"What Am I Missing?" Sam Harris vs Alex O'Connor on Objective Morality
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The title is perfect because I feel like I’m missing 30 years of context for this conversation.
Just wanted to comment here to proudly share that I've been sober for 1,679 days.
Gj man
I'll drink to that.
No you just wanted to comment a made up story in a totally unrelated place for some sympathy through the like counter to make you feel better.
Wp, alcohol diff
@@FredrickGustafson-lv4tywow
This is professional yapping
Hearing Alex say "Minecraft" is something I never knew I wanted.
Mein krohhft
You should adjust your wants and desires 😂
Timestamp?
@@Raphael4722 9:11
Im just sitting here smoking a bong pretending like I have the slightest clue wtf they are talking about. Anybody else? lol
Well, you're a retarded pothead. Clearly nobody else is as adamant at proclaiming their loser status like you are.
Just you bro cause you’re not smart and you lack the intelligence and comprehension to know what they’re talking about. You should do the world a favor and never give an opinion on the topic since you’re so uninformed. No offense tho.
Word bruh 💨
Harris is being a bit overly abstract simply for the sake of abstracting his abstract abstraction of abstractness. Aka, saying complex nonsense for the sake of sounding fancy.
Alex nailed it, there are objectively better and worse ways to achieve my subjective preferences. Sam disagrees and then explains in a way that demonstrates that he actually agrees.
@@billtruttschel
That sentence means literally nothing.
The premise doesn't lead to the conclusion, other than being reported in the same sentence.
@@billtruttschelclaiming other things are objectively contextualised by a subjective perspective is an oxymoron
So what though? That's still subjective morality.
@@billtruttschel I think you missed the point. What you said doesn't defeat the stance of the comment youre responding to. It's still only objective with respect to an arbitrary goal
I think it's fair to say we can not be totally objective that dose not mean we are incapable of making an objective decision or at least aiming for it and over riding our bias providing it is not a blinding bias , our view will be coloured and viewed through our experience and knowledge (distorted and limited hue if you will ) objectivity is the light we reach for rather than to attain . Hope that makes some sense to some one .
the flaw with this line of reasoning is that morality is almost never an individual construct. It's a collective one. We don't follow moral rules solely to benefit our own personal pleasure, but in order to participate in a collective where we gain benefits from that participation. You don't need a moral framework to live as an individual. You only need one in order to live in a community as part of a collective.
Say you are living as an individual, how would you know what to do with yourself without a moral framework? Morality is necessary to instruct behaviour toward others and oneself.
@@Egshsjsjsj Do whatever I want without considering morality.
Could you give an example of using morality while being completely alone?
@@Egshsjsjsj you don't need morality to treat yourself good. You do that automatically as part of instincts for self preservation. Morality is about our behavior toward others, not ourselves.
@@Egshsjsjsjhe’s not saying he doesn’t have a moral framework, he’s saying that framework is shaped largely by the society he wishes to benefit from.
This framing of morality as a “needed” tool is misguided. Objective morality people don’t view morality as instrumentally good, and they would hold that it is as necessary when living alone as in society. There simply is some objective standard for right and wrong and every action is subject to that analysis.
11:50 This is literally the crux of the disagreement.
"Objectively better, *IF* better means navigating away from the worst possible misery for everyone [...]."
Alex' point seems to be that the universe itself has no prescription to do what increases wellbeing. Sam's point seems to be that, if we agree that wellbeing is better than suffering and use that as a foundation for ethics, "right" behaviour is rather determined.
The fundamental question is whether one accepts that suffering should be avoided and wellbeing enhanced.
Isn’t well-being completely subjective?
@@GyatRizzler69-of3wl exactly - how do you define wellbeing and how do you define suffering
@@JoBo301 they basically boil down to health. That’s the objective basis for suffering and wellbeing which is what’s agreed on between Alex and Rationality Rules when discussing Sam Harris’s objective morality.
@@heylo5274 physical health or mental health or spiritual health or moral health??/
The hilarity is the "IF". No Sam, if you use an "IF", you are no longer defining objective morality.
Listening to atheist is a fucking headache.
When I listen to pastors for our Christian faiths, our imams or our Muslim brothers, and even Buddhist Bhodivistas and Hindu Adiyogis, it’s always a breath of fresh air.
So much knowledge and wisdom simply explained in lessons, our chores and devotions, our priorities and our unity, we work in tandem for common goals, very natural and spiritual connection stays alive and worked on.
When athiest talk, it’s always a probing, dissecting, splicing and over simplifying shit, it takes you hrs, to weeks to years to dance around a simple notion when it comes to them, when we hear our mentors in our faiths, it’s simple yet gravitates towards prudence, always on progress, always on results of fruition.
I love my Bible, my Christian fellowship and my churches I go to, comfort in this world of peril, strife and sorrow. Most athiest I talk to are on a string line of meds, always figgity, always know it alls, always on the brink of suicide, yet all the brethren’s of faiths I talk to are always calm and collective, ensuring and comforting. I don’t even bother with the naysayers anymore. I just turn to the people of obedience and steadfast faith.
Stay up brethren’s of faith. You couldn’t pay me to debate an atheist or sit through their bullshit, you’ll be sent to a realm of chaos and uncontrollable bullshit. Stick to practicing the Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata, the Gita, the dhammapada and other holy books. Build stronger fellowships, and attend to your churches, mosques, temple gatherings and live.
Funny how opinions differ. When I listen to pastors, I usually want to leave, thinking "why do I have to endure this bullshit?"
Well said, this atheist crap is pointless. They have nothing to offer humanity, just a talking shop to make money. Pathetic. Harris is boring as hell, and wrong. Alex is a decent person, Harris is useless.
William Lane Craig destroyed Harris’s moral position years ago in their debate.
lol. Low bar bill couldn’t destroy a sand castle.
He’s won every debate with flying colors
I’ve taken that special Music pill before … and I’ll probably take it a few more times to come
What I don't understand about these experiences Sam keeps going on about is what is the point of doing it? Am I really worse off never having done it?
I'm a professional musician and I have been taking those music pills through my entire life😂
@@OhManTFE From what I infer, his line of argument was going to be something like, "you can't possibly have a subjective yuck/yum expression of this hypothetical experience-space that you don't understand...but objective data *can* say something about whether you might be likely to prefer it". Or something like that. But the argument never quite made it all the way out.
@@drangus3468objectivity pertains to that which can be proven to exist without a subjective agent’s involvement influencing the outcome, it is fundamentally flawed.
No philosophical theory of ethics has ever credibly found an objective basis for morality that is not axiomatic, and Sam Harris is indeed amongst those who are unable to reconcile the subjective-objective division without redefining objectivity to something wholly different. Inter-subjectivity is essentially ethics by committee which itself is corruptible by the theological bases he so vehemently opposes.
He’s not really convinced anybody but himself on this, hence his derisive dismissal of the cognitive abilities of those who dissent.
@@cornsockgabz I think he's just being persistently imprecise about his language as a way of engagement farming (or perhaps out of obtuseness or unwillingness to concede or insecurity...idk). It seems clear to me that he is talking about *objective facts about subjective morality*, as opposed to *objective morality*. Which would be fine and uncontroversial and uninteresting except he insists on calling these things *objective moral facts*.
Or perhaps he is actually making the strong claim of having derived ought from is. This also would not surprise me; I have a low opinion of his logical rigour.
Wow, reading the comments and seeing how many people are missing that living according to one's preferences IMPLIES the inclusion in those preferences to not be ill-treated by the group for one's said preferences trangressing predominate desires of individuals that have found, in the device of alliance, means to deliver said ill treatment. The group has predictable minimal standards (look at different cultures across time and space and see what moral attributes are common to them all) that are in-turn based on the subjective preferences of individual, predominate, human nature. This is why Alex's perspective is not an open door to chaos.
This is actually helpful and interesting thanks
@@ghostj5531 My pleasure.
Sam finally respecting the coaster is the best in this.
The conversation has at this point elevated to what Sam considers a civilized tone. This is why he now is respecting the coaster 😂
Yeah I remember that Triggerpod episode where he kept putting the drink on the table
the "boo watermark" was flipped
8:44 the there there is as
If you limit your preferences to your own perspective, you will result in different value judgements than if you consider the preferences of the entire system. That doesn't mean that because you get two conflicting answers that the value judgement isn't real.
But it does mean that morals are not objective. Where would you stand to decide; what ivory tower could you look down upon to declare a moral rule correct?
@@chazwyman I would say that the possibility for any cooperation at all between independent agents suggests that there is a supervening objective value that is only available as an abstraction and is not available to any individual.
@@erinmagner it seems to me a supervening "objective" value is only a common ground subjective value that is valuable enough to keep at bay other subjective values that would have independent agents working against each other for only personal gain.
@@sagniksarkar2471 The fact that independent agents work against each other towards the same value even if they believe the value to be personal to them implies that the value is agreed upon by the agents.
@@erinmagner agreed upon, maybe intrinsic. But not objective
Thanks for making this section more easily replayable until I wrap my head around the implications of what this all means.
