Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
There will never be complete agreement of what well-being constitutes (outside of certain basics) and whoever attempts to impose a definition will find that many others reject it. Thus the argument for an informed, intelligent, assertive population living in as open a democracy as possible - people can be pretty clear about their own well-being. Another metric, however, might be species survival. Whatever else, if we don’t survive as a species everything else is moot.
And that might, on rare occasions, require extraordinary measures that would be offensive to all right thinking people…
I don’t think you can even go that far, at least not from a “well-being of conscious creatures” standpoint. The survival of the species implies the well-being of future generations—not “conscious creatures.” Why should we sacrifice the well-being of currently conscious creatures in favor of non-existent ones? Why does my well-being become moot just because the species is facing extinction?
Depends on how tender and juicy you cook up. Whoop, that’s well done, not well being.
Seriously, one of the basics of society is that survival of future generations is of ultimate importance. Innate instinct to protect the young. People who lack that get selected out of the gene pool. From a totally selfish point of view, of course, your argument is completely correct, you own nothing to anybody and are completely justified in pursuing your own pleasures without regard to anything other than your own whims (assuming that you are intelligent enough to understand the necessity of avoiding things that would get you jailed).
‘I’m still waiting for someone to answer what the objectively moral length of a woman’s skirt should be’
Why is that a moral issue?
Exactly!
A woman wearing a short skirt is objectively moral if, and only if, it produces well-being in conscious creatures such as myself - in fact, only myself. If it produces disgust and repugnance in me, it is immoral. Same for spandex.
I have no allegiance to relativism. I simply feel that the facts support this view. And I’m unwilling to profess a different view simply on the basis of which I like better.
The latter is an even more pernicious form of relativism. Since our conclusions are not even beholden to nature.
What’s the latter?
Objective moral values, in every scheme that I’ve encountered, simply nominate some preference of the writer as the ultimate reference point. What else could it do?
Discounting this rather obvious observation as navel gazing or academic masturbation is a pretty clear indicator that the purveyor isn’t dedicated to convincing others. When the moral dogma isn’t swallowed whole at first pass he moves to the ad hominem.
This is the red flag of Sam Harris book. Instead of confronting competing ideas head on he describes them as stupid or uninteresting. Again, simply on the basis of his own subjective judgment. He’s as entitled to his own view as anyone but this isn’t scholarship or philosophy. He’s just preaching to his own choir.
‘I’m still waiting for someone to answer what the objectively moral length of a woman’s skirt should be’
Why is that a moral issue?
Exactly!
A woman wearing a short skirt is objectively moral if, and only if, it produces well-being in conscious creatures such as myself - in fact, only myself. If it produces disgust and repugnance in me, it is immoral. Same for spandex.
I don’t think your candle is in any danger of being blown out. How will we know when right and wrong “hatch?” Will it be anything like the Rapture?
The metric of WBCC. No need to wait for end times. Does the cultural module/political idea/religion create a local maximum of WBCC? Does it create an absolute maximum? Does changing it in this way raise WBCC?
Lillian, how would the world be different in your vision of how things might be? That is, how would a TML-Harrisian world be different from the world as it actually is right now?
I ask this because it seems to me that science-style observations and data collection/manipulation are already in place in courts, police departments, legislatures and local governmental bodies. Such data are highly valued by medical ethicists, end-of-life care-providers and doctors, attorneys, therapists, and social workers. Where in the realm of ethical consideration are they lacking, assuming they’re available? Science is expensive, of course, and it’s certainly not widely available everywhere on the planet.
Does it really bother you if some within certain academic fields advocate for antiquated cultural rights? Yes, backwards ways can be horrific but I’d claim the same for much within typical modern societies, as well.
Does Harris represent for you a club with which to reform certain supposedly backwards cultures? If not, what specifically then?
Damn Dave lighten up. Just because Dennis threatened to leave but didn’t don’t take it out on me. Now, I am going to put another smile face so don’t be alarmed.
Sorry—I meant nothing by my critique. Misunderstood subtlety and humor almost seem to be in the air lately, don’t they? I’m pretty sure I misread you.
As for Dennis, he seems to be back on track, and I do plan to roast him for the time being for having misdirected the forum last Friday. He shows patience with me, so why not?
