My Problem With Sam Harris' Morality | Featuring Rationality Rules
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2017
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Make sure that you go over to Rationality Rules and watch our conversation on free will - should you be angry with someone if they murder your family? Maybe not... find out why in our discussion, and be sure to subscribe whilst you're there: th-cam.com/video/lks1MfZ8gQU/w-d-xo.html
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CosmicSkeptic stfu
jk i love u
CosmicSkeptic I'm only a minute in and I can tell this is going to be a very lucid and cerebral conversation.
I should've known that as soon as I read the title.
Looking forward to the rest of the video!
CosmicSkeptic am I the only one here who can feel the bromance between thease tow
CosmicSkeptic I thank you for opening my eyes months ago. I used to be afraid of questioning things that didn't sound right in religion. Then after finding too many contradictions I finally came to my senses and now I can finally use my mind freely and without restrictions to eternal damnation.
Thank you kindly for having me round Alex - and of course for the pizza : ) It was a pleasure to have these conversations with you.
Rationality Rules You are a nice guy
rationality rules how is medicine objective when some are healed by it, but some have allergic reactions?
im sure if there was another intelligent species to compare ourselves with we would have vastly different values and morals. even more so an intelligence from another dimension that may not even be considered life so death to it is not subjectively bad.
we are life forms, if we didnt evolve they capacity to dislike death and anything that affects our survival or "well being" we wouldnt have survived in the first place and gone on to label the things that are negative towards our survival as "bad" or "evil."
i would be honored and humbled if you were to respond to me rationality though it feels unlikely.
Rationality Rules, I have never seen any of your videos or your channel. This is the first time I've even heard of you. I posted this and I just wanted to make sure you saw it:
"Alex, I was of the opinion that morality is subjective. However, after hearing Rationality Rules's arguments, I am rethinking this question again. I think he made some good arguments here. Just like you said in your video, you said something like "I still reserve the right to have a contention here". Yes I still reserve the right to have a contention here. But I think he made a very interesting argument. I had not considered this before. At this point, after hearing Rationality Rules's arguments, all I can say is I really don't know whether morality is objective or subjective. So Rationality Rules actually got me to change my position somewhat because before hearing his arguments I was of the opinion that morality was likely subjective. He got me to change my view to say "i don't know" right now, and to reconsider this question."
I think you presented some interesting questions Rationality Rules. Thank you for making me rethink this.
Just incase RR doesn't get back to you:
It's been a while since I've read The Moral Landscape, but from what I remember Sam does address this contention. Essentially, an objective morality would encompass everybody's well-being in the same way that medicine would, in that certain medicines don't work for certain types of people or species, but even then there are still right and wrong claims to be made about the health requirements of all life forms.
For example, "Everyone should consume 2,000 calories a day" would be a terrible objective guideline for maintaining good health. However, we are scientifically able to measure the correct amount of caloric intake for each person based on their size, shape, bone density (etc...). And if these outer-dimensional aliens that you're talking about don't intake calories, then objective health standards would automatically encompass that fact. Morality is the same way.
Qdog, I assume that was a response to Tristan and not to me right? Just want to make sure lol.
Alex, I just finished watching your video reviewing Sam Harris’ book, The Moral Landscape. I was interested in your critique because I have had an ongoing debate with my friend since the publication of the book. He has always made your arguments, while I’ve been more impressed with Mr. Harris’ position. To your great credit, I then watched your debate with your friend, Steve. I should mention Dan and I are both in our late 70’s, with a somewhat jaundiced view of young people. So, after first seeing Steve, I wasn’t very confident about his capabilities. Okay, we all have our prejudices. Both of these videos were wonderful. I had to work hard to keep up, but if you and Steve are an example of the younger generation, we’re all going to be fine.
I'm not in my 70s, as are you & your friend, but being much older than these two young men I came in with a similar prejudice after having been disappointed with the quality of reasoning done by most in their age range. I was incredibly impressed and very happy to be wrong, as were you, about these two young men and both the caliber of their arguments and the standard(s) to which they hold themselves and each other.
BTW- I would have to very much lean against an objective moral standard in the absence of a communicative higher power by which we could gain such a compass of our morals and their relative values. I most frequently see that only until an athiest/agnostic can give up their need to compete with the theist's objective moral standard and put away the necessity for such a thing, pragmatically, are they able fairly deal the arguments and make an unbiased claim about them. After all, isn't the penultimate goal for the theist's use of such a standard to avoid hell and enter heaven? Beyond that they should make the most reasonable decision with the available information and move on, as does the atheist/agnostic, who has no such punishment/reward based life-goal.
@@datguitarplayer1656 What I find the most troubling about the attempts to find fault with young folks is simply the fact that both young people and old people can be wrong, about any matter. Older folks are like religious folks in this way, older folks only consider the way young people are wrong(if that is in fact the case) and don't consider how often they are correct. Religious people do it with prayer, they got that new car thanks to Jesus a week after their prayer failed to save a sibling. There was a hit on prayer and a miss, but only the hit is logged into the arguments for Jesus. This is because faith is involved in both cases and faith and pretend are equal. We have old folks who pretend their older minds are far more superior which is purely a faith based position. Young people have all the same faults as their older grumpier elders. I am 55.
They are not a representative example, they are above average.
@@datguitarplayer1656 Thanks for your reply. I was impressed with your first paragraph, but found the second more problematic. If I understand correctly, you believe the only entity able to hold an objective moral standard would be a God. I presume you mean the Christian God, but you may be referring to another God, or Gods. Also, you believe the ultimate standard for morality is to take those actions that will assure one’s entry into heaven and avoid those that would put one in hell. I assume you agree that your argument presupposes that heaven and hell exist. Let me know if I’m expressing your argument accurately. Also, can you offer any evidence?
@@MrBILLSTANLEY I'm more inclined to focus the crux of my earlier statement on two primary positions.
The first is that chasing an objective moral standard without an omnipotent higher power will always leave the moral philosopher wanting. I wasn't specifically inferring the Judeo-Christian God, but for the purpose of this discussion we'd need to assume to be instructed by a higher being that is, of course, really a higher being with perfect knowledgeand wisdom. A humanist view of morality, to me, should seem a bit like science or medicine. It has, since our earliest records, evolved as we have evolved. As more information becomes accessible we put into practical use that information and it changes not just how we do things moving forward but how we view things looking backward. Without a sort of perfect, a sort of divine moral instruction manual how can we be certain that future information won't discredit our current standards and develop our standards? I would put forth that we can't be certain now that we have any more security in our understanding of an absolute morality than the ancient cultures of any peoples- Mesopotamians up through the Egyptians or Mayans or Greeks or Romans or the British Empire or the modern day Western world. Each operated comfortably in the assurance that they held the pillars to morality. We know those that came after would ever more see a necessity to modify or destroy those pillars they found to be the immoral and archaic morals of a more simpler people. Some day, in hundreds or thousands of years, our morality may be seen as barbarism to some future, more enlightened peoples, using knowledge from future centuries of development to push our own tenants out, up or through their own litmus test.
The second is that it shouldn't matter. The secular thinker should stop trying to compete for this absolute moral standard, and that needs to be ok. To reference an earlier point, would a scientist or medical researcher be confident saying they now had what alluded all peoples before them- a sort of absolute scientific answer never to be built upon or discarded? A way of saying, "the medicine is over, we have all we will ever need, for now and forever". This is preposterous and in that way I not only disagree with an author like Harris, but so firmly believe he is lacking in this argument that I'm using his science and medicine analogies against him. I don't find any need to argue the point with a theist, of any particular brand, that secularism or atheism has an absolute morality in the way they believe they have with their texts. It's nonsense and it cedes ground to the conversation that there is a need for such a standard to exist in order to operate as a moral agent. We don't say scientists of old, scientists of ancient and more primitive methods weren't scientific. We say they were "doing science" according to their time. Similarly I believe we should confident in saying we are "doing morality" according to our own, and with forthright communication that not only do we expect it to change...but we hope it will as well.
I hope I've not made a mess of myself and lost the goodwill I earned from my first paragraph that you'd enjoyed by muddling up everything and rambling incoherently, but that's my offering to you on a small smartphone keyboard with a typing window nary the width of a scotch tape strip and my own tired eyes.
Please enjoy your weekend and the days to come, it's been a pleasure, and I'd surely appreciate any feedback.
Steven: Do you eat meat?
Alex: Yes I do
This gave me the biggest whiplash. Oh how the turntables
Hahaha indeed. About this topic, I recommend you to watch the debate they had about veganism as well. There you can see Alex preparing to be vegan haha
yes, how the turntables...
@@felipecosta9199 comments which aged like milk 😭
lol, how the turn tables turn tables
This is so good it feels like it doesn't belong on the internet.
Morality is only objective once you've subjectively decided what your going to base you moral system on.
