TED Talk: Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Sam Harris speaking at TED 2010 - What the World Needs Now

Note from Sam (3/22/10): This page is intended as a forum for critical feedback. I want to know what questions/doubts this short talk raised, so that I can answer them in a longer lecture that I will develop for my book tour in the fall. My next book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, will be published on October 5th, 2010.

Comments (266 total)

1. By Joe Seither on 3/22/10 at 11:29 pm

Not a criticism, but an idea. I posted the video on Facebook with the title, "I'll PayPal you $5 to watch this TED Talk."

I've only had to pay up once so far.

2. By James Nesson on 3/22/10 at 11:30 pm

Hi Sam -

This is the comment I posted on the TED (and my) website.

"At first I was disappointed that Sam pulled some of his regular punches at religion. Then I realized that his ‘philosophy’ was just maturing. This ‘moral landscape’ is larger than any religion and Sam is right to start expanding his discourse.

I am interested to see the results of his penetrating thought process on these topics. What is more, I am eager to here more of his simple, eloquent and provocative explanations of his ideas."

Hope this helps,

James

3. By Sean F. Conley on 3/22/10 at 11:30 pm

I realize you had a limited amount of time to get all of your information out, but I would have liked to hear more about the definition of morality. I seem to remember seeing a video of a talk you gave at Scripps(?) a few years ago that was more in depth about what morality should be. Since it is a rather subjective topic, are there any absolutes to human morality without invoking "natural law"?

4. By C. Carol on 3/22/10 at 11:30 pm

I was embarrassed by the idiocy of the moderator's questions. You didn't dodge them, you answered very well, and more politely, probably, than deserved, since it seemed he didn't understand what you had just spent almost an hour explaining. (Who was that?)

5. By Grant on 3/22/10 at 11:41 pm

Good speech, Sam. This is an issue that needs to be talked about. Here's my ideas on your theory:

Although the talk was enlightening, I think you might have mistook "morality" for "the ability for society to flourish."

In the last question you took, the host asked "What if they did truly love their child, [although in a "deluded" state]." One must realize that happiness and love are completely independent of social progress. Anyone with a twisted mind can find something that no one else finds and love it and be happy with it. Morality is touchy because it attempts to put a framework around something that is so amorphous because our feelings are just as pliable.

You would be much better off saying "Yes, okay, you may love your child just as much as the perfect American loves theirs, but is the way you raise your child conducive to the growth of humanity?" In this case, it no longer becomes a moral question, it becomes something more of a formula; 'education + freedom [>,<,=,etc.] murder' which can be very easily debated on which expression to use.

Finally, in this case, you can defend that you can love your child with equal amount of personal love and happiness while better enabling it to function and progress society.

We may never be able to truly know what is best for society, but we can easily tell right now what is better. And if we decide to forcibly "fix" other societies, moral framework will immediately come along with that, and by extension, solve the moral problems by simply eliminating them.

6. By Peter Christopher on 3/22/10 at 11:49 pm

I think it's pragmatic, that we "must admit that we have answers" somehow shows how ~science can answer moral questions~ even though many of your analogies are undeniable, e.g., in particular, when some response to error is "a peak of moral flourishing."

I don't think science is a narrative, for one thing, that it lacks the qualities of a grand narrative upon which we may all explore. So, we may supply it, and it will differ, but would this apparent individuality be too problematic to recover the equally apparent loss of a religious narrative?

Thank you!

7. By Bill Casey on 3/22/10 at 11:52 pm

I enjoyed the talk and am lockstep with you on the moral theory. But I'm willing to play some Devil's advocate on meta-ethics.

An underlying assumption of your talk was that questions of morality are questions of suffering/happiness. You seem to take this as being objectively true. As you no doubt know, there are many non-consequentialist ethical systems which would take issue with that assumption. What are your reasons for believing that utility and the Good are objectively linked?

8. By wilfred waters on 3/22/10 at 11:53 pm

I should preface this by saying I am not a Muslim, nor a feminist. I am a white male who with an honours degree in psychology and am doing masters in GIS.

Comparing the women in hijabs with the women on the magazine covers was not fair. You should have shown a photo of regular Western women. When you set up false comparisons like this the discussion that is based on them is less valid.

Overall it was an interesting talk for about the first half as it appeared to be about the important issue of morals/ethics/values and a new approach to them. A fresh approach that does not come from religion. That is potentially not based on sanctimoniousnous. That is not based on someone trying to polish their credentials as a valid participant in society. It appeared we were about to witness a simple but effective new method of defining a universal value system.

Hopefully that's not a straw man.

But you didn't do that. What you came across as doing was pandering to our assumptions about what is a good value system. Your presentation failed to mention the critical issue of ethno- or sociocentrism and how this may colour our views of your suggestions.

The host could have taken things down a more provocative line of questioning Muslim dress - pointing out that it is a form of liberation perhaps for women to wear 'a sack' as it means they fly completely under the radar of leering males. Now you may respond saying this is not the principle purpose of the hijab, however I think it might be a possible purpose. It may also be the case that this purpose is being ignored or the attention that might be directed at this purpose is being taken away by observations of other possible purposes (such as oppression). Well that's convenient. Convenient because such a purpose, to escape leering, points out the constant body objectification women suffer under especially in the Western world (and now girls are being sexually objectified as well).

That it might be so severe as to have to fully conceal the body is a shock. It sends the clearest message about how severe the problem is. That it may be so severe makes us feel uncomfortable, hence skewed analyses of the practice such as those in your presentation.

Now I may have given the impression I'm a feminist. I should say I am actually a masculist (check out 'The Myth of Male Power' by Warrenn Farrell, elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City) of course, as I am a man.

9. By Ananta Yanamandra on 3/23/10 at 12:00 am

I thought that the talk was excellent, and I agree with the other posts on a larger definition of morality and if there are any moral absolutes or is everything completely relative to the culture in which it exists?

I'm a little divided on the topic of corporal punishment. I didn't understand whether you were against it outright or merely highlighting that it is often taken to excess. Wouldn't there be situations in which it is the best course of action, much like first hand experiences with elements such as fire would teach you to be more careful with it? For lack of a better analogy couldn't it be similar to herding cattle, in which affliction of some pain via whips or rods would keep the cattle moving in the right direction and keep them together?

10. By Joe Seither on 3/23/10 at 12:13 am

Promotional ideas aside, here are a couple thoughts I had about your talk:

You have an opportunity to fold in some current research into the neurological infrastructure for empathy, then segue to the global nature of the ethic of reciprocity and on to epicurian and utilitarian ethics.

Because these are ancient principles - predating at least Christianity and Islam, so it's interesting to ponder how we've gone so badly off the rails over the last 2,000 years.

I personally think the root cause of the rise of our current mystical, irrational ethics is the proliferation of personal, individual experiences of God - and cultural acceptance of purely subjective definitions of God.

The great irony is that God approaches zero as the denominator (denominations) grows.

When God can be anything you want him to be, and can simultaneously be all things to all individuals, the notion of God lacks definition and the word God loses linguistic value utterly.

Ironically, the harder individual true believers drive toward a personalized conception of God, the farther they get from a single, universal, eternal conception.

But they will tell you that their experience and communion with the eternal is furthered and enhanced through this pursuit...

Which makes me dispair - because a purely subjective God concept can never be quenched by reason - as it is literally custom made for each believer.

*sigh*

Thanks for all you do. Please let me buy you a coffee next time you're in Palo Alto.

11. By Gerald de Jong on 3/23/10 at 12:22 am

This was a masterfully argued presentation, and Sam's customary focus on dangerous Islamic religious phenomena were somewhat more balanced against over-the-top western sexualization and objectification. Unfortunately when it came to talking about scientifically measuring mental states, once again the only example was a father considering to kill his daughter. No mention of measuring the love of a porn star or something, the balance was gone. Also, it's again as if evil acts are standard policy in "burka countries" and as if the core of the "silicone breast countries" is somehow inherently and that it goes without saying. I hope Sam pursues his reasoning here further and refines it, striving to really keep it balanced.

12. By John Sullivan on 3/23/10 at 12:30 am

Sam,

I enjoyed your talk and I am generally favorably disposed to your thesis. However for me your talk raises a number of questions. I hope my quick presentation of a few of these below will be helpful to you.

Values may be facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, but certainly, sometimes, my well-being will conflict with yours. Sure, it may not be a zero-sum game. But what if I can become a superman with a flourishing metric that is off the charts if I keep you and a bunch of others suppressed?

You elide over this huge issue of personal vs. collective well-being. You say the peaks on the moral landscape could be either. You have to unpack this in longer talks. Some will say we should maximize the potential for personal peaks in society, others that we should maximize the mean, others that we should minimize the standard deviation among individuals.

What if, for the sake of argument, in Muslim societies women truly lead wretched lives, but the men experience an existence of satisfaction and well-being that we men in the West can scarcely imagine of (for the sake of the argument). Their society's collective peak might be equal to ours on the landscape, although the standard deviation among men and women be much greater. Our system is more moral than theirs because?

If indeed the standard deviation among personal happiness/flourishing is of primary concern, then any society that has ever supported an elite on the backs of an exploited workforce is immoral. Our Western values, science, and civilization arose in ancient Athens where It all was made possible by slavery. How do we look at this according to your system? Surely, slavery was as much a moral evil then as it is now.

If it all boils down to happiness and suffering, how do we justify not harvesting the organs of one healthy human against his/her will to save the lives of several others? In other words, how do we balance the rights of the individual over the good of the many?

For comparative ethics to be science, you need to propose a metric for "happiness" and "suffering" and "human flourishing" as with food, you would use a calorimiter and probably a few other devices to assay presence of required amino acids, vitamins, etc. Not clear what you are talking about measuring with "brain scans". I know this is not your intention, but be aware that without proper qualification you are going to scare people with this. Visions of police stations with people strapped into chairs getting scanned to see if they experience appropriate brain states given certain stimuli, etc.

Two more things:

If it's not conscious, it has not moral standing? What do you say to someone who want to protect a mountain (a big rock) from strip mining, or a 2000-year-old sequoia tree (no nervous system) from being cut down? Are they justified only in so far as they prevent other humans from being upset by the consequences?

You start off your talk by asking "what is worth living for, what is worth dying for?" If all of ethics is based on maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering, what could be worth dying for? Other people's future happiness?

Thanks for reading, Sam. I look forward to reading your book and hearing you present your argument in longer form!

13. By Billy on 3/23/10 at 12:30 am

I quote an observation made on a forum I partake in:

"t would appear that Harris' argument is flawed at it's most fundamental level.

He states that morality is a question of concern for the well-being of conscious beings.

But that is, in itself, a moral position. It has a value judgement attached to it.

Science cannot tell you whether a concern for the well-being of conscious being is a "good" or "bad" moral assumption to make.

Once we have settled on that basic moral assumption then we can use science to judge whether any action is "good" according to that assumption or "bad".

But science cannot tell you whether this is the "correct" moral assumption to apply in the first place."

What say you Sam?

14. By Jason on 3/23/10 at 12:33 am

I agree with it all, however I know the reactions I'd get from certain people if I had said those things to them. Much like the officiant who came up at the end of your talk, many people I know are resistant to come out and state such bold (even if obviously true) claims.

There is no seduction needed to get me or the rest of your fans to agree with you. Preaching to the choir like that ends up being a sort of group masturbation type of thing. My critical feedback is that you need to find a way to speak about these things that gets those more "liberal" people -who most likely agree but won't admit to it out of fear- to take that step in our direction. It is clear you are passionate about all this because you want to make the world a better place. I appreciate the way you say it all because I'm a sarcastic and abrasive son of a bitch...but I'm not the one that needs convincing, and stacking fact upon fact in front of the fearful liberal does nothing.

For some reason, this reminds me of when you know a woman in a bad relationship and she just won't leave the guy. You can tell her over and over again what she already knows -that she needs to leave him- but she won't do it because she is scared or she doesn't have the confidence or believe in herself enough to do it. In those situations where the woman finally does leave him, it is not always because there was a final straw (some final in-ignorable fact, in our case) that broke the camel's back. Sometimes it is because something gives her the confidence needed to feel empowered.

How can you work that into your dialogue about these things in order to gain the "tolerant" and politically correct liberal?? Sorry if doing so messes up your writing style. I love how you write and speak about this stuff. But if you really do want to change things, you're probably going to need to change how you talk about it...otherwise your books will only sell to the niche target market I'm in.

15. By Mark Lapierre on 3/23/10 at 12:47 am

Excellent presentation Sam. At a few points I found myself waiting for some mention of research which does or could answer some of the questions about morality - something concrete to further fortify the given examples, and to demonstrate the contribution of science in a way that doesn't appeal to what people know (because many won't have that knowledge).

16. By Anders Emil on 3/23/10 at 1:00 am

I loved the talk and I fully agree with your position, but I can see from reading other people's comments that a lot of people misunderstand your argument and take it as "science can define morality", which I am sure is not your point; it seems that once you start talking about morality, people can't help but ask the "why" question-- and I am sure that you agree that science can never answer why questions. But when you move moral questions from the "why" into the scientific "how, what effect, what causes" domain, then we can most definitely answer a lot of questions through science instead of dogma and superstition.