I don’t think your candle is in any danger of being blown out. How will we know when right and wrong “hatch?” Will it be anything like the Rapture?
The metric of WBCC. No need to wait for end times. Does the cultural module/political idea/religion create a local maximum of WBCC? Does it create an absolute maximum? Does changing it in this way raise WBCC?
But the “metric” of WBCC is only objective at the individual level, and even that’s still hypothetical. We have to wait until Harris unveils his Well-Being-O-Meter to measure individual well-being (I’ve heard it works like a tricorder). But even if it eventually comes to that and we can objectively measure individual well-being, how will you determine your local and absolute maximums? How will you know if your favorite cultural module/political idea/religion raises or lowers WBCC? Individual well-being measurements mean nothing on their own. What will you do with them all in order to calculate WBCC? And, more importantly for the purposes of our disagreement, is science determining how to aggregate well-being or are you? And if you’re the one deciding, aren’t you just pushing your own, personal moral preferences on me?
Incidentally, I’m not suggesting there’s anything irrational or “objectively” wrong about your own, personal moral preferences (I suspect yours are pretty much like mine). I wouldn’t even fault you for trying to push them on me. But pushing them on me with the claim that they’re “objectively right” or “determined by science” is false advertising. Just like it’s false advertising to push them with the claim that they come straight from The-Big-Horse-In-The-Sky’s mouth.
[This response is addressed to many people above me in the thread, but the lack of a multi-quote feature and my own stream of consciousness writing style makes it really hard to address each person by name.]
I couldn’t figure out why we seemed to be talking across each other, and the sentence I bolded made it clear to me. Not being a philosopher, I didn’t understand that the important parts you honed in on were “objective” and “determined by science.” I was trying to focus on the applied, which is often uninteresting to many academics, and I was bemoaning the sole focus on theory and postmodernist ideas in fields like cultural anthropology, and searching for an academic home, so I was looking to see if there were places that cared about developing a new science. My question that I would answer is, What ways of organizing ourselves will be most likely to take us to a Star Trek: The Next Generation utopia? My question was sparked by several experiences and observations:
-In my work trying to convince people not to circumcise their children, I am often met with a response like, “It’s the right decision for me/our family,” with no sense that the decision will only affect the person to whom the foreskin is attached. All of the bad defenses devolve upon an idea of moral relativism and lack of ethics.
-Even my very conservative 81 year old father who watches Fox News day and night seems to have absorbed the idea of moral relativism. This shocked me.
-In working with my undergrad cultural anthropology advisor to choose grad programs and develop an application, I was met with a lot of phrases like, “A certain flavor of anthropology,” said in a certain tone, and when I rewrote my proposed study into his preferred format, all of the moral implications were taken out of it in order to make it palatable to other anthropology professors.
-I developed an interest recently in Islam, and was dismayed to read some pathetic defenses of all its horrible parts from some very prominent academics who I studied in college.
Second, the idea of “determined by science” as being more authoritative/meaningful/powerful: this is an epistemological question that I see being misunderstood, especially by smart young people. I brought up Redditors because I use them as shorthand for those young people who are turned off by the fuzziness of the social sciences as is, and prefer the “certitude” of hard science, and dismiss as a way of knowing anything that doesn’t have a number attached to it. They are often accused of “scientism,” and I both agree with that criticism, and yet understand where the Redditors are coming from, because what they see in their colleges’ social science departments seems to have no purpose, no method, and no goals. They begin to think that the only valid way of knowing the world is to apply science and numbers to it and get definitive answers, and discount anything that is not knowable in such a manner. This is partly because they are young and uncomfortable with ambiguity, but also partly a valid criticism, and the one I have taken up: what are academic social scientists doing to make the world a better place or increase knowledge?
My goal is not to apply numbers to people and thus make it more “truthy,” but to look for ways to study human beings that will allow us to choose better ways of organizing ourselves so that we end up in that Roddenberry utopia. There are some places that study this now, such as think tanks, but they usually have an ideological position and work towards that from starting positions that assume that their moral a prioris are better for people. But are they? For example, to throw out an idea, does promoting religious prayer in schools result in less crime, or higher voter turnout, or whatever your thing is?
