Religion is a poor source of morality

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Wow... the discussion between Harris and Dawkins, after the speech, is far more valuable than the speech; it's like the lecture just lays the epistemological groundwork for the discussion that follows.

I especially enjoyed listening to the discussion about flipping a switch on two sets of train tracks, in which five would die if you don't switch the train's course, but one will die if you do (an act with which 95% of those polled agree is a valid moral decision), versus being on a bridge above the tracks, where pushing a person onto the tracks will derail the train and save the other five lives is immoral according to 95% of those polled. These are both the same act, on the surface: killing one to save five. And yet, we see an almost night-and-day difference in how both acts are perceived by human beings. The implications for the concept of morality are staggering.

The following discussion, about whether you could grab a healthy person in the waiting room of a hospital because it was discovered that he had an ideal-match of his organs for five people who are dying in that hospital for want of those organs, and why-or-why-not, reminded me of the discussion we recently had about the ethics and legality of abortion and the concept of personal bodily integrity.

Thanks for posting that video. It's still going on as I type this, and I'm fascinated. Which is why it took me so long to type this! hehe

[Edwardo Piet]

You're very welcome Rocketsurgeon. Yeah that's a common problem in applied ethics it's called "the trolley problem".

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You're very welcome Rocketsurgeon. Yeah that's a common problem in applied ethics it's called "the trolley problem".

I had run into "the trolly problem" scenario before, but never in that particular framework of discussing the philosophy of moral reasoning. It was a discussion (in class) of the ways our brains evaluate "lesser of two evils" scenarios. I don't know why I didn't apply it to the philosophy of morality. The one I find most fascinating, in the former regard, is the Milgram Experiment, which we also discussed that day.

A book I read in 2013, called The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo, deals with the Milgram Experiment (he and Dr. Stanley Milgram were colleagues and friends) as well as Dr. Zimbardo's own Stanford Prison Experiment. 

If you really want your mind blown on the way human beings operate, read that book!

[TheRocketSurgeon]

P.S. - Easier to call me "Rocket" or TRS. If you want to type that whole thing each time, fine... but why!?

[Mudhammam]

I think Sam Harris' primary point is that whilst theists argue for objective morality that's ontologically objective, he argues instead that subjective facts about the well being of conscious creatures can be studied objectively in an  epistemic way instead... the same way science studies other things epistemecally . And his point is that the conclusions matter to the well being of everyone.

To paraphrase Sam Harris: "If words like "good" and "bad" and "right" and "wrong" mean anything at all then... they mean we should at the very least steer away from the worst possible misery for everyone."

He's not saying that it can be proven ontologically, he's saying that you can epistemically study subjective facts about well being that matter in an objective scientific way.

Although I enjoyed the Moral Landscape very much, I found it somewhat lacking for the very reason that he doesn't offer much in the way of a defense for the ontological status of objective moral values. To me, it makes little sense to claim that there are objective facts to be known about the differences between good and evil if you do not first acknowledge that good and evil are states which exist independent of one's subjective appraisal of those differences, much like the necessary truth that 2+2=4 regardless if a person has learned arithmetic.

[Edwardo Piet]

P.S. - Easier to call me "Rocket" or TRS. If you want to type that whole thing each time, fine... but why!?

Because I fucking love typing and it's my one and only talent!

I love typing out awkward things for fun.

It's thinking of what to say that's the problem!

I would happily type a load of bollocks!

Not as fast as I used to be becasue I'm on a little laptop keyboard I'm not as fast with.... but the last typing test I took says I'm still faster than 96% of people, averaging at 89 WPM (I'm a lot faster on the keyboards I am used to).

At 6 years old I learned to type with all fingers and both thumbs in the space of 30 minutes. I spent over 29 minutes feeling confused as to why my dad was overcomplicating it from my perspective... I listened to him and said in a more kiddy way than the following: "But all I need is the home keys right? Because from them I just move my fingers where it is easiest and closest for them naturally?". And then it just 'clicked' and I typed with all fingers and both thumbs. It's like the only seemingly inborn talent I have and it's weird.

[Edwardo Piet]

Although I enjoyed the Moral Landscape very much, I found it somewhat lacking for the very reason that he doesn't offer much in the way of a defense for the ontological status of objective moral values.

Then you missed the point:

As philosopher John Searle once pointed out, there are two very different senses of the terms “objective” and “subjective”. The first sense relates to how we know (i.e., epistemology), the second to what there is to know (i.e., ontology). When we say that we are reasoning or speaking “objectively”, we generally mean that we are free of obvious bias, open to counterarguments, cognizant of the relevant facts, and so on. This to make a claim about how we are thinking. In this sense, there is no impediment to our studying the subjective (I.e. first-person) facts “objectively. (Harris, 2010, p. 29)

Source: https://zaknafein81.wordpress.com/2013/0...jectivity/

His point is never to ground objective moral values ontologically, that would be ridiculous (That is what William Lame Craig repeatedly bangs on about as a misrepresentation of Sam's position). 

His point is to scientifically measure subjective values objectively in an epistemic way.

To me, it makes little sense to claim that there are objective facts to be known about the differences between good and evil if you do not first acknowledge that good and evil are states which exist independent of one's subjective appraisal of those differences, much like the necessary truth that 2+2=4 regardless if a person has learned arithmetic.

But of course if good and evil exists at all it is not seperate subjectively. For good and evil boils down to well being and the outside world that has no affect on well being cannot be deemed good and evil at all.

Of course good and evil can't exist separately ontologically from us, that would be as ridiculous as claiming there was a God.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Asked and answered!

[Edwardo Piet]

I just realized you're called "TheRocketSurgeon" and not "Rocketsurgeon". So from now on I'm gonna call you "TheRocketSurgeon".

[Esquilax]

It's how exactly you settle disputes between direct conflicts of interest that I think science cannot adequately answer. To do this, it must at some point assign relative value to different aspects of wellbeing. And bluntly, I don't much care about how anyone else values my physical pain compared to my lifespan, as a rough example.

But isn't this just you objecting on the basis of subjective viewpoints on an objective fact, rather than showing that the view is exclusively subjective? Once we accept the idea that objective facts can be known about moral value judgments, then by definition there must be an optimum action or set of actions one can take in any given scenario within the context of the objective facts, and whether we- or anyone- can properly apprehend or predict is irrelevant to whether or not that pinnacle actually exists. That's the whole point of objective things, that they continue to exist regardless of whether subjective beings can adequately account for them.

Take the trolley problem, for example: there is potentially some combination of objective facts that would make one or the other solution morally preferable (perhaps the one person has a nuclear bomb with him that will detonate if he's hit and kill far more than just one person, or perhaps he's a doctor with knowledge of how to cure cancer on his way to tell other people. Maybe the five people in the other tunnel are convicted murderers, or all hosts to a new, particularly virulent strain of Ebola). The fact that the person attempting to solve the problem may or may not know these facts, or may subjectively have values that would lead him to take the morally sub-optimal choice, does not alter the fact that one choice is objectively better than the other, given what we know about human beings. Our choices are influenced by the facts at our disposal, but that doesn't mean that all other facts cease to exist.