Sam is getting more wrong by the day.

We don’t need to converge in our morality. We don’t need a centralized world government.

Who wants the same people who ran the Iraqi food for oil program to run the world? What a horror.

I don’t know what species Sam has been watching, but I don’t see a lot of humans with a morality that maximizes collective human well being. And I don’t expect to see such people. Ever. They’d be inhuman cardboard cutouts.

Use science to show us how we can be happier. How we can help our children be happier. If you show people how to do that, lots of them will.

But Sam’s project to peddle a warmed over utiliiitarianism is a non starter on its face. It didn’t sell before. It won’t sell now. Selling it only detracts from the other useful work he does.

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Read the book first bro.

Utilitarianism is not his point in any way. I’m two chapters deep (It’s a very slow read for those like me who have to constantly consult the footnotes) and it is simply encouraging an open mind to the prospect of maximizing human well being.

If we had time to slowly teach generation to generation to be happier then we would, but Sam obviously understands, probably better than most, that time is of the essence.

With Israel, India, and Pakistan perhaps all on the brink of nuclear holocaust, we have to develop a solution to the poison of religion and its devout offspring.

I read Sam’s book as a tool for larger groups of people who perhaps don’t agree in moral stance to come together in agreement for the greater good of humanity.  It is a first step in presenting scientific proof that church and state must have a separation, and extremist culture that negatively affects human well being must come to an end.

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I haven’t read the book yet either - my pre-order still hasn’t arrived - so maybe my opinion isn’t any better than buybuydandavis’.

However;

Every time I’ve heard Sam discuss his moral landscape concept, he’s been quick to point out that there may be many peaks, many ways for humanity to flourish.

So I’d be very surprised if he didn’t flesh that out a bit in the book.

Which undermines the aspersion that Harris aspires to convergence on morality.

But again - best I withold any bold statements until after I’ve read the book.

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@buybuydandavis, Sam Harris’s new book doesn’t mandate a Global Moral Authority.  In fact, if you read the article, the interviewer asks whether scientists could become like moral policemen, and Mr. Harris answers:
“They wouldn’t necessarily enforce them any more than they enforce their knowledge about human health. What are scientists doing with the knowledge that smoking causes cancer or obesity is bad for your health, or that the common cold is spread by not washing your hands? We’re not living in some Orwellian world where we have scientists in lab coats at every door.”

The significance of Sam Harris’s “scientific morality” is that it argues against the “non-overlapping magisteria” formulation of Stephen Gould.  Under NOMA, science addresses objective phenomena while values, morality, goodness, etc, remain the domain of religion.

“Science studies the age of rocks; religion studies the rock of ages.  Science tells us how the heavens go; religion tell us how to go to heaven.”  Yuk yuk, very dumb, very cliche.

NOMA basically cedes a very important chunk of territory to religion: one that it really has no true authority on anyway.

Sam Harris is now saying that there is no reason for religion to have any authority on values, morality, and beauty either; that science can provide a framework for looking at these subjects.

It really changes the groundrules for the science-vs-religion debate.

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Harris is fantastic. He takes great care in all of his writing and speech to not make unsupportable arguments. Everything is the book is just trying to lay the groundwork for future research parameters.

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#buybuydandavis:

I understand your tendency toward fatalism, and the resignation to improve quality of life merely for your children.  It’s one reason why humanity is where it is now. —shortsightedness:  we can only remember 50 years in the past and only guess about a couple of years into the future.  I’ll wait to read Sam’s book before being too critical.  An informed opinion seems more scienc-y to me.

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I wish I had money for a study comparing the “morality” of believers vs. nonbelievers.  I’m betting that we are more likely to give to charities, volunteer services and offer other kindnesses. I’m also willing to bet that we have lower rates of drunken driving, domestic abuse as well as assorted violent and civil crime.

Why would I bet this way? We know we can not seek an out through “God’s forgiveness.” There is no absolution. Only consequences. No jailhouse religion for us.

Somebody, please, do this study,

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(to Michael Mullen) I think you’d be right that atheists have lower rates of criminality, but I bet you’d be wrong about charitable giving.  A lot of Mormons and Catholics still tithe, and there is still a LOT of giving to religious charities.  So I’d have to disagree with you on the first bit.