17. By Jason Jenkins on 3/23/10 at 1:52 am

I've been asking the same question within a philosophical context: is there an objective standard of morality? While I do not think there is a monolithic, black-and-white set of rules which can be applied to every specific situation, I think there exists a universal standard against which all ethical choices can be measured with varying degrees of goodness or effectiveness. I also think a philosophical ethos can be constructed with the aid of scientific understanding, and that such a system would have to necessarily follow from biological origins. I've explored different pathways for how this might be constructed. I haven't gotten very far.

Also troubling is the foresight that even if such an objective system could be devised, we will likely have to grapple with the question "objective to whom?"

While I understand that the focus of this talk was a criticism of ethical relativism and (to an extent) cultural relativism, there was a noticeable lack of suggestion for where to begin constructing such a standard from either a philosophic or scientific perspective. I would very much like to hear your perspective on this.

18. By oemug on 3/23/10 at 1:58 am

When the speaker selects the examples that frame a group's discussion of moral concerns, it's often easy to achieve a high degree of consensus. It's true that individual moral beliefs formed in this way may be correct and important, and examining particular injustices may be acts of conscientiousness. At this level, I'm sympathetic to Dr. Harris's remarks. Yet I also believe people may only recognize erroneous moral conclusions from dialogues and cultural milieus within which they've shaped their views once somehow enabled to step outside their previous frames of reference and approach the same topic from a different angle. Claiming that objective moral truths exist, for instance, is in my view more defensible than saying that science, by itself, will necessarily lead us toward such truths without dialogue with other modes of inquiry, practice, and experience, none of which, by the same token, should be completely trusted to provide correct answers by themselves either. In my view it's a commitment to dialogue and openness to new experience, coexisting with a wariness of their potential to induce paralysis and the deferring of important decisions, that stands the best chance of promoting moral growth.

This agenda overlaps with but has a somewhat different emphasis from the one Dr. Harris, as I understood him, offered in his presentation. His work has been valuable for adding previously neglected perspectives to a conversation largely dominated by relativists and sectarian dogmatists. Yet mine is ultimately a more interdisciplinary perspective, I would argue, and perhaps as a result I regard moral development as, to be sure, properly informed by scientific insights, but fundamentally probably more akin to an art -- and a collaborative art -- than to a science. Again, such a preference for moral dialogue and procedural eclecticism need not leave its advocates overcome by reticence or incapable of adherence to norms of argument. I might even point out that scientific discovery itself, perhaps the quintessentially objective endeavor, is especially in the theoretical realm often achieved in part through hypotheses that scientists come upon through nonlinear thought processes. Einstein was famous for this sort of thing. Eureka moments are certainly followed by experiments to test a new perspective, but these moments themselves arise in unpredictable ways. In sum I think commitment to dialogue and openness to experience -- concerns about the process of gathering moral information -- are actually important moral conclusions in their own right, more than I believe Dr. Harris has recognized.

19. By Sarah Jane Barnett on 3/23/10 at 2:04 am

Hi Sam -

I am a TED addict and your talk is the first that has made me think and question (compared to just applauding) for some time. I am a New Zealand poet (and currently a doctoral student) and injustice and white privilege is something I write about in my work. I would consider myself a moral relativist and have said that I don't believe in universal right or wrong and that all moral values are socially based. I tend to use 'productive' and 'unproductive' when describing behaviour in terms of whether or not it assists society in flourishing.

My question really is whether or not you think there is inherently a direct link between 'moral rightness' and a flourishing society or individual wellbeing. Because personally I don't know if that logically follows (and that seems to be the point of your talk - that if we can prove scientifically that something helps society flourish it is morally right). I would suggest that it is 'socially productive' but that morals are based in culture and belief and are not always linked to an outcome of well being. It all depends on your definition of right moral. I also was wondering what you think about the dangers of one group of people deciding what is right/wrong for other groups of people (and the danger of discrimination)? Fascinating - I wish you could drop by for a coffee and a chat!

Thanks
Sarah

20. By Denise Di Salvo on 3/23/10 at 2:23 am

"There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish,... and morality relates to these truths."

This leaves me wondering not only how human communities flourish, but how they don’t physically die off & whether or not these are related; i.e., why is well-being not considered a means to, or measure of, perpetuating the species? When taken to their negative extremes, how do situations that specifically detract from human flourishing contribute to the ultimate destruction of the species, & might this provide an objective test of the morality of the truths?

"How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise...that every opinion has to count?"

I’m wondering if war against “the patriarchy”--the blanket insistence (at least, in its early pendulum swing) by the purveyors of a philosophy/political agenda of inclusion that hierarchical arrangements are (in baby-with-the-bathwater fashion) *inherently* bad--has not helped to leave us devoid of any inclination or ability to stratify our values.

21. By xen on 3/23/10 at 2:31 am

Great talk Sam. I throughly enjoyed it.

I don't really have a challenge/question, but a suggestion on how to answer the first question that was posed on the talk - about women veiling themselves voluntarily - just draw a simple comparison with the situation current situation in North Korea.

Many people in North Korea undoubtedly think they worship their dear leader out of their own volition, with good reason, etc etc.
The situation within the muslim world bears some traits, even if the degree of insularity is magnitudes less...

22. By Roger Domagalski on 3/23/10 at 2:39 am

Hello, Sam
Enjoyed your thought-provoking talk. However, since the lead-in to the program stated that "...science can and should be an authority..." I was disappointed that there was so little actual science. In this regard I second the comments of Mark Lapierre. I would also humbly suggest that you expand your list of negative examples beyond the default Muslims. We already know they're nuts. Looking forward to the book. All the best to you.
Roger Domagalski

23. By Gabriel on 3/23/10 at 2:52 am

Sam, in the intro you said something like:

>It's generally understood that ... that science help us get what we value, but can never tell us what we ought to value ... I'm going to argue that this is an illusion.

So, where you arguing for the claim that:

* Science can tell us what we ought to value.

or were you arguing for the weaker claim that

* Given that we value certain things [i.e. conscious experience], science can tell us how best to structure society.

The former claim seems very controversial, and it's what you seemed to be claiming was your thesis in the intro. The second claim seems much less controversial - it's what you say is already 'generally understood'. Yet the first 15 minutes of the actual content of your talk seemed more targeted at this second question. At the rejection of moral relativism you touched on in the last 5 minutes doesn't seem to establish either.

I'm also curious about how you say what we value involves conscious experience. Are you arguing for some form Hedonistic Utilitarianism? Hows you thesis differ from this? What do you have to say about the challenge for such views posed by Nozick's Experience Machine thought experiment, for example?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Experience_Machine

Finally, I'd like to ask if you think that science can tell us how we should act to get to the best society, given some set of values. So do you think that science can tell us whether, e.g., the ends justify the means, or whether acts and omissions are morally equivalent?

24. By Ivan Soto on 3/23/10 at 3:15 am

Great talk! Congratulations.

25. By Jo Bell on 3/23/10 at 3:36 am

My question is about the definition:

"Values = Facts about the well-being of conscious beings."

...and where that leaves values towards living things that are unlikely to be proven "conscious" in any familiar sense?

I mean things like old growth forest trees - must it follow that our moral values are necessarily connected to something's utility (or otherwise) for ourselves or other conscious beings?

Or is your point simply that we feel a stronger moral obligation towards a person than something less conscious?

Either way, would love to see this developed a little further in a way that provides a meaningful framework to expand the morality conversation in scientific terms to broader environmental issues.

26. By Bjarte Foshaug on 3/23/10 at 3:48 am

Sam: I already commented on this in your faq-thread on Facebook, but here goes: Let me first say that I totally agree with you on what I consider to be the important points: It is indeed an objective fact that certain types of behavior cause more harm and suffering than others and any system of ethics worth having must be motivated by a genuine desire to minimize the suffering and maximize the happiness of all conscious beings (the latter being a value-judgment). I also agree that religion is the worst possible source of morality and hardly better than no morality at all.

However, I think the question moral philosophers have been struggling to answer is precisely: Why does the fact that something causes unnecessary suffering make it (objectively) wrong? Again: I agree that it is wrong, but I still don't agree that such a value judgment qualifies as an objective, scientific fact (which is not in itself a value judgment. Just because value judgments don't qualify as objective facts doesn't make any them less important). Without having read The Moral Landscape yet, I fear you may be guilty of setting up kind of a tautology: Causing suffering is immoral because that's what "immoral" means. You still haven’t answered why we OUGHT not to do it. The answer to that question cannot be reduced to objective statements about scientific facts but has to involve emotions at some level.

We all know how to answer the stupid argument that without belief in God we have no reason to be moral: "So if it wasn't for believing in God nothing would prevent you from committing rape, torture and murder?" I think a similar argument can be made against moral realism: If it could be conclusively shown that moral judgments are NOT objective facts, would that make you value the well-being of others less? The problem with making our value judgments depend entirely on scientific facts is that scientific conclusions are, more or less by definition, subject to falsification. So if somebody managed to falsify your findings, would that suggest that we should give up morality?

Still, I really enjoyed your excellent talk, and I definitely look forward to reading your book.

27. By Summer Seale on 3/23/10 at 3:59 am

Hi Sam,

Great idea for feedback on the talk. I watched it yesterday and I did love it as usual. Of the four "horsemen", I find you and Hitchens to always be the best speakers (even though I do love the other two very much, and RD's forums are always a beacon of light and information).

I saw a comment here by somebody named Sarah Jane about her being a Moral Relativist, and it prompted me to reply to her (and other relativists), as well as to you. I hope that this is okay, but it's something I think that should be addressed. In fact, I find you to be one of the best speakers on the subject.

Let me say right off: I'm a liberal of the likes of Hitchens: I supported (and still do support) the Iraq war. And, like Hitchens, it gets me excoriated in almost every liberal circle there is. I know that you are against it, and that's okay with me, but I have to reiterate some things which have stood quite plain for some time on the subject.

There really is no such thing as Moral Relativism. It is usually a self-delusion. If somebody were truly a Moral Relativist, they would essentially be a Nihilist. Allow me to explain with this example:

Almost every liberal that I know is against the occupation by Israel. In fact, the entire liberal movement, as a whole, thinks it's a bad idea. My guess is that Sarah (though, I do not know her at all, but I'll use her as an example - and I hope you don't mind Sarah, as I'm not trying to put words in your mouth =) ) is probably against the Israeli occupation as well.

Most Moral Relativists will find reasons to see the point of view of Palestinians who become suicide bombers. They will condemn suicide bombing, of course, because it is a violent act, but they will also try to determine what prompts somebody to become a suicide bomber in the first place - society, circumstances, politics, etc....

However, they usually condemn far more loudly the response to such bombings. While they clearly are able to put themselves in the shoes of Palestinians, or Iraqis, etc..., they are not able to put themselves back in the shoes of people in their own societies. Least of all, they appear to be unable to put themselves in the shoes of the leaders of the Western World. If they were, they would also be able to see the point of view of the leaders and militaries (for example: Israelis) who respond to such attacks with their own methods and arms.

But they do not.

The fact is that in most liberal circles, and most places where Moral Relativism exists in our world, the David vs. Goliath theme is invoked. Bush is excoriated, the Israelis are flamed, and it all comes down to what they think are the actions of religious fanatics in our own society, responding to religious fanatics abroad - with extra gravitas for the political and sociological motivations to sometimes, grudgingly, justify those actions or (at the very least) "understand" them.

That's not Moral Relativism. That's just being "against".

If liberals and, more exclusively, the subset being Moral Relativists, were truly pure in their ideology, they wouldn't even actually condemn anyone at all. They would actually be able to understand the response from an Israeli or American, or even Western perspective. They would be able to justify that just as well as the justifications I hear for suicide bombings.

I don't hear those justifications. I mostly hear blaming religion on both sides and then giving economic and socio-political weight to the other side. In this case, religion is used as a way to completely level the playing field for both sides and accuse them, but then the other reasons always tend to fall on the other side to, again, grudgingly give them the benefit of the doubt.

"Our" side is rarely actually given that benefit or, might I add, understanding.

That's why I believe that Moral Relativism, as it stands today, is a myth. It's really a self-justification for being against the West in general.

As another example: is there any doubt in your mind that the man who came and asked you questions at the end of your talk "understands" why Women wear burkas in those societies? And then, please ask yourself: which does he more loudly condemn: the burka or the way some of us girls dress up in public here in the West?

I think many of us know the answer based on the way he asked you those questions.

(more...)

28. By Summer Seale on 3/23/10 at 4:00 am

Please, I'd like to make it clear (because I'm fairly sure many others will read this and just want to disagree with me - contrarians as we Atheists can be) that I'm not condemning these points of view entirely. I don't agree with them, but I do understand them completely. What I am trying to do is have liberals be a bit more honest about their judgments and reasons.

One of the reasons I like you so much, Sam, is because you do confront these issues. You stand before entire crowds of left-leaning liberals, such as myself, and you force us to confront our viewpoints and be more and more honest about them. Hitchens does this too. They may wildly disagree with him when he does, but they know he has very solid reasons - unblemished ones formed in purity of thought for the most part - for supporting actions against the Taliban and also for his support of the War in Iraq.

