to be known about it. I agree that human well-being, as well as anything else, is wholly determined by natural events, but it doesn’t follow from this fact that we can understand it scientifically. Nature encompasses many things that are beyond the province of science, like philosophical truths about the nature of existence, or morality. There are probably things that no conscious human is observing at this very moment, and there are things that no conscious human will ever observe, but conscious humans can nevertheless make absolutely valid statements about those things without requiring any empirical observation whatsoever.

Human well-being can only be determined by philosophical thought and reasoning, which by its very nature must be independent of empirical observation. Any scientific facts about human well-being must conform to a definition of well-being formulated independently of any scientific fact or observation, for the reasons stated above.

Thus, while the premise of your premise is correct, its conclusion is not.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

My first thought was to edit your essay to see what comes out of it, but I opted not withhold a reply until I had the time to do so. It appears you've stopped short in your counter argument (and that may be more to do with construction than content), which dilutes its impact. It's not clear to me from your essay, for example, how the philosophy of science results in the suggested faulty conclusion rendering it inferior (?) to philosophy "Proper".
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:It's not clear to me from your essay, for example, how the philosophy of science results in the suggested faulty conclusion rendering it inferior (?) to philosophy "Proper".

Why is the philosophy of science not philosophy proper? Besides, Harris' argument concerns science. Not the philosophy of science.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

Yes, and that's the point.

The positive valuation of a living human isn't empirical insofar as it is limited to being an abstract valuation. This abstract human value, the premise underpinning the entire impetus of all scientific endeavour from medicine through biology to physics, is scientific as soon as it becomes a practical question. What "well-being" is, and how it should be measured, is not a question of philosophical absolutes. It is a question of such philosophical absolutes as modified by the field in which they are being investigated.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:This abstract human value, the premise underpinning the entire impetus of all scientific endeavour from medicine through biology to physics, is scientific as soon as it becomes a practical question.
No, because we would be putting an abstract value *into* practice, not determining it through practice. Even if it were to be modified by practice, the value would still be abstract - i.e, abstractly modified to be more complementary to practice. In fact, the modification of any value to make it more suitable for a certain endeavour would itself be founded upon an abstract value judgment, i.e, it is better to modify the value to be more suitable for said endeavour.
What "well-being" is, and how it should be measured, is not a question of philosophical absolutes. It is a question of such philosophical absolutes as modified by the field in which they are being investigated.
Again, that statement itself would constitute a philosophical absolute, thus making it self-contradictory. Also, well-being cannot be measured, since it is itself a measure. One can't measure a measure, just as one can't enumerate a number. If someone attempted to do so, he'd just end up with different measures/numbers.
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Post by Leyla Shen »

No, because we would be putting an abstract value *into* practice,
No, because if that were true, it wouldn't be an abstract value.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:
No, because we would be putting an abstract value *into* practice,

No, because if that were true, it wouldn't be an abstract value.


Because if what were true? That we are putting an abstract value into practice? Jeez.

Almost every argument you engage in here seems to devolve into you making nonsense au-contraire retorts. You should think about that.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

jupiviv wrote:
Leyla Shen wrote:
No, because we would be putting an abstract value *into* practice,

No, because if that were true, it wouldn't be an abstract value.


Because if what were true? That we are putting an abstract value into practice? Jeez.

Almost every argument you engage in here seems to devolve into you making nonsense au-contraire retorts. You should think about that.
(Ya think?)

Yes. The instant you take well-being as a measure rather than as a philosophical absolute, you have quantified it and that quantification “well-being” is concrete, not abstract.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:Yes. The instant you take well-being as a measure rather than as a philosophical absolute, you have quantified it and that quantification “well-being” is concrete, not abstract.

All measures are abstract by definition. The abstract standard of truth and falsity, for example, is a measure. A=A does not refer to any specific thing. Likewise, a square mile doesn't refer to a specific area of land. If measures weren't abstract, then they couldn't measure concrete things.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

And that concrete "well being" being measured in the abstract is what establishes scientific proofs; facts.

I don't see how this supports your assertion that whilst Harris's "premise of [his] premise is true, the conclusion is false".

Facts are the basis upon which Harris suggests, given that facts and truths essentially two sides of the same coin (it's not possible for any fact to be a fact without a truth value) that morality and science, rather than morality and religion, are the proper basis of morality.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:And that concrete "well being" being measured in the abstract is what establishes scientific proofs; facts.

Scientific facts are established by the moral standard of open and sincere inquiry about the natural world, not of any kind of well-being.
I don't see how this supports your assertion that whilst Harris's "premise of [his] premise is true, the conclusion is false".
His argument is that since well-being occurs in the natural world/Nature, it means that science can tell us what it is. Unless one defines science as the sum total of all knowledge and reasoning, that is quite obviously a faulty conclusion.
Facts are the basis upon which Harris suggests, given that facts and truths essentially two sides of the same coin (it's not possible for any fact to be a fact without a truth value) that morality and science, rather than morality and religion, are the proper basis of morality.