So is science and mathematics.
Mikko Haavisto Not really. Science is knowledge of the natural world rather than a belief one has of the natural world. The water cycle is simply a statement of fact on how water has been observed to transport from the ground to the sky. Even if we do not "believe" in it, the cycle still occurs despite human belief.
Sean Peery its just like health. In health we take it as an axiom that's it's better for people to be healthy than to not be healthy. And we all agree that SCIENCE is the best way to tell us what is healthy and what isn't.
his argument is that morals should be no different. if we take it as an axiom that it's better for there to be more well being and less suffering, then science may be able to help us reach these goals.
The point was that all systems of morality reduce to well being, when you get into the details. The same game could be played with any field of science "once you decide medicine is about advancing health....." "Once you decide chemistry is based on chemicals..." etc
Matt K Chemistry is definitionally related to chemicals, objectively real things; it was created specifically to study them. Medicine is a science created to further health, which is more of a concept.
Finally a debate where the other guy wasn't an idiot.
it's more of a discussion/exploration
Is the difference between discussion and debate objective or subjective?
@@Cy_Guy Yes
@meme there's nothing wrong with having debates. see counterargument's series on 12 angry men.
@meme I guess I'm kind of late to the party.
Listening to intelligent and thoughtful young people like these two instantly improved my confidence in humanity's future.
Me too .. :-)
Wish they were all like this.
It is so nice to hear people announce that they are unsure about something. The preface you both gave at the beginning made me smile. We need more people like you in the world:)
I know what you mean. I'm more than happy to admit my complete ignorance about fairly much everything and I could be full of shit about that as well.
I find that Certitude is the lazy person's version of Certainty.
I _love_ the vibe of this video. Would love to see these more often, bro.
Cheers from Cali!
Where abouts in Cali? I'm giving a talk in San Jose on Wednesday - come along if you can! www.meetup.com/Atheist-Community-of-San-Jose/events/235545872/
Ah, sadly that's in Northern California, I'm down in Los Angeles. If you ever find yourself stateside again and are near the city, make sure to let us all know. I'd be happy to attend a speaking event or any other kind of appearance!
Really? Wait that's actually great I live in the Bay Area... I really hope I can see that.
Alex, where do you keep a schedule for events? If you ever do something in LA, I would love to come. As well as if you did something in Vegas or upper Arizona.
god damn, does EVERYONE live in LA? i'm yet to see a youtuber that doesnt, even a smaller one.
Cosmic Sceptic and Rationality Rules. The bromance I wanted to see.
The big difference I see between morality and the sciences is that when we ask "Why value this?" of a science, you're outside of the realm of that science. This is not the case with morality. Saying that "morality is objective" here is the conclusion being claimed, but not the conclusion being reached. All that's been established is a shorthand for adding "assuming wellbeing is the goal..." before every premise.
And what is wellbeing anyway? The state of being well? Sounds like a tautology.
Yeah, I was wishing they would bring this up. If within a field, you start by making an assumption which lies outside that field, it's fine, it just makes it dependent on that assumption. If within a field, you make an assumption which is within that field, then you have a serious issue.
Sure, the question "Why value this?" is outside the realm of all the sciences. I would argue that's pre because there is no field of science dedicated to this question. That would be the very field Sam Harris proposes. If we wouldn't have the field of biology the origin of species would be a matter outside the realm of all the sciences. Would that make the question unscientific?
Furthermore, we grant statements like "Earth orbits the Sun" the label "objective truth". That doesn't mean we are 100% certain that it's true. In the future we might develop a more sophisticated theory of the universe that forces us to reject this picture. It's hard to imagine now but remember that for most of human history it was fundamentally obvious to everyone that the Sun orbits the Earth. We can not guarantee that "Earth orbits the Sun" is correct either because it's ultimately a conclusion derived from the laws for physics which are nothing but assumptions. These laws are backed by observations (just like the well-being assumption) but those are imperfect themselves and can't take us to 100% certainty either. So we really have the same situation here. All that's been established is a shorthand for adding "assuming the laws of physics..." before every premise. That doesn't mean doing this is useless. We live in a world of uncertainty. There is no perfect knowledge. Our best and pretty much only option is to draw conclusions from solid assumptions. The point is, in science we are allowed to call something an objective truth even when it's rooted in pure assumptions.
I'm not sure why "state of being well" sounds like a tautology to you. Can you elaborate?
@@ngruhn What you're missing with the "assuming the laws of physics" analogy is that in the realm of physics, it is inevitable that you assume the laws of physics. Every physical theory assumes the laws of physics, because even if it challenges previous laws of physics, the end result is that it becomes part of the laws of physics, therefore any question or theory within physics assumes the laws of physics, they are codependent. It is literally impossible to make a physical statement that doesn't assume that physics exists and has certain laws.
That is not the case for morality. In morality, you cannot assume well-being is the goal, because you can construct a system of morality where that is not the case. Religious people can say morality comes from god, and they assume the goal is pleasing god, even if that does not lead to well-being, f.e. martyrdom, gods of destruction, etc. You can debate them on the existence of god, the absurdity of an ethics system contingent on god, etc, but you cannot convince them that well-being is the goal of their morality, well-being is not inherent to morality unless you define it as such, and in that sense you'd have a definitional problem as many people do not share that definition.
The words "good" and "well" are synonymous, thus saying "wellbeing is [morally] good" when "wellbeing" is defined as "the state of being well" can be rephrased as "a good state is good", which is a tautology.
@@ShadowTasos Sure, every physical statement assumes that physics exists and has certain laws. In physics we agree to stick to the scientific method. Science gives us a framework to find consensus. If we wouldn't, I could very well say: in MY physics the sun orbits the earth and who are you to disagree. Sure this contradicts the observations. But hey "Thou shalt not murder" and commiting genocide too seems like a pretty bad contradiction. Well who cares, morality is not science, right?
If we could just adopt the scientific method for morality as well, we could put an end to this.
I agree that we can not convince people that well-being is the goal of their morality if it just isn't. It is an assumption and if half the world population rejects it, it's a bad assumption. Just like a physical law is bad law if it contradicts observations half the time. However, Sam Harris point is that most people and the ethics systems of religions actually already approve this assumption implicitly. Thus, it's a good assumption. It does not "contradict the observations" *. What religions are doing wrong is that they constructed ethics systems around this assumption that clearly contradict it. And this should allow us to objectively classify their morality as worse than others. Just like, if we would both agree on the same laws of physics but I came up with the conclusion that the sun orbits the earth. I made erroneous conclusions and your physics is objectively better than mine.
I don't think "good" and "well" are meant to be synonymous here. But there is some relation, namely one implies the other. You're right "a good state is good" is saying nothing but "well-being => [morally] good" (i.e. "seeking well-being is morally good"') is saying a lot. If you accept this assumption then your concept of morality is bad if it causes suffering and a good concept of morality must be dedicated to seeking well-being. Note, I wouldn't say the implication also goes the other direction. You can live in a society with morality perfectly dedicated to well-being and people are still perpetually suffering for other reasons like disease.
* Ok, you will find examples of people or cultures that do not approve the well-being assumption. Here the analogy to physics is a little bit unfair. Physics is the field of science with the highest precision. One counterexample might already kill a theory. In biology or psychology we are not so quick to reject theories.
@@ShadowTasos I'm new to this way of thinking so bear with me. Maybe it's not that wellbeing isn't the goal, but that wellbeing is not so clearly defined. For a religious person belief in god leads to wellbeing because of the afterlife. Wellbeing can be found in self mutilation, martyrdom, chastity, poverty, ostracism, etc., because wellbeing continues beyond their physical life (heaven). A religious person's morality is based on wellbeing. Their morals lead them to what they believe is a state of good.
You are the two smartest people I've seen who seem to have no ego involved in your pursuit of knowledge.
"throwing acid is wrong, in some people's eyes". I love that.
Why is it wrong?
@@ryanj6093 It reduces wellbeing.
@@MrRebound68 who cares if it doesn't affect me survival of the fittest thus natural selection. What is right to you is the opposite to me. And how can you even trust your own statement if there's no objective morals?
Throwing acid isn't a great thing to do because it's dangerous. Throwing acid into someone's eyes who's trying to kill you may not be super but it's a durn sight better than being murdered. Throwing acid into someone's eyes because they said they wouldn't marry you is criminal, has no relation to evolutionary principles, and isn't celebrated by any culture or cultural group, 'left-wing' or otherwise.
@@ryanj6093 Where to start? I'll give it a try:
Who cares? Me.
(And the victim, probably).
Throwing acid has zilch to do with survival of the fittest as it is no condition of the natural environment of a species but just with asshole doing what assholes do.
"What is right to you is the opposite to me" is a pretty strange statement - does that mean if it is right to me that the sun goes up in the morning it doesn't to you?