[Ok, I’m going to post this and see if I missed anybody’s question.]
I enjoyed the recent thread on postmodernism (http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22295/). In that thread, Rob (with the big German name) said, “The dry rot of relativism has taken over academe (even science faculties) to an alarming extent and people need to speak up about it.” I totally agree, having earned a BA in Anthropology that was full of nonsense and mumbo jumbo. It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, . . .
I assume that you reserve “pernicious-nonsense” kinds of descriptions of department heads and professors to close friends and forum members. Or do you go all-out to their faces?
LillianCannon, responding to Ecurb - 22 July 2012 06:48 AM
. . . Would I have to pretend along with the mumbo jumbo for awhile in order to have freedom later? . . .
If you’re clever enough, you’ll master the mumbo jumbo far beyond what your academic peers will have done. You’ll chum up with a linguistics instructor whose brain you’ll be able to pick for information about meanings behind words. Your mastery over your peers will consist of simple word knowledge, along with sentence structure, rhythm, as well as the reach of your ideals. Insult only the stupidest of your peers or else you might find yourself out of favor even if you have tenure. Political expedience will not be your goal. Rather, you’ll shoot for a ponderously slow intellectual beating to take place. Get tenure and a little power, and you’ll have bright young graduate assistants to help you.
LillianCannon - 26 July 2012 05:21 AM
[This response is addressed to many people above me in the thread, but the lack of a multi-quote feature and my own stream of consciousness writing style makes it really hard to address each person by name.]
I’m not sure what a true multi-quote feature looks like, but this forum is coding intensive, taking well to editing of the codes to do pretty much what anyone would like. Let us know if you need any further tips, such as how to navigate around the problem of assembling the various quotes and your responses. It’s easy but a little bit time consuming.
There will never be complete agreement of what well-being constitutes (outside of certain basics) and whoever attempts to impose a definition will find that many others reject it. Thus the argument for an informed, intelligent, assertive population living in as open a democracy as possible - people can be pretty clear about their own well-being. Another metric, however, might be species survival. Whatever else, if we don’t survive as a species everything else is moot. . . .
Also, I think that well-being itself is key to species survival—not just a luxury. When people lack well-being, they can tend to become disengaged with their societies as they are. I think unrest is the word. When enough people find themselves in a state of unrest, weapons are drawn, some nuclear powered.
I enjoyed the recent thread on postmodernism (http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22295/). In that thread, Rob (with the big German name) said, “The dry rot of relativism has taken over academe (even science faculties) to an alarming extent and people need to speak up about it.” I totally agree, having earned a BA in Anthropology that was full of nonsense and mumbo jumbo. It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, . . .
I assume that you reserve “pernicious-nonsense” kinds of descriptions of department heads and professors to close friends and forum members. Or do you go all-out to their faces?
LillianCannon, responding to Ecurb - 22 July 2012 06:48 AM
. . . Would I have to pretend along with the mumbo jumbo for awhile in order to have freedom later? . . .
If you’re clever enough, you’ll master the mumbo jumbo far beyond what your academic peers will have done. You’ll chum up with a linguistics instructor whose brain you’ll be able to pick for information about meanings behind words. Your mastery over your peers will consist of simple word knowledge, along with sentence structure, rhythm, as well as the reach of your ideals. Insult only the stupidest of your peers or else you might find yourself out of favor even if you have tenure. Political expedience will not be your goal. Rather, you’ll shoot for a ponderously slow intellectual beating to take place. Get tenure and a little power, and you’ll have bright young graduate assistants to help you.
LillianCannon - 26 July 2012 05:21 AM
[This response is addressed to many people above me in the thread, but the lack of a multi-quote feature and my own stream of consciousness writing style makes it really hard to address each person by name.]
I’m not sure what a true multi-quote feature looks like, but this forum is coding intensive, taking well to editing of the codes to do pretty much what anyone would like. Let us know if you need any further tips, such as how to navigate around the problem of assembling the various quotes and your responses. It’s easy but a little bit time consuming.
No, I do not tell people to their faces what I think of them. I just don’t speak.