Even as I read all these comments and struggle to keep the flow of the logic from turning into chaos in my mind I laugh at how aggressively everyone calls everyone else an idiot or illogical for their positions. When trying to debate something this fundamental it just seems silly how absolutist everyone is. No one really has a superior vantage point, even if I know I lean towards Alex's side heavily. I think we are all trying to wrap our heads around this and what it means. Even if some won't admit it. So I guess this is objectively a difficult question to answer because it inevitably leads to disagreement, wink wink.
Excellent Alex, love it..
Definitely showing the value of definition or should i say honesty of definition..👍✌️
I think the line "That does nothing deflationary for me" sums up my growing stance on this. morality is at its core subjective but so what? does that make it worse that something objective? That would require a subjective evaluation. many of the things we value most in life, indeed the vary act of valuing things is subjective. The short hands of "good" and "Evil" denote from a perspective what we believe to be beneficial of harmful to overall well being. Emotivism appears to be 90% correct in its observation of the state of things but goes to far in apparently discarding the value of value judgements and the short hands used by a moral system to denote those judgements.
"Nothing deflationary for me"... I don't think that's the issue, though. The question of the basis of morality is, in principle, a factual question. And we don't answer factual questions by commenting on the significance of the answer one way or the other. Who cares if Sam Harris feels quite relaxed about having a fundamentally subjective moral landscape? No-one. The point is not how we feel about the facts, but what the facts actually are.
The problem is that saying morality is subjective means people are willfully living in delusion. It’s like saying, “there are no right and wrong behaviors, but I will act like there are.”
Has a massive impact on moral relativism and whether you believe that is real or not.
Perhaps it's me but I heard him talk but i did not hear him say any thing .
Nothing worth hearing, at least.
Well the usernames certainly track in this thread.
No he was an entire nothingburger the whole video.
@@AggravatedAstronomer, kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
it's you
"Contemplating shoulds and oughts" is often actively detrimental because as soon as those deontological evaluations are in place, you're within spitting distance of the, "Unga bunga -- the tribal precepts must be obeyed!" type thinking so often attributed to religious institutions. Whereas if you don't have a rulebook, nobody can develop a litigious spirit and either misinterpret the rules, take them too seriously, or actively manipulate them to shore up their power base. A lawyer's entire job is to defy the moral spirit of the law and find loopholes in how they are worded.
_And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?_
_How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days_
-- Matthew 12
This is basicaly Jesus being a Jewish reofrmer saying, "Oh shut up with your shoulds and ought!" to the pharisees because thier pretentious to piety have gotten out of hand.
It doesn't matter how good your intentions are -- if anything good intentions only provoke more self-righteousness -- these things get distorted because there are instinctual patterns in the human psyche that does that to preserve the forces of human survival. A truly moral human race would indeed be decadent.
It is nto a given that we would be better adapted by being more moral. Evil greases the wheels of society in unsuspecting ways.
The bitter truth is not simply that things are bad; that life is unfair, but that it's unfairness is the basis for all virtue, just as shadows are actively created by light and even if you somehow got rid of the shadows, you'd be just as incapable of seeing anything as if you were into total darkness because there would be no contrast.
"This too will pass." So in the moal sphere: "This too is good."
What's your point?
Individual potential for boo and yay can both be multiplied exponentially through community/relationship. Morality is therefore (at least) an aggregate of our shared biology and emergent potentiality. Whether you call it subject or objective morality simply follows from whether you think it's helpful/meaningful to cordon off humanity from the universe.
A straightforward basis by which to parse this entire conversation is to notice that it's trying to get at the difference between DESCRIPTION and PRESCRIPTION. Everything else follows from this.
Also notice that, except for this distinction, Alex and Sam are talking about the same phenomena and the same concerns.
So is it a fundamental distinction, or something derivative or arbitrary? Well, I think it could hardly be more fundamental. It's the distinction between how things are and how things might be conceived. It's the distinction between (empirical) science and (conceptual) mathematics. It's the distinction between territory and map.
It does not, however, provide a distinction between what is moral and what is not moral. Morality remains poorly grounded whether you attempt either a descriptive or prescriptive basis for it.
Alex might say that it's sufficient to describe how preferences associate with possible choices. That's fine, but we aren't passive observers. Nothing happens until some choice is exercised, and that choice is ours to make.
Sam might say that given these preferences, certain choices should be prescribed. That's fine, but we aren't emotionless robots seeking to optimize a set of parameters. If we can't sooner or later feel the preference, we have no warrant to follow the prescription.
You can't get an ought from an is. Sam should quit while he's behind on this one.
@@matthewphilip1977 Sam would say that distinction doesn't stop prescriptions from fields like medicine for maximizing health, why the added skepticism toward prescriptions from ethics for maximizing wellbeing?
@@kyrothegreatest2749 Can you give an example of an ought from an is?
@@matthewphilip1977 I can get an ought quite easily by observing my own conscious mind. For example, I ought to stop writing this comment, because I am probably wasting my time arguing on the internet, and I also am extending my insomnia. But, I ought to continue writing this comment, because I could help you understand my point of view.
It fulfills objective moral benefits to choose one way or the other. If I found another solution that achieved all my preferences, it would be objectively better to choose that one, compared to one of the two subpar options detailed above. This would be better, not for me alone, but for the entire universe, because I am a part of what is, and desires are the definition of "ought".
If I have anything to contribute to this conversation, I think "wellbeing" is a trap word, which should be replaced with "fulfilling desires that are held". A universe full of blissful paperclip maximizers (experiencing qualia) is better than one where Yahweh tortures 90% of humans for infinite time, objectively, and you can tell because one contains desires being filled, and one doesn't. You can only tell this is the definition of "ought" by having desires yourself, just like you can only tell that you are conscious by being so (and a universe filled with nonsentient paperclip maximizers is amoral, or evil if filled with other sentient creatures that cannot defeat them).
Desires are; they are an individuals experience of "ought"; "ought" exists, it is the desires.
@@magnusanderson6681 “...I ought to stop writing this comment, because I am probably wasting my time arguing on the internet, and I also am extending my insomnia.”
Explicitly, the ‘ought’ in that sentence is meaningless. You don’t tell us that you want to avoid wasting time arguing on the internet, or that you want to avoid insomnia. It is implicit, given that most people don’t want to waste time, or suffer insomnia, but given the context of the discussion, it's not enough for it be IMplicit.
“But, I ought to continue writing this comment, because I could help you understand my point of view.”
See above.
It fulfills objective moral benefits to choose one way or the other. If I found another solution that achieved all my preferences, it would be objectively better to choose that one, compared to one of the two subpar options detailed above.
“This would be better, not for me alone, but for the entire universe, because I am a part of what is, and desires are the definition of "ought".”
You are part of a whole that consists of desires that are often competing. And desires are not the definition of ought, far from it. Desire means to want, to wish for; ought, in this context, means should, in a moral sense, and in other contexts, means should in a mere strategic sense.
Bottom line; try to provide an example of an ought from an is that is meaningful, without adding anything on to it, like;
We ought to help those in need
I ought to go to bed earlier
He ought to marry her
It’s not possible. They all beg the question; Why?
So what you end up with is an ought from an is/because e.g,
We ought to help those in need because ________ (fill in the blank).
I´ve wondered if what utilitarians are getting at when they say they´re moral realists is something like this "there are truths about what makes life feel better for the vast majority of human beings, i.e having a community, having healthcare, having good social relations, it therefore makes sense that we pact together to structure society in such a way to achieve those ends".
I actually happen to think that´s true, I guess the question is whether that makes morality "real". Perhaps morality is a kind of intersubjective truth in the way aesthetics is, i.e because we have similarish neurology, human beings tend to view (with a little bit of cultural and individual variation) the same things as being beautiful, i.e most people think an El Greco painting is far superior to my own doodles. We can say it therefore makes sense to design public spaces with that in mind.
The thing is on that view, I don´t know if you can tell someone who prefers Damian Hurts´s sharks to a painting by Van Gogh that they are inherently wrong, they´re just wired differently. Similarly, I don´t know if you can tell the minority of people who are real sadists that they are wrong to feel that way (you may be able to say that acting that way will harm themselves, but that´s not necessarly true with very powerful people), but you could say society at large should pact against them because they make us miserable, or that it makes sense for us to do so.
Right and wrong are RELATIVE. 😉
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
People are just making it harder than it actually is...
Morality is subjective, heck reality itself is subjective in the eye of the beholder... However...
Since we are a social species that cannot live alone, then we just need to insert that collective judgements are necessary on everything that touches our life collectively and individually.
Therefore collective morality assessments can be and ought to be agreed upon and achieved if we want to continue living together. And thus, collective objective morality is born, so to speak.
@@Napoleonic_S you are definitely underselling the degree to which this is dissected and argued in philosophy. It’s not simple and people are over complicating it. It’s complicated and you are oversimplifying it.
@@bigboy2217 No I completely agree with Napoleonic.