As for objective - in the end we can only trust ourselves, and if you believe you found an "objective moral" then you are doing nothing other than I do - putting trust in your own senses and your own reasoning ...
It's nice to finally see a non-polarizing debate, where participants actually are listening and trying to understand the other person's perspective!
Totally agree. If only the politics is like this..
I like the way you guys discuss philosophy and being open to accept things when you get convinced. I believe everyone of us is going to find the truth when we are true and sincere inside.
Funny that I'm watching this now for the first time, hearing you say you hope to be vegan one day and knowing that you finally did it. =)
Wait who is vegan and why?
@@maclo4 alex
What do you think? Is morality objective? This discussion certainly helped me see things from a different angle. Don't forget to tweet us for your chance to win a copy of one of the books!
CosmicSkeptic I don't think morality is objective :)
CosmicSkeptic I think its subjective
I'm a moral nhilist, i thought you were too...
CosmicSkeptic Nope. I think it's subjective.
I think it's subjective, but we can roughly lay it out in a pseudo objective way as :
- Don't physically/mentally hurt people unless it's necessary.
while it's hard to say what is good, it's easier to say what is bad therefore we should improve laws to give everyone the same chances for a free and happy life.
I honestly can't disagree with either side. One makes an argument based on practicality, and the other makes an argument based on philosophy. Both argument seem sound.
I have to say, I truly enjoyed this. Please keep it up. I think this is one of the very few discussion that could truly change people's minds. The two of you are perhaps the next four horsemen in the making.
I adore them both while walking away believing I've just watched the screenplay version of my own inner monolog...and I appreciate it. Thanks fellas, good talk.
I'd love to find folks like you guys to just sit down and talk through stuff like this! Thanks at least for sharing YOUR conversations.
I really like how respectful and insightful you guys are. The new age of modern thinkers at work, I would love to have been there!
A scientific law is a description of phenomena that always behave a particular way. It's not perfect, but it's the best we've got. If every person on earth believes morality is based on well-being, then this is definition by consensus, and it's as safe to say that the basis of morality is well-being as it is to say that two objects of mass attract each other. I know it's semantics, but you have to start somewhere.
But you can have objective ways of measuring it at the level of the neuron, pain receptor, etc. You also could hypothetically establish what needs must be met to avoid suffering (Maslow's heirarchy might be a good starting point). An in-depth analysis of how much suffering results from deprivation (eg. going without food for 5 days isn't as bad as going without water) could push us closer to an objective measurement. Purely speculative, but I don't think it's impossible.
I disagree. Our universal belief in "our" well-being resulted in gross over-population has set us on course for self-destruction along with the potential greatest mass extinction event in the history of our planet. Perhaps it could be argued that we need to define well-being including long-term self-preservation of humanity but that does not seem to be where our heads are at.
Other creatures have a natural state of well-being that is in ecological balance with their environment, humans are the dangerous exception. Also, what about the incredibly tortuous inhumane treatment that we inflict on other creatures to support our pursuit of an improved state of well-being. How does that relate to our universal objective morality based on our well-being?
BTW - have watched and liked many of your videos, keep up the good work.
Celerites your very first statement is wrong it was or unwell being that historically set that course. statistics show that when getting to a point of well being we start to get a negative population th-cam.com/video/eA5BM7CE5-8/w-d-xo.html
Holy Koolaid
Look, you can base morality on well-being but that doesnt mean anything. The concept of well-being is subjective but not also that, if I steal something is that good? It will encrease my wellbeing.
This was the most interesting, thought provoking, peaceful, and intellectually honest discussion I have ever seen. Truly fantastic!
what a lovely way to start your conversation / debate with each other.
You never talked about *whose* well being. If you base morality only in the well being of the individual, it *is* subjective. If you base it on the well being of everyone, you have to weight it against each other. Like when a starving man steals bread. The well being of the starving man increase, while it decreases for the owner. So maybe there is a way to measure the absolute well being of a individual which tells us whether this action is "good" or "bad".
If this is true, there might be a world, where one part of the population is greatly suffering as slaves for the rest of the population. But because the happiness of the rest outweighs the suffering, and improving the life of the slaves would decrease the happiness of the rest, it would be a morally perfect world.
However. I would argue that morality is based on the well being of the individual. And caring for others is only a consequence of our ability to feel empathy, which causes us to suffer when seeing others suffer. So when we want to increase the well being of others, we actually want to increase our own well being. That's why I would say, morality is subjective.
Absolutely right.
Well if you had a properly functioning social safety net the starving man wouldn't need to steal and if the owner was stolen form too much he wouldn't go hungry ether. So the most moral thing to do is to have a properly function social safety net.
Baring that though it would likely help the man stolen form's well being in the long run to let the starving man have the bread. It would help cultivate a good reputation, witch helps many ways. Not the least of witch is if he's ever down on his luck, people might remember his generosity.
Look I've see a few comments on this and the ultimate answer boils down to; Well that's just not a good way to maximize anyone's well being.
Edit. Ok I have to come back to this. Well being can only be improved so much by material goods. The starving man's life is improved dramatically by a loaf of bread, the guy who it was stolen form might not even notice. If the man who was stolen form has enough this is a positive sum gain.
There are other ways in witch this misses the point, but I think I made myself clear.
@Eddie the Head
The starving man stealing was only an example. Did you read the rest of my comment? My point was that even if it's possible to measure the "absolute well being" of each individual, it could have strange implications if you base your morality on the well being of everyone simultaneously.
Say we could rate "well being" on a scale from -5 to 5, where 0 is neutral, positive is happiness, negative suffering. A world with 5 individuals could have values like
2, 2, 2, 2, 2 which is a total of 5
But the world could also look like this
-5,-4,5,5,5 which has a total of 6
So if you base morality on the total well being of everyone, the second world would be better, even though two individuals live in agony, while no one is suffering in the first world.
@Treufuß
But this scenario is also predicted in Sam's book. To shift to the health comparison again, the second world you posted there is the same as taking apart a perfectly healthy person to donate their vital organs to 5 different people who need transplants. In the end, you certainly saved more lives. But would you want to live in a world where any doctor/ institution has the power to take anyone against their will and tear them apart to save lives? no one really would, and this is why medicine doesn't do it.
A science of morality, if done right, also wouldn't consider the second world you proposed (total of 6) better for the same reason doctors are not mutilating people against their will to save lives. The suffering of a few does not justify the well being of all the others, not in medicine, not in morality, simply because at a long term, global level, this is not sustainable, and leads to more suffering.
What the second world in your scenario does not consider is the suffering caused by living in such a world. A world where certain people are born to suffer, a world where someone on the good side (the 5s) could potentially end up on the bad side (-4 and -5). The reason why slavery doesn't work is mainly because of the suffering of the slaves, but not only about it. It is also because of the burden it puts on all others who are NOT slaves, and the fear that some of them have of becoming slaves, for whatever reason. It also doesn't take into account the REASON why those -4 and -5 are suffering, which matters. In our world we put murderers in prison, restricting their freedom and causing them suffering, so the rest of us can live safely without the fear of being murdered. This is just one case where the suffering of a few for the well being of other is morally justified.
Your "problem" with a science of morality only exists if you have a shallow, simplistic outlook on it.
As far as I can see it always comes down to one's own well-being, however, there are many more positive sum games that humans can play than there are zero-sum games as Sam points out in his book when he talkes about the fictional Adam and Eve. Also the reason it remains objective is that there are facts to be known about how you can improve your own wellbeing. Hope this helps.
Great discussion! I find it very helpful to hear two intelligent, thoughtful, articulate people civilly discuss a point of disagreement.
I dunno... I think I've become accustomed to the bloodletting. This almost feels boring by comparison. 😮
(I'm kidding, of course; I love these kind of discussions. 🤣 )
great discussion, love you both guys. especially liked the moment when RR says how when he had realized the one fact it then all the others clicked and then he saw the point but can't articulate that ... suuuuch a familiar feeling ... anyway thanks a bunch, great one :)
What an absolutely refreshing video this is... It's so awesome to listen to two rational and intelligent individuals discuss an issue of disagreement in a truly philosophical manner with the mutual goal of discovering what is demonstrably real rather than discuss it in a way that boils down to little more than childish "chest beating" and egotistical "I'm RIGHT and you're WRONG" verbiage. Well done to both of you! You two give me hope for humanity...
Morality is as subjective as empirical science itself. You have to assume the basic principles first in both.
In science you assume that inductive reasoning is valid. In Harris' moral framework, you assume that the positive subjective experiences of conscious creatures are good.
good point
That boils down to the difference between descriptions and prescriptions.
One is either true or false irrespective of any consciousness observing or considering it, while the other is only good or bad because minds used value judgments to decide which it was.