I can manually insert all the quotes with the required tags, but on a lot of other fora, there is a feature: on each post, next to the “Quote” button, there is another button that reads “”+” - when you click it, it changes color to select that post, and you can click as many as you need and then click “Quote” on the last one, so your reply comes up already populated with [quote=nv]...
_______ [quote=burt]....
and also you can still see the preceding posts above the editing window even though you chose “Quote” as the reply function. It makes it much easier to refer back through the thread and answer several people at once without needing two windows open and without having to copy, paste and insert the quote tag.
There will never be complete agreement of what well-being constitutes (outside of certain basics) and whoever attempts to impose a definition will find that many others reject it. Thus the argument for an informed, intelligent, assertive population living in as open a democracy as possible - people can be pretty clear about their own well-being. Another metric, however, might be species survival. Whatever else, if we don’t survive as a species everything else is moot. . . .
Also, I think that well-being itself is key to species survival—not just a luxury. When people lack well-being, they can tend to become disengaged with their societies as they are. I think unrest is the word. When enough people find themselves in a state of unrest, weapons are drawn, some nuclear powered.
Well-being is relative, people living 4,000 years ago would have a considerably different idea of well-being than we do today. It’s only very recently (basically since the 18th century) that we’ve taken to projecting a future material utopia. But people have been concerned with what constitutes “the Good Life” since ever.
“If only I controlled God’s universe
Would I not tear down these faulty heavens
And build from nothing a true paradise
Where all souls could achieve their hearts desire.”
Omar the Tentmaker
My goal is not to apply numbers to people and thus make it more “truthy,” but to look for ways to study human beings that will allow us to choose better ways of organizing ourselves so that we end up in that Roddenberry utopia. There are some places that study this now, such as think tanks, but they usually have an ideological position and work towards that from starting positions that assume that their moral a prioris are better for people. But are they? For example, to throw out an idea, does promoting religious prayer in schools result in less crime, or higher voter turnout, or whatever your thing is?
I think that one approach is bottom up: this goes with “the Maharishi Effect” which basically in a woo loaded way says that if 10% of the people in a society are practicing meditation then the society will become more peaceful. We can project all the top down idealism we want in terms of what sort of society we would like to have, but if a significant number of the people in that society are not “enlightened” then it’s not going to be a utopia. That conclusion goes all the way back to Plato’s Republic. Recommend reading the Mark Lilla essay, The Lure of Syracuse, which can be found on the web.
My goal is not to apply numbers to people and thus make it more “truthy,” but to look for ways to study human beings that will allow us to choose better ways of organizing ourselves so that we end up in that Roddenberry utopia. There are some places that study this now, such as think tanks, but they usually have an ideological position and work towards that from starting positions that assume that their moral a prioris are better for people. But are they? For example, to throw out an idea, does promoting religious prayer in schools result in less crime, or higher voter turnout, or whatever your thing is?
I think that one approach is bottom up: this goes with “the Maharishi Effect” which basically in a woo loaded way says that if 10% of the people in a society are practicing meditation then the society will become more peaceful. We can project all the top down idealism we want in terms of what sort of society we would like to have, but if a significant number of the people in that society are not “enlightened” then it’s not going to be a utopia. That conclusion goes all the way back to Plato’s Republic. Recommend reading the Mark Lilla essay, The Lure of Syracuse, which can be found on the web.
-In my work trying to convince people not to circumcise their children, I am often met with a response like, “It’s the right decision for me/our family,” with no sense that the decision will only affect the person to whom the foreskin is attached. All of the bad defenses devolve upon an idea of moral relativism and lack of ethics.
Ah, one of those people. That is your view, based on your own bias not science, not any objective morality.
-In my work trying to convince people not to circumcise their children, I am often met with a response like, “It’s the right decision for me/our family,” with no sense that the decision will only affect the person to whom the foreskin is attached. All of the bad defenses devolve upon an idea of moral relativism and lack of ethics.
Ah, one of those people. That is your view, based on your own bias not science, not any objective morality.
Surely on a site devoted to reason I would not find a defender of routine infant circumcision.
-In my work trying to convince people not to circumcise their children, I am often met with a response like, “It’s the right decision for me/our family,” with no sense that the decision will only affect the person to whom the foreskin is attached. All of the bad defenses devolve upon an idea of moral relativism and lack of ethics.