People complicate it because it's in their interest at the expense of others to do so.
It's not that complicated, and objective morality can be obtained (in a logistically complicated in enforcement fashion but conceptually simple) by simply moving the position of the perspective to an outside, hypothetically omniscient position i.e a god consciousness.
This works even if the god perspective is only hypothetical.
For some reason I'm not only imagining the doodle, but the public space it might create. ..
I think the literal fact that morality is also expressed as "judgement" that judgement is only about taste, the judgement is not built on anything that isn't a person taste interaction.
But then again, what is freedom?
And if freedom is what we strive for on an individual level what would that freedom look like?
When 'my freedom is not the same as your freedom'... Because subjective experiences of the physical world is guided by totally different parameters in my case than the guy or girl next to me...?
There's no fruitful discussion before the morality as its subject is properly defined and understood. Things can be good or bad depending on the assigned terminal goal.
Only conscious entities can have a goal, thus the existence of goals and morality depends on the existence of conscious entities.
Yes, and the difficulty is that people can disagree on the extent to which any given action helps them reach any given goal.
"Things can be good or bad depending on the assigned terminal goal." No. They can be wise or unwise, not good or bad.
@@ericb9804 what makes things good or bad?
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani I'm not sure what you mean. But I would say "good" and "bad" are, at best, colloquial labels we apply to things or situations depending on context. Applying these labels serves more of a social function than an ontological one.
@@ericb9804 The context is the goal you want to achieve when labelling something as good or bad. Something is good if it helps you achieve your goals, and vice versa.
I still haven’t heard Sam answer the obvious challenge: Why is human well-being objectively good???
I keep asking myself the same thing. Maybe I’m missing something but I think Sam is just saying a bunch of stuff to make it seem like he’s answered the question.
Humans just assume it is because humans are arrogant and vain 🗣💘.
It makes no sense for an objective observer (a sapient non-human) to care about an arbitrary line in the sand.
I don't care for Sam's views on morality but its like you didn't listen to him.
You guys genuinely doubt that tho?
There is no reason for a non-human intelligence to believe in that arbitrary 🎲 line in the sand.
Humans are just so arrogant and vain 🗣💘 they usually don't think like that.
🙄
This comment is meant as a comment and a question, not a judgement, even saying that first feels difficult. I have been look at the experience of psychopaths, Ive been wondering how this discussion of morality etc has an overlap with an exploration of psychopathology so called?
It may be only me, but I thought that these two fed off .. .. if I may use that phrase.. .. they fed off each other and the result ‘for me’ was a sumptuous increase in value - in my mind... both of them are now loved that much more by myself..
Judaism: Murder is necessary.
Islamism: Murder is necessary.
Christianity: Murder is always bad.
Sam Harris: Murder is probably not ok in our current 21st century moral landscape.
Jordan Peterson: What do you mean by "murder" ?
christianity seems to be misrepresented, otherwise great joke. (plenty of times where christianity deems killing necessary, other times not so much, it's just modern christians who overwhelmingly uphold the latter)
Killing is not the same as murder. Murder by definition is an act of killling restricted by law. If we're speaking about that law being God's then by neither Islam nor Judaism nor Christianity sanctions murder
a bit generous to christianity
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@kolya727 Yeah because genocides are not murder, if done in the name of God, right?
Time to take up horseback riding if you haven’t already yet Alex; there’s two apocalyptic horses vacant. You should of course the one that pisses off Peter Hitchens the most.
Could argue there are two horses seems Dawkins fell off his and Elmo here is riding a painted pony .
Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty, please.
Which one of these apocalyptic horsemen would enrage Peter Hitchens the most?
@@proudatheist2042his brother's of course
Can’t you just say humans are essentially pack animals, we’ve evolved to be social and have empathy because we need to work together to survive. We also have a hierarchy. I think that is sufficient in explaining “morality”, it’s ingrained into us already.
I like Alex's "music preference pill" hypothetical, though I'd be interested to hear Sam's position on a pill that opened you up to positive preference towards war, or murder, or violence in general i.e for those growing up in violent or wartorn conditions
if you're interested in that then you should listen to Sam talk about his views on Islam.
What Sam is missing is that what people agree to as being "moral" depends on the people involved. Even if being smashed in the face with a rock is universally DISLIKED, it doesn't make doing it morally wrong in an absolute sense.
I'm a big Sam Harris fan, but I'm in Alex's camp here.
No matter how you dress up a "should" or "ought", it remains firmly in the realm of subjective judgement.
And "Subjective" doesn't mean "less worth standing up for" than "Objective". It merely means we are continually required to reargue and justify our claims regarding it to others in our society.
We can put to bed questions such as what 1 + 1 is equal to, but we really have to continue negotiating questions like, "How much of our GDP should we spend on housing and feeding the poor?"
I'm happy to see that someone gets it.
That is not a moral question, it’s a loaded one lol
Exactly. And, you might want to examine whether Sam's other arguments are just as poorly made (guns, torture, bombing people, etc.).
@@TheHuxleyAgnosticu sound dumb, just stop
@@TheHuxleyAgnosticjust stop. Ur wrong g
I invite all to read "The Objective Morality of Transcendent Experience". The most updated version is on the No Termination without Representation blog.
Yes, but what about the metaphorical substrate of our subconscious?! And what do you mean by “boo”? And what do we mean by “mean”? And is any of this “meta-true”?! -JP
And man couldn't have written Cain and Abel.
Love this use of words :)
They are meaningless.
@@dominionphilosophy3698 yes
This is the most difficult to follow exchange I’ve heard in some time. I can’t make heads or tails of what’s being said by either at almost any point in the conversation.
You're not alone. I see from comments this rests upon the "is/ought problem", which, no matter how many explanatory articles and videos I see, I will never understand.
@@maidros85 I think Sam doesn’t understand the is/ought distinction or willing to admit that he’s wrong about it.
This was a great rip! Really enjoyed it and following the joust is always instructional on some level, even if only to make one reflect on the matter of communication itself. Specifically I felt Alex was somewhat attached to the comfortable feel for him in the term "preference" (now that's a preference!) I felt it bogged things down a bit unnecessarily, and as a thinker he could have used the opportunity to re-asses how universally this term is appropriate. I would have been interested in where things could have moved on to. But no matter, I can find more content with Sam around to see what else he's got to say about this. Good Show.
What's interesting is that where the emotivism becomes more of an ought and right and wrong is where the notion of free will comes in and whether a person decides to care more about what gives oneself more yums now at the expense of a shorter life or a shorter life for someone else, or whether you maximise another person's yums at your own expense or whether you just forego more intense yums now for better yums later, a lot of these things are not obvious and as the Christian would say require one to walk a life of faith in the path they've chosen. And you have to genuinely choose what you're going to try or not try.
The problem is, there is no pill which will guarantee you increase of yums. Rather everything is a choice whether to keep the yums you have now and forego many other potentialities, or whether you have faith that in trying new things and with slight pain and trust in people you have good reason to trust, but is still scary, you might discover a more transcendent yums better than anything before. So in this landscape you have to choose. And conscience or gut feeling seems to be something extremely subconscious and complex and easily overridden by our immediate will.
So what will you listen to? The idea in Christianity is that these phenomena are real, that they are deeply connected to God and that when we trust in them that we make our connection to the more reliable path a lot stronger.
not quite. We never really know if forgoing our existing yums will lead to better yums in the future. All we know is the reasons we have for thinking one way or the other. As it comes to Christianity, there is little reason to suspect that forgoing our current yums will lead to anything, though you are free to disagree.
“What's interesting is that where the emotivism becomes more of an ought and right and wrong is where the notion of free will comes in and whether a person decides to care more about...”
How can you decide to care more about anything?
“The idea in Christianity...”
The problem there is that Xtianity is nonsense. Forgetting the talking donkeys and virgin births for a moment, you have the contradiction of Yahweh judging people for things he knew they would do, things that were determined by his foreknowledge.
It sounds to me like he just doesn't get what most people mean when they say "objective morality" or is actively trying to redefine it.
I think it´s a common stumbling block in debates about this topic, people have different definitions of the words
In your own words, define “OBJECTIVE”. ☝️🤔☝️
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServiceswithout using words define "word"
It seems like Harris is talking about objective morality as an emergent property of how human brains work, rather than in the "prescribed from on high" sense you get from religion.
Given how wildly differently different people experience the same things in some cases though, I'm not sure I understand how what he's saying works
@@ltmcolen 🤣
As much as I like alax some talks he has with guests goes right over my head
That's because he tries to hide his ignorance with complicated trains of thought that lead to nowhere.
When I first started watching debates I would always have a Google search open so that I could quickly search anything that I didn't understand. Sounds a bit silly but it really does help.
@@ianx-cast6289 Or maybe it's complicated for you because of your limited ability to understand. Alex is exceptionally intelligent after all. But that said, many of us have no probably following his reasoning.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 It's not complicated for me at all. I understand what he is saying.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean you're the best one to explain something. Knowledge, wisdom and experience, among many other factors often trump IQ.
