Well, it is quite obivous now that Harris has finished writing his upcoming book. Given the increasingly and continuously intensified controversy his position on morality has elicited and the vastness of the feedback people have felt incited to produce, It was , for some reason a great relief to read Dawkins review of Sam’s new book, whereby he admits to his prior relativistic stand on morality and how it was positively changed by Harris’ writing.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing from the remaining horsemen soon, and I’m sure they’ll both weigh in on the issue ultimately leaning towards Harris’ view.

Thalamus - 09 April 2010 08:28 AM

Well, it is quite obivous now that Harris has finished writing his upcoming book. Given the increasingly and continuously intensified controversy his position on morality has elicited and the vastness of the feedback people have felt incited to produce, It was , for some reason a great relief to read Dawkins review of Sam’s new book, whereby he admits to his prior relativistic stand on morality and how it was positively changed by Harris’ writing.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing from the remaining horsemen soon, and I’m sure they’ll both weigh in on the issue ultimately leaning towards Harris’ view.

Yes I’m sure once everyone has heard that science has determined that throwing acid in girls faces is lower on the continuum of human wellbeing then loving and nurturing them there will be a collective whew.

Maryann, Dawkins, and Harris are at coffee…Maryann pops off with…

Maryann:  It is a true fact that love…treating the other as self…is the highest value.

Dawkins (pre-Moral Landscape):  Nature neither knows nor cares.  Nature just is.

Maryann:  Agreed.  But the being to which this true fact corresponds is not constrained to the physical universe.

Dawkins (pre-Moral Landscape):  You have to cultivate love…make it up as you go.  Relying on some imaginary being outside yourself is a recipe for religious atrocity.

Maryann:  Although that seems like a noble cause, why would you want to ‘cultivate’ love?  Would you say it is a basic human need, like Maslow?

Dawkins:  *thinking about where she is going with this before he answers* *Harris throws him a copy of The Moral Landscape*

Harris:  *saving*  Yes, which is part of why there can be true facts about values, without the need to refer to a being to which those true facts correspond.

Dawkins (post-Moral Landscape):  *to self*  I’m beginning to like the sound of this.  *to all*  I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too.

Maryann:  I would agree that science can study the moral center of the brain, figure out which genes work together to build a being who experiences empathy, study which chemicals make us feel and act more pro-social—I agree science can describe the “fact” of valuing.  But you’re also saying science can go beyond just describing what’s going on when we value….to actually determining what type of valuing is actually…really…best?

Harris and Dawkins:  Sure.  And it beats all the atrocities we’ve had to put up with from religion.

Maryann:  But scientists, some of them explicitly religious, and all of them implicitly religious (none being without a worldview) are just as human as the rest of us.  Secular governments own their own share of atrocities.  Isn’t this just an attempt to neutralize the “Moral Law” argument for God’s existence, that we all intuitively know and hunger for a “real good”?  I’m no fan of nailing morality to the pulpit, but is confining it to the laboratory a better alternative?

Harris:  Indeed, the most common defense one now hears for religious faith is not that there is compelling evidence for God’s existence, but that a belief in Him is the only basis for a universal conception of human values. And it is decidedly unhelpful that the moral relativism of liberals so often seems to prove the conservative case.

Maryann:  So now it’s liberals versus conservatives?  Sam, this seems rather divisive.  So what ‘do’ you make of Dawkins’ hunger to cultivate “pure, disinterested altruism,” of Maslow’s putting self-actualization as the highest of basic human needs, of the Golden Rule being found in all cultures throughout history?  Doesn’t this imply there is a being who is and does what we should all be and do…a being to which a “true fact” about the “highest value” corresponds?  How do ‘you’ define well-being, anyway?  Are we free to choose it?

Harris:  No, free will is an illusion, but this will all be answered in the book.

Dawkins:  Yeah, I’ve read it.

All:  *long sips of coffee*

Well, Maryann, while I think Harris is way off base on this, on the continuum of being off base he is much less off base then you. Still, I don’t blame you for taking your shots.