I'm afraid that, like you and Hitchens, only right-wing demagogues of the religious bent tend to agree with me (and yes, I'm not saying you support the war, obviously). Like you, most liberals disagree with my moral stances and waver towards the other side because it has become implicit in liberalism to be "against" our actions - whatever they are, and no matter the reason. And, as Hitchens would say, I won't stand for it. I won't.

If liberals (and Moral Relativists in particular) stood up and said "Well, I understand Bush's sociological reasons for the invasion of Iraq as well...", then I would really believe that they truly are of that philosophical persuasion. But I have yet to see it. I have yet to see anyone "understand" the reasons why Israelis feel the need to be in the West Bank and to have Jerusalem. I have yet to see anyone "understand" the reason for the West to fight a ground war against Iraqi insurgents and to stay until the fight is done. I have yet to see anyone "understand" the will to remove Saddam from power and even "understand" hanging him for his crimes.

A true Moral Relativist would understand and cite all these reasons, but you just don't get that. Go to any liberal forum and you would see exactly what I mean - as I am sure you are well aware. These particular "understandings" are looked down upon. One is instantly accused of being in bed with Neo-cons, or the right wing, if one even so much as pipes up about them. And, after years of this kind of treatment, I'm a bit tired of it. Quite frankly, I'm glad that you said "who are we *not* to judge?" when it comes to the subject of the burka.

A few months ago, when France was debating banning the burka, we had an argument about that in the Dawkins forum. Many of the people who were supporting the ban were Women (as was pointed out), and most of the people citing liberty and freedom (even though they were aghast at the idea of wearing one) were Men. It just showed me even more clearly that liberals are just as human as their religious right counterparts, with all the foibles, sexism, and justifications which go along with their particular philosophies and world views. It showed me that even in a forum replete with Atheists, you still had a thin veneer of sexist attitudes. It showed me that even self-declared Moral Relativists could not "understand" the point of view of some Women who declared, such as myself, that this sack represented not merely the enslavement of women, but the complete *erasure* of Women from a society.

It showed me that Moral Relativism, yet again, is just a myth.

So yes, I'm glad you confront rooms at TED and other places with the notion that we *should* judge the morality of some things, because quite frankly, they usually fail to entirely do that. You don't appear afraid to challenge them on this.

(more...)

29. By Summer Seale on 3/23/10 at 4:01 am

So, in the most long-winded answer here so far: no, I don't think you dodged any issues. I think you confronted some that many don't like having confronted. I am a little tired of being placed in the right-wing camps for my views - as a liberal - because other liberals won't confront these issues as well, and I'm glad that you are making some rethink their instantly accepted dogmas that come with our usual world view.

Once more, I really hope this doesn't sound like a flame of liberals, because I am one. I understand what that view is. I completely accept Evolution, Relativity, the fact that Barak Obama was born in the USA, that there should be no school prayer at all, that we *should* have a public option Health Care Service, that Global Warming is absolutely real and that we should develop alternative fuels, the right to have Abortions, the right for equal pay and treatment of Women in the workplace and society, and I believe in a whole other host of liberal stances and positions. I am not a right-winger.

But, like you, when it comes to morality, it appears that the only people who support our own society's views at times are people on the right-wing. So, at times, I am accused of being on that side.

Well, thank you for challenging that view. I, for one, greatly appreciate it. =)

30. By Bjarte Foshaug on 3/23/10 at 4:02 am

Sam: I already commented on this in your faq-thread on Facebook, but here goes: Let me first say that I totally agree with you on what I consider to be the important points: It is indeed an objective fact that certain types of behavior cause more harm and suffering than others and any system of ethics worth having must be motivated by a genuine desire to minimize the suffering and maximize the happiness of all conscious beings (the latter being a value judgment). I also agree that religion is the worst possible source of morality and hardly any better than no morality at all.

However, I think the question moral philosophers have been struggling to answer is precisely: Why does the fact that something causes unnecessary suffering make it (objectively) wrong? Again: I agree that it is wrong, but I still don't agree that such a value judgment qualifies as an objective, scientific fact (which is not in itself a value-judgment. Just because value-judgments don't qualify as objective facts doesn't make them any less important). Not having read The Moral Landscape yet, I fear you may be guilty of setting up kind of a tautology: Causing suffering is immoral because that's what "immoral" means. You still haven’t answered why we OUGHT not to do it. The answer to that question cannot be reduced to objective statements about scientific facts but has to involve emotions at some level.

We all know how to answer the stupid argument that without belief in God we have no reason to be moral: "So if it wasn't for believing in God nothing would prevent you from committing rape, torture and murder?" I think a similar argument can be made against moral realism: If it could be conclusively shown that moral judgments are NOT objective facts, would that make you value the well-being of others less? The problem with making our value judgments depend entirely on scientific facts is that scientific conclusions are, almost by definition, subject to falsification. So if somebody managed to falsify your findings, would that suggest that we should give up morality?

Still, I really enjoyed your excellent talk and I definitely look forward to reading your book.

31. By Hamish Allan on 3/23/10 at 4:48 am

Hi Sam,

I really enjoyed the talk, but I think you need to cover this point a bit more:

"There is no notion, no version of human morality and human values that I've ever come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes."

Well, yes, but that's a very wide spectrum. As one of your other posters pointed out, the devil is in the detail between wellbeing at the individual and at the societal level. The Inner Party in Orwell's 1984 did very well for itself.

32. By Eric on 3/23/10 at 4:51 am

My main objection is that science is a descriptive discipline whereas morality is basically reduced to preferences. If you say, "focusing on human well-being is nice" and turn that into "we ought to focus on human well-being" you could just as easily say "inflicting human suffering is mean" and turn that into "we ought to inflict human suffering". Thus, you can't derive an ought from an is; just because evolution selected certain members of our species to be altruistic does not automatically give it a value. Is/ought fallacy.

I don't think Sam explained why human well-being is really even something to strive for. I like human well-being as most of us probably do, but I can't say for a 100% fact that it is an objective moral value. However, I would concede that if we do all act in our self-interest and this self-interest is accompanied by a well-equipped moral conscience, then it would be wrong to use Islam as a means to accomplish that goal (since I believe Islam is wrong, it would lead you down the wrong path to ensure your happiness which may include the well-being of others). This may have been the point Sam was making throughout the video.

33. By Gary Walker on 3/23/10 at 4:59 am

Sam’s desire ‘to go under the radar’ and not project an image of ‘atheism’ parse should be applauded. His desire to move the dialogue in many of his talks as he has in this one, from the religion/ non-religious (Atheist) strategy to one for the collective human well-being, happiness and the survival of our species, should be applauded. It is gaining the middle ground, not the extremist view either way, and seems to me the way to go if we are to ever raise our collective humanity slowly upwards, into one of intelligence, dignity, and grandeur. We as decent human beings, (not just as non-believers) deplore many things done in the name of god or religion. Humanity as a whole has to challenge the illusion that religion has all the prescriptions for moral and ethical behavior, for skeptical critical thinking, intelligence, reason, and rational, secular state, separation of religion and politics, gender equality and children’s rights, all those ideals which are attributed to any human being, independent of what we may really believe in as an individual. How many debates do we have to witness winning for the above ideals which we do represent, but gain no better ground for humanity, because the religious are making it plain they see non-believers as just another religion, and not for greater good of humanity. It is in itself creating conflict on the side-lines. We also marginalize those we want to stand for humanity with us, the moderates and make a pseudo-religion out of non-belief (atheism) that the religious continually attack. Imagine how much better the recent Global Atheist Convention would have been, had it stood for the collective humanity, for decent intelligence and the survival of our species, in a way that Sam has put his ideas. His calm, measured, desire to launch a continual look into the apparent denial of our human condition, using great empathy, is awesome. A standing ovation is not given easily from any audience, Sam, many salute you.

34. By nonverbal on 3/23/10 at 5:13 am

Sam, your speech has moved me, as most of your speeches tend to do. Thank you.

I would only encourage you to consider using more highly descriptive terms than words such as right, wrong, good, and evil. I'm not suggesting that the above words are always out of place or inappropriate, but that more descriptive and powerful words can often replace them. Not always.

"Truly delusional belief system"

You came up with the above phrase in answer to the person who interviewed you at the end of your presentation. It seems to me that those words have much greater potential not only for personal understanding, but also for political impact than something like, "truly evil system" would have offered.

35. By robin lindsay on 3/23/10 at 5:45 am

hi sam,

i posted the link to your ted talk on my facebook page, and it sparked a lively debate. below is a transcript of the discussion.

erica:

wish the q&a went on longer.

I understand there's an ideological war going on out there that I'm not really tuned in to, but the thought of someone applying the adjective "scientific" to moral judgments and discussions seems like an incredibly bad idea to me. It's like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire... I'm either being asked to turn over my capacity to judge for myself to priests or to scientists. Either way, there's some sort of squad of elites coming up with answers to dictate what should be coming from my own hard-working brain.

like, is the problem really that people aren't willing to admit answers exist? or is it that people aren't willing to do the work and think for themselves and be open to challenges and constantly entertain the possibility that they might be wrong. Which is, incidentally, an exhausting way to go about things.... See more

but that said, that was an interesting talk. so short! makes me want to go back and read Kant.

Robin:

i dont think harris wants people to switch off their own moral compass and hand over the responsibility of morality to science, but merely to suggest maybe science need not stand absolutely mute on the question (which is what most of us think science should do)

additionally, i thought it important to suggest that some people are moral peons and other people are morality "experts" in some senses. i dont have a problem with that, or its implications. i think it positively liberating actually - and definitely a positive step in moving the discussion of 'what is moral' forward.

"like, is the problem really that people aren't willing to admit answers exist?"... See more

i think most of the north eastern liberal educated sect probably do take their moral/cultural relativism a bit too far.

Andrew:

Interesting. He articulated a few thoughts which i've tried and failed to express. I disagree with his premise though. I don't think one can conceive even of a scientific morality. We already have a moral objectivity...it's called ethics.

It is no wonder the church was the voice that agreed with him. The result of Harris' dream is the Catholic Church. We have cast off religious repression all too recently to forget it. WE will very likely return to a monolithic world view some day. Moral relativism is to my mind the agent by which we get creative and try some shit before we have to pick the next oppressor.

Ben:

Interesting talk, thanks. I think Sam makes a lot of good points. I do, however, wish he'd offer something more about how we'd use science to structure morality (could we determine laws like whatever is the best for the most sentient beings is the most moral?) and maybe made a distinction between between what he means by 'science' as oppose to philosophy and more specifically moral philosophy (but then perhaps if I spent more time studying moral philosophy this would be self evident). I am also curious as to whether the study of law (at least in a democratic society) is the scientific method for determining morality (and the whys and why nots thereof).

I suspect what he was really trying to get at was that we shouldn't be using religion/scripture as a basis for morality (because of the examples he used) which is fair enough, but he could have made a stronger argument if he said that more directly, quickly pulled a couple of any of the millions of good examples as to why we shouldn't (for example, not sparing the rod and spoiling the child, or genital mutilation, or burnings for witchcraft, or prohibitions against homosexuality) then moving on to how, specifically, we could use science to development a method for determining right from wrong. He went on a bit too much about 'women in sacks' and the number of the states which don't spare the rod when he could have been discussing how science can be used to determine morality.

I agree with him, and think he is correct that we can use the scientific method to determine moral absolutes, but without investing a lot of brain hours into how we could develop a framework in which to test right from wrong (let out alone make the determinations themselves) that is just an opinion. It'd be a stronger argument if there we some examples of how something that is self-evidently morally wrong (like killing your daughter because she was raped) could be proven and verified as wrong. Could we agree a set of moral laws? How would these moral laws be agreed? How could we test them?

36. By Matt Skelly on 3/23/10 at 6:06 am

When TED posted this on twitter he gave it the #controversial hashtag. Then he mentioned that people might be overcome with anger at the end of the talk. Neither of those things make sense to me.

I personally would love it if he'd go MUCH deeper down the rabbit hole of his theories. I'd be astonished to learn what his guesses about the origins of life are, given how controversial the plain truths he evokes about human knowledge can apparently be.

On the other hand, there are other people out there, even people commenting on this board, who disagree that morality and human flourishment are related - that answers exist.

Keeping that in mind, I think he did a great job of only laying out what's plainly true. Free will > oppression. Proper nutrition > dying of hunger. And really, his primary objective: Intellectual honesty > pretending to know things you don't (or in this case, pretending to not know something you do). I fail to see the controversy.

37. By Amanda Campbell on 3/23/10 at 6:46 am

Great talk! I actually said to my husband that I wished it was longer and that you could go into more depth, so I'm happy to hear a longer version is in development. My thoughts are:

- It seems to me the talk was more about moral relativism (and that being a bad/ineffective way to "do" morality) than about science specifically giving answers.