Reality doesn't need minds to manifest, but morality always does, as is the nature of any concept, being that they're conceived in minds, and don't exist separate to minds.
Minds correlate perfectly with brain waves and modern physics has already ruled out all feasible mechanisms on how brain waves could be affected by some spooky action. You can reliably predict people's experiences by studying their brain waves. It's a perfectly scientific explanation, even if you have to rely on self reporting for one step.
People have no problem assuming that other people have consciousnesses, even when this is also only proved by self reporting. If you think only you are conscious and everyone else is a philosophical zombie, the problem disappears.
Mikko Haavisto
Modern physics has already ruled out all feasible mechanisms on how brain waves could be affected by some spooky action? Could you explain what you mean by that? In my understanding modern physics begins with the discovery of the existence of and deals up to this day to a large extend with spooky action like action at a distance, quantum nonlocality, wave-particle duality or dark matter.
@@gavsmith1980 How do you know anything is true for certain?
I kept hearing Wallace Stevens' "The Glass of Water " in my head as I watched this. Very enjoyable, gentlemen. Thanks!
Love watching. Makes me think deeper than the daily grind. Spare time freed the mind.
It's pretty simple - here's a comparison. Happiness is a subjective phenomenon, and some things which make one person happy might make another person unhappy. However, if a person is experiencing happiness, it is objectively true to say "he is happy." In the same way, though each of us can have different desires and beliefs which are subjective, whether or not those desires/beliefs/whatever are fulfilled is a matter of objective fact. The pursuit of moral goodness then becomes the attempt to maximize that fulfillment.
"if a person is experiencing happiness, it is objectively true to say "he is happy.""
No, I don't think so. All we can do is ask him if he's happy. If he says he is, that is a subjective claim and nothing more. At best, he might know whether he is happy or not, but we do not always know our own minds in such matters. And he might not be telling the truth, or he might only be momentarily happy. Perhaps he is content, but not as happy as he was yesterday. Perhaps he has mixed feelings - he may be happy about some aspects of his life and not with others. I don't see how we can consider his state of happiness to be objective at all.
Sorry the original post misunderstands morality.
Morality is a set of rules which people/animals live by.
Enjoyment or none enjoyment are irrelevant to morality.
Well-being is irrelevant to morality because you have to establish whose well-being governs morality.
The individual, the minority or the majority.
I'd say it's a phenomenon that is about subjects, not a "subjective phenomenon". "Subjective phenomenon" implies that it's a relation between some circumstance and some outside observer.
@@davidvarley1812 Pretty much no one understands the word "morality" as just any set of rules.
>Well-being is irrelevant to morality because you have to establish whose well-being governs morality.
That directly contradicts your prior definition of "morality". If any set of rules is a "morality". Then sometimes well being is a causative force or justification of a morality or parts of a morality and sometimes not.
@MrCmon113 I can't agree with you.
Morality is any set of rules a society or a culture decides is appropriate.
The morality of contemporary Britain is alien to that of the Aztecs of 600 years ago. Well-being is subjective, and it's hard, perhaps impossible, to determine how it impacts the moral code of any society or culture. The only true morality is that which governs the universe, the natural world and nature. The lion has no idea what the moral code of natural is, yet it lives within that code.
Morality as we the human race define and know it, is an invention of the human mind, like the house, capitalism or the cheese burger. Ask most Europeans today if slavery is morally acceptable and they'd say it wasn't.
Yet for thousands of years society lived off the back of the slave and in fifty years we'll potentially be a slave owning society once more.
Last time our slaves came from Africa, next time they'll come out of a factory.
Our descendents might think it is morally acceptable to enslave an intelligent android or think it is perverse.
Unnatural morality is a human fiction and is the glue that binds our a society together. Morality is constantly evolving and it's impossible to determine what path it will take. Like the branches or roots of a tree, morality doesn't go in one direction.
I love the beginning of this conversation where they state their honesty. It’s so refreshing
excellent convo
Great discussion gentlemen! Thank you for it
Would be great if Sam himself could comment on this great conversation.
Even after you have established that morals are based on well being, the application is still subjective. Not everyone agrees on what would best promote well being. Take the situation where in one action you would help one person but equally harm another. Does the positive benefit outweigh the negative? Some would say yes and others would say no. The same goes with the concept of "the ends justify the means." There are still many grey areas after the concensus of morals being based on well being.
That's the whole idea of the moral "landscape". Sam pictured in his book a terrain with hills and valleys that represent all kinds of morality position.
Just because people disagree doesn’t mean that there is not an objective truth. Take the example of how many birds are flying above the surface of the Earth at this moment; we could make better or worse educated guesses of the number, but we’ll never know. However, this doesn’t change the fact that there is a precise objectively true number. We can also be sure through observation and reason that some answers are objectively wrong (like 1).
You are completely missing the point. If putting consciousness into a state of well being is the goal it doesn't matter how you get there. Take this analogy. A company's main goal(moral) is to increase it profits(well being). The fact that there are many different approaches and oppinions as to how you increase profits doesn't really matter concerning the issue whether or not the main goal is to increase profits.
A fact about the world doesn't depend upon agreeing everybody that it is true. Some people claim the earth is flat, but this doesn't mean that the shape of the earth is subjective.
Well then, based on the idea of wellbeing, this action is morally neutral and doing it or not doesn't matter.
This is such a civil discussion I almost threw up - I loved it guys, thanks so much.
Thank you Alex for commanding respect to all parties involved in the conversation
Nice to see a discussion emerge amidst the YT circus. Had I been at the table I'd be questioning the "well-being" assumption as it pertains to the well-being of an individual vs. a sub-group vs. a group at large. So, a hand grenade flies into the trench. A high-minded moral sort, covers it with his body thinking of the well-being of the group while ignoring his own. The group goes on to kill hordes of enemy soldiers to the well-being of their army but to the detriment of their opponent's army. But their army had been deployed by an evil dictator seeking to improve his well-being by conquering his enemy's liberal democracy which was to its detriment and that of the individuals within it. Meanwhile, some philosophers persisted with the idea that there's such a thing as objective morality based on well-being.
@French Frys The framework (of any given morality) itself is subjective. You can objectively consider actions and decisions however much you want within given framework, does not make the framework an objective truth.
@French Frys Yes, i agree with Matt on most things, except his take on morality being objective. In this video a better argument is being made imo, namely our morality comes from the physical natural world (our brain), hence it is objectively verifiable. You could in theory compute everyones braincells or brainwaves or whatever, and objectively define the "average" morality. The question then is, is that "objectively" "correct" morality, just because everyone thinks it is? It's the same as taste, we can objectively compute the average taste, but taste is still subjective imo.
Jose Segue
I guess it depends on what you mean by "well being". To survive or flourish? Because what makes you flourish may not help you survive in the same scenario. One of the best ways to "flourish" in my opinion is to follow Maslow's pyramid of needs. It's an interesting phycological take on morality. Your general health is good if you and your friend run away from a lion and escape. You survived. If your friend falls and you keep running your general well being remains good. But if you sacrifice yourself to save your friend you're a better, braver, and more selfless person. Your well being is better in the "essential human" category.
You're ignoring what Harris means by well being lol. Good try and funny post though. Cheers
"Meanwhile, some philosophers persisted with the idea that there's such a thing as objective morality based on well-being."
And they are apparently right, since there is an evil dictator in your story.
I mean, maybe he isn't evil because he is disrespectful of the wellbeing of others and do more to hurt it (directly or by setting precedents and creating appropriate conditions), but then, I would like to know which objective moral framework allow you to qualify him of "evil" rather than just "dictator".
Also, none of your example debunk anything. All of the people you cited acted in order to improve overall wellbeing, whilst decreasing it objectively, it's true and that doesn't change a thing to any sort of objective moral system based on wellbeing, since in fact they all lacked either informations or resolve to act according to the moral truths they could come up with with the informations.
Would the soldier who sacrificed himself had done that if he knew he was fighting for an evil dictator ? What about his unit, would they have charge if they knew about the evilness of their leader (or had a strong enough resolve to oppose him) ? What about the army at large ?
Hey Alex, you know what would be awesome?
You co-staring Atheist Experience with the legend himslef, Matt Dillahunty. That would be epic.
Silent_ Watcher92 While watching this video I was thinking about how cool it would be to hear Matt's input on this issue. He is definitely one of the deepest thinkers I know of.
I very much agree. Also seeing as (if i remember correctly) Matt believes in objective mortality
I'd agree, but Matt isn't too great at letting co-hosts talk. Hopefully he'd make a conserted effort to allow more air-time to someone that travelled 1000's of miles to be on the show.
"The Cosmic Experience"
No way, Seth Andrews is better.
Both of you are just really really pleasant to listen to. Even when I disagree with anything you say, I like your presentation and openness to debate. And especially your ability to change your minds in the face of new information or points of view.