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(to bananapeel)  A tithe is not a charitable gift. As it only benefits the church being given to. Churches are businesses bent on accumulating more members. More members required to tithe = more profit. An example would be a Mormon who tithes is probably funding lobbyists and legislation that discriminates against homosexuals. Tithes aside, the religous may still be more apt to give. Though neither could really be argued without statistics.

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This was a good interview with good answers from Sam. I can’t wait to read the book. It seems Sam has been arguing with people (or they’ve been arguing with him) so much that he’s really fleshed out his arguments a bit better than when this discussion first started.

I am starting to understand what he is trying to say a bit better. Thanks Sam!

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@buybuydandavis, you seem to imply that moral convergence is somehow equivalent to a world government; I don’t agree. Personal morality is one of the things that tends to counterract the greed that any human institution tends to amplify, whether that institution be governmental, religious, scientific, or whatever.

As to whether humans’ individual moralities actually maximize collective well-being, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that it does. For one, since the time when moral codes based on fairness and compassion were first formulated, human numbers, the densities of human population centers, and the level of human cooperation have increased exponentially. It is true that quantity does not necessarily trump quality, but I suggest that some analog of Lancashire’s Law applies to the relative effective valuation of them.

I don’t like the “warmed-over Utilitarianism” that Sam seems to be promulgating either, especially since he doesn’t seem to overcome the fundamental problem of the original, which is that the notion of “happiness” is not definable except with infinite recursion, which is to say, complete knowledge. Sam is by no means alone in this failure; I am not familiar with any moral theorist who has succeeded in coming up with something that is both conceptually sound and practically effective. Kant, to my knowledge, came closest, but he too failed (valuation, in Kant’s formulation, is the product of perfect knowledge). The problem of finding a useful moral theory may be like the problem of finding an ideal employee, who has to be smart enough to do the job, but dumb enough to take it.

Nonetheless, I see Sam doing another service to humanity here. His targets are again dogmatists who consider themselves immune from either the laws of survival or the laws of evidence.

Poldano

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Bananapeel writes:

**The significance of Sam Harris’s “scientific morality” is that it argues against the “non-overlapping magisteria” formulation of Stephen Gould.  Under NOMA, science addresses objective phenomena while values, morality, goodness, etc, remain the domain of religion…

Sam Harris is *now* saying that there is no reason for religion to have any authority on values, morality, and beauty either; that science can provide a framework for looking at these subjects.

It really changes the ground rules for the science-vs-religion debate.**

I realize that not everyone has been following the debates about religious vs. secular morality over the last two hundred years, but the above statement suggests something very misleading. Sam is not himself “changing the ground rules for this debate.” As many others have noted, he is defending a version of the ethical theory known as Utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham (a philosopher) defended this in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), and John Stuart Mill (another philosopher) classically defended this in his Utilitarianism (1861). The subject of secular based morality is not something that has been newly discovered, but has been widely discussed among intellectuals for well over two hundred years. So while Sam may have something interesting to say here, let’s not suggest that secular ethics itself is some new phenomenon. There is a long history to theories of ethics and many of the major view have been around for a while now.

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I wish the Salon article had not referred to Sam as a “notorious atheist.” Such a negative phrase. Is “notorious” ever used in reference to religious spokespersons?

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The interview between Sam Harris and Salon is interesting.  However, I must take exception to the premise that science should shape the moral landscape.  Inferred in Mr. Harris’ thesis, and that of most atheists/humanists, is that a scientifically based morality system would produce a better product (society).  I don’t believe that would be the case.  One reason for my objection is that most successful moral systems have within them an inherent driving force.  By this I mean a force that can compel the majority of “individuals” within society to willingly comply with the moral system.  I don’t see that a scientific system could provide that type of motivation.  At best, compliance under this system would under compulsion from a more extensive enforcement agency than is common under most faith based systems.  Belief in a higher being, to whom people feel responsible to, provides a more substantial motivation for the individual which can’t be duplicated in a purely secular society.  This relieves some of the stress on the body tasked to police the moral system.  It is not perfect motivation but it is much better than that proposed by Mr. Harris.  I think Mr. Harris guilty of wishful thinking.

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Wave Rider: Sam compares the “driving force” of a scientifically based moral system to one of science helping to shape health. I eat right not because a religious leader told me to do so but because science is proving what works. Neither do I need a religious leader to tell me what morality is. Science can inform me and motivate me far better than someone who has repeats words from a single book.

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