- To piggyback on that point, the one mention of a scientific procedure that I caught was during the Q&A when there was discussion of scanning the brain to detect levels of "love." While in the end you said that actions done out of "love" have to be taken in a larger context than that relationship and that when talking about morality, to quote Tina Turner, "what's love got to do with it?" I think this point about love specifically needs to be made up front, before talk of brain scans. Because talking about scanning brains to detect love might lead audience members to think that "love" matters in questions of morality. I can act morally without loving the people involved, and love should not be used as a justification for immoral behavior. I think that was your point, I just felt it could be made clearer and stronger.

- A few of the people on my Facebook mentioned that they felt that the points about Islam were "too easy" in that they let the mostly Western audience off the hook, and maybe even feeling a bit smug. I'd like to see more points raised like the one about corporal punishment in American schools.

38. By Tom J. Lawson on 3/23/10 at 6:51 am

It's too easy for someone to take offense when you appear to be knocking cultural (and religious) laws (ie, burkas), and although it's completely justified, I think you should offer homosexuality as a more obvious case of religion having no moral concerns about it other than the fact that their god told them it was immoral. If you ask a religious person what they have against homosexuality, they usually will offer you Bible verses but no actual reasons for why it is bad. They could say that you get no begatting, but they rely on simple authority from above.

Science obviously has something to say about homosexuality, and how it used to be the end of the road for that DNA, that having a gay child was like not having offspring at all. If genes are selfish, then why would a genetic string want to stop itself from reproducing? And isn't that detrimental to human flourishing? So strict homosexuality would be immoral, but bisexuality would be moral. Soon enough gay couples will be able to have a child with both of their DNA strings, so does that mean that science will have turned homosexuality from being immoral to moral?

39. By Chris on 3/23/10 at 7:02 am

any chance of a new reading list in anticipation of the your book coming out sam? the recommended reading section here on your site is such a treasure trove, it has been my reading list for several years. maybe a new list would contain a few classics from the old list that speak specifically to what you are arguing for in "The Moral Landscape", like perhaps Parfit's "Reasons and Persons" and Glover's "Humanity", mixed with some books containing ideas that you are currently being influenced by in ethics and psychology. something like the "Moral Psychology" series that Walter Sinnott-Armstrong put together a couple years ago that comes to mind; it has pieces by Flanagan, Casebeer, Hauser and others you have recommended. As for your new hour-long talk, having just finished Peter Singer's "The Life You Can Save" and "Peter Singer Under Fire", I would love to hear you address where you have common ground and where you differ with Singer's preference utilitarianism.

40. By Clifford Meece on 3/23/10 at 7:13 am

I agree with everything you said in the talk Sam (in principle), but I think there are several problems with the specific arguments. This isn't a criticism of your skills as a thinker but just an assessment of the magnitude of the problem you're tackling (and you should be commended for the bravery of tackling it).

One, everyone in the moral landscape is on a journey, either up a peak or down a peak, like a hiker in the wilderness. Social policy is one of the engines that propels this hiker. While it's fine to say that policy should be designed to help the hiker's assent, you forget that the landscape is filled with local minima and local maxima. Most of the debate around moral questions is an analysis of these local phenomenon. "Would a descent into the nearby valley facilitate the climb up the next peak?", for example. Focusing on just the highest peaks compared to the lowest valleys ignores these and essentially sets up a straw man. Easy for you to knock down, but a useful fallacy.

Secondly, (but related) is that you create another strawman when you say that intellectuals can't (or won't) distinguish between the lowest valley and the highest peak. That kind of moral relativism should be roundly criticized, but I just don't think you would actually find anyone who seriously equivocates the Dalai Lama and Ted Bundy.

Thanks for tackling the subject though...I hold the belief that you are one of a new emerging breed of public intellectuals that we haven't seen in this country in many, many years. History will find you in good company.

41. By Tony Lloyd on 3/23/10 at 7:15 am

My first thoughts were that it was awful (so awful I stopped watching!) You may have dealt with the following later (and I will watch it all, at some point) but what annoyed me about what I saw was:

1. You've muddled the concept of a moral fact with an empirical fact. Your argument for an (empirically) factual basis of morality appears to be:
i. Science deals with "facts"
ii. There are "moral facts"
iii. Therefore science deals with them

2. You seemed to take a version of utilitarianism "as read". If you take a rights/duty based approach to ethics then you do not make ethical decisions on the basis of well being of sentient creatures (though, often, their well being will help inform choices). Similarly with many other priniples of ethics: adopt them and at times you will act against what you are arguing is the basis of morality.

3. You resorted to creationist style "the other side of the dichotomy I've falsely created is wrong, therefore I'm right." I'm thinking of his criticism of "spare the rod, spoil the child". The theists, there, have got it wrong and it's a powerful argument against God as a basis of morality. It's no argument at all for your basis.

Initial impressions, and I will do the decent thing and listen to all of your argument, before posting more considered criticisms!

42. By Matt Hirsch on 3/23/10 at 7:22 am

I thought the moderator took an unfair dig at you with his "social elitism" remark. You addressed and answered the question, but you ignored the comment. I kinda wish you had addressed it specifically. Making a judgment that the cultural de-valuing of women is wrong is not an elitist view. I believe your point is that it should be considered empirically wrong.

I'd like to point out that attacking the monopoly on moral teaching that religion has so violently protected in this way, the moral landscape, is ingenious. Thank you.

43. By Sean Moran on 3/23/10 at 7:26 am

Sam, I like the chess analogy but slightly disagree with you on the ted bundy/edward whitten one. I think you came off a little bit too restricting in terms of what makes a moral expert in the sense that everyone learns their morals partly from a similar criterion - life. To become an expert in physics one must first choose to, go to college, excel, and keep up with new physics info coming out. In morality, you are kind of forced to be an 'expert' because of the truism in that everyone is put in a position where they have to make moral decisions every single day.
I like in the beginning how you were trying to get people to think more about how science can help guide us towards what is moral truth, but when you said moral truth has experts, certainly this may be true, it came off as it being like anyone who doesn't study it at a collegiate level is a relative ted bundy (or sam harris ha jk) of moral philosophy. I know this isn't what you meant and you were conveying the fact that their are people who can and should work in the realm of science outside of superstition to develop universal truths, and that was good, but i think what i heard was a bit too limiting upon who can or should be moral swayers of the times. We all can be and we all should be, it's just a matter of being grounded in reality before being morally allowed to do so.
We all have the power to analogize, but i believe that just because someone goes to college or reads a few books on philosophy, while this isn't bad, it doesn't necessarily equate on the scale you inferred about what it takes to qualify as a moral 'expert.'
you are one of my favorite orators sam and the person i first found out who was also another atheist. thank you for letting me know that there are others like me in the world. not to sound gay but you really grapple my attention by how you speak. it's totally awesome, man.

44. By Sean Moran on 3/23/10 at 7:28 am

Sam, I like the chess analogy but slightly disagree with you on the ted bundy/edward whitten one. I think you came off a little bit too restricting in terms of what makes a moral expert in the sense that everyone learns their morals partly from a similar criterion - life. To become an expert in physics one must first choose to, go to college, excel, and keep up with new physics info coming out. In morality, you are kind of forced to be an 'expert' because of the truism in that everyone is put in a position where they have to make moral decisions every single day.
I like in the beginning how you were trying to get people to think more about how science can help guide us towards what is moral truth, but when you said moral truth has experts, certainly this may be true, it came off as it being like anyone who doesn't study it at a collegiate level is a relative ted bundy (or sam harris ha jk) of moral philosophy. I know this isn't what you meant and you were conveying the fact that their are people who can and should work in the realm of science outside of superstition to develop universal truths, and that was good, but i think what i heard was a bit too limiting upon who can or should be moral swayers of the times. We all can be and we all should be, it's just a matter of being grounded in reality before being morally allowed to do so.
We all have the power to analogize, but i believe that just because someone goes to college or reads a few books on philosophy, while this isn't bad, it doesn't necessarily equate on the scale you inferred about what it takes to qualify as a moral 'expert.'
you are one of my favorite orators sam and the person i first found out who was also another atheist. thank you for letting me know that there are others like me in the world. not to sound gay but you really grapple my attention by how you speak. it's totally awesome, man.

45. By Sean Moran on 3/23/10 at 7:29 am

Sam, I like the chess analogy but slightly disagree with you on the ted bundy/edward whitten one. I think you came off a little bit too restricting in terms of what makes a moral expert in the sense that everyone learns their morals partly from a similar criterion - life. To become an expert in physics one must first choose to, go to college, excel, and keep up with new physics info coming out. In morality, you are kind of forced to be an 'expert' because of the truism in that everyone is put in a position where they have to make moral decisions every single day.
I like in the beginning how you were trying to get people to think more about how science can help guide us towards what is moral truth, but when you said moral truth has experts, certainly this may be true, it came off as it being like anyone who doesn't study it at a collegiate level is a relative ted bundy (or sam harris ha jk) of moral philosophy. I know this isn't what you meant and you were conveying the fact that their are people who can and should work in the realm of science outside of superstition to develop universal truths, and that was good, but i think what i heard was a bit too limiting upon who can or should be moral swayers of the times. We all can be and we all should be, it's just a matter of being grounded in reality before being morally allowed to do so.
We all have the power to analogize, but i believe that just because someone goes to college or reads a few books on philosophy, while this isn't bad, it doesn't necessarily equate on the scale you inferred about what it takes to qualify as a moral 'expert.'
you are one of my favorite orators sam and the person i first found out who was also another atheist. thank you for letting me know that there are others like me in the world. not to sound gay, but you really grapple my attention by how you speak. it's totally awesome, man.

46. By James Bierly on 3/23/10 at 7:34 am

I think you have some good points, but I think the real argument lies at a more basic level than your talk addresses... maybe you will get into these objections more in your book?

Sam Harris: Morality is human flourishing

Religious leader: Morality is obeying God

Ted Bundy: Morality is human flourishing, and what makes me flourish is to kill and rape

Relativistic New-Ager: Morality is finding yourself, and being true to your soul

... you need a stronger definition of "human flourishing," and a stronger argument for why we should consider this to be what morality is about. It's not necessarily taken for granted by many humans that "human flourishing" is what morality is about, or that we should care about this. Once one grants that this is what morality is about and that we should care, then what you say follows. But you need to lay the foundation first

47. By Pablo M. H. on 3/23/10 at 7:49 am

Great talk, as usual, but I'm not fully convinced. I hope you can clarify some of the following points:

1) Isn't it a contradiction to state that science can inform absolute moral principles and then propose a moral landscape with "many peaks"? Some people might view this approach as a Trojan Horse to moral relativism. And that's a tough sell.

2) How would you deal with a (quite plausible) scientific demonstration that deluded brains are almost always happier than critical thinking ones? What would you value more in that case?

3) Is human well-being a higher end in itself? Especially considering that some of the brightest contributions to art, science and philosophy have historically been made by troubled, maladjusted and/or unpleasant people.

4) Our best universal moral principle, the so called "Golden Rule", was realized way before anybody could dream of an fMRI machine. Don't you think that you are over-selling the ability of natural sciences to reach conclusions in the realm of ethics and values?

5) Many issues that you discussed here are matters of public policy and law. What would be your approach to achieve a productive dialogue between scientists and influential social agents that are often unshakably tied to special interests and ideologies?

Thank you.

48. By Jean Kazez on 3/23/10 at 7:50 am

I've made comments here--

http://kazez.blogspot.com/2010/03/sam-harris-on-morality.html

49. By clint warren on 3/23/10 at 8:02 am

I want to see Sam display and explain the data he's been collecting regarding the brain... and recent work by Inzlicht too.

50. By Greg Gilman on 3/23/10 at 8:15 am

Fascinating talk. You are very convincing that an objective morality exists but less convincing that we are at all close to scientifically discovering it. If the brain scan of the delusional man who chops off his son's head looks like he loves his son then we are back to a subjective standard - one I very much agree with but one which is based on our emotional revulsion at the act. Especially since the act may have spared his son much suffering later in life. In fact all your examples are highly emotionally charged. I share your values on each one but do not see where you have made the link to a scientific discovery of human values yet. I am rooting for you though.

Another problem: The best alternative to a religious view of the world is provided by evolutionary biology. It is a foundational principle of evolutionary biology that people cannot be trusted to understand and report accurately their deepest motives. Yet every time someone kills in the name of religion you unquestioningly accept this as a true cause. Isn't it likely that most violent people would still be violent even if they lost their faith? In fact aren't here many violent people who aren't religious at all?

51. By Mike on 3/23/10 at 8:45 am

Great talk.

In some ways I preferred your similar talk you gave at Beyond Belief - Can we ever be right about right and wrong. Although it's been a while since I watched that talk I seem to remember it being a less obviously emotive. While I agree with you in principle, I found some of the long pauses in the TED Talk allowing the audience to let certain 'horrors' sink in was a little cringeworthy.

I think that you misunderstood a qestion asked at the end of the talk - which is something which I remember thinking myself after watching the original Beyond Belief talk. Namely that if you accept the premise that science can answer moral questions, it follows that things that you as an enlightened, educated thinker may strongly believe to be moral and just, but that can be proven by science to be immoral. In which case, one would have to be willing to defer to science rather than to one's one moral intuition.

I look forward to the book.

52. By Dustin Sanders on 3/23/10 at 9:45 am

Sam, another brilliant performance.