So kudos to you two, looking forward to further debates!
Just found the channel, so super late, but excellent discussion. My main contention with both of your stances is what defines “well-being?” Well-being for the individual (a primarily Western/enlightenment stance and my stance primarily) can be vastly different than well-being for a community. Some more communal cultures may see the pursuit of well-being on the individual level as harming the well-being of the community, and thus be amoral in the sense it causes community disharmony (such as the woman learning to read causing the traditional communal fabric and balance to be thrown off by the disregard of the traditional role). Breaking down things to well-being is inevitable, I agree, but I wonder if that discussion with that person in Somalia would end up resulting in differences of what level of a society the well-being should be prioritized: personal vs. communal
>well-being for a community
There is no reason to assume that communities are conscious, so they don't have "well being" in the same sense as invidiuals. And if you're a panpsychist, you don't know in what states a community experiences pleasure or pain and you have the same problem with rocks.
If you think that a community experiences pain when it dissolves, you would have to assume something similar about eroding rocks or just regular work meetings, etc.
Incredible, rational, respectful, and informative conversation. Thank you immensely for sharing your intellect and rationality with the rest of us.
Ah, 2 TH-cam skeptics worthy of the name.
John H but why arent they whining about sjws? Booo
Oops. Not so much. lol
They are not that skeptical about atheism though. But sure they are fun to watch.
@@BlacksmithTWD depends on your definition of atheism
@@edga69
Of course it does.
Great conversation. I'm leaning towards wellbeing as objective. Begining by defining wellbeing with a basic understanding that my head and your head are better on our shoulders than not.
Great discussion! Good job Steven for keeping Alex out of the his rabbit hole of subjectivity, long enough for the argument to progress 😀
What I understood is that you both agree that the basic assumptions of both medicine and morality, i.e. health and wellbeing respectively, are just that: assumptions. They can't be said to be objective facts or values about the universe.
I agree with you on that, but then Steve seems to imply that since people treat medicine as if it has objective oughts, they should do the same with morality, but what he seems to be missing is that there are objective oughts in medicine only because everyone accepts that health is a goal, which is an assumption. When a patient presents to a doctor, this establishes that both the patient and the doctor value the health of the patient. Only then can the doctor make "objective" oughts. As for homeopathy, the problem with it is that it claims to value health, but there's no evidence that its practices improve health, and this is why it's objectively wrong.
I've enjoyed this calm conversation a lot. Bring Steve back again!
TranquilOblivion, while I agree that homeopathy shouldn't be considered on the same level as, say, prescription drugs, I think it's unfair to say it doesn't value health. I recall reading about a study where patients showed measurable improvement when a caring doctor prescribed sugar pills, even when they knew they were getting placebos. The homeopathic solutions may fail the test, but the practice itself could be considered effective due to the psychological effects.
Either way, I can't see it as *objectively* wrong.
He explicitly said that health being a goal is an assumption. It was basically his entire case so I don't know how you think he missed it?
The difference you are pointing out is that two people may agree on well being as a standard but place different values on the well being of different actions. This is why the book is called The Moral LANDSCAPE. It is a metaphor. While we may all agree on the standard we won't necessarily agree on the best course of action because we place different values on well being.
In the case of throwing battery acid in the face of girls for learning to read, muslims do not see this as immoral because they have additional baggage when they define well being based on the afterlife and whatever other factors such sins could cause to both the girl and the family. It's not as cut and dry as medicine but it is fundamentally identical.
In fact, there's quite a landscape with medicine particularly when discussing complicated medical issues. Heck, there's a lot of risk weighing even when discussing whether or not to use over the counter drugs (not homeopathy) for the common cold.
Matt Dillahunty (and Sam Harris but this is paraphrasing Matt's analogy) equates it to chess moves. At any point of time in the middle of a game of chess if you ask Chess Grandmasters to give the best move they probably will not give the same answer and/or for the same reason. There's a bit of subjectivity to it. However that doesn't mean there isn't some objective best answer out there even if we don't know or agree on it and we have to assume the objective moral standard (rules of chess) in order to compare and weigh the options.
"but what he seems to be missing is that there are objective oughts in medicine only because everyone accepts that health is a goal, which is an assumption"
He didn't miss it, he actually acknowledged it. Have you watched the entire discussion? He said that health is an assumption for medicine, just as wellbeing is for morality. He said it several times.
Can someone tell me if I understood this correctly?
What they agreed on in the end is basicaly that we cannot claim that morality is objective, however, in practical sense, we should make that assumption, because we make a similar assumption about other branches of science?
"Steel man" your opponent's argument...I love it.
Great conversation. Thanks Rationality Rules For suggesting this video.
I love how at the end of this Alex pretty much admits that having a philosophical objection to something is often practically useless !
hearing Alex say "i hope to be a vegan one day" in 2020 makes my heart so happy. he is a vegan now. and a pretty darn good one.
Yes he is. I just saw his debate with Matt dillahunty...impressive!
@@dshawnbyrd It wasn't a debate though. It was a conversation.
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 he is so good at being Vegan!
Me too!!! I am happy when anyone goes vegan, but ecstatic when highly intelligent and communicative influencers do.
Vegan hugs from Canada
❤️🌱❤️🌱❤️🌱❤️🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦❤️🌱❤️🌱❤️🌱❤️
@@spongbobsquarepants3922 true, but they were debating in the convo.
Yeah this all feels right. Have always had an issue with Sam’s argument, but I feel comfortable with hanging out in the space you two ended up.
This is fantastic! Thanks guys!!
That was a nice discussion. I agree with both of you that given the assumption of well-being, there's a better chance of figuring out what's morally good and bad. Although, to use your example of medicine, when it comes to health there are several metrics that can be used to determine the proper function of a system (statistically at least). The analogous for well-being should somehow take into account how consciousness work, which science is not even close to answer (would a measure of serotonin let's say be enough to determine how happy I am?).
Besides that, you could make the argument even more complicated given multiple agents. Most of the times our actions can effect other people, while in many cases there's a conflict of interests (this can be shown for all animals under an evolutionary point of view). Is my "well-being" as important as others'? Should i give my life for 2 strangers? Even if we accept the well-being hypothesis and explain it in a mechanistic way, there's still room for weighting the situations and have alternative policies/strategies.
is he the actor for Jesus in the walking dead?
Ironic
Great video guys ! Thank you.
I want to say that I loved your discussion and it brings me hope to see you and yought like you (I am not so old). I have been following both and also holy koolaid for sometime now. I am from Turkey but I am thankful to Britain (even though in historical and political way, Turkey has some problems with Britain and rest of the world) for raising such people for all of our well-being... All I hope is to raise my kids curious, skeptical, rational, thinking, searching, discussing etc like you ( I am doing my best but my country moves backwards instead of forward). Thank you for all the joy and hope.
A wise guy says that "I never loose in a debate, either my opponent teach me something or I teach."
I love this
imagine if people around you were capable of an peaceful discussion like this
man... i can dream about this right?
it takes a certain level intelligence to self reflect, play devils advocate and pick apart a philosophical idea for the sake of truth. Most people are more interested in "holding rank" and not breaking their delicate image of themselves.
Fuck you!!!!
When having this discussion you MUST discuss well being of who- the group or the individual. You can get different objective answers depending on your stance.
Derrek Evans u have covid?
Yes. The "Wellbeing" of Who or What ?
I don't see any more reason to believe that a group can have well being than I see reason to believe that trees or rocks do. And if they had, I wouldn't know in which states they are happy or sad.
@@jasonlee2692
Well being proper. Consciousness doesn't have a subject. Pleasure and displeasure simply arise in a space that is completely borderless and centerless.
So refreshing to watch a conversation instead of an argument. Thank you lads. My gut reaction to the topic is that if morals were truly objective, wouldn't we all agree on them?
This is a very good debate, really enjoyed this thanks. I would still like to hear a little more about the concept of wellbeing as core to these arguments. Couldn't the very concept of well being also be subjectively rooted?
What does "subjectively rooted" mean?
I would like to debunk Steve's argument Rationality Rules style, so:
Steve's argument:
Premise 1, everyone's morals eventually boil down to "well-being".
Premise 2, "well-being" is objective.
Premise 3, therefore morality is objective.
Premise 1 could be a generalization fallacy, for there may be other things morals boil down to. For instance, a non-religious mass murderer may have no regard for anyone's well-being and his/her morality will therefore not boil down to well-being. Highly religious people may also adamantly keep saying that it is because their god tells them to, which would be worship, and not necessarily well-being.
Premise 2 is an equivocation fallacy. It requires everyone to have the same definition of "well-being", even though there are multiple definitions. For instance, "well-being" may mean "what is best for the group", or "what is best for my family", or "what is best for me" and so on.
