= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Carinthium comments on P/S/A - Sam Harris offering money for a little good philosophy - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (77)
I don't have the book, so I don't think I'm eligible for the prize. Suffice to say that I've read his summary on "Response to Critics", and anybody who can't refute the tripe philosophy shown there (maybe he's got better in the book, I can't be sure) doesn't deserve to be considered anything more than a crap philosopher.
EDIT: Making criticisms as I go.
1- There is a fundamental difference between the question of science and the question of morality. Scientific inquiry percieves facts which are true and useful except for goals which run directly counter to science. Morality perceives 'facts' which are only useful to those who wish to follow a moral route.
2- Say I were a psycopath obsessed with exterminating all humanity for some reason. I do research on a weapon to do so using every principle of Science known about how to do it, testing hypotheses scientifically, making dry runs, having peer review through similiarly psycopath colleagues, etc etc. Although most people would be outraged, they probably wouldn't call it unscientific.
Harris could object that this is further from what most people associate science with. However, scientific research is associated with a lot of things- white coats for example. Why should morality be any better?
I might also point out that many projects seen in reality as scientific would be unscientific under Harris's definition.
3- As far as I can tell, Harris does not account for the well-being of animals. This is an ethical question his pseudo-philosophy cannot answer. It merely assumes humans are all that matters. He also cannot account for why all humans should be considered equal despite years of history showing humans usually don't consider them such.
4- Much human morality has little or no relationship to well-being. Say A murders B's entire family in cold blood. Not only B, but many others who witnessed the deed will have a moral desire for A to be punished independent of, and contrary to, human well being. Deterrent is nowhere in their brains.
I neither disagree nor agree with Harris (see my post for what I actually think), but I don't think you've understood the argument sufficiently to refute it. I'll pretend to be Harris and counter your arguments:
1) Scientific inquiry elucidates all facts that are available to our perception. Morality is a perception, therefore science can study it.
2) Yeah, so? Science doesn't force us to be moral - but it can tell us what is moral and what is not. The scientific psychopath would know that his behavior was immoral, and wouldn't care.
3, 4) Science will discover whether or not those humans are correct to believe that that course of actions is moral.
Read here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/ to get Harris's viewpoint, stated more articulately
1: Harris compares pursuing moral goals to pursuing health and claims they are fundamentally similiar (i.e. both part of the basic purview of science). This is what I'm disputing here.
2: See the reply I've made already, both here and my other argument.
3: Harris could claim that a question of the worth of animals could be solved by checking the brains of humans, but this begs questions of why human brains are the only ones that are taken into account. In addition, human brains are likely often contradictory on the subject- a law of averages could be used, but why is it so valid?
4: Harris claims all morality is about the well-being of conscious creatures. That's what I'm objecting to here.
I think 3) is your strongest point, may I try to expand on it?
I wonder, what is Sam's response to utility monsters, small chances of large effects and torture vs. dust specks? In saying that science can answer moral questions by examining the well-being of humans, isn't he making the unspoken assumption that there is a way to combine the diverse "well-being-values" of different humans into one single number by which to order outcomes, and, more importantly, that science can find this method? Then the question remains, how shall science do this? Is this function to be found anywhere in nature? Perhaps in the brains of conscious beings? What if these beings hold different views on what is "fair"?
I simply can't imagine what one would measure to determine what is the "correct" distribution of happiness, although that failure to imagine may be on my part.
Sam would be subject to all the usual objections to utilitarianism, altruism, and moral objectivism available in the existing literature. He has justified not addressing that literature with a glib comment that he was sparing people from boredom. As I said before, he is fundamentally unserious and even dishonest in arguing his case.
He should have appointed a seperate judge for his contest. If he's just going to brush off legitimate criticism, this whole contest thing doesn't make sense.
Harris has decided to define "good" as "that thing in human brains which typically corresponds to the word good".
Under this definition, an agent using orange/blue compass rather than a black/white compass doesn't have a different morality - rather, it's simply unconcerned with moral questions. "Good" and "Moral" are defined as the human-specific-value-thingies. That is why only human brains are taken into account - because they are embedded in his definition of "good".
Yes, but he's effectively ignoring a significant number of ethical questions regarding Why Humans? In addition, the principle that all humans are about equally weighted appears to be significant in his morality.
I disagree with all your points, but will stick to 4: "Deterrent is nowhere in their brains" is wrong -- read about altruism, game theory, and punishment of defectors, to understand where the desire comes from.
Evolutionarily it is a REASON why the desire evolved that way, but it is not the same thing as what the person FEELS, on a conscious or subconscious level. If you claim that evolutionary reasons are a person's 'true preferences', then it follows that a proper morality should focus on maximising everyone's relative shares of the gene pool at the expense of, say, animals rather than anything else.