I have only one criticism, which is this:

When you make passing comments as to how the first inclination a father feels when their daughter is raped, is to murder her, then pausing and saying "let this thought detonate in your mind ...", I feel you could press the issue further.

My understanding is this: Most atheists and even liberal believers don't quite grasp the seriousness of these issues. They don't "actually believe others believe" this stuff. Or they may think you are just picking far off extreme fringe elements, which I personally realize you are NOT doing.

I think you can stress and underscore these parts more, so your audience knows as a fact that millions, not just a few dozen, believe these heinous things.

Angels for Atheists,
Dustin Sanders

53. By Dustin Sanders on 3/23/10 at 9:53 am

Sam, another brilliant performance. My "only" criticism, as I sent to you in a private email giving thanks, is this:

When you comment about things such as the father who's first impulse is to murder his daughter after finding out she is raped ... well, I know that this happens.

But, I also feel (and I could be dead wrong.) that the majority of non believers or liberal believers think this is just a serious fringe element, and not altogether the majority of even moderately fundamentalist Muslims.

I think these points should be stressed. Over stressed if necessary, as many may hear you say it, and think "This guy is just taking the extremes and comparing them to the main body ...", which may only hurt your cause.

Best wishes,

Angels4Atheists

54. By Mike Perry on 3/23/10 at 10:41 am

Hi Sam, I'm responding to your call for questions on Dawkins' site.

My questions are in the same vein as Bill Casey's earlier one. He wrote:

"An underlying assumption of your talk was that questions of morality are questions of suffering/happiness... As you no doubt know, there are many non-consequentialist ethical systems which would take issue with that assumption."

What scientific justification can you give for your utilitarianism?

And, even if we assume utilitarianism, there are more questions unanswerable by science. Whose well-being matters? Should the well-being of all animals be considered equally? Which is more important, average well-being or aggregate well-being? Should we be rule utilitarians or act utilitarians?

Of course science can inform moral decisions -- I don't think you'll find many ethicists who disagree with that. How much destruction some bomb will wreak, for example, is a scientific question, and it is one whose answer might have major implications regarding whether or not we ought to drop it.

The big questions, the most important questions, reside solely in the domain of philosophy.

55. By David on 3/23/10 at 12:41 pm

From an atheistic view, when the universe came into being there was no cosmic goal for people to appear on one tiny planet and start being nice to each other. So morality cannot be akin to the laws of physics which have always existed independently of us. Where does this moral law come from in a universe which had no obligation to produce you and I? If it comes from the brain, then had we evolved to believe that rape is O.K and our brains told us rape was O.K then would rape be O.K? In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins spends a whole chapter trying to explain the evolutionary origins of religion with the implication that this shows God is nothing more than a delusion, so does that therefore mean if an evolutionary explanation of morality can be found then morality is no more than an accident of mutation as well? Alternatively, if you claim that a moral statement is true simply because everyone agrees it is true then what should we make of social reformers etc who went against the moral consensus of their day? Hitler was voted in so does that mean his views were morally right simply because they represented the majority? You seem to be appealing to something higher than yourself (i.e it’s not simply your opinion that letting children starve to death is wrong) yet without God there is nothing higher for you to appeal to. At the moment you seem to be suggesting that your brain is right because your brain says so!

You suggest that what’s moral is what’s best for our health however where does this assertion come from? You could have four people in the room – an animal rights activist who believes we should do what’s best for the planet, the humanitarian who wants what’s best for humanity as a whole, the racist who wants what’s best for their race and the individualist who is only concerned with what makes them healthier with no concern for anyone else. Each one has scientific evidence showing how an individual action rates on their philosophy. Whose ethical system is the correct one? To say that our brains favour survival of the fittest might lead us to wrongly conclude that the one with the most children (i.e the one whose moral system let them pass on their genes) is the correct one.

You give the example of chess, however chess only works because there is an agreed upon set of rules. Somebody, once upon a time, had to sit down and draw up a list of rules which said what was and wasn’t allowed in chess. Who did that for this moral set of rules which you refer to?

As part of your book tour, it would interesting if you debated a respected philosopher such as William Lane Craig on where morality comes from rather than just engaging on this topic at a popular level.

56. By imbecile on 3/23/10 at 12:52 pm

Using consciousness, and how it perceives itself (recursion? consciousness is self-perception already, or even more simple: internal state dependent on internal state) as the yardstick for moral questions doesn't really solve the central moral dilemma: who decides?

Or more specifically, how do you solve conflicts between different consciousnesses, that might have different ideas of well being. Using science you can decide a lot of specific moral questions, and that is very necessary. But how do you decide which consciousness takes precedence, if one is the sober self, and the other the mean self?

Or how do you decide, if by some technology, or maybe even just normal evolution, we lose some of our emotional range, or gain some to it. Who decides which version is more moral?

57. By mk10108 on 3/23/10 at 1:18 pm

The message is evolving..well done

58. By Joey Frantz on 3/23/10 at 1:26 pm

Having read virtually all of your writings and viewed all of your published speeches, I have noticed that you always say something like "morality is about happiness and suffering" or "moral questions are questions about human flourishing" as though this were just obvious. You don't even take moral skepticism - the idea that there just is no right or wrong - seriously. I'd like to know if you really have anything to say to counter academic moral skeptics like Richard Joyce, who have presented strong technical arguments against the existence of moral truth. As far as I can tell, you just take it for granted that there is right and wrong and that happiness is right and suffering is wrong.

In The End of Faith, you also say that you don't think the differences between Utilitarianism and Deontology are as large as people tend to think they are. I would like to know why you think this, since the vast majority of philosophers do think that the differences are real and significant.

59. By P Wilmers on 3/23/10 at 2:00 pm

Ted Bundy had nothing on John Piper in the mental illness department.

How can this mind be chinged?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taYhbRm6pnU&feature=channel

Fundamentalist religious morality is such a deeply imbedded bad idea how can it be corrected?

60. By Timothy Riches on 3/23/10 at 2:56 pm

The Atheist with a Soul! The Great Uniter! Very pleased to share this planet with such a man! Carl Sagan would have loved you!

Much respect and admiration,
Tim Riches,
Brampton, Ontario, Canada

61. By Zachary Lawrence on 3/23/10 at 4:20 pm

The main doubts I have had, and others I have spoken to, results from the lack of time you could spend on each subject. The "chess" analogy, and many others were not deeply described in a variety of contexts. And many complaints have occurred involving the "extremes" of morality used, instead of the "gray areas".

What I saw lacking: Examples, the quality of the examples, Explanation of why opinions are perceived as "unanswerable".

This small focus on opinions, can then be shifter to morality and values. Telling them why their "belief" is incorrect will better help them understand why your ideas are correct in theory.

Although I do have some questions I would like answered. Ill explain my reasoning, and see if it fits yours. That way, if needed, you can augment any part of your lecture for better understanding - If I end up not understanding.

Well, from my studies in psychology, experiences in life, etc I find it plausible to say human morals and values are results of a mixture of hereditary and environmental elements. Therefore, in a psychologically-rich environment,that gives great opportunity for well-being, people tend to have similar qualities and values (Which remind me of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) such as altruism, creativity, spontaneity. While people in societies deprived of such benefits develop prejudice, confirmation bias, mental sets, etc. So, it becomes possible to question "What ought to be good", when realizing this two peaks exist - Which I believe you mentioned in your video, just in a different manner.

So, what about two people arguing about abortion? I think answering such questions will lead to a larger understanding. Usually such arguments occur because both groups assume the other understands their ill-defined terms (Good, Bad, Happy)and their goals. Thus, both "opinions" may be correct given certain contexts. So an opinion is a "possible" answer, solution, or fact for a set of well-defined, specific goals, instructions, and results wanted. This way, its not "These cannot be answered", its more of "The question isn't specific enough, or not specified at all".

Like when I ask people "Are peanuts bad?", There is a variety of answers. Many people could have opinions, but in actuality both "Yes" and "No" are correct given the specific contexts. "Yes" might be the case of an extreme allergic reaction. This is similar to the "Chess" analogy, where exceptions do not make something non-objective.

Also, when people wonder "Well what about happiness?". Well, This emotion and understanding of it is directly linked to our brain and how it perceives the outside world. The perception would be based on possible hereditary factors(Autism) and Environmental Factors(Abuse). This way, given a continuum of "peaks" in morality - What would be able to understand what constitutes "happy" for certain people, and possibly even understand what "happy" ought to be researching the "evolution" of people, and how positive environmental factors can change people's beliefs and values in specified ways.

I have no doubt that if Science strives for these answers, which are completely possible, then this world will be a better place. Tolerance of behaviors, beliefs, and traditions that obviously "damage" well-being of humans, as it is defined, should not occur.

Hopefully this helps in some ways. If I am incorrect in the above statements, then you can possibly change your lecture to compensate for my misrepresentation of the data given to me.

62. By Tim Almond on 3/23/10 at 4:32 pm

Hi Sam,

I think the interesting point is what came from the question about belief systems.

If we look back on the history of say, the United Kingdom, we can see that from medieval times to the present day that women's clothing has generally reduced in the length. Veils were frequently worn in medieval times, the Victorians never showed an ankle, through to today when a woman can wear a bikini on a beach.

We know that we ourselves once set such rules on women and so there must have been reasons why we moved away from them.

What I believe is a mistake is to assume that religion is the driver, that religion brings about such oppression. Instead, it is linked far more to society which itself drags religion along. As technology changes society over time, religion either has to adapt or become redundant.

In order to get a grasp on moral positions, it's important to first understand why people hold moral positions. Sometimes, they're just mentally ill, but that doesn't explain why whole societies seem to allow something. There's something more going on when that happens.

The more we understand why societies have different codes, the more we can grasp what is common in thinking, and perhaps why some people (even in the same families) take quite different moral positions.

63. By Jeff on 3/23/10 at 4:36 pm

Great talk. Can't wait to read the book, and I love the general thrust. Two comments:
1. If you haven't already read it, I recommend Maryanne Warren's book, Moral Status, which speaks to at least some of these issues concisely and eloquently.
2. Even in a 20 minute talk, I think it would have been good to at least acknowledge the mistakes that have been made in the past by folks who wanted to derive values from facts--folks who attempted to justify (and a few who still do) racism, sexism, homophobia and the like by appealing to science (e.g. scientific studies that purported to show that women had less intelligence because of smaller brains, that african-born slaves were not human, etc.). To be clear, these were all cases of "bad science"--but it seems like they should still be (at least briefly) acknowledged.

64. By Kody Boyd on 3/23/10 at 5:06 pm

On the subject of the brain's growth through social and cultural experience. I’ve often stated that growing up in a different country's culture in some sense can be like being raised with a inverted sense of facts. I know its an extreme example, but there are limited things we can learn and figure on our own without the teaching of those around us. We can figure out light and dark, hot and cold, hunger and thirst. But something even as simple as color we are taught. I don’t know, maybe it can be found if we can even see the same colors as the person beside us, all we know is we have been taught to identify that shade as the "color" on hand. Like we have been taught a stop sign is red. If we were raised thinking a dog is a cat, and a cat is a dog. Then landed in here in Canada, and told some lady out walking her dog that she had a wonderful cat, she would assume we were crazy. I don’t know how far into depth you go on this, or if you can go deeper, but religion can get pounded into some of our youths head so early on, that their reality is based off of it, and its why its so hard to shake that foundation. I mean you cant take lets say a 30 year old mans view of life, and change it with a 20 minute lecture of Morality through reason vs. religion. He has his 30 years of so called experience vs. your 20 minute window you granted him.

Either way, fantastic lecture. I hope some of our thoughts, comments, questions go somewhere and help you to solidify the argument we fight for.

65. By Heber on 3/23/10 at 5:35 pm

Your talk was terrific. I hope you come to Minnesota soon!

I have followed you very closely since the publication of your first book and I have myself become imbued by much of what you said over the years. However, as you no doubt are aware, atheists for some reason have a tendency to adhere to moral relativsm (perhaps in reaction to religious moral absolutism) and this issue of morality is a lot harder to discuss than the problems with religion. e.g. as a consequentialis or utilitarian, how do you personally deal with the tyranny of the majority? If science can emit moral claims, what will these moral claims be grounded on? Happiness and suffering? if so, aren't these experiences subjective?

Anyway, I can't wait for your book! I'm sure many of my doubts will be dispelled.

66. By Jared Asay on 3/23/10 at 6:13 pm

Hi Sam,

I'm excited to learn that you plan to elaborate further on your TED talk. The major concern I have with your idea is that it concentrates on (possibly) a short-sighted morality. I'll give you an example, but first we have to agree that we are working towards a better overall framework of morality for all of mankind, and not only that, for the future of mankind and not just the present.

The prime example is this: what happens when overpopulation becomes an unavoidable problem for this planet? A moral code that only addresses the now will almost certainly lead to happier, healthier people. But those happier and healthier people will almost certainly reproduce at a much faster rate. Even if not, overpopulation WILL eventually become a problem, and I would like to know how you propose we deal with that.

67. By Vladimir Vigdorovich on 3/23/10 at 7:25 pm

Greetings, Sam,
I loved your talk overall. Over the years I have come to expect this from you. So, well done, again.