Additionally, for any term to be objective, it must be quantifiable or measurable, so unless you can find a definition of "well-being" that every person in the world agrees with and that is completely measurable, this premise fails.
Premise 3 is not a fallacy (as far as I can tell), and follows naturally from the other 2 premises. However, since at least one of the former premises fail, this premise/conclusion fails as well.
Thanks for your read and see you next time.
Richard Santing Regarding the example you gave of a religious extremist, you could go a step further and ask "Why are you following what God told you to?" and the answer might be "If I follow God's command, there'll be peace on Earth". I'm not gonna go through all possibilities, but in essence it is well being, I think. As for a mass murderer, I'm not an expert on psychology (obviously :D), so I'm hoping someone else will think about it and comment here.
I very much appreciate your debunking. I made a comment with similar reasoning, which I will share below.
The biggest flaw I see with BOTH their arguments is the statement that morality boils down to well-being.
I was born with the innate desire to value MY well-being. You were born with the desire to value YOUR well-being, not mine. So morality only boils down to the individual's well-being, not the COLLECTIVE well-being. The only reason to value someone else's well-being is if it also happens to improve my own. If I improve my well-being while hurting yours, I am being OBJECTIVELY moral to myself, and my actions are also OBJECTIVELY IMMORAL to you. Which, ironically, means that morality is necessarily subjective.
To reiterate, because everyone's morality boils down to their individual well-being, morality has to be subjective. Stephen would be correct if everyone's morality boiled down to the collective well-being, but we cannot say that with certainty. Unless I am mistaken, science has not proven that we have an innate desire to protect the collective well-being.
A mass murderer is a perfect example that shows our morality does not boil down to everyone's well-being, only our own.
You are completely missing what well being means. Well being is a state of consciousness completely separate from the world around it in the sense that you can easily imagine pure well being without any external cause. You are conflating well being with "what I think might give me a sense of well being". You consciousness is either feeling well or not. It doesn't matter why
This is a great discussion. It’s worth bearing in mind that assuming utilitarianism/well-being as fundamental isn’t ubiquitous in moral codes. Some alternatives include rights (that just ‘are’, rather than being based on wellbeing), honour and more controversially, genetic survival of through oneself and one’s kin
Have to take issue with "we ASSUME that medicine pertains to improving health."
We don't; we DEFINE medicine to be the improvement of health.
Yeah these guys are clueless.
Gri sha That’s one mistake if anything, they’re not clueless, they’re actually very intelligent and are having an intellectual discussion
@@thegoat8827 Intelligent people with bad ideas often end up in a far worse state than unintelligent people with few ideas.
The situation is analogous to the advice that when lost in the woods it is better to stay put than to move around trying to find your way out. These guys are like an olympic runner who is lost in the amazon rainforest and can run faster than 90% of people. They end up getting more and more lost *because* of their extra speed and mobility. Whereas a person in a wheelchair or of below average speed can't actually get anywhere quickly enough to get themselves in even more trouble.
I call this the "layperson's advantage"; A plumber or nurse knows how idiotic most ideas from academia and philosiphy is and so they just ignore them. A philosophy student with no real world experience can't reject idiotic positions like moral nihilism because they've only been in a safe, controlled environment where bad ideas aren't punished or are even rewarded.
The danger with people like these two is that their ideas will discredit philosophy to the public in general, and will make the normal people who work for a living will react extremely negatively. Look at how the Alt-Right has reacted to the Social Justice lunatics. That is only going to get worse from here on out:
www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
"Peterson is popular partly because he criticizes social justice activists in a way many people find satisfying, and some of those criticisms have merit. He is popular partly because he offers adrift young men a sense of heroic purpose, and offers angry young men rationalizations for their hatreds. * And he is popular partly because academia and the left have failed spectacularly at helping make the world intelligible to ordinary people, and giving them a clear and compelling political vision. * "
The more nihilism takes over academia, the stronger the public's hatred of academia will grow.
@@cas343 I think the issue here is that Stephen is neither a philosophical or practical nihilist, whereas Alex shares some nihilist philosophical underpinnings but does not allow that to make him a practical nihilist. I think it is akin to saying "Philosophically, we can't know much more than that there is existence, as everything following is predicated on assumptions (however universal), but to act as if that implies there is no practical knowledge, or practical objectivity is self-evidently stupid." This seems to be Alex's view in a nutshell, and I think it is quite uncontroversial. While I agree with your overall point wholeheartedly regarding the societal trends and their causes, I do not believe these two fall into the nihilist group that makes people hate academia of which you speak.
And so we define morality as improvement of well being. Same shit.
Alex, could you please do a video on a channel, Deflating Atheism. I've commented on his most recent videos and I've seen nothing but hatred and just purely wrong information about the stance of Atheism.
I second
I fifth, despite being a year late.
Premise 1: Every single person on earth has a morality system which is based on the assumption that well-being is an inherently good thing.
Premise 2: Well-being is a physical condition that can be measured by science.
Conclusion: Given enough education, every single person on earth will eventually agree on what is inherently good and what is inherently bad.
I see a problem here. There are many people with contradicting morality systems, such as kantianism, utilitarism, positivism, etc. Therefore, there must be a mistake in my syllogism!
We have duties to the dead and duties to the yet to be born that cannot be determined by well being.
This is just one problem with Harris' assertion that we'll being is the only necessary to morality
@@danhiggins9151
What kinds of duties are they? Can you give me one or more examples?
Why can't those duties be determined by well being?
What are some of the other problems with Harris' assertion that we'll being is the only necessary to morality?
Drinking acid is bad.
@@WadelDee Honoring people's wills when they die. Proper burials. Not slandering and defaming or otherwise disrespecting dead people. Respecting said dead person's grave.
As for the unborn
Mother's not taking drugs during pregnancy
Not aborting after a certain point in development
Making sure you have the financial ability to support them once they are born
Likely more for both, but just examples.
My thoughts about this: I think all sciences have two stages, theoretical and practical, and both stages have a base set of assumptions that are agreed upon, like math, physics, chemistry, biology; the way it's defined morality and ethics may give us a base set of assumptions like "the golden rule" and by that base we construct theorems (I think of these better than theories) that supports the various definitions on the realm of ethics and morality (I don't separate these because of one being theoretical and the other one practical). I think of morality, in terms of what's being discussed, a "baby science" or a "science in process" by making a base set of definitions and axioms while discussing the ethics and the behaviour of people rather than taking for granted that it is what it is.
Thanks for always making great content on your channel.
interresting thoughts...thanks for sharing
The discussion mentioned that all morality boils down to well being, but I think that assumption may not always be true.
Well being of whom exactly? Yourself? Your species? All life?
And what about a sociopath or psychopath? They may value their own well being while not valuing others.
Circuitrinos, you just pointed out that even the psychopath is still striving for well-being. It's just that he/she is only concerned with their own well-being.
The wellbeing of all consious creatures. This includes animals and artificial consiousness. Even if something increases the wellbeing of all humans but at magnitudes more of suffering in animals it is wrong.
@@Andy-em8xt Well said.
@@Andy-em8xt why should I care about the well-being of animals?
Anthony Norman because animals are conscious and experience pain and joy as you do?
Alex is on the right track in recognizing morality as different from science as Steve is describing it. What Steve fails to acknowledge in this video is that medicine is an APPLIED science... a science that takes the data derived from fields such as biology, chemistry, etc. and makes a practical application of it in our lives. The same is true in any other technological field.
Applied sciences are inherently interwoven with ethics/morality because they are all concerned with how we should or should not "improve" our lives. It is one question to ask why a chemical reaction takes place and how such a reaction might interact with a virus. This is within the confines of scientific inquiry, and we could consider our conclusions as objective facts determined by empirical observation. But the classification of a virus as "bad"--as something that needs to be eradicated on the basis of our views on health--is not a question of science. Medicine is a field that already carries moral assumptions about health and well-being. Biology, on the other hand, simply seeks to improve our objective understanding of natural life. As far as I can tell, it carries no ethical assumptions. (However, that's not to say that science carries no philosophical assumptions/axioms at all... it's just that ethics is the focus of this discussion.)
Science certainly can inform our understanding and practice of morality... but, by definition, it still cannot and will never give us a philosophically justifiable "ought." Sam Harris and Steve can't get around this.
This topic is one of my largest passions of life. To see it here on youtube being discussed in formal dialectic style makes me want to kiss you both! I am so happy to demonstrably know that others like me exist elsewhere
good work guys❣️
Necessary Assumptiom, a book by Cosmic Skeptic and Rationality Rules
*assumption... May the Grammar God forgive you...