EDIT: I'm also curious about your response to all of my arguments.
No, of course not. It's still wrong to say that deterrent is nowhere in their brains.
Concerning the others:
I don't see what "goals which run directly counter to science" could mean. Even if you want to destroy all scientists, are you better off knowing some science or not? Anyway, how does this counter anything Harris says?
Again, so what? How does anything here prevent science from talking about morality?
He talks about well-being of conscious beings. It's not great terminology, but your inference is your own.
A- O.K, demonstrate that the idea of deterrent exists somewhere within their brains.
B- Although it would be as alien as being a paperclip maximiser, say I deliberately want to know as little as possible. That would be a hypothetical goal for which science would not be useful.
As for how this counters Harris- Harris claims that some things are moral by definition and claims that proper morality is a subcategory of science. I counterargue that the fundamental differences between the nature of morality and the nature of science are problems with this categorisation.
I'm not sure if Harris's health analogy is relevant enough to this part of the argument to put here, but it falls flat because health is relevant to far more potential human goals than morality is. Moral dilemnas in which a person has to choose between two possible moral values are plausibly enough adressed (though I have reservations) I'll give him a pass on that one- but what about a situation where a person has to choose between acting selfishly and acting selflessly? You can say one is the moral choice by defintion depending on the definition of moral, but saying "It's moral so do it" leads to the question "Why should I do what is moral"? With health people don't actually question it because it tends to support their goals, although there is a similarity Harris and his critics do not appear to realise in that a person can and might ask "Why should I do what is healthy?" in some circumstances.
C- What I am trying to say argue with my psycopath analogy is that something can be good science without in any way being moral that Sam Harris would recognise as 'moral'. The psycopath is in my scenario using the scientific method in every way except those which he can't by definition given his goals- he even has a peer review commitee! His behaviour is therefore just as scientific as the scientist trying to, say, cure cancer.
D- I was only acting from what I read in his responses to the critics, which was my disclaimer from the start. I made a mistake, but I left open the possibility of such for lack of time.
Evolutionary game theory and punishment of defectors is all the answer you need. You want me to point at a deterrent region, somewhere to the left of Broca's?
You say that science is useful for truths about the universe, whereas morality is useful for truths useful only to those interested in acting morally. It sounds like you agree with Harris that morality is a subcategory of science.
Still, so what? He's not saying that all science is moral (in the sense of "benevolent" and "good for the world"). That would be ridiculous, and would be orthogonal to the argument of whether science can address questions of morality.
A- Not so. If the human does not consciously nor subconsciously care about deterrent, evolutionary reasons are irrelevant.
B- Only if, and this is a big if, you agree with the Elizier-Harris school of thought which say some things are morally true by definition. Because Harris agrees with him, I was granting him that as his own unique idea of what being moral is. However, at that point I was concerned with demonstrating morality cannot fit as a subcategory of science.
C- Harris appears to claim that there is a scientific basis for valuing wellbeing- he repudiates the hypothesis that there is none explicitly by claiming it comparable to the claim there is no scientific basis for valuing health.
This discussion isn't getting anywhere, so, all the best :)
On 1, I believe you're begging the question on the is-ought divide, which is the point of contention with Sam.
On 2, my recollection is that Sam basically excommunicates psychopaths from the human race. They don't count. In the end, I don't think that particularly helps him, as he'll have to excommunicate anyone who isn't a universalist altruist, and not just for humans, but for all conscious creatures.
On 3, I believe you're mistaken. The usual rubric Sam's utilitarianism goes by in the circles of Sam is WBCC, Well Being of Conscious Creatures. He grants that other creatures can be conscious, that there are degrees of consciousness, and that their well being counts in proportion to their degree of consciousness.
On 4, Sam is at least consistent, in that he'll argue that punishment for criminals is an icky leftover of our primate evolution, and fundamentally an evil in that it doesn't maximize WBCC, which is the standard by which Good is measured. The objective morality that Sam believes in is not the morality that people objectively have.
Disclaimer- I only went from his responses to critics, in which some points weren't clear.
1: I just assumed (perhaps wrongly) that even Sam Harris would see the validity of an is-ought divide to some extent. If he hasn't, then I can refer to Hume and copy-paste his arguments for the win.
2: O.K then.
3: Refer to my disclaimer.
4: Which makes it even harder for him to go from an is to an ought, as he can't use the idea that he's merely following human intuitions somehow. He's following his own, very alien intuitions instead and can't justify them.
I have read the book, and consider it tripe all the way down. I've "discussed" it with others at his project-reason site as well. None of his supporters can make a coherent case out of what he said.