I have a couple of suggestions for your expanded version. The TED talk would have benefited from these, but you were facing a serious time constraint.

Here goes:
1) Spend 5 minutes on talking about science as a _method_ of learning about objective truths. Too often science is understood as a narrative or a fenced "magisterium". I even see this in some of the comments left here. This is not the context of science you are addressing (and rightly so); make that point super-clear. Although this may seem basic, I am convinced that many of your critics are confused precisely on this point.

2) Talk about available data and methodologies that would allow us to map the moral landscape. You alluded to these in the TED talk, but I believe the presence of data needs to be more concretely felt. You need to (and, indeed, can) disspel the myth that one "can never measure happiness."

68. By Oscar Pineda on 3/23/10 at 9:18 pm

Hello Sam, we are having a discussion about it here.

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=558511&forumid=16&s=

I think some common and not so common arguments against your stance have been raised.

69. By M. Valdivia on 3/23/10 at 9:36 pm

The presentation left the impression of one that is needlessly over-complicating the Zero-Force paradigm, by trying to 'dress-up' old-school Objectivism with lots of prima facie assumptions (some even bordering on the myopic/bigoted) forwarded as somehow being part of the 'scientific' perspective, which of course, is not how real science is done. Quite a shame too because the core message of your lecture is actually quite powerful and compelling.

70. By C. Vales on 3/23/10 at 10:29 pm

I think this is an important step in the struggle against moral relativism that has long haunted science and questions of evaluation. We would think about ethics in two different ways, one through consequentialist view, utilitarian, or through the non-consequentialist view, where the rights of one individual surmount any other possible consequences. If Neuroscience will one day be at the point where we can tell the path of a certain ‘choice’ based on extra-subjectivity, that’s exciting. Many people (lacking some erudition) are worried that the tone of the discussion is heading towards single authoritative systems, as many people lack education enough to really acknowledge a range of answers to what seem to them like black and white questions. And human beings tend to access moral codes as having arbiters. Is it a common assumption that people inherently contain moral aptitudes within their brain-or are their environments ruling their social behavior.

If people hold certain opinions that influence their ethical decision making, and some find their response to be morally inadequate or on the wrong end of the spectrum that mainstream intellectuals deem to be to a better degree or moral rectitude, are we then to marginalize such opinions? It is true that opinions, statements and propositions, all contain a truth-value to be tested and analyzed by Science? What would be the effect of morality and science as the same project?

Kant was concerned about Deux ex machina and free will. And he attempted to make morality and science the same project, and the categorical imperative of moral behavior being lawmaking behavior. When Harris used the example of universal rule, being broken in one instance, how is Science, based on pattern establishment-where anomalies are rare and non-existent and can be explained by another cause, helpful in such a project? Are people in delusional ideological mindsets just sick? Or are they operating according to the rules of the culture that they live in?

Of course arguments would have to be made, but not by scientists, but by interdisciplinary philosophers. Metacognitive emotionality is already a popular paper topic in a lot of ethics and phenomenology research circles.

I completely understand this moral void people fear they are living in, and we should come up with a thriving ethics field to better capitulate problems of delusion driven irrationality in particular belief systems.

I wonder if their will be a field specifically devoted to the effects of cult ‘membership’ on the brain, and whether or not such research becomes its own Malthusian chamber. The thing is everything would come back to religion and political groups. And then you just make enemies it seems. This is certainly a very sensitive and nuanced argument, but what are the larger ramifications set forth by this ‘mode’ of thinking? I’m interested, but skeptical about how neuroscience would break down the question of moral thinking-being somewhat wrong, evil, or just a bad choice, and if there could at any point be a thought-crime or what have you. Interesting stuff. I suppose the variety of expertise and posited thoughts are better left to researchers, rather than religious authorities, on the subject of value judgments. Mr. Harris needs to write a pretty comprehensive treatise on the question.

71. By Andrew Swensen on 3/23/10 at 11:08 pm

Mr. Harris,
Please consider addressing the Einstein-Russel Manifesto in your next lecture/article/book if you haven't already. It came immediately to mind while hearing this talk that yours would be the perfect voice to resurrect this forgotten document and its implications. Here are a few reasons why I consider it fertile ground for your intellect.
(1) 55 years ago some of our most eminent minds formally warned the global community of the dangers involved in pursuing nuclear weapons. This occurred a decade after two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Probably, nuclear war does not 'aid human flourishing'. Perhaps it is even obvious that it does not. Brave as they were for doing so, what is the explanation for their [the eminent minds] lag time and why, at present, is the matter still up for debate?
(2) Richard Feynman once expressed (my apologies for not being able to find the link or to quote verbatim) that the mistake [they] made in the Manhattan project was not to recognize that the catalyst for their efforts was no longer a threat. 'The bomb' was originally conceived to defeat the Nazis however, the physicists kept working on a solution because (without regard to morality perhaps) that is what they set out to do as men of science. Feynman's expression of regret marks the earliest time in history I've heard a modern scientist imply that science has any responsibility towards or potential influence on morality. This I think is the crux of your current argument; that science not only can but should stake its claim in the realm of right and wrong.
(3) Humility. Your talk on TED was rich with it and I applaud you for it. My one objection was that you took one too many opportunities to ridicule a particular culture for their senseless acts, both recent and historically, against humanity. While I agree that we, as reasonable people, are not obliged to pause in consideration of culture, I fear that my own nation (and the nation you speak primarily to) needs little more encouragement before it retaliates in excess in response to an instigation of conflict suffered almost a decade ago . Let us not forget that Hiroshima and Nagasaki might rightly be considered as senseless as the events of 9/11.
I should like to believe that an objective morality does exist and further, that science has a role to play in its discovery. The Einstein-Russel Manifesto exemplifies that those invested in scientific endeavor no longer wish to be confined to the laboratory segregated from their affect on human civilization. Regrettably however, it exemplifies as well that the domain of reason is still not well heard of nor well respected. Just the other day I heard on the radio of the concern over the increased enrichment of Uranium in Iran.
Please read the words of some great thinkers on the subject, so carefully though out it took a decade to compose, at http://www.pugwash.org/about/manifesto.htm

Thanks for your time,
Andrew Swensen
swensena@gmail.com

72. By Timothy Platt on 3/24/10 at 12:06 am

I recently learnt how altruism is a defense mechanism in many species to protect genetic posterity. If this is so, then the banding of brothers and cousins to defend the honor of the family would have a genetic link to maintaining a viable genetic line. The goal would be to prevent a genetic invasion by unknown ancestries. The developing scientific understanding of altruism would seem to justify Taliban-like behaviors in more primitive societies.

73. By Jared Scheib on 3/24/10 at 1:44 am

Hey Sam,

It was a good talk and one I agree with completely, but I felt that the title was a bit misleading insofar as "how" usually connotes a procedural explanation, but your talk was focused on "how" as meaning an _enabling of_ or _broach of_ the topic. I hope that makes sense. In other words, to clarify, I would be more satisfied with the talk (and the title) if you would have given (despite limited time) even a brief example of a moral value that science can explain, such as by diving into some of your own research or Antonio Damasio's research via fMRI on the neurological basis for social emotions and how that can translate into a concrete moral. When I read "how" in the title, I expected a procedural demonstration, not just an argument for the notion that it is possible. Food for thought for future deliveries on this topic. Either way, keep championing the charge! We're all very grateful for your work.

Ciao,
Jared

74. By Cameron Lapworth on 3/24/10 at 1:45 am

First brilliant talk, watched it twice to make sure I got everything in.

Second, it seems to me that people find it hard to understand that morality has physical outcomes. It strikes me in things like immunising children. I get morally outraged that people who don't understand the risk to my child in not immunising there own and that this isn't just a matter of choice. That there are facts involved. Society indeed seems to have sidestepped reality.

The other thing is a link to Natural Selection, we do seem to have brains wired for socialisation unlike a crocodile which is perfectly happy to eat the young of other crocodiles (male even eat their own). Clearly the crocodile wouldn't be judged by own standards, but acknowledging our species tool kit of survival strategies, empathy, cooperation, sharing, protecting others etc. and linking this to morality might be good. Jarred Diamond has done some excellent stuff on civilisation collapse. Perhaps you could draw a link to failures of the moral/ethical behaviours of civilisations. Failure to care have empathy for their environment, failure to have empathy for those around them. etc.

75. By Sam Speedy on 3/24/10 at 2:10 am

Hi Sam,

Brilliant talk. I've always thought chapters 6 and 7 of The End of Faith, where you first outlined your argument for a science of happiness and suffering, was the only thing that was actually 'new' about the 'new atheism', and I've been wondering for a while now why those chapters have been largely ignored these past few years. Hopefully that will start changing now.

That said, one quibble I had with your talk was that you didn't explain why people should care about the well-being of others in the first place, especially in cases where the well-being of another might conflict with our own. I know you must have been pressed for time, but this is the first thing that people like the religious will throw against you. Having read your chapter 6 of TEoF I know you can justifying it, and I think you should in these talks as a basis for everything else you say.

Also, I've seen how some have reacted to your talk, and I thought I'd give you something by way of a heads-up (in case you aren't already aware of them). First, some think a science of morality is a path to totalitarianism, with scientists dictating what is right and wrong. But it strikes me that if totalitarianism leads to suffering, then this is exactly the sort of fact about well-being that you would be talking about anyway. That should be pointed out. Second, some wondered why values related to well-being SHOULD come from the facts about well-being, rather than from a holy book or whatever. So far I've been saying that the reason values related to well-being should come from the facts about well-being, rather than from a holy book, is the same reason that the act of building an airplane should come from the facts of air-plane building, and not from a book on the flight dynamics of angels. Seems insultingly obvious, but some seem to have trouble grasping it when it comes to values.

Keep up the excellent work.

-Sam Speedy.

76. By JFN on 3/24/10 at 7:28 am

Hi, Sam. So here's my question:

In your TED presentation, you concluded with:

"We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that we have to admit these questions have answers."

I completely agree with this statement, but what about all the religious folk who think that they DO have the answers to these questions and try to stuff them down the throat of the world? What do we do about these people? After all, to the faithful, isn't that what their faith is? Answers to life's questions?

I agree with you that religious moderates who give cover to zealots are extremely dangerous in their own way in their enabling of ignorant religious beliefs, and from what I heard, your talk addressed moderates. Do you think that if we target them with the kind of reasonable talk and thinking you speak about, we can overwhelm and marginalize the passionately, dangerously faithful?

Catholics will say that nixing gay marriage and birth control and abortion and sex outside of marriage are essential to human happiness and well being. Mormons will say not drinking any alcohol or caffeine is. Many Muslims will say keeping their women in cloth bags, as you say, is. Obviously they're not looking beyond the damaging rules and traditions to see what pain they can and do inflict. My question is, how do we convince them that the belief that these things are essential to human happiness is more rooted in their own fears or insecurities than in reality? Or are we not trying to convince the very religious of anything, but rather the moderates? Or are we not trying to convince anyone of anything, but, rather, encouraging secularists and rationalists to speak up, represent, and create a critical mass?

77. By Ishuani on 3/24/10 at 8:52 am

Hi,

It was great to hear you confronting the 'all culture is holy' idea. We agree that all culture possesses aspects we can learn from. At the same time, we need to bring light to the fact that cultures also posses aspects that are not only detrimental to them selves, but also to human progress. This subject is an enormous tabu.

Self insight in one human being is hard enough to maintain. Self insight in a culture is a monumental task, but none the less, it is the only road possible.

Does there exist certain cultural traites that have lent themselves to the development of democracy, hospitality, community, friendliness or justice?

How do we recognize these traits? How do we get past the fear of recognizing our cultural flaws and accepting others pointing out what they see to be our flaws?

Thank you

Ishauni

78. By Algeron Waterschoot on 3/24/10 at 9:03 am

I am an enormous fan of your style of reasoning, Sam. It's clear, to-the-point, logical and best of all, easy for laypeople to understand. If there's any advice I can offer, it would be to continue presenting your material in a way that's accessible to everyone, whether they have religious beliefs or not. Common ground is a powerful tool of persuasion.

79. By Gabe Eisenstein on 3/24/10 at 10:00 am

As a philosopher, I welcome a new ally in the fight against moral relativism. I also welcome any empirical research that might help us refine, expand or decide between competing ethical theories. I still think that rational reflection (philosophy) must do the bulk of the work, and that we probably should not expect new research to profoundly alter the terrain of universalist ethics as built up from Aristotle to Kant to Rawls, MacIntyre, Nussbaum, et.al. (It is their work, rather than the skeptical arguments of Hume and Moore, that I would prefer to see you address.)

What really encourages me about the talk is that it signals an awareness that your most serious interlocutors are not the superstitious "believers" (who are mostly deaf to argument anyway), but rather those of us who opt for a strategy of demystifying (demythologizing) religion rather than debunking it. We tend to stress the moral-psychological aspects of religion, and you are pushing back against the sense that this carves out a safe domain ("magisterium") in which religion is immune to attack.

