Sam Harris, "Toward a Science of Morality"

What to say about this?

Well, first the good: Harris makes a few good points that really need to be made in a public way. They are not new points--absolutely nothing here is even close to being new--but some of them are worth making.

Harris's thesis is that ethics is something like an incipient science. What he says is this: "...morality should be considered and undeveloped branch of science." My formulation is probably better, as morality is something more like the phenomenon and ethics is something more like the study of it. Hence ethics (or moral theory) is analogous to science and moral rightness more like the phenomena studied by the science. Harris also holds (roughly) that ethics is the science of maximizing well-being. That is, he's a consequentialist. Again: nothing new here.

If there's nothing new here...if these conversations just recapitulate the early moves in the on-going debates in moral theory, then why does Harris re-start the discussion without reference to those very well-developed debates? According to him, he finds terms like "deontology," "meta-ethics" and "non-cognitivism" boring.

This, incidentally, is what it's like to be a philosopher: you slowly and painstakingly grind out distinctions, definitions, and the occasional fairly secure conclusion, but people couldn't give a rat's ass. They just wade in as if they were inventing the stuff. And that's a tad bit annoying. (Not that it's not good for people to do their own thinking--but they'd spare themselves lots of work and embarrassment if they'd just get up to speed by attending to what's already been figured out.) But no need to stew over this. At least there's a little philosophy going on in public forums, and that's good.

In this piece, Harris is responding to criticism from, e.g. the physicist Sean Carroll, who trots out the old chestnut that "there is no single definition of well-being." Harris rightly points out that if this is supposed to bring us to a screeching halt, then every branch of inquiry is in trouble, since there is always someone who disagrees about something. This is the kind of point we make to our students in 101. Again, it's not new, but it's a point worth making.

Harris also shows himself to be on the side of the angels when he writes that "...it has been disconcerting to see the caricature of the over-educated, atheistic moral nihilist regularly appearing in my inbox."

Now, I certainly think that moral nihilism is a view that deserves respect and careful attention. What irritates me, however, is how many otherwise intelligent people smugly advocate nihilism, or views that entail nihilism, with apparently absolutely no recognition of the earth-shaking consequences of their beliefs. Nor do they generally recognize the self-defeating nature of their positions. For example, as a means of blocking right-wing puritanism, many on the left hold that morality is a pure and unmitigated "matter of opinion" (or, writ large, a "social construction"), i.e. that there are no moral truths. They think this gets them some kind of liberal permissiveness about e.g. sex, when what it actually gets them is the view that there is not a thing in the world wrong with being Hitler or Pol Pot--or Jerry Falwell. Among other things, it gets them that sexual permissiveness is no better than sexual puritanism. With no moral truths, there is no kind nor degree of oppression that is impermissible, since nothing is impermissible. Permitting homosexual actions is no better than forbidding them--both are ungrounded choices that cannot be rationally evaluated.

So Harris gets all that right. But he also gets many important things wrong.

He may find that the term 'deontologism' "increases the amount of boredom in the universe, but the discussion he wants to have cannot be had without that concept being in play. (Imagine someone saying: I want to talk about mathematics, but I find the term 'function' boring, so I don't want to look at anything previous mathematicians have done.) Harris presupposes many things he's not entitled to presuppose, and perhaps foremost among them is that consequentialism is true (and deontologism is false). That is, he presupposes that what we ought to do is to maximize well-being. However, the perils of such a view are well-known. Suppose that you need kidneys and I need a liver, and that we'll die without them. Suppose also that Smith, an innocent person, happens by, sporting healthy organs of the specified kinds. Suppose that we can easily kill him and take them and the world will be a better place for it--Smith is an unpleasant sort with no family or friends; but we are otherwise. On simple views of Harris's sort, we are not only permitted to kill Smith and take his guts, we must do so. One might try to squirm out of this by invoking speculative claims about our subsequent guilt, but such defenses don't work--some people's guilt will, after all, be outweighed by their future well-being. Ergo Harris cannot affirm what seems to be true--that we'd never be justified in killing Smith just because we need his guts. Of course the conversation gets complicated after this point...but Harris seems oblivious to even these initial moves in the discussion.

Carroll raises roughly the above obvious objection. Harris's reply shows how far out of his depth he is:

It is true that many people believe that "there are non-consequentialist ways of approaching morality," but I think that they are wrong. In my experience, when you scratch the surface on any deontologist, you find a consequentialist just waiting to get out. For instance, I think that Kant's Categorical Imperative only qualifies as a rational standard of morality given the assumption that it will be generally beneficial (as J.S. Mill pointed out at the beginning of Utilitarianism). Ditto for religious morality. This is a logical point before it is an empirical one, but yes, I do think we might be able to design experiments to show that people are concerned about consequences, even when they say they aren't.

Um, no. Kant is not a consequentialist. This is an elementary error. If you're making mistakes like this, they you shouldn't be pronouncing on these topics. Rather, you should be hitting the stacks. Kant did not think that the Categorical Imperative was the fundamental principle of morality because of any consequences it has, nor did he think that the moral law has rational authority because it had good consequences. Rather, Kant holds that morality has a kind of rational authority over us in virtue of our rationality and autonomy. The authority of the Categorical Imperative over our actions seems to be rather like the authority of the Law of Non-Contradiction over our thinking. To will something not in accordance with the Categorical Imperative is to will incoherently, hence irrationally (and, on some interpretations, not to even will at all--to abandon our rationality and autonomy). And there is no hidden premise in play about maximizing rationality or any such thing. Kant could (obviously) be wrong--but he is certainly no consequentialist. To insist that every view must reduce to conseqentialism is simply to betray a misunderstanding of the logical terrain. Even if the topic of deontologism bores you, you really ought to understand the view before dismissing it.