Moral realism is the prevailing position among philosophy professors at the University of Minnesota (where I go). I personally surveyed 23 out of 26 of them. Notwithstanding the obvious limitations of such a small sample, I will venture to say that moral realism (along with atheism btw) is the prevailing position among modern philosophers, and even ancient ones. I’ve found that moral relativsm (or pragmatism) tends to infect the minds of politicians -mostly liberals nowadays-, psychologists and is also insidious among college students who are not studying philosophy. It would be interesting to carry out and actual comprehensive poll at a larger scale. I myself feel rather comfortable as a moral realist, I think it’s the most sensible position to stake out. Sam Harris has certainly influenced me quite a bit and I think much of the opposing comments Harris’ has been getting stem mostly from misconstruals of his claims. Will have to see what happens after the publication of his book.

Thalamus - 09 April 2010 06:16 PM

Sam Harris has certainly influenced me quite a bit and I think much of the opposing comments Harris’ has been getting stem mostly from misconstruals of his claims. Will have to see what happens after the publication of his book.

Sam Harris influenced your world view? You had to pay someone (assuming you bought his books) to tell you the obvious? And no, I watched his TED talk and read his rebut to criticism and for the most part it is not “misconstruals” of his claims. All he has done is state the obvious, make claims that science can tell us the obvious, and give obvious but out of context examples.

GAD

Well I agree that what he has written so far SHOULD be obvious. However,it certainly is not obvious for so many people, especially in America. It is obvious for you and me, given that we are both atheists, but in a country where 85% of the people are in some way religious, Harris’ only two literary publications are FAR from obvious. And I have to disagree with you with respect to the nature of his critiques. The vast majority of the criticism leveled against him brings up the fact that there is no particular reason to be moral. In other words, they’ll indcate that the interrogative: “Why is it good to be moral?” remains unanswered. Harris’ equates this question to something like: “What is a rational argument?”...Or “Why does 2+2 = 4?”.There are questions in science whose answer has proven incredibly elusive, however, sicence still works within the range of objectivity, and so it could be with morality.

Thalamus—feel free to use this poll:  http://ichthus.yuku.com/topic/71/t/Poll——essentialist—-voluntarist—moral-truth-discovered.html (btw, essentialist is synonymous with realist, voluntarist is synonymous with anti-realist, and the third category is for nihilists and skeptics).  Some folks who think they are in one category, actually default to another category.  The poll is designed to show whether or not one’s beliefs conflict or are coherent as it relates to this subject.

Ichthus77,

I thought “voluntarists” were people who think God prescribes morality out of sheer whim, thus everything God says is good simply because God says so. And since this is obviously theism, wouldn’t these people be ‘realists’?  I’m confused.

Thalamus - 09 April 2010 08:28 PM

Well I agree that what he has written so far SHOULD be obvious. However,it certainly is not obvious for so many people, especially in America. It is obvious for you and me, given that we are both atheists, but in a country where 85% of the people are in some way religious, Harris’ only two literary publications are FAR from obvious.

I agree with this observation. I think it goes to the issue of selective processing of information, including denial and manipulation in order to fit a thematic mold of one’s self-perception and particular world-view. Take Ichthus77’s poll for instance, clearly everything we’ve seen from her is a well-formulated hodgepodge of so many -isms it makes my head spin. Admittedly, I am totally ignorant in Philosophy, but I had no idea that there were so many pigeon-holed schools of thought specifically defined for so many people for which it would or would not be possible for one to pierce the thresh-hold of another without distinctly ejecting to an antithetical point of view. The obvious is lost to the above approach. This is what makes it frustrating to argue from the point of the wider perspective and from the inarguable facts. Bizarre is what most comes to my mind when it comes to theist arguments on the topic, or any other that continue to muddle the obvious and the scientific process with such unsupportable notions. 

And I have to disagree with you with respect to the nature of his critiques. The vast majority of the criticism leveled against him brings up the fact that there is no particular reason to be moral. In other words, they’ll indcate that the interrogative: “Why is it good to be moral?” remains unanswered. Harris’ equates this question to something like: “What is a rational argument?”...Or “Why does 2+2 = 4?”.There are questions in science whose answer has proven incredibly elusive, however, sicence still works within the range of objectivity, and so it could be with morality.

This criticism is that of which I speak above, it is a classic philosophical argument which I consider to be lame and tired. The very premise that “there is no particular reason to be moral” is as an imprecise, unfounded and unconfirmed assumption as “there is no particular reason to be human.” Harris’ “What is a rational argument?”  is precisely on point. The simplest method to demonstrate the point is to eliminate the God variable from the equation altogether, then there is no dispute as to the questions and the realm for which the answers are to be pursued and found. The answers in science have not been incredibly elusive, it’s in how the questions are asked. It’s apparent that we will be be learning a lot more in the future about what moral is as a behaviorial aspect, how it came about and how to view and apply it with respect to standards of individual choices and societal norms. Sam Harris, ironically, “just may be making a whole new name for himself.”