No intellectual tradition should be immune from vigorous criticism, and it is in the nature of traditions, especially those that have enjoyed political power (whether Catholicism or Marxism), that they breed dogmatism and fanaticism. I would only emphasize that self-criticism is not absent from religious traditions. Thinkers in religious cultures have been practicing the demythologization of religious symbolism (restoring symbols to their proper function) since the time of Amos (8th century BC). And they have often worked vigorously against prevailing moral dogma, reflecting openly and freely on the moral issues confronting them.

To be clear: I am interested in religion as a symbol-system only, not as a theory or "faith". And I don't think we NEED religion, for morality or anything else. My only question is whether it is prudent to salvage the good parts of tradition, while working to change the understandings of those still prone to take it literally, or if we must start from unaffiliated rational philosophy only. I take this to be an empirical question.

80. By THP on 3/24/10 at 10:19 am

How do you measure the height of a society's moral peak, is there a theoretical maximum?

How do we know if, for instance, the democratic institution provides an added moral value to a society or culture.

How do we go about influencing a culture/religion where any supposed progress first requires it's practical downfall and effectively diminishing large parts of said culture's wellbeing for say almost a generation or two.

Accepting morality beind based on wellbeing and suffering requires analysis, reasoning and perhaps like-mindedness. What (moral) basis is there when no conversation is possible to firstly, compare someone's morality with your own (society's) morals and secondly to act on it.

Let us know the schedule of your book tour (date/location), please visit Europe!

81. By abb3w on 3/24/10 at 10:52 am

You are correct to point out that science can determine what IS the common element of all human OUGHT assessments. You then appear to make three major mis-steps:

1) neglecting to address whether this common element is an exact expression, or merely a close approximation algorithm;
2) neglecting to consider whether this is a particular case of a more general concept;
3) presuming that it follows we OUGHT to use any of these -- the common element, the conjectural more exact expression, or the conjectural more general concept -- as the primary bridge across the IS-OUGHT divide

Additionally, I would make a distinction that philosophically, this is no longer science. You are using science to determine what choices you OUGHT to make so that results of some properties come about; this crosses into the context of Design, and is ergo Engineering. (Science as anthropological practice routinely crosses into the philosophical discipline of engineering, since a scientist generally considers what experiment they OUGHT to run and how they OUGHT to run it. However, anthropological practice includes lots of other things not usually considered essential part of the philosophical discipline, such as writing grants.)

82. By Grant Smith on 3/24/10 at 11:26 am

My feedback is divided into two parts. The first assumes your audience is the public at large. I think for this audience it will be necessary for you to apply this model to politics. You mention how important it is for moral choices to be voluntary, it then follows that the best way to improve the lot of man is to promote a voluntary society. Probably the best resource on what this is, actions to take to get there etc. is www.cato.org. I leave you with the link because if you aren't already familiar with how individual liberty (economic liberty and civil liberty being equally critical) is harmonious with your model, you'll get a lot more benefit from perusing that site than anything I could hope to contribute in this email.
The second audience I assume you may want to address are the scientists who currently renege their responsibility to ask normative questions because they harbor the belief you are trying to defeat; that science can't/ ought not answer moral questions. If these individuals are your primary target I think you are on track. Perhaps you can give historical examples of the negative outcomes associated with men of science relegating the responsibility of answering normative questions, I'm sure there are many. One personal example comes from my study of social psychology where I see professors who understand human nature better than most avoid testing any hypotheses that could result in findings that have controversial implications. By controversial implications I'm of course referring to the exact same those inherent in your lecture. You will find resistance in the form of fear from these individuals. This fear exists because they have witnessed career ending implications associated with obtaining data that can be used to improve our ability to understand human nature and make sound moral choices. Herrnstein and Murray's problems after they wrote the Bell Curve provide a good example. This is why I think it might be necessary for you to explain why they shouldn't be afraid, or that if they want to make the world a better place they ought to overcome that fear. The framework you're developing provides a method for diffusing irrational criticism of research that aims to shed light on human nature. Therefore it has the capacity to encourage these individuals to take the kind of risks that are necessary to change academia for the better.

83. By Philippe Blanchard on 3/24/10 at 12:41 pm

Good speech -

Of course, you realize the fundamental problem with laying out a humanistic-based set of values would be to answer the question "what criteria do you apply"?

If you are a student and a fan of natural selection, and if you decide that the chosen criteria should be to strictly have the race thrive as much as possible from a strict biological point of view (reproductive / genetic criteria) then even the most horribly repressing social context would be perfectly acceptable...

Arguably, the western world with its 1.6 children per family is a rather poor long-term scheme to ensure the race's survival. Granted on planet earth, the space being at a premium right now, it may not be such a bad idea, but once space travel becomes possible and extra-planetary colonisation becomes a possibility, why restrict procreation?

See what I mean? This is hugely relative. Natural selection works best precisely because it adapts (and changes) to the changing environment. And those changes bring about social changes as well.

Remember that movie where the only people left found themselves living in an outpost in Antartica after a devastating nuclear winter? Leaving the movie, nobody had any qualms about the few remaining women being "shared" sexually by the males for procreation's / re-population's purposes.

So then - what criteria do you apply? A humanistic / liberal criteria? A genetic criteria? And more importantly, are we smart enough to devise the right set of criterias?

84. By Terry Freeman on 3/24/10 at 1:22 pm

It is refreshing to see someone who values reason over dogma and can articulate it so compellingly. Too often arguments about faith are polarizing battles but It is precisely our ability as humans to reason that is the exercise of faith. To believe in something without any evidence is not faith. It is, rather insanity. We all must make assumption on which to build our perceptions of reality but if those assumptions are not open to revision based on reason then we are cheating ourselves of our uniqueness as a life form. That uniqueness is the ability to alter our perceptions as well as our environment at will. We squander this ability at our peril.

85. By Maryann Spikes on 3/24/10 at 1:37 pm

Excerpt: "...what Richard Dawkins is not seeing, what Sam Harris is seeing, is that Dawkins' desire for such 'deliberate cultivation' comes from his being a moral creature with a natural hunger for it. And what Sam Harris is not seeing, what Richard Dawkins' is seeing, is that Harris' science can explain the natural hunger, but it cannot supply nor endorse what satisfies it. It is a modern-day Euthyphro Dilemma. Is this a true dilemma, or a false one? Is there a resolution? Consider this dialectic:..."

86. By Aaron on 3/24/10 at 2:09 pm

Thanks again for challenging taboos so unflinchingly. I am also pleased to see you continually stand up for worthwhile practices (like meditation) that often get ‘thrown out with the religious bath water’ (as it were).

With regard to your appeal for feedback, I have two suggestions (Though I imagine that, given more time, you might have covered these more thoroughly):

1). For the people in the audience (or readers) who are generally skeptical of your line of thinking, I think you need to spend more time showing them HOW a set of morals breaks down to factual claims about well-being. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to take a set of morals with which they are very familiar (like the 10 commandments, or at least one of its few useful parts) and break it down into their underlying factual claims about well-being -- in front of them, step by step. To keep my point in context of your talk, here’s the statement where, without more detailed explanation or familiar examples, you may lose your skeptics:

“There is no notion, no version of human morality and human values, that I've come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and it's possible changes. … Even if you get your values from religion; even if you think good and evil relate to conditions after death -- either to an eternity of happiness with god or an eternity of suffering in hell -- you are still concerned with consciousness and it's changes"

2). I'm hoping you can expand more on your point: "How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects that's worth considering?" Indeed, the modern promotion of "Multiculturalism” (of which religion is almost a subset) is perhaps one of the sneakiest hindrances of Reason. I have thought about this issue in great detail while working on an essay in response to an earlier talk of yours and Jonathan Haidt's TED talk ("The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives"). For instance, you may find Haidt's talk interesting and useful in that it is a perfect example of how taboos block scientific inquiry and logical conclusions. In my opinion, Haidt (under the misguided principle of “Moral Diversity”) fails to make (or avoids pointing out) the obvious conclusion: that of his 5 so-called “Foundations of Morality," the 2 seen most prevalently in conservatives, have nothing to do with Morality. So again, I hope you can spend some time on how ‘Multiculturalism’ prevents us from having more honest conversations about which social systems are most successful at promoting happiness.

87. By Philippe Blanchard on 3/24/10 at 2:52 pm

This is a social-engineering pseudoscience / social-engineering "trap", used to justify the status quo of white supremacy in the late 19th-early 20th centuries.

The "key" here is what I wrote earlier:

"Natural selection works best precisely because it adapts (and changes) to the changing environment. /// and then the punch line: /// And those changes BRING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGES AS WELL." (And that, my friend, happens to INCLUDE religious beliefs).

The cool thing about natural selection is that we will never accuse it of doing social engineering. Yet that's precisely what it does, as it attempts to create the most thriving setting.

The other cool thing to think about when talking about natural selection, is that it has NO QUALMS about ELIMINATING species that do not know how to adapt to fast changes when such changes occur.

Are you advocating that we know better than natural selection what works best for the universe? No, of course not. As far as natural selection is concerned, the human race may well be a PLAGUE on the universe, and "good riddance" when it self-destroys and disapears.

I'm gonna leave you with this thought. Natural selection HAS RESULTED in humans practicing all the atrocities you describe (honor killings, sati, misogyny, AND what some of us describe as absurd prohibitions of any of the world's organized religions. Are you so daring as to say that natural selection made a mistake in allowing such things to exist?

88. By Luis Alfonso R de Trío on 3/24/10 at 5:36 pm

Mr. Harris, you have talked about "facts" as the bricks for building a moral conscience, but science can give much more to a sound moral foundation. Just by "example": the search for "truths" (even without capital "T") and selfcorrection (the willingness to accept correcting opinions if they seem to be more correct, even though they are not mine). If something simillar to this procedures were applied to the search of moral certainties, we would be living in a better world, no doubt. Other attributes of science will be quite useful too, for example, scientists usually work inside the paradigms of the competing theory or explanation, in order to test its validity. That kind of mental flexibility would be very beneficial if applied to the search of moral certainties.

And as a marginal note:
The host at TED said something like "What would you answer to a devote muslim women that says that veil is a form a celebration of feminine uniqueness, because male lust is not to be trusted?"
Well, if the goal of veiling is the protection from masculine lust, wouldn't be more reasonable, effective and fair a ritual knotting of the penis to the abdomen for example, or some other sort of male chastity belt?
History and sociology and antropology (that can be sciences with hard facts, too) can show us that all that religion regulations were born in a patriarcal male chauvinist environment.

My congratulations for one of the most inspiring talks I've ever listened to. The public at TED was overwhelmed.

89. By cbazinet on 3/24/10 at 6:03 pm

Brilliant! I've watched in several times and think you are spot on! Please keep doing what you're doing. You have no idea how many people you help and encourage. Bravo!

90. By Mark Sloan on 3/24/10 at 6:14 pm

Sam,

Excellent talk, I look forward to its expansion. However, some people are struggling with your explanation for how what ‘is’ can inform us about what ‘ought to be’.

You might consider the following approach to that explanation:

1) It is a fact that mentally normal people ‘wish’ to flourish in Aristotle’s sense of the word.

2) Rules for living in groups(value judgments about how we should live and what our obligations are) can be chosen by groups based on rational choice (a choice that is expected to best meet the needs and preferences of the group’s members). Such a rational choice should by the definitions involved produce a higher degree of flourishing than the group's alternatives.

3) It is uncontroversial in the field of the evolution of moral behavior that almost all moral behaviors (whether behaviors motivated by moral emotions like empathy, guilt, and righteous indignation or cultural standards like the Golden Rule) can be understood as strategies and heuristics for exploiting the synergistic benefits of cooperation. That is, they have been selected for by the benefits of cooperation (reproductive, material, and emotional) that these strategies and heuristics, on average and in the long term, have produced.

4) This observation about moral behavior can be expressed as: “Almost all moral behaviors increase, on average and in the long term, the synergistic material and emotional benefits of cooperation and are unselfish at least in the short term.” If this observation, or something like it, can be defended as empirically ‘true’ based on its explanatory power concerning diverse and even contradictory moral standards and behaviors, predictive power for moral intuitions, and other normal criteria more successfully than any other hypothesis, then it will be part of science.

5) Science cannot tell us that, as groups, we ‘ought’ to choose moral values that maximize flourishing (make rational choices) or that do not maximize flourishing (make irrational choices). We, acting as groups, are completely free to make irrational choices and frequently have. My preference though is for rational choices. (Note this is about rational choices by groups for rules for living in groups. Rational choices for individuals regarding moral obligations have to be argued a little bit differently and while usually consistent, may sometimes be in conflict. However, sacrifice for the good of the group may still be defended as a rational response which avoids shame and condemnation and for other reasons.)

6) My above suggested science based definition of moral behavior is consequentialist. How can we know what behaviors will actually increase the benefits of cooperation? Fortunately, genetic and cultural evolution have been working on this problem for a long time and can provide us with a lot of empirical ‘moral wisdom’. These are in the form of heuristics (some better than others) for choosing moral behaviors based our common moral intuitions and our cultural or philosophical moral standards like the Golden Rule, Utilitarianism, and Kant’s moral imperatives.