Steve is making the classic mistake of conflating hypothetical imperatives with categorical imperatives. Well being is also a fuzzy concept. The purpose of medicine is to fix health ailments. Whether you fix them or not can be objectively determined. The purpose of morality is to judge behavior, not according to a physical standard, but a metaphysical and cultural one.. Whether behavior is morally 'right' or 'wrong' cannot be objectively determined, because the moral 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of a behavior isn't an objective property in the same way physical disease is.
the purpose of morality is to prevent others from causing psychological and physical damage
"Do no Harm" is based on specism!
Well said.
Joe Smith -Stephen isn’t making that mistake because in very beginning, when he steel-maned Alex’s argument, Alex said that he believes well-being is measurable because just because we don’t have the technology currently doesn’t mean we can (i.e. we could measure some sort of neuronal elements and potentially determine well-being). I don’t have a personal belief on this yet, I am still taking time to fully construct my believe system, but I wanted to point out that Alex conceited that he believes well being is physical and while not currently measurable, it is potential measurable.
"The purpose of medicine is to fix health ailments. Whether you fix them or not can be objectively determined" You're ignoring the issue of side effects. The purpose of medicine is to fix an ailment while producing as few side effects as possible. If a medicine cures a headache but causes cancer it's pretty terrible medicine. How well it does this cannot be objectively determined.
"Premises in description" - They are not.
Premise 1: Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds. Specifically, that such minds can experience various forms of wellbeing and suffering in this universe.
Premise 2: Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena. Fully constrained by the laws of nature, whatever these end up being.
Conclusion: Therefore, there must be right or wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science.
You talk like Yodah much you do ;-)
@@justinlines3715 The problem, when you cut past all the bullshit, is that the world is full of different subjective moral preferences, which I define as “not intrinsically harmful”. But the existence of different “not intrinsically harmful preferences” creates harm in the form of psychological and emotional distress when people are exposed to behaviour violating their preferred norms. Thus these two liberal propagandists, to the extent they agree with Sam Harris, were really attempting to justify privileging their own liberal preferences and oppressing other preferences to achieve a harmonious herd consensus, in which the harms inflicted on them by our culture war are eliminated. This is not objective morality, it’s an attempt to smuggle in subjective-based authoritarian actions under the guise of objectivity. The biggest clue to me was when they started making moral statements about racism. Why use that term if you’re trying to incorporate morality into science with an objective criteria relating to wellbeing? Science uses operational language (stating things as sequences of actions) that disambiguates meaning. Using terms like racism brings ambiguity into the equation, which science has no tolerance for. I’ll give two examples to illustrate the difference:
A) “Throwing acid into a man’s face because of their ethnic/racial background is catastrophic to their wellbeing and therefore bad”
B) “Ewww racism is bad”
The latter statement is ambiguous, and even if CosmicSkeptic has a definition in his mind that limits the concept of racism to a set of demonstrably harm-inflicting behaviours, he must have his head buried in the sand if he doesn’t realise it is commonly understood to refer to all instances of discrimination and forms of bias, harmful or otherwise, as dictated by the liberal/leftist subjective preference for diversity.
@@justinlines3715 My problem with Harris' reasoning is that the conclusion seems baked into premise 1. Naturally, if we define morality as related to well-being and suffering, we can (in theory) make measurements and conclusions within that moral system. But the proposal to value well-being over other parameters is itself a moral statement that is ultimately unjustified. He seems to argue that it's the single parameter that fits best with our moral intuition. Even if we accept that assumption, why does congruence with existing morals make for a good moral system? There's no getting around the philosophical discussion.
Oh good, it’s not just me!
This was an extremely interesting conversation. I do have a problem with something though. Is wellbeing a quantifiable thing? As I understand it wellbeing is based on the conscious experience and it would be very hard (if not impossible) to compare two experiences objectively.
I think the book makes the point that it's at least theoretically possible to measure well being since consciousness is part of the brain, a physical thing. At the very least, I think it's clear that if you hit someone and they cry and say ow, that's at least a crude bit of feedback that their well being has been harmed. Ideally, we'd develop the technology to really measure it with great accuracy. That said, I'm sure there are things that everyone would say harms their well being and there are some things that people would disagree on, like Christians don't mind being preached to about Jesus, but atheists might find that irritating.
@9th Forqis If consciousness is not a product of the brain, where would it come from?
@9th Forqis philosophy indeed defines what consciousness is the same way that it defines what life is, but science can make observations that can categorise things as either matching those definitions or not. There are philosophers that disagree on the definition of life, and I'm sure there will be disagreement on consciousness. But science is good at making discoveries, and I'm pretty sure at some point technology will be good enough that predominant definitions of consciousness will be measurable.
What a brilliant conversation although I do miss CosmicSkeptic ripping someone apart... Constructively 😊
Hell yeah! I love his channel, glad to see you two together
Also, I ship it ;)
all day everyday bb
Halt
God I LOVE seeing people talking about the same things that I think about and try to understand all the time. You guys have the same quarrels and thoughts regarding these topics that I do and it's so nice to see that other people think the same things that I've thought for years. It's nice to know that I'm not just believing and contemplating these things in a vacuum. It makes me feel better living in a world with all of the people who refuse to admit that they seek pleasure and wish to avoid suffering, especially those who insist that morality is entirely subjective and is just a matter of personal opinion and social acceptability. Those people are the most frustrating thing, and they're waayyy too common.
The best I could do is argue that "good" is built into the definition of pleasure and "bad" is built into the definition of suffering, but I don't really know that that's true, because it doesn't explicitly say "good" or "bad" in either of those definitions, it just has those implications and connotations of good and bad. I think those definitions, as well as the definition of morality, should be changed to be more clear and more practical.
Good discussion if one takes the subjective position of discussion being productive of new thoughts and deepening understanding.
sooo the problem with homeopathy vs medicine compared to moral vs immoral is that both claim to achieve something (make people healthy cure disease etc...) meaning we can test whether or not they do achieve that thing and decide whether or not they are good at doing what they claim it doesn't matter if health is a good goal or not health is the intended purpose and we can test which better achieves it objectively
That's why Harris defined morality to be about well-being. Once you actually have a clear definition of what "good" and "bad" mean then you can start to derive things from them. Believing one definition is better than another is certainly subjective, but the definitions themselves are analytic truths which means they are objective facts. They just describe different concepts using the same word.
+Taylor Adams But there are different kinds of well-being. There's short term vs long term, individual vs collective. Emotional vs physical. I don't see how one system of values can cover them all without being relativistic (and I don't have a problem with relativism).
I think you guys are both correct. Morality, in my eyes comes from societal and species evolution. We are social creatures, therefore, we had to evolve in such a way to cope with each other and not kill each other. Western society supports morality such as "don't kill unprovoked", "don't rape" and "help others". This helps us to develop further.
On the other hand, though, every culture and every person makes morality for themselves. These evolved traits that I believe lie in the prefrontal cortex or corpus callosum, and have evolved fairly recently in our ancestral tree. We also see morality in other species, such as elephants, but not others. The very basis of morality comes from this. Other than that, it is subjective. Based on where you live, societal pressures, and personal mental states, you will think slightly different from your neighbor. I think circumstance is the most important thing in this. Say yo throw acid in someone's eyes. When would this be okay? Some say never, I would say in self defense.
I don't think that morality, if it is objective, comes from some universal law, like mathematics and physics. I think it comes from our biological makeup, and what we make of our environment. I respect you both very much for debating so civilly, if only our politicians were like this.
Interesting video and great discussion.
I love this discussion/debate. Both sides were talking in good-faith. An absolute breath of fresh air.
Hrm... kinda thinking you guys should have a series of these (once a week or month?) where you get together and just talk thru various topics (one topic per episode). :) I'd watch.
Back to the topic at hand...
Question: I'm curious, if the base assumption (which I too agree this is) of "morality is based on well-being, and well being is good" is one-step-too-far - what base assumptions do you accept as a better starting point for morality in particular? As an example, one could argue solipsism all day long, but at what point does it stop being productive and you choose to "own" a base assumption such as, "whether or not I'm in the matrix, I can't seem to know. Therefore I will live as if it's irrelevant and my thoughts and actions actually influence the world and those around me." For me, this is the same type of assumption Harris is making with morality - which I for one am happy to accept. A philosophical flaw? Maybe, but hardly one that should dissuade the world from taking the practicality of the science/follow-up research seriously. Thoughts?
Solipsism is a bad comparison. If we followed through with it practically, we'd accomplish nothing and the only differences between pre-solipsist and post-solipsist would be at the level of the solipsist. Having a moral system based on a different target for wellbeing could have massive or small consequences ranging from a single belief changing that changes one or two of your decisions to the end of humanity.
31:41
I'd rephrase what Alex has said like this:
1)We define "GOOD" as a state of the world which we want to achieve.
2)We call something that helps us achieve "GOOD" as "g00d"
2)We know/agree/assume that using Medicine X causes this Body State Y and the effect is objectively true.
3)We subjectively consider the Body State Y as a GOOD.