Ah, one of those people. That is your view, based on your own bias not science, not any objective morality.
Surely on a site devoted to reason I would not find a defender of routine infant circumcision.
Surely on a site devoted to reason I would not find someone who confuses their own subjective views with being scientific and objective morality.
I couldn’t figure out why we seemed to be talking across each other, and the sentence I bolded made it clear to me. Not being a philosopher, I didn’t understand that the important parts you honed in on were “objective” and “determined by science.” I was trying to focus on the applied, which is often uninteresting to many academics, and I was bemoaning the sole focus on theory and postmodernist ideas in fields like cultural anthropology, and searching for an academic home, so I was looking to see if there were places that cared about developing a new science. My question that I would answer is, What ways of organizing ourselves will be most likely to take us to a Star Trek: The Next Generation utopia?
I’m not so sure we’re talking across each other. Why should we organize ourselves in ways most likely to take us to a Star Trek utopia? Is that something science determined? When you talk about objective right and wrong, that’s essentially what you’re saying, that science can determine what kind of utopia we should achieve.
LillianCannon - 26 July 2012 05:21 AM
Second, the idea of “determined by science” as being more authoritative/meaningful/powerful: this is an epistemological question that I see being misunderstood, especially by smart young people. I brought up Redditors because I use them as shorthand for those young people who are turned off by the fuzziness of the social sciences as is, and prefer the “certitude” of hard science, and dismiss as a way of knowing anything that doesn’t have a number attached to it. They are often accused of “scientism,” and I both agree with that criticism, and yet understand where the Redditors are coming from, because what they see in their colleges’ social science departments seems to have no purpose, no method, and no goals. They begin to think that the only valid way of knowing the world is to apply science and numbers to it and get definitive answers, and discount anything that is not knowable in such a manner. This is partly because they are young and uncomfortable with ambiguity, but also partly a valid criticism, and the one I have taken up: what are academic social scientists doing to make the world a better place or increase knowledge?
“Determined by science” is more authoritative/meaningful/powerful than what? Blind faith? Superstition? Wishful thinking? I think you’re confusing “knowing the world” with “knowing what kind of world you prefer to live in.” If we want to “know the world,” science is our best hope. If we want to know what kind of world we should prefer, science won’t help.
LillianCannon - 26 July 2012 05:21 AM
My goal is not to apply numbers to people and thus make it more “truthy,” but to look for ways to study human beings that will allow us to choose better ways of organizing ourselves so that we end up in that Roddenberry utopia. There are some places that study this now, such as think tanks, but they usually have an ideological position and work towards that from starting positions that assume that their moral a prioris are better for people. But are they? For example, to throw out an idea, does promoting religious prayer in schools result in less crime, or higher voter turnout, or whatever your thing is?
I think your goal is to enlist science to rationalize your own personal preference for a Roddenberry utopia. The Roddenberry utopia is your ideological starting point.
‘I’m still waiting for someone to answer what the objectively moral length of a woman’s skirt should be’
Why is that a moral issue?
Exactly!
A woman wearing a short skirt is objectively moral if, and only if, it produces well-being in conscious creatures such as myself - in fact, only myself. If it produces disgust and repugnance in me, it is immoral. Same for spandex.
Exactly!
The two examples above seem to highlight the problem in framing the issue of well-being and objectivity, but it makes a good point, I think, of why there is such a dichomoty of views. The religio-cultural view and the relativist’s seem to be at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
Epa is right, first of all, questioning why it’s a moral issue. Bruce then presents the religio-cultural view in answer to it, with a limited misconceived notion of well-being and morality. As Harris has said, science isn’t going to answer all questions like these, perhaps because it’s not a moral issue (ie, it’s neither moral nor immoral), in the way that Bruce presents it. But science can determine cultural attitudes.
I heard a discussion this morning on NPR about schoolgirl uniform skirt length in Kenya. An official was defending himself because he was misquoted as promoting miniskirts for girls in school. While he wasn’t advocating miniskirts, one of his points was that the strict dictates of long skirts only was a matter of stifling the well-being of the girl (eg, what she wanted, how she felt about herself, etc). However, the well-being of the group must also be considered (eg, proper place and time with regard to institutional focus/learning with regard to disruptions). Another was the cultural line that extrapolated to women’s rights or treatment of women more broadly. IOW, Bruce doesn’t get at an objective measure of well-being, or how it transposes in a dynamic way back and forth from the individual and group/cultural perspectives.