Thalamus - 09 April 2010 08:28 PM

Well I agree that what he has written so far SHOULD be obvious. However,it certainly is not obvious for so many people, especially in America. It is obvious for you and me, given that we are both atheists, but in a country where 85% of the people are in some way religious, Harris’ only two literary publications are FAR from obvious.

OK, so atheists knew. My basic assertion here is that all he did was preach to the choir, so can you give me an example of something that Harris told theists that they didn’t already know and now believe to be true?

GAD - 10 April 2010 01:56 PM

OK, so atheists knew. My basic assertion here is that all he did was preach to the choir, so can you give me an example of something that Harris told theists that they didn’t already know and now believe to be true?

If they listened they might have realized that objective morality does not need to be determined exclusively by theology but that there are scientific ways to determine it once you know what wellbeing means in an objective (possibly even quantitative) sense.

OK, so atheists knew. My basic assertion here is that all he did was preach to the choir, so can you give me an example of something that Harris told theists that they didn’t already know and now believe to be true?

Well I think I can confidently assert that most theists didn’t know most of what’s written on the pages of The End Of Faith. Now, it’s hard to deal with the latter part of your question because theists generally don’t change their mind about certain things despite facts to the contrary, so I’m not sure how much of Harris’ writing they acutally now believe to be true.

You say that Harris didn’t write anything new or distinct from what people already knew. Well, right..but most authors don’t write new facts about the world that nobody else knows hitherto. They simply provide their own interpretation of the facts and attempt to persuade people who disagree. Harris’ ideas are far from conventional, at least outside of elite circles of scientists, philosophers and other intelectuals, and some of his propositions are even somewhat eccentric among educated people. I think that Dawkins getting on board with Harris on the issue of morality indicates how contagious rational arguments are. So many people still feel a bit uneasy with the idea of objective morality because it had been the monopoly of religion for such a long time that now it’s getting really hard to accept it. But the more I read the more I become convinced that there have to be moral truths whether we can ever learn them or not, and it’s relieving to know that many of my intellectual heroes are on my side. To name a few:

Steven Pinker
Peter Singer
Christopher Hitchens
R. Dawkins
S. Harris
Jerry Coyne & PZ Meyers (I think)

etc..

Thalamus - 10 April 2010 03:43 PM

. . . Peter Singer. . . .

I get what you’re saying, Thalamus, but Singer comes off as a crackpot to all who’ve closely read him. Speciesism? A flagrant flip-off to humanity, though I admit to having followed his every word back in the early 1980s—just not very closely. Any member of a species counting itself as being an organism is biologically instructed to honor and protect its own, for no reason beyond an immediate survival imperative.

I hope Harris’ new book doesn’t end up making him look as silly as Singer. But if it does, Harris will still be on my list of heroes if only because whatever he’s come up with will no doubt result in a lot of discussion. No one else these days seems so capable.

Any member of a species counting itself as being an organism is biologically instructed to honor and protect its own, for no reason beyond an immediate survival imperative

Well yeah but that’s until you realize that you’re a human being capable of discerning right from wrong. Since we know better, we are no longer justified in simply protecting our own species at the expense of whatever is not human. Peter Singer is, as Dawkins rightly puts it, the most moral person I know. That is becasue if you follow a utilitarian rationale to its logical conclusions you will ineluctably end up with about the same conclusions as Singer does. Singer does aknowledge that human beings are capable of experiencing greater suffering than animals and therefore we stand up higher on a continuum of moral considerability (which many people ignore and thus reject Peter’s views as despicable in many cases).

Your statemente which I’ve just quoted says nothing at all about morality. Unless of course the implication is that we ought to behave as to protect our own species in which case you’d be incurring a naturalistic fallacy.

Thalamus - 10 April 2010 08:45 PM

Your statement which I’ve just quoted says nothing at all about morality. Unless of course the implication is that we ought to behave as to protect our own species in which case you’d be incurring a naturalistic fallacy.

You’re correct. I tend not to think in morally proper ways.

I do appreciate what Singer has done for humanity’s appreciation for other-animal rights. His reputation remains as a crackpot, though, a role Harris may possibly take over.