Scientific facts come into play only when our conception of morality is applied to the empirical world, not when we conceive it. By the way, Harris talks about the identity of facts about the natural world and values that apply to the natural world, not facts and truths. Obviously facts and truths are the same thing, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the question of whether science is the basis of morality.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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L: And that concrete "well being" being measured in the abstract is what establishes scientific proofs; facts.

j: Scientific facts are established by the moral standard of open and sincere inquiry about the natural world, not of any kind of well-being.
jupiviv, are you really suggesting that open and sincere enquiry about the natural world has nothing to do with well-being? That concerning ourselves with the question of what is true about the natural world rather than merely assuming that what we are taught about the natural world is true without question, has nothing to do with our well-being?

Are you sure you value reason? I have to say, if what you say there is true, I do indeed have a big problem since it means that I should never question anyone or anything on matters concerning goodness and well-being as they relate, for example, to life and death. Some guy could come up to me with some elaborate proposition that if I don’t cover my body from head to toe in worldly life, I will burn in hell in the afterlife and I would simply have to accept it on the basis that, whilst it may or may not be true, the moral standard of open and sincere enquiry about the natural world has nothing to do with well-being.
L: I don't see how this supports your assertion that whilst Harris's "premise of [his] premise is true, the conclusion is false".

j: His argument is that since well-being occurs in the natural world/Nature, it means that science can tell us what it is. Unless one defines science as the sum total of all knowledge and reasoning, that is quite obviously a faulty conclusion.
I don't think that's an entirely accurate paraphrase, nor that it can be so reduced without making it a different argument altogether.

He has stated his central argument as follows:

"Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of the universe (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science (in principle, if not in practice)."

His argument for a relation between science, morality and well-being is that since minds experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe, such states of mind comprise natural phenomena and, as such, are constrained by the natural laws of the universe. You seem to be suggesting that since we don’t know what all the laws of the universe are, his reasoning is faulty. Is that right?

What his argument actually means is that science is the means by which we can establish the laws of the universe (in contradistinction, for example, to the "laws of god"), and that anything affected by them therefore fall within the purview of science. It’s a perfectly logical, coherent argument which doesn’t require a “sum total of all knowledge and reasoning”.
L: Facts are the basis upon which Harris suggests, given that facts and truths essentially two sides of the same coin (it's not possible for any fact to be a fact without a truth value) that morality and science, rather than morality and religion, are the proper basis of morality.

j: Scientific facts come into play only when our conception of morality is applied to the empirical world, not when we conceive it.
Can you give me an example of morality not applied to the empirical world? I mean, are we talking about just thinking something is right/wrong, but not doing anything on that basis (no behavioural relation), as being moral and therefore outside of the purview of science? I can’t imagine such a thing outside of--well, the imagination; but if such a thing did exist beyond the imagination, I would be inclined to call it philosophy, at best—not morality.
j: By the way, Harris talks about the identity of facts about the natural world and values that apply to the natural world, not facts and truths. Obviously facts and truths are the same thing, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the question of whether science is the basis of morality.
It would seem to me, given the entirety of your second statement, that you might just as well be suggesting that science cannot establish facts. Or, is the argument that truth and morality are necessarily mutually exclusive?
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

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Leyla Shen wrote:jupiviv, are you really suggesting that open and sincere enquiry about the natural world has nothing to do with well-being?

I didn't say anything even remotely like that. No conception of well-being can establish scientific facts. Even if well-being were specifically defined as the pursuit of knowledge and truth, it would still be unable to establish any scientific facts.

Whether scientific facts support (or deter) whatever goal of well-being people might have is a different issue.

I'll respond to the Harris quote you posted:
Harris wrote:Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds
I agree.
—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.
It's unclear what this means, since it's unclear what he means by well-being and suffering. I get the strong impression he uses those words in the conventional sense, in which case I would disagree with him for reasons stated in my essay.
Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of the universe (whatever these turn out to be in the end).
There aren't any laws of the universe apart from logic itself, which is ultimately the same as the universe itself.
Therefore, questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science (in principle, if not in practice).
Since science itself is established by values determined non-scientifically, this is a contradictory statement.
Leyla Shen wrote:What his argument actually means is that science is the means by which we can establish the laws of the universe (in contradistinction, for example, to the "laws of god"), and that anything affected by them therefore fall within the purview of science.

Even assuming there are any laws of the universe (there aren't), there is no way that science can establish any of them with certainty, which means the argument that they can be used to determine values is wrong.