4)Therefore, medicine X achieves the Body State Y which is GOOD.
5)Since Medicine X helps us achieve GOOD, Medicine X is objectively g00d.
In other words, by this way of thinking, when you say "X is obejectively good (or bad)", it means that we both agree that X does what we consider good/bad and (we assume that) it is an objective fact that X does that.
You discovered deflationism
Great conversation.
Excellent video, excellent analogy
So we all agree that morality is based on well being. But whose well being? Because if you're a let's say a racist, then you care about the well being of your race, but not the well being other races. So then if you, somehow, came to the conclusion, that murdering people of the other race improves your races well being is that than the objectivly right thing to do?
I completely agree that morality, if you break it down, is based on well being. But not necessarily on the well being of everybody and everthing. So you my point is that you still can't say that morality is objective, because as I said in my excample, is it wrong to kill the people of that other race? It really just depends on what side you ask. It's subjective.
Still thank you two for the debate, a lot of interesting ideas. I didn't really think of morality as thing based on well being before, you kind of opened my eyes on that one :)
I'm pretty sure it's based on an in-group/out-group mentality, derived from the "pack". The reason why racists think that other races are bad is because they think they will negate the well being of the in-group, while non-racists consider these other races as part of the in-group.
And this is where I have to disagree with Alex. Alex thinks that, even though everyone on the planet can agree with this definition of morality, that doesn't make it objective. However, if it is ingrained with-in the human species, then wouldn't there be a biological reason for this unanimous agreement? I'm not a philosopher, but evolutionary psychology has every reason to have this definition written within our brain. If a pack member does something that harms the in-group, then their group's chances of survival (as well as their own) is hindered, meaning that they won't be able to carry their genes to the next generation.
AKA some where in our brains is the rule of "preserve well being". This isn't subjective. If every human being has it, then it's just as objective as the hair on our head or the hypocampus storing short term memory. If we are to say that this rule is just subjective, then we are also forced to say that the way a trans man relate to their genitals would also be subjective, even though transgender men have brains have been scientifically (objectively) been proven to be more masculine then feminine.
from what I could understand from their conversation was that Morality when broken down to the well being is objective but the product of morality is subjective(defining what is good or bad) , but if you somehow could show someone that by doing something he thinks is good for his well being is actually not with actual evidence then you could say that what that person was doing is objectively wrong and act upon it.
Harris and this guy seem to rely on the following sleight of hand:
There is an objective basis for morality... therefore morality itself is objective.
It simply doesn't follow, it's just an assumption.
If you're a racist, you wouldn't be maximizing well-being, by definition, because you would have no concern for the well-being of other races.
If there's an objective basis for morality, what else *could* it mean but that morality itself is objective?
If height is an objective measurement (and it is), then how tall you are is an objective number.
The minute you admit that there is an objective basis for morality, you have to admit that morality is objective. That's what it means to have an objective basis.
It would make more sense to argue that morality _doesn't_ have an objective basis.
If one person is talking about well-being in the hereafter, and the other person is talking about well-being while the person is alive, they may both be coming at the question on the basis of well-being, but they're never going to find common ground, because while they might agree that morality increases well-being, they haven't agreed on what well-being means.
I’m still struggling to see how well-being is an objective concept.
On the issue of homosexuality a Christian could argue that refraining from homosexual thoughts and acts earns favour with their god and makes them more likely to reach heaven which contributes to a persons wellbeing.
Another person could argue that a person refraining from homosexual thoughts and acts leads to a repressed state of turmoil and therefore detracts from a persons wellbeing.
Hence, whether the repression of homosexuality is bonefitial for someone’s wellbeing or not depends entirely on your worldview.
The same could be said about the hijab in Somalia. From the dominant worldview in that society, forced hijab wearing is beneficial to the wellbeing of its citizens (favour with god) whereas from an entirely secular point of view it restricts freedom and harms wellbeing.
We can’t objectively prove which worldview is right or wrong so we can’t objectively prove an action’s objective effect on wellbeing.
In medicine, well-being seems to be an objective (or universal) concept - at least with respect to certain conditions.
citizenghosttown Absolutely, however I would say that it is as such because medical wellbeing in most cases is a fairly objective idea.
The only problem is that wellbeing isn’t only medical in the eyes of a lot of people. Some people would consider wellbeing in the afterlife, spiritual wellbeing and the comfort that they live in to be essential aspects of their wellbeing and I wouldn’t say that they are wrong nor right in thinking as such. Yet I am saying that only using medical wellbeing as a basis for objective morality is enforcing a secular morality onto people who’s morality is based on their religion or it is at least calling their version of morality wrong for reasons that I find fairly hard to justify.
HomoSapien1234 Well in regard to science wellbeing is absolutely physiological and psychological. However if we understand wellbeing on only scientific terms we cant say that all morality boils down to wellbeing. Just over 50% of the worlds population are either Christian or Muslim, In both these religions morality boils down to someone’s wellbeing in the next life and not their bodily/ mental wellbeing. If the morality of this many people doesn’t boil down to strictly scientific wellbeing well then the foundation of Harris’ claim to objective morality is wrong.
If we take into account religious peoples views of morality, wellbeing is subjective and therefore so is morality. If we discount a religious view of wellbeing then we cant say that everyone’s morality boils down to wellbeing which renders the basis of Harris’ claim to objective morality false.
I agree and here's a strong argument why moral realism isn't just badly grounded, it also misses it's goal to be practical, think of this, how would you convince somebody, by saying to them they're objectively wrong? Or by recognizing their position and trying to speak in their language? And what is objective after all? It is intersubjektive consensus, the concept of the sun only makes sense to one because we observe it, it's entirely arbitrary to count this chunk of space (also just a human concept) as the sun, it's useful, doesn't make it more right outside of this human context.
And we have to be aware that we speak as if we could step outside of the human context, but we actually can't, that's why we have to be very careful to clarify what objective actually means!
@@MrS-in8pp I see where you're going. Would you say it's wrong if parents keep their kids from having a blood transfusion ultimately causing their death? In two cases where it happened in my circle of people, they claimed that it went against their God and it was worse for them at least in the long run. I feel this borders medicine and morality, well being and health. Bear in mind that health harmful beliefs based on religious or cultural views were rampant. Health must be defined so people's minds can be changed in the first place.
I would argue that morality should somehow be redefined. Something both speakers here seem to agree with. What is morality for? After we have the answer, where you or I take them from shouldn't be an issue. One will be right and another wrong...
The conundrum in well being, and even health, is that different cultures will distinguish and even subordinate an individual's well being for societal's or group's well being, or vice versa. This is a topic that needs to be debated. Meaning, it will be interesting to hear an argument that proves why individual's well being guarantees or has greater probability of achieving group's well being.
Panpsychism is a really fringe position outside of philosophy, so I don't think any significant amount of people believe a group's well being even exists.
Good point to start with: Hans Wagner - Philosophie und Reflexion.
If you say "homeopathy is objectively wrong" it's just nonsense, everything you can say about homeopathy is just that it objectively doesn't have impact on your health.
I think this is a point Alex never quite explicitly said, but danced around it a lot. I was waiting for him to just say that the problem with homeopathy is that it doesn't do what it's claimed to do, rather than being "wrong" according to medicine.
Dissonant Second Yea, it's pitty.
Scientists have developed highly sensitive instruments that demonstrate homeopathy is effective as a medicine to cure disease. This science has convinced countries like Switzerland Germany and many other European countries to recognize it as legitimate.
Benjamin Brewer Well, positive effect of homeopatics can be just as "strong" as placebo
in clinical tests, homeopathy is as strong as placebo effect. And that's not nothing. Just think about all the drugs candidates that didn't pass the tests. They were cleverly designed, reasoned, researched - lot of resources and ingenuity went into them and in the end, they weren't measurably more effective than a sugar pill. With this being a reality of the drug development, I can't honestly agree with the statement "objectively [homeopathy] doesn't have impact on your health". As much as I would like for these scams and shams be objectively dismissed, I don't see an intellectually honest way to do it.
33:35 "Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell"
The ethical part of 'throwing acid is bad until its good' is relative based on metrics of good and bad. This is purely reflective of causality making it relatively objective. Metrics of causality instead of objects are what I mean by relatively objective. My semanics are consistent with coventional meanings, with a division of conflated terms.
5 years later: As much as I value philosophy for exercising our mental acuity, I think it sometimes gets in the way of practical, productive rationality. Too often, I've seen philosophical discussions get mired down in semantics as to prevent progress toward any practical goal or objective. (I guess that may make me an enemy of the channel.) Nevertheless, I do enjoy the journey of these conversations when the paths have been discovered and worked through. I agree with where Stephen (and Sam) have arrived at the time of this video. In a practical sense, morality should be defined with "well-being" and it can be objectively studied toward that end.