For instance, people don’t wear clothes at nudists camps. But if you’ve never been to one, you wouln’t know that to stand dressed in the midst of everyone else who is nude produces the same feeling of anxiety and discomfort as standing nude in the middle of Main St. Is the schoolgirl at the nudist camp who is wearing no skirt at all, mini or maxi, moral or immoral because it either delights or disgusts Bruce’s sensitivities? I think not. However, right and wrong can be determined in terms of well-being effects of the individual and group based on both considerations.
Another example involving principles of social-psychology would be anonimity and de-individuation. People are more likely to reduce inhibitions and perform behaviors they would not normally do if they were able to be singled out for chastisement and/or punishment. Might a rioter choose not to participate in mob behavior if he was aware of the psycho-social forces driving his behavior? I would like to think that I would never be involved in them, and knowing the motivational factors, it would seem to me, would add even extra assurance. This has to do with the hard-wiring (and soft) under consideration related to motivation/behavior.
I don’t think well-being is being defined in the limited sense that I keep seeing presented, nor did I understand that coming from Harris.
“Determined by science” is more authoritative/meaningful/powerful than what? Blind faith? Superstition? Wishful thinking? I think you’re confusing “knowing the world” with “knowing what kind of world you prefer to live in.” If we want to “know the world,” science is our best hope. If we want to know what kind of world we should prefer, science won’t help.
I think this where you’re falling short, Asd, the two are very linked and inter-dependent. Human brain capacity and function can’t be excised from the equation. Again, I refer back to a hierarchy of needs paradigm.
Is the schoolgirl at the nudist camp who is wearing no skirt at all, mini or maxi, moral or immoral because it either delights or disgusts Bruce’s sensitivities? I think not.
I disagree. I think my sensitivities are paramount. Just thinking about schoolgirls at nudist camps is getting me all aflutter. It was immoral of you to do this. Very immoral.
Perhaps there are objective truths we can discover about morality. I don’t discount it out of hand. I just haven’t heard a reasonable case made for them. And I suspect that human culture is simply too immature to really express them if they exist. At least for now.
What I do notice is the people can cooperate. They respond to positive reenforcement. The often have similar goals and conceptions of the good. But, they are also contrary. They often react badly to correction even when the correction is well grounded in fact. If you tell someone their evaluations are in error not only do they not accept it they feel compelled to return fire on the messenger. Regardless of the facts on the table.
This is why I find that values are best dealt with appeals to consensus. Rather than confrontations over differences. Where ever possible. Give people space. Look for convergence in culture and capitalize upon it. Things like food, holidays, music, art… These things have the capacity to create common ground among disparate groups in a way that argument rarely succeeds in doing.
Rather than collecting facts to defend ones citadel from every angle it might be more efficient to reflect on ones boundaries with an eye for where WE might give a little ground.
Rather than collecting facts to defend ones citadel from every angle it might be more efficient to reflect on ones boundaries with an eye for where WE might give a little ground.
Yes! The problem is, those who believe they’re objectively right on moral issues are about as likely to give ground as you or I would be to give ground on Darwinian evolution or heliocentrism. Which is why I think relativism is more than just an academic exercise. Facts, perceived or real, leave no room for compromise. Objective morality—even when it’s rationalized with “science” instead of religion—is still tantamount to religious belief.
‘Objective morality—even when it’s rationalized with “science” instead of religion—is still tantamount to religious belief’
WOW. Strong and absolute statement and apparent belief.. How are you so brilliant to know this?
You are omniscient about all the future possibilities of neuroscience and neurobiology?
How is the concept of empiricism equal to a belief system exactly?
Science just observes and tests and builds models. It does not insist on things that are not empirical. Either the methodologies of scientific inquiry will be able to give us some insight into why we are moral, think morally and care about being moral, or it will not. Is this game over already?
ASD-I think you should become a Theist, if you are not already. You sure sound like one.