Also, why does something affected by things that can be known using science fall within its purview?
Can you give me an example of morality not applied to the empirical world?
Whenever one thing is considered more moral than another thing, since there is no necessity that either/both of them may be observed/perceived.
It would seem to me, given the entirety of your second statement, that you might just as well be suggesting that science cannot establish facts.
Now you're just arguing for the sake of it. To prove that, I'll re-post that part of our discussion:
Facts are the basis upon which Harris suggests, given that facts and truths essentially two sides of the same coin (it's not possible for any fact to be a fact without a truth value) that morality and science, rather than morality and religion, are the proper basis of morality.
Scientific facts come into play only when our conception of morality is applied to the empirical world, not when we conceive it. By the way, Harris talks about the identity of facts about the natural world and values that apply to the natural world, not facts and truths. Obviously facts and truths are the same thing, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to the question of whether science is the basis of morality.

And while I'm at it, just what in the name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did you mean by the emboldened part of your post?
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

The winning essay, for those of us giving the Harris challenge some consideration:
Ryan Born: In issuing the Moral Landscape Challenge, you suggested some ways to refute your claim that questions of morality and value have scientific answers. One was to show that “other branches of science are self-justifying in a way that a science of morality could never be.” Here you seem to invite the “Value Problem” objection to your thesis, which you attempted to meet in your book’s afterword. I’ll be renewing that objection. Despite your efforts to invalidate it, the Value Problem remains a serious challenge to your thesis.

The “Value Problem” is your term for a common criticism of your proposed science of morality—namely, that it presupposes answers to fundamental questions of morality and value. You claim that what is good (the basic value question) is that which supports the well-being of conscious creatures, and that what one ought to do (the basic moral question) is maximize the well-being of conscious creatures. But science cannot empirically support either claim. Even granting that both claims are objectively true, science can do little more than fill in the descriptive empirical particulars. Such particulars may help illuminate specific moral values and principles, but only in light of the general ones you presuppose. Thus, your proposed science of morality cannot offer scientific answers to questions of morality and value, because it cannot derive moral judgments solely from scientific descriptions of the world.

You respond to the Value Problem in the following way: Every science must presuppose evaluative judgments. Science requires epistemic values—e.g., truth, logical consistency, empirical evidence. Science cannot defend these values, at least not without presupposing them in that very defense. After all, a compelling empirical case for the three values just named must show that they are truly values by using a logically consistent argument that employs empirical evidence. So when you speak of science as “self-justifying,” you appear to refer to the reflexive justification of certain epistemic values that all sciences share. But then you also note that the science of medicine requires a non-epistemic value—health. Science cannot show empirically that health is good. But nor, I would add, can science appeal to health to defend health’s value, as it would appeal to logic to defend logic’s value. Still, by definition, the science of medicine seeks to promote health (or else combat disease, which in turn promotes health). Insofar as you take the science of medicine to be “self-justifying,” you appear to hold that the very meaning of the science of medicine entails its non-epistemic evaluative foundation. From these two analogies (one to epistemic values, the other to medicine), you conclude that your proposed science of morality, in pulling itself up by the evaluative bootstraps, does no different from the science of medicine or science as a whole. In your view, to make any scientific claim, we must presuppose certain evaluative axioms.

Neither of your analogies invalidates the Value Problem. First, your analogy between epistemic axioms and moral axioms fails. The former merely motivate scientific inquiry and frame its development, whereas the latter predetermine your science of morality’s most basic findings. Epistemic axioms direct science to favor theories that are logically consistent, empirically supported, and so on, but they do not dictate which theories those will be. Meanwhile, your two moral axioms have already declared that (i) the only thing of intrinsic value is well-being, and (ii) the correct moral theory is consequentialist and, seemingly, some version of utilitarianism—rather than, say, virtue ethics, a non-consequentialist candidate for a naturalized moral framework. Further, both (i) and (ii) resist the sort of self-justification attributed above to science’s epistemic axioms; that is, neither is any more self-affirming than the value of health and the goal of promoting it. You might reply that the non-epistemic axioms of the science of medicine enjoy the sort of self-justification you have in mind for the moral (and likewise non-epistemic) axioms of your science of morality. But then your second analogy, between the science of medicine and your science of morality, fails. The former must presuppose that health is good and ought to be promoted; otherwise, the science of medicine would seem to defy conception. In contrast, a science of morality, insofar as it admits of conception, does not have to presuppose that well-being is the highest good and ought to be maximized. Serious competing theories of value and morality exist. If a science of morality elucidates moral reality, as you suggest, then presumably it must work out, not simply presuppose, the correct theory of moral reality, just as the science of physics must work out the correct theory of physical reality.