📍9:51
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@Rachel Oats Happy Autism Awareness Month, congratulations on being one of us autists! I appreciate you identifying as autistic because your skillset & talents make for excellent representation by providing yourself as a living counterexample that refutes several harmful autism stereotypes that persist here in the United States, because our culture is 15 years or so behind England in terms of progress of public awareness, lessened stigma, & tolerance of people with autism. We adults who have autism here in the United States suffer greatly from a wide variety of abuses, disrespect, misunderstandings, ostracism, social isolation, & chronic unemployment. From my own perspective, even though my own experience of decades-long poverty due to corporate stigma against hiring autistic employees has robbed me of many forms of agency enjoyed by most adults, and the passive violence of social isolation has taken 15 years off my life expectancy, for me the very most intolerable consequence of living my first 42 years as a person with undiagnosed AuDHD living amid America's cultural stigma of all difference, especially disability, most of all autism was constantly recurring experience of indignity of suffering humiliation of being treated inferior & having my voice & my wishes ignored by those people whose position in beaueacracies provided them an opportunity to enjoy the power that indulging in the infantilization of someone who is at their mercy offered them.
I have observed that America's false-meritocratic culture that judges human worth by their wealth exacerbates infantilization of the large swaths of society who already suffer from the bigotries of Christianity, such as misogyny, racism, & anti-intellectualism, that run rampant throughout Anglophone society.
What Harris misses, starting around the 10:30 mark, is that Adam and Eve will have conflicts of interest. Generally speaking, in between "the worst possible misery for everyone" and "maximal bliss for everyone", there is the possibility of bliss for me and misery for you. Whether that feels good to me depends on how much I value my own wellbeing over yours as an ultimate concern. In turn, the value system that maximizes my utility function depends on that. That makes the preference among value systems subjective, and, indeed *very* subjective.
Exactly! How in the hell are we meant to decide what is ‘best’ for everyone?
Our judgement is eternally clouded by our pride and our attachment to some individuals over others.
Interesting we're introducing themes of pride and selflessness as virtue or lack thereof.
One thing I haven't heard mentioned is how Harris's idea of the moral landscape seems really naively utilitarian: Like it seems like he would have to say that you ought always to pick options like wireheading or the experience machine, because he can't seem to justify not always picking the option which is "higher" on the moral landscape based on a simplistic utilitarian calculation.
sam describes the scorpion and the frog and somehow believe the scorpion won't kill the frog because it's not in its best interest... yet it does.
@@Matthew-cp2eg It's not clear what point you're making
@vakusdrake3224 Sam referred to an Adam and Eve scenario and that there would be a mutual understanding and desire to work together, while not smashing the other.
My point is Sam is niave and when you substitute his people with the scorpion and frog, you gain the understanding of just because it may seem a mutual beneficial relationship doesn't mean the nature of one will embrace that part, but rather the nature of the beast will show itself and what will result is not a utopia Sam wants
@@Matthew-cp2eg I suspect I disagree with key aspects of your model of human evil here. Since it very much seems like when people behave selfishly or irrationally there's *usually* a reason why that was useful to one's genes in the ancestral environment. Which is to say that I don't think you're appreciating the ways these human flaws are not bugs they're usually features (though some are just bugs, since certain cognitive biases can also be observed in artificial neural networks)
It's not just that people are randomly selfish and cruel, these things are the way they are for evolutionary reasons: People are selfish when they think it benefits them and they're cruel most often to people who are perceived as the outgroup or who personally wronged them. Hell even a decent fraction of our cognitive biases seemingly disappear when you ask people to put their money where their mouth is (as in when being correct actually matters).
So I would not rule out rational cooperation in quite the same way you seem to be. Though I think that people's moral intuitions radically disagree in ways that cannot be easily or objectively reconciled, particularly when you start getting access to certain technologies. However, even the inability for everybody to get their most preferred outcome doesn't rule out rational negotiation for a compromise solution that completely satisfies nobody.
I could also go on quite a lot about how much of what we think of as "human nature" is cultural adaptations that took off after we adopted agriculture. Since the most warlike and agriculturally efficient early societies would conquer their neighbors therefor creating a sort of cultural survival of the shittiest (since this translates to a far lower quality of life and physical/mental health for it's actual citizens) .
@@vakusdrake3224 I never said humans were evil or good. its much more like micro and macro economics, neither system works when applied to the other. And in this contradicting system there lies the ability for people to get along or not... However why there is competing systems, just like the overall system of economic there is a fundamental layer or driving force and that force for humans is one of self interest be it at a 1-1 or group level.
This is about OBJECTIVE MORALITY, a structured framework that is supposedly within people to determine a right from wrong, something so inherently knowing that it doesnt need to be taught...
If anything you laid the frame as to why there isnt an objective morality or is that your position? that there isnt one?
Hi, what if morality appears only when there are at least to conscient beings sharing the same domain - and suddenly you voluntarily decide to accept something that is not the best for you just to better the experience of the other being is living...?
Mabe it's not even necessary for the second being to be conscient... jut to be there - but you being aware of it's existence should be enough to trigger "morality"
What do you think ?
Morality is just coding (both hardware and software) for groups of humans to thrive and survive. Nothing more nothing less.
So, who wrote the code?
@@ianrose5874 magical beings?
Hi Alex :)
It’s an objective fact that we DO value certain things, by our nature. It’s not that we *should* (an ought) but we DO.
There are better and worse ways to realize them.
The ways to realize them, made a study, would be the study of morality.
I swear I don’t see how people don’t see this.
And, of course, we have to start with moving away from the things we don’t like, and moving toward things we do.
Like medicine is a science. But, who is to say that health is better than sickness, or life better than death? We could easily find a place to stand, philosophically, that questions these values.
But, we STILL have a science of medicine.
This would be a similar assumption in a science of morality.
Healthy > sickness + means = medicine
Well being > suffering + means = morality.
It is pretty simple. I don’t see the reason for all the confusion.
Is it an objective fact that all people value certain things? I would almost certainly disagree with that-like even some norms like murder, slavery, and cannibalism among others have been the standard in different societies. Morality much more seems to just be what people agree on at the time.
I for one believe objective morality doesn’t exist and that it’s just a product of natural game theory-everyone wants what is best for themselves, and morality is just the optimal description of the solution that pops out maximizing outcomes for all the participants.
@@soccutd77 you can argue the exceptions.
And I could say not everyone wants to live.
Does this make medicine an invalid science?
Agreed. People criticize Harris for what? ...articulating the obvious in a way that confuses them? It's just a battle of semantics.
No it is not. Not everyone values life the same. Furthermore, not everyone has the same nature. That is yet another problem with people like Alex and Sam. They try to get everyone to think there is but ONE human nature when, in fact, there are infinite different human natures: we are all different. They are assimilators: they want everyone to assimilate and therefore push the false narrative of 'One Human Nature'. Christians value a fairytale afterlife more than this very real and short life we have. They don't value life as much as they say they do and certainly not as much as atheist.
Life is "The Good" imo but not so much to most people. Most people don't even think what "The Good" is.
Alex and Sam are either to dumb to comprehend this or they are liars and simply propagandists for the oligarchs. It is pretty clear to me which one it is because they both appear to be very smart. That means they are psyop agents for Capitalism and The Oligarchs.
They are happy being the brightest mental midgets as long as they are on top. They don't care that they could be the least smart mental giant if it means they are not on top.
Even the powers that be are not free from a capitalist society.
@@MelFinehout Medicine (at least as we know it now) isn’t objective either. Most doctors will tell you that it is both an art and a science in how you care for a specific patient. Also things that are generalizable to populations have little precision when mapping to the individual-for example, if a drug has shown a 30% decrease in mortality from disease in a certain population, the probability that it will help one patient is essentially 0. Many people smoke and don’t develop cancer or heart disease-they are just more likely.
All that is to say that maybe you could see “objective morality” as some well-described guidelines for the best general way to live life for good outcomes, just like medical protocol or standards of care are the best-known general way to save life. But on the individual level, that “science” or objectivity disappears. What we think is “objective morality” is just our best guess at what we think is best for all people to adopt, just like medical guidelines are just our best guess. But because both can clearly be wrong (and often are), for example slavery or COVID, I would hardly call either one objective.
IMO there are two interpretations of the word "objective" which cause much of disagreements in discussions about morality.
The hard interpretation says that objective means independent from any observer. A statement can be objectively true or false even when no one is observing or verifying it. For example, the existence of the sun is objectively true even if there's no conscious entity to observe it.
The soft interpretation says that objective means independent from whoever makes the observation/evaluation. It implicitly assumes that there's always conscious entities to make the observation.
By definition, morality exists to distinguish between good and bad things. This distinction requires a goal as the evaluation criteria, or something to compare against. In turn, it requires a conscious entity to pursue the goal.
Those who said that there's objective morality must have used the soft interpretation, because otherwise, they are making an oxymoronic statement. On the other hand, hard interpretation leads to the conclusion that there's no objective morality.
