Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[Mister Agenda]

You can't have logic without axioms, a foundation that can't be proven, but is accepted. 'Reality is real' is an unspoken axiom/premise of almost every logical argument dealing with reality, for instance. It is not a fault of ethics that it can't prove its logical foundations, even physics can't do that (prove that reality is real). Harris didn't get from an 'is' to an 'ought', but 'what is best for human thriving' certainly isn't the worst or most difficult to accept axiom on which to base a moral system.

[John V]

You have the gas pedal, faster, and the break pedal, slower, on the floor by your feet.  Dur.

Wait, I was asking how you can drop to a lower gear when wanting to accelerate faster. A gas pedal won't do that. It will put you into a higher gear when you go faster.

No, it automatically puts you in a lower gear if that's warranted. Hence the term automatic.

[vulcanlogician]

What I tried to do in my earlier post was isolate the question.

In philosophy, a working definition of a "moral action" is whatever action is maximally good. An immoral action, or "evil action" is whatever works contrary to (or is destructive toward) goodness. So ethics is the business of using logic to discern that which is good and moral from that which is immoral and evil. But then we are left with a question, aren't we?

What is good?


So this is the bread and butter of an ethicist's work. Some ethicists say that human happiness/pleasure is the greatest good (hedonists). Others say that goodness is rooted in the satisfaction of desires (desire satisfaction theory). Still others say that something is good if God says it's good (divine command theory). The list goes on. Much debate transpires in ethics over value theory... that is: what do we call good and what do we call evil?

To return to our beaker example, those arguing value theory all agree that there is a measurable quantity of water in the container. They disagree over what that quantity is.

But your problem is not a problem with value theory. Your problem is an issue in metaethics. You think that every value theorist who argues for a specific "objective theory of good" is WRONG.

YOU are a MORAL SKEPTIC, Rob.

You don't see moral arguments as a quantity of water in a beaker. Rather, you see all moral philosophy as more analogous to wine-tasting. Value theory does not describe anything objective. It is all subjective to you. Ethicists are sitting around quaffing wine and supplying flavor notes.

So we should not even bring up "well being" (not yet!) because, human well being is merely one metric by which we discern "what is good" from that which is "not good." As a moral skeptic, you don't care about "what is good"-- at least in an objective sense... you might care in your personal life etc. etc., but we are talking about objective reality here.

So, in order for me to make the case for moral realism, I have to convince you that there are moral facts in the first place. If I should succeed, then we can move on to "regular" ethics and have a discussion about well being, hedonism etc. The only way I can see to go about this is to show (logically) that your moral skepticism is misplaced.

So I'm going to list an argument for error theory here, and I'd like to hear your assessment of it. Then we can go from there.

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.
2. Science cannot verify the existence of objective moral values.
3. Therefore, the best evidence tells us that objective moral values do not exist.

[possibletarian]

I always prefer to listen to Harris than I do to read him, I find his books a little too fragmented to really get to grips with them.

I recently listened to a podcast when he had Sean Carroll as a guest, they were debating if 'maximum good' should really be, or could even be justified as an 'ought' it got heated in parts, but a good listen.

It can be found in the 'Waking Up' section of Harris's website.

Personally since I became athiest I've never understood the need of people to have objective moral values, when it seems clear to me that they never existed other than as tribal or national laws, and being enforceable and failure to comply meant punishment they took on the semblance of objective.

[bennyboy]

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?

[vulcanlogician]

Personally since I became athiest I've never understood the need of people to have objective moral values, when it seems clear to me that they never existed other than as tribal or national laws, and being enforceable and failure to comply meant punishment they took on the semblance of objective.

I take issue with the use of the term, "the need." It is a matter of fact whether morality is objective or not. If it isn't objective, then, you are correct. If it is, then I'm correct. 

Our "needs" have nothing to do with it. If I was dangling from a cliff, I might need the law of gravity to not be a real objective thing, at least until I got to safety. But my needs would be irrelevant, wouldn't they? Same goes for moral reality. If something is objective, it exists independently of opinions, wants, or needs.

"Since I've become a simple potato farmer, I've never understood the need of people to understand the laws of physics," would be an analogue to the bolded portion of your quote. Just because you don't see how something fits into your worldview, doesn't mean it isn't a real thing. To me, morality is a real objective thing in the same way justice is real objective thing... in the same way numbers are real objective things. You might see no need to ever do geometry, but that doesn't render geometry fictitious.

You could say, "numbers aren't real," but then you'd have to say "physics isn't real"... (at least, those parts of physics which are expressed by mathematics).

You can certainly argue that morality isn't real. I may very well be wrong about it being real. But let's be clear: It either does objectively exist or it doesn't, regardless of what people may want or need.