Nevertheless, you seem to believe you have worked out, scientifically, that your form of consequentialism, grounded in the supreme intrinsic value of well-being, is correct. Your defense of this moral theory is conceptual, not empirical, and requires engagement with work in moral philosophy, the intellectual home of consequentialism (in its myriad guises) and its competitors. Yet you identify science, not philosophy, as the arbiter of moral reality. In your view, no significant boundary exists between science and philosophy. In your book, you say that “science is often a matter of philosophy in practice,” subsequently reminding readers that the natural sciences were once known as natural philosophy. Bear in mind, however, the reason natural philosophy became the natural sciences: The problems it addressed became ever more empirically tractable. Indeed, some contemporary analytic philosophers hold that metaphysics will eventually yield (more or less) to the natural sciences. But even if that most rarefied of philosophical disciplines does fall to earth, metaphysics is a descriptive enterprise, just as science is conventionally taken to be. Ethics, i.e. moral philosophy, is a prescriptive enterprise, and thus will not yield so easily.

For now, I say you have not brought questions of ethics into science’s domain. No empirical inquiry into such questions can determine anything of clear moral significance without having normative conceptual answers already in place. And finding and justifying those answers requires a distinctly philosophical, not scientific, approach.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by jupiviv »

Aw crap. There goes my trip to Barbados.

In any case, I think my essay, though far less polished and jargon-filled, makes the case more elegantly. For one thing, it doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Value Problem at all (and therefore any question of validating/invalidating it), which is one of those "difficult" philosophical "problems" that earn academic philosophers their keep.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

Aw crap. There goes my trip to Barbados.
:)
In any case, I think my essay, though far less polished and jargon-filled, makes the case more elegantly. For one thing, it doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Value Problem at all (and therefore any question of validating/invalidating it), which is one of those "difficult" philosophical "problems" that earn academic philosophers their keep.
But as I recall it, you still make the same essential counterargument (without addressing it directly as the "Value Problem"), no?

If we're going to take it right down to its bare essentials, this, in my view, is where such an approach to the argument leads:

Namely, that value and morality are properly and necessarily in the domain of philosophy and not science; that, where science exists, there's some absolute and mutually exclusive distinction between them.

That they exist independently of each other is simply an arbitrary assumption.

Insofar as the academic philosophers go, the judge himself is an (Australian) academician. I guess there's always that sense that such icons of linguistic prestige have a greater capacity to influence others...

Bourgeois. Got your qualification? You're worth a mint. If not, a life of crime is the only road to riches for you!

"Values".
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by jupiviv »

Leyla Shen wrote:Namely, that value and morality are properly and necessarily in the domain of philosophy and not science; that, where science exists, there's some absolute and mutually exclusive distinction between them.
I would simply say that there is a distinction between them, owing to the fact that philosophy is defined differently than science. Also, I think I pointed out what and where that distinction is more clearly. The author of the winning essay merely made the case that it exists, which is really not such a difficult one to make.
Bourgeois. Got your qualification? You're worth a mint. If not, a life of crime is the only road to riches for you!
That or being the curry version of Cisco kid.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

Well, here's what I think: that you yourself have not made clear* what you mean by consciousness since your argument appears to be critical of a conflation by Harris of (your understanding of) consciousness with sentience in general.

What say you, Cisco?

*That is, you have not given a precise definition of it for Sam to work with, just as you suggest he has failed to do with the term "well-being".
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by jupiviv »

Leyla Shen wrote:Well, here's what I think: that you yourself have not made clear* what you mean by consciousness since your argument appears to be critical of a conflation by Harris of (your understanding of) consciousness with sentience in general.

What say you, Cisco?

*That is, you have not given a precise definition of it for Sam to work with, just as you suggest he has failed to do with the term "well-being".

I define consciousness to be rationality, although I appear not to have explicitly stated that in the essay.

My central argument was that all value judgments, and indeed all judgments, are merely definitions made by any rational mind. Thus, they can neither be created, nor destroyed, nor improved upon, by empirical observation. And vice versa of course. The two things - empirical observation and value judgments - are simply not related in that fashion. No matter how many apples I observe, I cannot judge whether they are red or green or edible without using definitions of redness, greenness or edibility formulated beforehand and without the direct aid of observation.
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Re: Email to Sam Harris:

Post by Leyla Shen »

No matter how many apples I observe, I cannot judge whether they are red or green or edible without using definitions of redness, greenness or edibility formulated beforehand and without the direct aid of observation.
Redness, greenness (optics) and edibility (biochemistry) are as empirically verifiable as nose, ear (anatomy) and pain (endocrine system/autonomic nervous system/neurology). All of these branches of science rely on empirically supported definitions. I still don't know why you think this point needs to be made.

The above quote boils down in my mind simply to a statement that any judgment about any observable thing cannot be a judgment about an observable thing without being a judgment about that observable thing.

And?
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