I will prefix this by saying I have not yet seen the longer form discussion yet.
Alex’s description of this relativist agent trying to maximize local rewards and that their policy generation is somehow special is missing that there are policies that maximizes expected rewards even if it does not optimize to his optimal policy for his current trajectory. There are actions that for a population raise the total expected reward of most people which one could argue is “good” relative to actions that aren’t (albeit a utilitarian argument). Just because not all good moral argument do not raise all rewards does not mean that this is not a good policy in general. Indeed, it may be hard or impossible to scope all actions that may raise all trajectory rewards (especially in an optimal way) in a world of stochastic scenarios but that does not mean good judgments cannot be claimed.
I'm very confused at this point. Can somebody please unravel the mystery of emotivism to me, cause I seem to be unshaken in any tangible way?
Same, they don't really seem to be discussing anything? Like maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the definition of good and mortality really aren't clear and are crucial to this debate. They are just coming up with impossible scenarios and making basic points with no resolution.
It’s just a semantic solution to the origin of morality. We have the rational side of our consciousness, and we have feelings. Emotivism says all descriptions of morality are reducible to the feelings
Emotivism is a meta-ethical theory
I’d recommend the book “emotion,truth and meaning” which is barely 200 pages but goes over the emotivism that was put forth first by ayer & then stevenson
Its a great book
@@Pivotcreator0 Reductionists always miss the forest for the trees though. All descriptions of immorality are reducible to feelings too.
The question of "objectivity" then becomes one of being able to distinguish the good/moral feelings from the bad/immoral feelings.
But then all philosophy unravels in all of its connotational sophistry.
Why do we feel good; or think it's right to pursue Truth?
Why can't we feel good; and think it's right to pursue Falsehood?
Objective morality is implicit in philosophy. That's why we draw the true/false distinction; and the have an implicit preference for truth.
It doesn't make any sense. Because calculation leads to emotion this theory summizes that all calculation is emotion. This is false.
Mirrors pointing to mirrors with no hierarchy.
A while ago I thought: every act is selfish because even the “selfless” acts we do are in anticipation of the guilt we’d feel if we didn’t act selflessly. The selfless act is delayed gratification in pursuit of long term gratification for us or our genes.
A smarter person than me pointed out that while that is a perfectly valid definition of the word selfish, it serves no practical use in reality. We would simply have to redefine the word selfless as a consequence.
While I agree you can hold the framework Alex does and it could be perfectly logical, I would like to see some practical use for defining the word preference in this way. Otherwise we may have a hard time making progress in the reduction of suffering
Values are just preferences. Thus, they are subjective, or at best inter-subjective. To the lion, eating the lamb is 'good'. To the lamb, being eaten by the lion is 'bad'.
Well done! 😀
Alex you come across as quite closed minded in this exchange. You often cut off your interlocutor the moment they bring a slightly different angle to the topic, which I observe is your preferred mechanism for clarifying you both understand the foundation of what was meant previously, but it also shows you don't trust your interlocutor to navigate the complexities of your train of thought. When discussing these topics with a knowledgeable person, or a person with a lot of empathy (who repeatedly shows that they understand what you mean and that they will ask you to clarify if they're unsure), it would be nice to see you ease off the pressure and try harder to engage in a genuine exchange, to show you are willing to accept new information and perhaps even accept slightly different ways to arrive at a conclusion you previously did not see the value in. Love the content!
It was clear to me that Sam was unable to understand truly what Alex was saying. That's okay, but it gets messy when he begins to answer as though he does understand. This causes him to answer more within his realm of understanding and floats above the actual discussion. Almost as if he's talking to himself. I believe Alex was correct to be led to the conclusion of Harris being unable to navigate the thought process.
This feels strangely uncharitable. I didn’t get the sense that he was disrupting the convo or in any way stifling the positions or speech of Sam at all. This was an absurdly respectful exchange.
I think your interpretation is way off. When someone puts words in your mouth or does not follow your logic, you should interject respectfully as a means to keep them on course. It’s called managing the conversation. It’s not being closed minded; it’s being purposefully intentional.
@@Michael-kf7gm Yes. The OP is butthurt over something else.
No.
Sam Harris is speaking gibberish.
Yep
8:44 “…the there there is as…”
He always does this.Apparently, he is a thought leader. My experience is he is a small minded ideologue who constantly returns to his little theories, which are always wrong.
I still don't think I'm onboard with Sam's position and maybe it's lack of understanding moreso than disagreement. It seems like he's assuming there's a 'frame of reference' in which a conscious observer could be not just the most correct on moral good but perfectly correct and we have opinions about good and evil that more or less align relative to the perfect consciousness. Am I wrong? Maybe he's right, but it's still an assumption. We can assign a value for 'good' and make predictions that are incredibly accurate without ever having the absolute knowledge about a) whether our internal model's value for good is correct and b) whether there even is a fundamental good outside of our model. I don't mind using a value for good that works well with observation but I am not convinced there must be an absolute good that maps perfectly onto our universe.
hard for me to understand what use morality has if no one has freewill to chose what is good anyway.
Sam's views of morality are quite muddled, which is a bit ironic since he considers morality objective
ik I think Sam generally sees to be pretty well spoken but this is a solid 13 and a half minutes of yapping
@@TobyPearce-lv9qj He words might sound good together to some but they are always dripping with Pro-System fascist propaganda. Harris is Pro-Israel Zionist. He is 100% a genocide apologist.
@@TobyPearce-lv9qjif u can’t keep up, just say u can’t keep up, kiddo
@@MrShaiya96 nah but like genuinely he spends like 10 minutes setting up hypothetical, all the while Alex keeps saying like how does this prove morality is objective? so if its me not keeping up that also applies to Alex which, when combined with others in this comments not getting it, suggests more it's Sam Harris yapping than us not getting it. I mean finally when he does get to the point it basically amounts to in theory, we can scientifically measure some actions as causing the most of one subjective experience and as science is one of the most objective ways of discovering things, we can say that morality is effectively objective. I find it an incredibly uncompelling argument and really poorly explained
Sam does himself a disservice. He uses the word objective in a way that even he doesn't mean it. The "separate peaks" of his moral landscape show this. Each peak is its own subjective value system within his proposed landscape, and he concedes this. And this is more or less the singular point of contention to his proposal.
Man, it always seems to come into a semantics problem...
Objective morality is implicit in philosophy. Philosophers pursues Truth and abhore Falsehood on moral grounds.
If the true/false distinction isn't objective then none of the other distinctions matter.
If morality isn't objective there can be nothing wrong with saying it is. "It's false!",a philosopher objects. OK. so what? I prefer falsehoods.
i think of it as "relatively objective" or "universally subjective" as in it's technically subjective but practically indistuinguishable from objective so the distinction is not really meaningful or consequential (speaking of the few moral standards that pretty much everyone agrees on, save for negligible fringe dissenters)
as a point of knowledge I'm with the notion that "I feel good about this / I feel bad about this" is the first principle for morality as a concept
@@zzzzzz69 Precisely.
The subjective/objective distinction is drawn by subjects.
The objectivity philosophers talk about is an unnattainable ideal.
The objectivity scientists talk about is simply inter-subjective consensus on the moral yardstick.
@@zzzzzz69 But if you want to be contrarian - you could trivially point out that subjectivity doesn't even exist. Everything's objective.
Our thoughts, delusions and all that stuff that goes on in our heads exist and has direct effect on our behaviour and on reality. Scientifically - that's as objective as it gets.
So now you have to manufacture "subjectivity" just to start a philosophical bar fight.
Maybe I'm still not getting his point, but it seems to me morality is merely the expression of or individual and collective preferences in some domains, the extent and nature of which are continually shifting. Nothing in that is objective, all is subject to the individual and the collective. Sure we could apply objective measures to things (does x align with or contradict our preferences) but the preferences themselves are in no way objective.
Oh, typed this just before getting to 8:11 so thanks Alex
There is conscience and there is what is reasonably right and wrong. These are the two tools that helps to get rather close to what is objectively right and wrong. What is a roadblock here is humans subjectivity so that needs to be objectivised for best results. Lots of psychology and introspection will be helpful here.
Hello friends, I understand Sam very well.
We getting collectively hung up on the objectivity feels to me much like the hyperskeptic "but how do you know anything is real?" type of people.
If we fight Sam's "objective" reasoning, we'll have to grand that absolutely nothing is objective, not the existence of matter, the past, of other minds, nothing.
We could do that, but holy shit, that just kills the game on the spot. So if we had to pressume ANY objective realities, I think Sam is doing a good job
How is the existence of matter not objective??
@@xanopython9062 ask a hardcore skeptic. "how do you know matter actually exists? How can you trust your senses? What if you imagine everything? What if xyz"
It feels like Alex is doing something similar to Sam in terms of morality
Feels like Harris' argument is once again decapitated by Hume's guillotine.