[possibletarian]

Personally since I became athiest I've never understood the need of people to have objective moral values, when it seems clear to me that they never existed other than as tribal or national laws, and being enforceable and failure to comply meant punishment they took on the semblance of objective.

I take issue with the use of the term, "the need." It is a matter of fact whether morality is objective or not. If it isn't objective, then, you are correct. If it is, then I'm correct. 

Our "needs" have nothing to do with it. If I was dangling from a cliff, I might need the law of gravity to not be a real objective thing, at least until I got to safety. But my needs would be irrelevant, wouldn't they? Same goes for moral reality. If something is objective, it exists independently of opinions, wants, or needs.

"Since I've become a simple potato farmer, I've never understood the need of people to understand the laws of physics," would be an analogue to the bolded portion of your quote. Just because you don't see how something fits into your worldview, doesn't mean it isn't a real thing. To me, morality is a real objective thing in the same way justice is real objective thing... in the same way numbers are real objective things. You might see no need to ever do geometry, but that doesn't render geometry fictitious.

You could say, "numbers aren't real," but then you'd have to say "physics isn't real"... (at least, those parts of physics which are expressed by mathematics).

You can certainly argue that morality isn't real. I may very well be wrong about it being real. But let's be clear: It either does objectively exist or it doesn't, regardless of what people may want or need.

Well that was my point really, that i once held a world view that needed objective morality to work or make sense, otherwise why obey God if they didn't come form a pure objective source.

Now I don't, and the need for them to be objective just is not there. For lot of things I can relate to them by putting my theist head back on even if I don't agree with them, but this is something that once out of the box I cannot connect with or relate to any more.

It wasn't a comment on whether morals exist or not.

[no one]

Yes. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt does.

[vulcanlogician]

It wasn't a comment on whether morals exist or not.

Yeah. I see that now. lol. Your original post didn't weigh in on the existence of objective morality. It was a commentary on people's desire for it.

If you are feeling so inclined, forgive my obtuse counter-argument to the claim you never made.

I was pretty invested in an argument that started earlier in the thread (before you chimed in), and you popped in to give your two cents when I was trying to (on the surface) prove moral objectivity.

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Also, ROBVALUE: I'm forcing you to take a position as a moral skeptic. I've taken a position ("There are moral facts.") Now YOU need to take a position on what exactly you think "moral facts" are. Otherwise, we can't have a fair debate.

[robvalue]

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It wasn't a comment on whether morals exist or not.

Yeah. I see that now. lol. Your original post didn't weigh in on the existence of objective morality. It was a commentary on people's desire for it.

If you are feeling so inclined, forgive my obtuse counter-argument to the claim you never made.

I was pretty invested in an argument that started earlier in the thread (before you chimed in), and you popped in to give your two cents when I was trying to (on the surface) prove moral objectivity.

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Also, ROBVALUE: I'm forcing you to take a position as a moral skeptic. I've taken a position ("There are moral facts.") Now YOU need to take a position on what exactly you think "moral facts" are. Otherwise, we can't have a fair debate.

I'm trying really hard here, I'm honestly not meaning to be difficult. We have a severe impasse, with each of us confounded by the position of the other.

I'm saying that moral statements don't mean anything until you are specific about what morality is, and what it is trying to achieve. You can have a "moral fact" once you have stated one of these goals. But to say you can have a fact that just applies to "morality", and is true whatever morality might mean to you, makes absolutely no sense to me. How can it apply to everything?

I guess that's my definition of a "moral fact": a statement that something is "good" or "bad", without establishing what "good" or "bad" are. That appears to be what you're saying, unless I misunderstand. So it's a meaningless statement. It's saying that something is X, where X is yet to be defined. It's literally saying nothing. Something can be good by one definition, and not good by another, so there's no universal statement you can make. If we ask different questions about some water in a beaker, we'll get a different answer. You can't assume all moral questions are the same, while allowing the question to then be about anything.

Is there some correct meaning of "good"? That is the only way this could be resolved, as far as I can see. The answer, to me, is that this is meaningless. What does it mean to say that your definition of good is the correct one? Every potential definition is already correct, in that you've assigned meaning. Is there some kind of "goodness" that transcends every definition of good? Clearly not, unless you've already set some parameters about what "good" can possibly mean. I feel like you're implying all kinds of "good" somehow overlap.

I don't think this is anything to do with science, this is to do with the use of language. You can't have a fact about something until you've suitably defined it. I think I've explained my objection as best my can; whether or not it's a standard objection, I don't know. Science deals with the physical, and morals are not physical. They are an abstraction. But I'm not bring science into this, in the first place.

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For example, let's say God thinks torture is "good". A theist might then say that torture is "good", because they think whatever God says is true. But I think "good" is about wellbeing, so torture is "not good". What moral fact can we make here? We can't say torture is "good", or "not good". It is both, depending on the chosen point of view.