Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

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ARGUMENT FROM THE SCIENTIFIC TEST OF REALITY (error theory)

1. If science cannot verify the existence of X, then the best evidence tells us that X does not exist.

I would say that it is irrelevant whether X exists or not. We can therefor continue as if X does not exist, or just informally say it doesn't exist. I suppose by using Occam's Razor, we can conclude it most likely doesn't exist. But we're talking about physical existence, here. You can't have abstract concepts "existing"; at least not in the same way. You can have information about things that physically exist, or you can have entirely abstract ideas that may have no bearing on the existent.

2. Science cannot verify the existence of objective moral values.

If someone is trying to claim OMVs exist physically, then I agree.

3. Therefore, the best evidence tells us that objective moral values do not exist.

Sure, but I don't see this as having anything to do with the discussion. The truth of a statement is part of an abstract system, so it's not supposed to physically exist in the first place. This error theory... is itself in error, for trying to categorise something incorrectly.

I'm very confused by how this is relevant. If we have some information, X=2 say, then there are facts that are true, given the standard rules of mathematics, such as X+3=5. That's a true statement. It is validated as true just by the rules of mathematics. But "X+3=5" doesn't exist, that makes no sense to me. It's an abstract statement.

I can say, "There is 30ml of water in this tube". Is that true, or not? If we allow for a certain degree of accuracy, then we can use science to verify this. We're asking questions about the existent. But the fact itself does not exist; that again makes no sense. I can't test for the existence of the fact.

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Let me try for an objective morality.

I'd argue it by saying our objective reality, i.e. our DNA, takes precedence over our conscious reality.

Individually, we don't want to be harmed.  We have, from birth, an aversion to harm and an attraction toward pleasure.  Some of us have, to varying degrees, compassion for others, and it's by nature rather than by logic.  But we don't arrive at these wants logically-- they are our birthright.

Then we're born, we interact with each other, we experience suffering due to lack of resources, or a pressure to mate, and so on.

It's important to understand that the goals of any moral system are intrinsically emotional-- dying is bad simply because we fear it.  If everyone loved dying, nobody would care about murder.  Rape is bad simply because it is very unpleasant.  If girls deeply enjoyed getting raped, then we probably wouldn't need to stop it.  The reality is more complex-- almost all men dislike not having a partner (or multiple partners) to mate with, but there are some men who for whatever reason almost all women dislike the idea of mating with.  This leads to an emotional conflict-- do the men tie women to the bed and create a moral system which essentially institutionalizes rape, or do women (and sympathetic men, probably largely those who already like their mating chances) establish a moral system in which unwanted sexual advances will lead to an undesirable being removed from the community?


Emotions are highly complex and variable among individuals, but they aren't arbitrary-- they are the expression of a billion years of recorded interactions among our ancestors and their respective environments.

I'm not sure how useful all this is when we are tying to act with willful intent-- we are acting as though there is free will, and we are exercising that will in attempting to make a moral code, perhaps one which transcends the obvious practical shortcomings of the instincts which have thus far driven our moral systems.

Sam's version of all this, hedonic state, is impossibly complex and a bit naive.  It would require good calculations, and foreknowledge.  Who's to say that today's reduction of suffering won't lead to a tenfold suffering at some point in the future?

Very well put. I totally agree, the root of morality is emotion. We want things to be a certain way. If we didn't, there would be no morality. The universe doesn't care either way. It stems from our evolution as a cooperative species. This is why it overlaps.

Harris just asserts his own goals, and you're completely correct, you require way more information than we can possibly have to make some sort of calculation. You can only produce a best estimate. We could look back and call what we did "immoral" because it eventually caused lots of suffering, but at the time we were trying to reduce it as best we could. So were we moral, or immoral? It's a matter of perspective.

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Converge! That's the word I'm looking for. Moral facts seem to assume that any (permitted?) definition of morality produces results that converge. But clearly, they don't. If we discuss things with people who share the same values as us, then we have a certain degree of convergence.

That's the key, to me. Do we share the same values? If so, great. Discussion can continue logically from there. There's no need to establish why we share those values, or that those values are somehow correct. If we don't share them, then we need to discuss why that is.