@@Snuni93Well, it depends on what we meant by "exist". For example, let's say that I create a simulation where an AI character doesn't know that he is living in a simulation and everything he feels and experiences feels "real" to him. So from the AI perspective, all those experiences of the simulated world would be real for the AI, while from the outside perspective of the person in real life. The simulated world would not be real. Unless we consider the information of the simulated world as something that exists in our world, which could be true since matter and energy is also information in some sense.
I think you are correct in your understanding of Sam and the state of objective morality.
"when we at the physics conference say physics for us is our understanding how matter and and energy behave in this universe if you know a Biblical creationist or somebody some other person you know unqualified for the job comes in and says well no you know I want to talk about physics but I have a different definition".
This is an example Sam uses at another point in the conversation and Alex eventually turns against him.
When Sam describes his morality as objective he is the person approaching a group of experts and saying "well no you know I want to talk about objective morality but have a different definition".
For an average person going about their life Sam's framework of morality is usually good enough.
But Sam does not solve objective morality for philosophers any more than his creationist solves the mysteries of matter and energy for physicists.
As a philosopher it is Alex's goal to convey this.
You're really milking this one interview lmfao
As he should.
The problem with the thought experiment involving taking a pill to gain a love of music is that it lends itself to infinite regression or recursion. Taking such a pill would entail a desire to have a desire for music. But what if you didn't have a desire for a desire for music? Does having a desire for a desire even make sense? And even if so, can we not take it even further, with questions about having a desire for a desire for a desire for music? And so on. To me, this suggests that a first-order desire for something is the only level of order that makes sense. I know that there's the complicated phenomenon of addiction, where a person desires a substance in one sense, while recognizing that the substance is harmful. In that case, though, I consider it a case of competing desires, in which case it's a matter of which desire is stronger, not a "nested" system of desires. And perhaps we can rethink the "music pill" thought experiment along those lines, too, where a desire to fit into wider society's love of music overtakes the personal aversion or apathy or music prior to taking the pill.
I have the desire to desire healthy food and exercise because I'd rather be healthy, but I currently have the actual desire to be lazy and eat fried chicken.
You wouldn't need a desire for a desire for music per se, you would only need a desire for new pleasures generally.
That has been a topic of contemplation for me over the past week or so. I was observing a desire to want to be compassionate and realized that wanting to desire something IS desiring it. This interesting string of logic seemed to come from self-criticism that I wasn't trying hard enough to be compassionate. After letting it go, I was able to return to my practice of cultivating compassion and trust the process with confidence.
The helmet example he mentioned is much better & more accurate. Let’s discuss it
I didn’t hear about it in this clip. Is it in the larger podcast of which this clip is a part?
I've long thought that morality can be gotten by 1) accepting the obligation to the survival of our species and 2) noting that we are, by nature, social creatures. These two things imply that to survive, treatment of others must by such that cooperation is ensured, that is to say, based on a socially acceptable morality. As for the people who can't agree to the obligation of our survival, I'm frankly not interested in what they have to say.
Sam Harris, in a Bart Simpsons fashion, should write 50 times on a board:
"Even if we agree on an opinion, that doesn't make that opinion objective"-
If we agree that the moon orbits the earth, are we merely expressing an opinion, or a demonstrable objective fact?
Similarly if we agree that murder is deleterious to net human wellbeing in a society as defined through the lens of neuroscience and related sciences, are we not agreeing on a demonstrable objective fact?
I think that is where he is coming from. Your criticism is of how he had deployed the word "objective" and I too usually dislike the concept of "objective morality", but in this framing I think it's sound. There are objectively good and bad ways to maximise human happiness.
If you have the goal of human well-being (you don't have to . . . But IF you do) then your opinion of how best to achieve that becomes irrelevant as we can determine that some experiences are objectively better than others.
You can have an opinion. Sure. And that opinion may or may not align with objective reality.
I am of the opinion, for instance, that the principles of morality and governance mostly associated with modern western societies (individual liberty, skepticism, secularism, etc.) Are not merely different than their eastern counterparts, but objectively better at achieving human well-being.
But my opinion might be wrong. The point is that we can determine whether or not that opinion is correct in the same way we might determine any other scientific fact. It may not be easy, but it can in principle be done.
@@AggravatedAstronomer
"If we agree that the moon orbits the earth, are we merely expressing an opinion, or a demonstrable objective fact?"
We don't agree on that, we measure it.
THere is no arguments or discussion.
"if we agree that murder is deleterious to net human wellbeing in a society as defined through the lens of neuroscience and related sciences, are we not agreeing on a demonstrable objective fact?"
No, we agree on an opinion.
For example, I think Death Penalty is murder, while somebody thinks abortion is murder.
What are you gonna do, objective boy?
@@godless1014
Who's to say if abortion, death penalty and euthanasia are beneficial to the collective or murder?
@@ChristianIce That's obtuse - we do agree on it, precisely because we can measure it. And even then, there can be disagreement about how we measure it, what the right methodology is. There is nuance, for example its orbit is elliptical, as most are, so the distance to the moon changes all the time. It is also receding.
We can also measure the rise and fall of human well-being in a society across it's various strata as conditions change, we can do this through a wide range of useful metrics.
Would you seriously contest the there's no way to measure the wellbeing of human beings in North Korea and conclude that they are worse off than those in Sweden?
Whether someone is experiencing joy, or pain, is objectively verifiable and even measurable in the brain.
It's weird that you're coming off so churlish, immature, bitter and resentful, given the cordial manner in which I engaged you. I mean "objective boy"? What a melt.
You are mischaracterising Harris' argument here, on the basis of what seems to be an entrenched emotional response, that has led you to stick your head in the sand and pretend objectively verifiable facts about the brain are unknowable.
Why doesn't Sam talk about how zionism is morrally bankrupt
Because Harris is a Zionist
Because he is morally bankrupt.
he does
He does, and he dismisses the crimes of Israel and justifies them as "Islam is the greatest threat to EVERYTHING!!!!"
Maybe I'm missing it myself, but I dont see where Sam actually countered Alex in any real way. What I heard was was Alex say after you establish a subjective axiom around which you base your morality, you can then make objective decisions, the axiom itself is not objective. To which Sam replied, No you see, once you have an axiom then everything can be objective.
Lol if only we could agree on this one little thing everything else would be perfectly simple!!!
Sam pushes the subjectivity as far back as he can possibly manage - and yet without a metaphysic it will ALWAYS be subjective.
The whole point of axioms is that they don't require grounding. A grounded axiom would be a theorem. Sam is right in saying that morality can be epistemologically objective, while still being ontologically subjective. Alex agreed to this. This is what Sam literally says in the Moral Landscape. And Alex used to disagree with this 5 years ago before he changed his mind after talking to moral objectivists (mostly Stephen Woodford). You don't understand the disagreement.
The disagreement is over caring about someone else's well being to begin with, where Alex says while he does care, he feels like objectivity requires the framework to have people care about the axiom so it's subjective still. This is a category error.
Sam's response to this is that we have no problem with applying objectivity to any other framework, even though their axioms are ultimately ontologically subjective just the same and that moral philosophers are using a double standard just for moral philosophy by putting an impossible task on moral objectivism in requiring it be self-evident and automatically convincing everyone the moment they get in contact with it. This is not the case for any sciences, yet it is asserted in moral philosophy.
"If biology is objective, you don't have to believe in it."
"If biology is objective you should believe in it."
as compared to
"If morality is objective you would be required to believe in it" which is Alex' position, but Sam's position is
"If morality is objective, you don't have to believe in it or follow it.
If morality is objective, you should believe in it."
And there are indeed a great many people on this planet who do indeed reject the theory of evolution. This disagreement does not make the framework subjective, even though it's still ontologically subjective to care about biology.
Or chess for that matter. I've seriously seen people claim that chess is subjective, because nobody has to care about the rules of chess. If this were true and the whole of chess is subjective because in order to be objective in any way we have to care about it first, then Magnus Carlsen is only subjectively better at chess than me. And stockfish is only subjectively better than Magnus Carlsen.
The problem in this case is that people do not differentiate between ontological and epistemological subjectivety/objectivity or that one side only talks ontology, while the other accepts the ontology but focuses on the epistemology instead.
The one who hasn't countered the other in any way here is Alex.
This conversation goes over my head.
Weirdly I can’t understand not understanding Sam Harris’ view of morality
he's using the probably principle
probably, murder is not ok🤓
@@aiya5777
Self defence? Euthanasia? Death Penalty? War?
@@ChristianIce Look up what murder means.
@@azhwanhaghiri6336
"unlawful" killing.
Which is subjective as well.
Better luck next time.
I get what he means but he's still really bad at explaining it
I'm an atheist, and I admit I have no objective morals. But neither do theists, even if they think they do.
You're not an atheist, even if you think you are.
And the Theist would say you, the atheist, has objective moral values, even if you don't think you do.
I agree, although I think I have an objective standard to base them on.
Even if I am wrong though, and morals are objective, theists don't know what they are any more than I do.
They can't even agree with each other what they are.
If God exists, and they follow his law, then they do.