My point here is just that science appears to be fully capable of producing a science based description of what almost all morality ‘is’. Further, the most likely definition of a morality based in science may also the most rational choice for adoption by groups. Science may be unable to provide justification beyond rational choice for adoption by a group, but so what? It will not perturb my world if there are no ‘magic oughts’ in the universe.

91. By ~C4Chaos on 3/24/10 at 7:57 pm

Sam, i definitely agree with your premise: "Science can answer moral questions."

as a fellow meditator, my question to you is, do you believe that science can facilitate the "enlightenment" of individuals and entire culture?

here's a video of Shinzen Young @ Googleplex expounding on the topic:
"Divide and Conquer: How the Essence of Mindfulness Parallels the Nuts and Bolts of Science" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XCWP4pODbs

keep it flowing...

~C

92. By Matt Dearmond on 3/24/10 at 8:43 pm

I would like to hear Sam discuss morality and how it pertains/can be reconciled with cosmic perspective. (something a little different)

93. By Joshua Allen on 3/25/10 at 1:30 am

Unfortunately he didn't escape the fact that it all comes down to a conditional statement, an if-then. IF suffering is bad, THEN X or whatever. IF human happiness is the greatest good we can achieve AND it is RIGHT to achieve good, THEN we should strive for human happiness.

That is the basis of Humanism, more or less. And I consider myself a Humanist, BUT I recognize that the condition I place into the IF slot is arbitrary. In science we don't say that the sun is yellow because that's how the sun looks TO US, we say things about the sun that are independent OF us - that is, science gives us objective facts. So why should I allow someone to say that human happiness IS great just because it is great TO US? A tiger certainly wouldn't consider human happiness to be the greatest good, nor would Martians, and in the grand scheme of things the Milky Way won't give a rat's ass whether 1 of the some billions of different types of life that arose on some far-flung planet in a boondock solar system were happy for the brief fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the lifespan of the sun that sustained them.

Human happiness IS great, IF you're a human who can experience happiness, or a member of the human's moral community. The reciprocity that springs forth from mutually beneficial relationships like the ones we foster are a wonderful part of the human experience. Our happiness may be objectively verified. But so may our jealousy and our malcontent and our rage and our lust. The superiority of one of those emotions over the others has certainly not been established objectively, not by Sam Harris here, and not by anyone else whose opinion I have encountered.... See More

I think Sam Harris knows this. I think he is playing a dangerous game, a game where we lie to people in their own best interests, where we tell them the myths that will give them meaning, and make the world a better place and perhaps ultimately save them. But where have we heard a mission statement like that before? I hope I am wrong about that, but I can't imagine that what I have said above never occurred to Mr. Harris...so why didn't he address it?

I am a huge fan of Mr. Harris' literary work, but I feel he occasionally oversteps what he can back up. Perhaps he is challenging science to take up this cause, but I think he needs to admit when his case is not so very air-tight.

94. By Dustin Geeraert on 3/25/10 at 2:00 am

Hi. I'm a Skeptic magazine subscriber, and longtime fan of Sagan, Dawkins, Randi, and so forth. Initially I was kind of skeptical (ha ha) about Sam's ideas, mostly the association with eastern religion (reading the back and forth between Randi and Harris I think the issue is settled and I'm no longer worried about it). Now, however, I'd like to say that this is one of the most exciting, reasonable and intelligent talks I've ever seen, and it's incredibly frustrating that after Sam gave this concise, brilliant piece of clear thinking the host then went on to actually use the phrase "cultural imperialism," demonstrating the exact kind of wishy-washy, "let's substitute political preferences for logical rigour" bullshit dogmatic thinking that Sam just spent the entire talk arguing against. As far as I'm concerned the more people Harris convinces the better the world will be.

95. By Allen Jones on 3/25/10 at 3:33 am

The Title of this talk was : Science can answer moral questions. Emphasis on science and can. I know this was a shortened version of a longer lecture you are planning....however...I saw little reference to science and the scientific method and actual avenues that may be used, or are currently being used. Science is the use of the scientific method in the narrow definition...and even in a broader sense science is still an actual practice applied. Philosophy will not do here. This is a great start to a conversation and I agree with every single thing you stated....but I would like to see more nuts and bolts examples. I suppose many of these avenues of practice are waiting to be defined, many more experiments waiting to be designed. However...my criticism is for you to incorporate more detailed examples of how ACTUAL application of scientific method will be applied to gain concise results.
If we hope to lop off large sections of radical belief and dogma we are going to have to employ the obvious and unambiguous "correctness" that only science, in the strictest sense, can illuminate.

96. By Gerald Rudolph on 3/25/10 at 7:02 am

When I hear an example of a religious text that is unreasonable, I ask if this is an indictment of religion or just an indictment of a particular religious writer. A talk would be more convincing if the examples went to the core of religion instead of just examples of bad religion. After all, scientists have brought us nuclear weapons, polluted air and water, global warming, etc. so taking that approach could easily become a tit-for-tat, like the question who was the worst mass murderer, an atheist or a theist. That approach gets nowhere.

Another thing that I wonder about is that the whole of science, including reason, abstract thinking, and even mathematics itself is taking place in the same brain as what some would call religious awareness. I am not proposing a theistic understanding of reality, and certainly not for an acceptance of religious beliefs proposed by established religion.

However, we are not so much evolved beyond other species. Science is good at making predictions for things that lend themselves to mathematics but a belief that mathematics, or natural laws exists outside the minds reasoning may not be so different from religion.

Both saying something is delusional and saying something makes sense are ways of describing what the mind is doing, not what reality is doing; reality is what it is. It neither makes sense nor doesn't. Making sense is the result of activities within the brain that are somehow compelled to create explanations that are consistent with each other however the electrical impulses in brain measure consistency. The squirrel in the tree outside my window does not seem confused, but the extent of its notions, if it has any, probably consists of things like food, predators, sex, etc. It would be amazing indeed if in our evolution, our reason has come to such a state that it has converged exactly to all of the reality we experience, not to mention what we don't experience. On the contrary, the increasing complexity of scientific explanations might suggest that it is a process that does not converge at all.

Showing an extreme preference for those synaptic activities consisting of reason over other synaptic activities may not be so reasonable.

97. By BVL on 3/25/10 at 8:26 am

On a collective level, the difficulty is that moral questions are often answered according to majority consensus. And if science were to be the guiding principle of the majority, would the world be a better place? I dont know. Science and Religion tries to be very black and white according to belief; very left hemisphere of the brain. Arts, care for human beings, and social action tend to be less decisive; very right hemisphere of the brain.

Would it be better to have more social interaction and community of different cultures versus more science?

98. By Frank Berger on 3/25/10 at 8:27 am

Hallo Sam,

I'd like to share some thoughts about your interesting talk.

First of all, I do strongly sympathize with your impatience with ethical relativism. All too often it is nothing but a lame and defeatist excuse not to bother about the cruelty and injustice that persist in other societies. I also concur with your assertion that there is something like moral expertise. I doubt, however, that that will turn out to be any kind of scientific expertise, neurological or otherwise.

There seems to be, in general, some measure of confusion between moral and non-moral phenomena in your argument. You start out with the challenge that, contrary to popular belief, science can help answer the age-old question of "what constitutes the good life" and try to support that claim with the observation that "values are a certain kind of fact, they are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures." These alleged facts then in turn are reduced to individual neural states that, at least in principle, are investigable by neuro-science. At this point you have narrowed the concept of value down to the point, where it fits in exactly with your central thesis. In other words, you have come very close to producing a circular argument by sidestepping the really contentious moral issues. The classical concept of the good life is, contrary to what you say, certainly not "reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes." Neither is the Christian concern about the fate of the soul in the afterlife (which is very close to the Platonic one). But even if we disregard other moral systems for the moment, the idea that states of consciousness are likely candidates for the kind of value that really counts in morality, seems an odd one. Can a drug-induced feeling of euphoria really be considered a morally relevant value in itself? Undoubtedly, it can be a very pleasant experience and it is of course also true that pleasure and pain play a prominent role in almost any moral theory. That, however, does not mean that morality is all about the changing states in conscious minds. You'd have to present a very strong argument to defend that position. Instead, at least in your talk, you almost seem to take it for granted.

Besides this, in my eyes, rather unconvincing and reductionist account of human values, you also seem to blur the distinction between moral and non-moral judgements. Take your own example of the corporeal punishment of school children:

"Is it a good idea (...) to subject children to pain and violence and public humiliation as a way of encouraging healthy emotional development and good behaviour?"

Well, no. But then, this isn't even a moral problem. This is, strictly speaking, just a question about means and ends. In this case most people will immediately agree that treating children this way can hardly have any positive effects. But if they didn't, then here's a place for science to help us out. A long-term study about the effects of classroom violence would undoubtedly be a valuable resource that could prove that this is a bad and counter-productive practice. But this study would not have any moral content. It could only deliver the necessary background information to help us decide, what to do. To have such information is, undoubtedly, very useful and often absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, it's not any kind of ethical information. Which is okay, because, as I already said, so far we aren't even faced with a genuine moral problem. That would change, if beating children actually did improve their behaviour. What now? Is it okay to cause children pain in order to ensure their conformity to established rules of conduct? Which level of violence would be permissible? Now we have a real moral challenge on our hands. Can science provide a solution? I rather doubt it. Looking at the changing states of consciousness of the people involved, though surely fascinating, hardly seems to be a promising approach to solve this riddle. And while this is only a hypothetical case, there are other, more pressing dilemmas that are not. Is it okay to torture people, to ensure the safety of the nation? Is a war, in which many innocent civilians are killed, justified, if it serves some ulterior, benevolent purpose, like the establishment of a functioning democracy? Again, science can help us to collect the necessary factual information and thus, to make a well-informed decision. But after all the relevant facts are known, the task of deciding which of the competing human values in this case trumps the others still remains.

If you want to make a convincing argument for your proposition, you need at least to present a rough outline of how science might resolve such complex moral issues. We can all agree that it's wrong to add "cholera to the water". That doesn't prove that human values are facts of the natural world, investigable by science. It only shows that this is a ridiculously simple moral case.

99. By Greg Thompson on 3/25/10 at 8:38 am

Wonderful presentation, Mr. Harris.

In the future, should we be more concerned about building healthy bodies, or building moral individuals? I suppose we can do both, but I would prefer that morality be the number one priority. I also hope that this "building" process happens on an individual basis, rather than as a government initiative.

As an atheist, I am also frustrated by the tendency of religion to hold sway over moral questions. Therefore, I believe your search is incredibly important and worthwhile.

I think that many people consider the "moral geniuses" to be religious leaders, who are the same guys bound by ancient literature. An objective notion of morality seems so possible, so plausible -- one wonders why it has failed to take hold. The secular humanists tried, but so far nothing has stuck.

My only doubt is: Can you REALLY convince people that there are objective notions of right and wrong without an all-powerful god in the sky? Then again, we have police and prisons and don't just rely on deities to enforce right and wrong, so maybe it is possible. Maybe the very fact that we have police, laws, and prisons is an admission that objective right and wrong is a possibility.

Alas, I don't really have a question and instead have written a sprawling comment. It nearly brought tears to my eyes to see a crowd stand for a talk of this nature. It gives me hope for the future.

Be well, Mr. Harris, and keep up the wonderful work.

P.S. I wrote an article for Skeptic Magazine about the indefinite extension of James Randi's million dollar challenge. Michael Shermer says it will likely run in Vol 13, No 5. Magazines tend to push things to other issues, so we'll see. I hope you check it out.

It's filled with some history of the wacky claims through the years. I interviewed Randi and Penn Jillette via phone and Daniel Dennett via e-mail, among others. I even sent you an e-mail, but you were probably busy. Anyway, hope you can check it out and enjoy it.

100. By jsfb on 3/25/10 at 8:55 am

It seems to me the tag lines of this talk and book are too easily misconstrued as being the absolute point when it isn't. Sean Carroll seems to have missed it too, because he thinks this is a simple ought from is argument. Maybe I'm wrong also but I think that your main objective is to try and shift the paradigm of the assumptive authority for answering moral questions away from religious thinking to that of scientific thinking at the population level. I don't think you are claiming that science can provide every answer, only it is demonstrably more qualified to weigh in over religion and deserves serious attention as a way to evaluate moral assertions. In your usual style you contrast rather stark examples to clarify your idea for all but the most biased listeners. That said, it might be more useful to better emphasize not that "science can provide the answer to X" but rather, "science can achieve a better answer to X that doesn't depend on the fallacious presumptions of religious authority by using evidence that leaves a legitimate discourse about reality on the table". Most people I've seen commenting are picking on "as yet to be determined details" when the alternative is religious certainty or simple individual opinion beyond relativist presumption. The distinction between individual moral viewpoints and a collective moral position should also be addressed carefully much as evolution dynamics in a population vs. individuals. I think you should emphasize early on (assuming you hold this point) that all points on the moral landscape aren't necessarily reachable objectively, however *any* point argued by religious thinking is demonstrably weaker in support than through a scientific process so we can be confident in disfavoring the religious process. In that regard it would be objectively better to give more weight (but clearly not default assent) to such a scientific argument than a non-scientific one if we are to progress with a minimum of regressions.

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TED Talk: Science Can Answer Moral Questions

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