But let me end with something important that Harris is right about. Harris notes that Sean Carroll and P. Z. Meyers hold--as do so many people--that skepticism is a problem for morality, but not for science. If you just grant science its presuppositions, then it can do all sorts of wonderful things. Carroll writes:

And finally: pointing out that people disagree about morality is not analogous to the fact that some people are radical epistemic skeptics who don't agree with ordinary science. That's mixing levels of description. It is true that the tools of science cannot be used to change the mind of a committed solipsist who believes they are a brain in a vat, manipulated by an evil demon; yet, those of us who accept the presuppositions of empirical science are able to make progress.

But Harris's response is right on the money, even if, again, the point is familiar to philosophers:

Of course, it is easy enough for Carroll to assert that moral skepticism isn't analogous to scientific skepticism, but I think he is simply wrong about this. To use Myer's formulation, we must smuggle in an "unscientific prior" to justify any branch of science. If this isn't a problem for physics, why should it be a problem of a science of morality? Can we prove, without recourse to any prior assumptions, that our definition of "physics" is the right one? No, because our standards of proof will be built into any definition we provide. We might observe that standard physics is better at predicting the behavior of matter than Voodoo "physics" is, but what could we say to a "physicist" whose only goal is to appease the spiritual hunger of his dead ancestors? Here, we seem to reach an impasse. And yet, no one thinks that the failure of standard physics to silence all possible dissent has any significance whatsoever; why should we demand more of a science of morality?

So, while it is possible to say that one can't move from "is" to "ought," we should be honest about how we get to "is" in the first place. Scientific "is" statements rest on implicit "oughts" all the way down. When I say, "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen," I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor doesn't share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence? What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place?

Science cannot secure its own foundations in the ways that Carroll and Meyers want it to. Above, Carroll seems to make two common mistakes at once--he suggests that science should get to simply presuppose the rationality of its method, and he points out that, if we do so, then we'll see that science is successful. The two errors here are (1) presupposing what needs proof, and (2) pointing to the successes of science as evidence of the truth of these presuppositions. Of course you could just assume the rationality of the scientific method--but then you're left with an unjustified assumption at the heart of our seemingly most important and successful epistemic endeavor. And, of course, you'd have to let morality assume anything it needed. So if we're allowing wanton assumptions, then any view can be "defended" in this way. On the other hand, if we point to the successes of science in support of the rationality of science, we have to ask: how do we know that science is successful? The answer ends up being, roughly: when we carefully tabulate the successes of science and compare them to the successes of other methods, science wins. But that sounds like: when we scientifically compare science to non-science, science wins. And that, ignoring a few details, seems circular: science shows that science is best. We have little reason to care what science says about its own success unless we already have reason to think that science is the right way of investigating things.

The view I currently favor, FWIW, is a Peircean view of the logic of science based on a Kantian deontological ethics of belief. (The best place to see this view worked out is in Richard Smyth's Reading Peirce Reading, incidentally. Don't mind the title--it was supposed to be the much less trendy Readings of Peirce.) But to understand this view requires understanding a lot of the long conversation that is Western philosophy. In particular, it requires understanding some moral theory. And yes, it requires understanding deontologism, even if you find it boring...

[Addendum:

Harris also ends with the following tangle of confusions. There are points hidden in there, but as it stands its rather a mess. Let me just reiterate that these are the kinds of mistakes you end up making if you ignore what all the smart people who came before you had to say, and try to solve the most difficult problems about science and morality in one essay on the Huffington Post...:

So, while it is possible to say that one can't move from "is" to "ought," we should be honest about how we get to "is" in the first place. Scientific "is" statements rest on implicit "oughts" all the way down. When I say, "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen," I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor doesn't share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence? What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place?

So it is with the linkage between morality and well-being: To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that a rational understanding of the universe is good. We need not enter either of these philosophical cul-de-sacs.

Carroll and Myers both believe nothing much turns on whether we find a universal foundation for morality. I disagree. Granted, the practical effects cannot be our reason for linking morality and science -- we have to form our beliefs about reality based on what we think is actually true. But the consequences of moral relativism have been disastrous. And science's failure to address the most important questions in human life has made it seem like little more than an incubator for technology. It has also given faith-based religion -- that great engine of ignorance and bigotry -- a nearly uncontested claim to being the only source of moral wisdom. This has been bad for everyone. What is more, it has been unnecessary -- because we can speak about the well-being of conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science. I think it is time we tried.

Harris is right in the first paragraph until the last sentence, where he suddenly tries to dismiss the very problem at issue. These questions are real questions, and waving your hands in irritation will not make them go away. And, besides, wasn't he just taking these questions seriously like two sentences earlier? He's right that moral relativism has had bad consequences, but that's rather beside the point. What matters is that the view is false--though he gives us no reason to think so here. He's also right that the search for a rational ground of morality is important--philosophically important...important qua theoretical question--though I'm not sure it's practically important, since I think that most people recognize the rational authority of morality in action, even if they deny it in words. And I actually think that science might be more relevant to that search than it's common to think. But it's not relevant in the way the Harris thinks it is. Of course if we simply assume the truth of a certain type of consequentialism, then suddenly science becomes clearly and direction relevant. But everything interesting here is simply packed into Harris's unproven assumptions.

So, again: there's nothing new here, and nothing that interesting to anyone who's had an introductory ethics course. I'm glad somebody's talking about this stuff in a public way, and Harris is, by my lights, right about a lot of stuff that many people get wrong...but in the end, it's hard to classify the majority of this as anything but sophomoric.]