@@oliverthompson9922 I think a Theist would rely on the general principles behind what we think is "Good" and "Bad", and the innate feeling when we know we're doing something "wrong".
there is no morality on whether an experience is desirable or not? How so? If an experience is desirable (in the grand scheme of things, which is likely where the more interesting discussion lies), then isn't it good? And doesn't it carry an implicit morality?
I'm confused about whether Sam is actually an objectivist or not. Objectivism is generally a belief in immutable laws that are true regardless of personal preference. Murder is wrong because of X, Y, Z, and whether or not you personally like that is out of the question. It sounds like he's literally describing what Alex said: I enjoy this because I do. It isn't objective, it isn't factual, and it isn't set in stone. Now, it's totally true that we can come up with objective measurements to achieve these desires and find out which actions lead to the desires I have, but the fact that I even want this in the first place is totally up in the air and arbitrary.
I like action-adventure stories with some romance along the way. If you were to scientifically examine my preferences and my brain, you'd find that there are certain things that improve this preference of mine, certain patterns that tick the story with my brain, right and wrong answers as to how I should go about finding my favorite books and things writers should do if they want my attention. There are even things that a story COULD do that I haven't even read yet and would improve my enjoyment of the book beyond my ability to comprehend until I experience it. This is all true, but the fact that I like action-adventure stories with some romance involved is completely arbitrary, and if I didn't like it, which is totally possible, then all of this scientific development is useless, and we'd start the process again to fit my new desires. The fact that you can objectively study the inner-workings of my arbitrary preference doesn't make my arbitrary preference objective.
Your reasoning is solid except for one problem. Very often many of our preferences are not arbitrary at all and can actually be completely founded in logic rather than emotion.
Is doing heinous things to a young child for no reason objectively bad?
Listening to Sam talk about how to ground yourself morally is like hearing an overweight alcoholic doctor tell you to stop smoking.
Sam Harris is immoral?
What has Sam Harris done to render you to judge him in such a way?
Right, he should be spending 90% of his wealth to supporting a village in a poor country.
Something tells me we're about to hear some river to the sea nonsense
@@groundrunner752 Abrahamic religions are hilarious
I disagree with Sam's argument that conciousness is the only evidence for conciousness in the universe
What do you propose?
Do you have another example?
Let’s here it man.
What he's saying is that there is no physical mechanism that we know of that creates "consciousness." Or in other words, there is no part of the brain where we can objectively say "Thats where the consciousness is"
What other evidence is there?
I'm not sure if I'm the only one but I feel like Sam Harris isn't fully addressing Alex's concerns/emotivism, like he's just saying that it's still possible to act morally bc there's a range of possibilities but Alex is trying to say that there is no objective right/wrong.
Hi, what if morality appears only when there are at least to conscient beings sharing the same domain - and suddenly you voluntarily decide to accept something that is not the best for you just to better the experience of the other being is living...?
Mabe it's not even necessary for the second being to be conscient... jut to be there - but you being aware of it's existence should be enough to trigger "morality"
The moment you consciently deny yourself "the best" in favor of someone else's "better" could be the trigger for morality .
Could be that subjective morality is related to your ability to let go of your self ...your ego ?
Could it be that subjective morality be triggered by empathy ?
Is a person with no empathy unable to develop morality ?
What if the higher the empathy the higher the morality will be - and if you go to an extreme - in a society where everyone is doing the best for the others the circle closes by everyone doing the best for you ...:)
What do you think ?
Maybe I'm not grasping what you're saying fully, but I believe there are moral values that are intersubjectively shared and are not merely expressions of individual emotions. Those values are honorifically objective as they are established by the moral assumptions shared by human communities. In other words, there is a basis for morality that transcends individual emotions. In fact, these values can be defended rationally and are susceptible to change and debate within a community, implying that they have coherence and persistence (coercivity) that go beyond instant emotional reactions. Any modification in moral values must endure the scrutiny of contrasting viewpoints and must evolve from the pre-existing moral framework, eventually becoming part of the community’s customs. I'm thus suggesting that morality possesses an objective aspect that is anchored in tradition, rationality, and communal consensus, and is accessible through reasoned moral discourse.
Thus, even an atheist can advocate for an objective moral framework with honorific values, independent of the universe's lack of moral directives.
So even if a psychopath feels approval towards the idea of killing someone, that would still be objectively wrong, and the intrinsic worth of an innocent human life retains its objectivity (being an atheist isn't being a nihilist). So maybe, ultimately, or in practice, the absence of divine or cosmic mandates is irrelevant to the establishment of moral truths.
Wait...can someone who saw the video that precedes this clip fill me in on what was discussed there? I feel like I stepped into the middle of an argument but never actually heard what the crux of the disagreement was. Is it just that Alex is arguing there are no objective morals and Sam says "yes there are, as long as you start with the assumption that we're working toward maximizing well-being?" Thanks!
Basically yes. Alex says there is no strictly “objective” morals there are only preferences that we then label as being moral, whereas Sam says there is objective morals but I think like your saying he equates morality with wellbeing, which I think is ungrounded.
@@danielholder7979what should morality be equated to? Or are u withholding judgment on a word with no real definition?
@@MrShaiya96 I’m a Christian so I’d posit Gods character and decrees as the objective standard for morality.
That was fun!
Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤
It all turns on the difference between categorical and hypothetical imperatives. Ought we to value X because it’s good in itself, or ought we to value X because it makes life good for us?
Can't get an ought from an is, no way around it.
Yes; We can't tell the difference between them, which is why the distinction doesn't matter and we only confuse ourselves when we pretend it does.
What is good in itself?
@@fifikusz Exactly
I think the problem of morality is unsolvable and chaotic if it was solvable then there would be morality but because it is chaotic (in mathematical terms) then morality is just relative.
In your dreams 😂,
God exists and morality is objective whether you like it or not
@@ali_haidar_313 Yeah. Long live our god, Quetzalcoatl!
A very simple boil down. Acts that get us closer to traveling to the stars and spread amongst the galaxy (morally good). Acts that work against that, (morally bad).
I would like to know how Alex answers this question: Is it right (morally) to treat a human person as a commodity? What if we as a society got together and picked a particular group of humans (by race, intelligence, age, lottery, whatever) and placed a monetary value on them and exchanged the price of them on the stock market? If that is wrong, would that just be a statement of Alex’s emotions about how he feels about it? And if it is just a statement how he feels then why should anyone else care how he feels about it?
I think that would true of any of his moral statements. That there is no reason anyone should care because then that would be a realist moral statement. He is not just saying he is a subjectivist but that moral statements have no real truth value. I cannot lie to act like I can really understand that kind of statement though. What is the purpose of even making the statement? What does it matter if it is not a matter of truth at all? and if it is just the expression of my dislike isn't it still a truth statement or have truth behind it? Maybe I am just not understanding his view but it goes farther than just being a subjectivist. once you use the word should though then it cannot conform to Alex's view because there are no should in his view.
Obviously he would say it is morally wrong to treat another person as a commodity. Why are you acting like you don’t know this?
To me it all comes down to accepting that the very term "Morality" is a constructed space in itself, in which you can place truths. Like if I say: Spiderman is objectively speaking a superhero. The same with morality. That word is a construct. It is an idea. It is not a thing, and it for sure has no existence without sentience. And so in that framework, I agree with Sam: If morality has ANY validity as an idea, it must be to seek out the peaks of sentient wellbeing. And so, while we may no be able to postulate what peaks are the highest, or what routes are the optimal, we can FOR sure, AND objectively say something about two situations within this construct. We can measure them up against each other in terms of this axis we call well being. Is it tricky? Sure. But it is not subjective, unless you pick very similar elevations in this landscape.
You can't get an ought from an is. End of.
I think you are underestimating how tricky it can be to "measure them (situations) up against each other in terms of this axis we call well being." Legitimate disagreements on this do occur and when they do, there is no sense in which either one can be deemed "correct," which is why calling the situation "objective" in the first place seems a bit obtuse.
@@matthewphilip1977 If the framework you work within is an ought itself, why not? So... "we ought to have something called morality"? If we buy into the very notion that a construct like that "ought to exist" (Which we might not), then within it, the oughts are treated like is, and can be objective. It is like a renormalization ;)
We can't both invent a framework of the purest ought, and then not discuss truths within it. So, unless we simply get rid of the very notion of morality, we can justify it only by evaluating its effect in terms of the very ought it represents.
And I think that is the point. Morality is an idea, and it exists to solve one thing. And we can evaluate if it solves those things.
Anyways, you want to play another game, and I simply refuse to play it, as it has no value to me :)
@@HKragh “If the framework you work within is an ought itself, why not?”
The framework who wants to work within?
“So... "we ought to have something called morality"?
Meaningless. Why would you think otherwise?
“Morality is an idea, and it exists to solve one thing. And we can evaluate if it solves those things.”
One thing? What’s that thing? And can you give an example of an ought from an is?
Interesting exchange. I actually found the last little by by Sam very interesting. I'm not sure this is what he was trying to say but it almost seemed along the lines of since their are objective laws of nature there is objective morality. In this case morality being maximizing well being, or pleasure (from Alex's terminology moreso).
I've never heard it argued that way and it makes me a little more interesting in the idea that there might be "objective morality. Essentially since the systems that determine all the outcomes (laws of nature, physics, matter, etc etc) are in fact objective so all of the outcomes that translate to "better" outcomes would also be at least somewhat objective due to that.
I guess two ways to say it is looking at murder.
A) Murder isn't objectively bad, but I view it as subjectively bad since ultimately isn't productive and/or I have a distaste of it etc
or another way to see it might be
B) Murder is bad because the objective systems we live in, life and death, hurt and pain, joy and suffering, entropy, etc... all ensures that murder is ultimately and objectively bad.
Maybe the B perspective points to the idea that thinking things are good or bad or whatever is subjectivity might be surface level only, deeper beneath that their might be objective systems in our lives and universe that essentially ensure that we will subjectively dislike murder etc.
Of course murder is an easy one to proclaim such things for, a lot of other things become far more gray of course. Though maybe there's still an underlying "moral" system that is ultimately a product of the laws of the universe (not some intelligence of course). Though even if all those assumptions hold true that list of things is probably small since sure something like murder might be something most people could agree is objectively worse than say not murder, but most things aren't so easy to proclaim something like that about.
Say freedoms for example. Determining what freedoms are moral or aren't is very tricky. The freedom to not be imprisoned for example, the freedom of movement. Though if you commit a crime severe enough then it might be better for the whole that you be imprisoned, or even for yourself.
Of course one might say murder is ok in certain cases, say to end a homicidal maniac, to deal with dangers or threats. Though if my emotivism style "Boo" to certain kinds of murder is essentially hinged upon objective systems our universe and reality are based on does even that Boo or Hurrah statement become objective? Though not universally objective for everyone, but our individual sources of it stemming from something objective. This is where objective vs universal might be important to distinguish. Maybe our multiple moral systems are in fact objective if not universal.
An interesting thought exercise though.
I honestly don't even get the urge to imagine that there might be moral absolutes, since it takes as little as a single word, "scarcity", or as much as a couple of VERY probable "what ifs" to bring anyone around to doing a 180 on whatever they might have seen as the moral thing UNLESS they switch on make-believe mode.
There alway might be less morally objectionable alternatives, no absolutes.
No absolutes...
@@ianrose5874 ...ok...
Ethical Morals are by definition subjective and relative.
They are subjective because they are a social agreements over to what degree social behaviors are good versus bad.
They are relative because simplistic ethical moral values do NOT fit all relative situations. The relative specifics can change the ethical moral agreement.
This not only applies between two or more human individuals but within a singular human, because the human mind is a swarm intelligence, which means within the swarm intelligent community of a singular human mind there is debate, disagreement, and hopefully agreement upon to what degree social behaviors are good versus bad.
Because ethical moral values are subjective and relative, we often get ethical moral values which are enforced by our social leadership which we individual humans disagree with.
Can somebody please explain to me what I am missing about Alex’s overall philosophy of morality?
If morality is purely a matter of preferences, why is he going on his vegan campaign? Sure, you can say he would just prefer somebody to not eat meat, but this isn’t what he does: he frames it as if eating meat is wrong. The views of a non-vegan who subjectively sees no issue with eating meat (and, let’s assume, prefers it) would have to be on the same level as Alex’s view. This means that now Alex has no moral high ground, since there is no moral ground at all. And if this is true, we might as well equate Alex’s veganism to companies advertising products, for example “Everyone knows that cardigans are itchy, and I don’t like it when people suffer. So I’m on a campaign to get people to buy my own jumpers instead; I think they’ll be a lot happier, and as a bonus I get paid!”
Obviously, Alex isn’t in it for the money, but if he were, why would it be any different? It’s all about what he wants and feels good to him. So given this, Alex would have to either concede and say that veganism is only a matter of his own personal preference (which seems to be contrary to his entire cause) or say that this is not a fair analogy. But how can this not be a fair analogy when it’s all subjective to what the individual wants? I see no ability to escape this other than claiming that morality is objective, or inventing an entirely new worldview/religion.
Finally, I don’t understand why (from what I’ve heard) Alex only speaks as if humans are the only ones to blame, when most of the animal torture and death is at the claws of other animals. Shouldn’t we also be trying to make meat supplements for lions and tigers and bears and expecting them to go vegan too? And if he were to say we’d let them off the hook because of some hand-wavy “humans are higher life forms” or something, then that begs the question of what exactly separates humans from animals? How are we to quantify that? Many religious people would say it’s a soul, etc., but I’m sure Alex would reject that. This is an extremely important question to answer before one can have a cause establishing animal rights that all humans must follow, yet claim that these very same animals need not respect them.
Why does every conversation that anyone has with Sam Harris feel like Sam is having a different conversation than the host?
We already have seen this, Harris is simply a Leftist ideologue. As such he is useless.
I think partly morality is neurologically wired into us. For example we all know not to lie, cheat, steal or kill
That doesn't seem to hold any truth. Humans are wired to procreate, and have done so throughout the entire course of history. Humans, in your argument, are wired to act in this particular way; humans constantly commit every single one of the things you mentioned, however.
@victor_2216 true but there is celibacy and other usually unfortunate things that could get in the way of that
@@shadw4701 Sure, but people do those things voluntarily, and to a vastly lesser extent compared to the actions you described.
My take away is that it's good to try to see the good in other cultures ect, and when they can enhance my life and overall wellbeing.
When man's life is the set as the standard, morality becomes objective because what is required for man's life is dictated by reality and not subjective whims. So good and evil can be boiled down to a simple question, "Is this good for my life, bringing me closer to my values, or does this harm my life and compromise my values? The end goal being my own happiness." So morality comes down to a fundamental alternative for living beings with free will (humans), and that is life or death. Are your choices leading you towards pleasure and long-term happiness (life)? Or pain/misery and death? These choices aren't always obvious and will depend on one being explicit with oneself what their values or goals actually are, and why. This is done through introspection (looking inward).
A value is something one acts to gain and/or keep. Values are essentially pro-life and are necessary for any living organism's survival. Now, with human beings, there are subjectively chosen values based on an individual's preferences. We're all different and will have different chosen values and things we want out of life. An example of this is I've decided i want to be a good doctor. The principles I embrace to become a good doctor will be dictated by reality. I can not just chew 100 pieces of bubblegum a day for 1 year and expect to gain the knowledge and experience I need to be a good doctor. In this way, achieving my value is not subjective. It's instead objective.
As human beings, our metaphysics and epistemology is intertwined because the nature of our survival relies on our ability to reason. That's our unique ability to observe reality with our senses and integrate that with our minds in a process called concept formation. Concepts are what we use to package up perceptual observations into knowledge to be drawn upon again as we need them. They're like mental concretes that store information. Symbols and language are examples of these concepts.
I have been following this discussion since Sam’s book came out. I especially appreciate the series of discussions between Alex and Rationality Rules’ channels, and for a brief moment, I nearly sided with Alex. But I think this conversation sees Alex and Sam fill in the picture between their positions enough to see that they’re more or less on the same page, albeit from very different pathways.
I’m happy to hear feedback to my claim here. I do think Sam’s position deserved more questions because on the surface it seemed to be breaking some rules, but if we admit the possibility of a material world presenting facts about what is better for human existence even on the most essential levels, we can say that science helps us find moral objectivity. I do grant Alex justifiably takes this position to task, as we all should, but once we find ourselves on that desert island with one other human being, we quickly strip the cultural and social compexity of modern life to see there are objectively good and bad things on the menu for two stranded humans beings.
Looks to me that when people say "morality" they mean some mystical magical force behind the curtain of the universe for whatever reason, morality is or should be about well-being/happiness and harm/suffering of feeling subjects.
Googles first definition is - ""principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.""
You could for example stab me in the eye and this would objectively be determent to my subjective well-being ergo bad or wrong, the opposite of good.
And as I have all the reasons in the world to assume that other feeling subjects would feel the same if they are stabbed in the eye I conclude that this is a bad or wrong action when performed on feeling things.
Or in short - there are objectively better and worst ways of doing this whole life thing in regards to well being of feeling subjects.
Now off-course there can be a bunch of gray areas as objective does not mean absolute - as for example sometimes stabbing someone in the eye can be objectively morally correct/justifiable to prevent greater harm in the future(eg. stabbing Hitler to prevent ww2, self-defense etc.) and is like everything else dependent on the context.
If the stove burns your hand remove it and do not put it back on the stove, thus to improve one's personal pleasure.
If the house is on fire remove yourself from it and do not go back inside- but... a child is in the burning house.
To save the child I must not care for my well-being. My choice must be a moral one, not based on my physical, mental or emotional well-being.
Both atheists' worldview I dub *The Coward's Philosophy*
Amazing conversation. Was wondering how Sam was going to get there. But I agree, morality just falls out of Alex’s island, if you try to maximise yes then you’ll act as what we generally call nice