Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is a good start, but it falls way short of actually saying what, specifically, is wrong with his view. What does he say, for example, that exposes his ignorance of normative ethics? Do you have anything specific in mind?
BTW: I know it has become common to lump Harris and Dawkins together (two of the "4 Horsemen"), but I think it can be misleading to do so. Harris makes strong attacks against specific claims and doctrines found in holy books, and to the extent that various religions are based on these doctrines, we can say that he is "anti-religion" in that sense. But Harris is open to the idea of mystical insights and is willing to discuss spirituality in various positive ways. He is skeptical about drawing ontological/cosmological conclusions based on subjective mystical experiences (as am I, mostly), but I'd say he is far more open to "paranormal" evidence than Dawkins and, more open to discussing potentially uplifting conceptions of "God", so long as these conceptions don't blatantly contradict reason and evidence (as the traditional holy-book conceptions do).
We can take an example from the essay I linked earlier, in which he responds to his critics.
The context here is that Harris claims science can serve as an objective foundation for morality. For this to be tenable, he must show that science can resolve the Is-Ought problem and bridge the divide between statements of fact and value.
In The Moral Landscape, he ignores the problem by simply assuming that moral value is baked into scientific measures of well-being. Following scathing academic criticism, he is forced to look up his BPhil textbooks and actually address the problem:
Quote:
As I point out in my book, science in [sic] based on values that must be presupposed -- like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn't share these values cannot do science. But nor can he attack the presuppositions of science in a way that anyone should find compelling. Scientists need not apologize for presupposing the value of evidence, nor does this presupposition render science unscientific. In my book, I argue that the value of well-being -- specifically the value of avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone -- is on the same footing. There is no problem in presupposing that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and worth avoiding and that normative morality consists, at an absolute minimum, in acting so as to avoid it. To say that the worst possible misery for everyone is "bad" is, on my account, like saying that an argument that contradicts itself is "illogical." Our spade is turned. Anyone who says it isn't simply isn't making sense. The fatal flaw that Blackford claims to have found in my view of morality could just as well be located in science as a whole -- or reason generally. Our "oughts" are built right into the foundations. We need not apologize for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps in this way. It is far better than pulling ourselves down by them.
Someone with a background in knowledge theory can point out the problem with this response straight away.
The section of his comment in blue is the proposition that science presupposes values systems, which is correct. For his moral theory to work, however, he needs to show that science can explain values systems, a very different proposition.
In other words, his explanation fails because he doesn't understand the concept of epistemic priority.
The section of his comment in blue is the proposition that science presupposes values systems, which is correct. For his moral theory to work, however, he needs to show that science can explain values systems, a very different proposition.
In other words, his explanation fails because he doesn't understand the concept of epistemic priority.
It is possible that Harris is stumbling through this without a full grasp of knowledge theory, etc. His academic training, after all, is in neuroscience, not philosophy. Still, I would say that his basic intuitions are correct here. In other words, I think he arrives at the right place (or close enough, anyway), even if he skips merrily down a slightly naïve path to get there. Philosophers are not all united around the idea that the is/ought gap is unbridgeable. Entire branches of philosophy focus on the fundamentally meaning-constituting and normative nature of experience.
So far as I've seen, Harris doesn't reference any of these approaches, but he ends up in that camp. Instead of a "gap" between is and ought, you end up with a deep sort of logical inseparability between the two because both are ultimately experiential. Even the "a priori-ness" of a priori concepts is conceived as a priori - which is to say, even such concepts as "objective", "logical", "mathematical", etc., are ground on the givens of subjective experience. But our most self-evident concepts derived from experience all imply that we are not purely isolated ontological monads - solipsistic islands of experience. There are underlying conditions for the possibility of experience - structures common to all experience. These underlying structures of experience are universal and certain ("objectively true", so to speak) even though each of us, individually, accesses them subjectively. And therein lies our potential access to the implicitly normative nature of experience. We have no rational choice but to experience the maximally suffering universe as "bad" due to the underlying structural (patterned/meaningful rather than purely random/ meaningless) logical conditions for the possibility of experience in the first place.
To put it yet another way: The potential for the "raw feels" of sentient experience are "built in" as "meaningful" in a way that is logically prior to any actual experience, and because of this, you can never actually experience an "is" that does not suggest "ought" by the very nature of how the "is" is given in experience in the first place. At a fundamental level, these is/ought units constitute what we experience as "self-evident" truths leading us to the value of logic, the usefulness of math, the perspectival nature of experience, the badness of eternal maximal suffering, etc. In principle, the higher-level "oughts" (e.g., "Should we condemn murder?") could be constructed out of these self-evident givens, once the underlying structures of experience are discovered. We don't currently know how to do this - we don't have a full-blown science of morality - but there is nothin, in principle, to prevent it. And I'd say that this, intuitively, is what Harris is getting at, even if he does not have the conceptual tools to explain the whole story. (Actually, I don't have all the tools at hand either, so a lot of what I've just said is sketchy, at best, and perhaps a bit sloppy, but it's the best I can do at the moment, given this short-post format.
It is possible that Harris is stumbling through this without a full grasp of knowledge theory, etc. His academic training, after all, is in neuroscience, not philosophy. Still, I would say that his basic intuitions are correct here. In other words, I think he arrives at the right place (or close enough, anyway), even if he skips merrily down a slightly naïve path to get there. Philosophers are not all united around the idea that the is/ought gap is unbridgeable. Entire branches of philosophy focus on the fundamentally meaning-constituting and normative nature of experience.
So far as I've seen, Harris doesn't reference any of these approaches, but he ends up in that camp. Instead of a "gap" between is and ought, you end up with a deep sort of logical inseparability between the two because both are ultimately experiential. Even the "a priori-ness" of a priori concepts is conceived as a priori - which is to say, even such concepts as "objective", "logical", "mathematical", etc., are ground on the givens of subjective experience. But our most self-evident concepts derived from experience all imply that we are not purely isolated ontological monads - solipsistic islands of experience. There are underlying conditions for the possibility of experience - structures common to all experience. These underlying structures of experience are universal and certain ("objectively true", so to speak) even though each of us, individually, accesses them subjectively. And therein lies our potential access to the implicitly normative nature of experience. We have no rational choice but to experience the maximally suffering universe as "bad" due to the underlying structural (patterned/meaningful rather than purely random/ meaningless) logical conditions for the possibility of experience in the first place.
To put it yet another way: The potential for the "raw feels" of sentient experience are "built in" as "meaningful" in a way that is logically prior to any actual experience, and because of this, you can never actually experience an "is" that does not suggest "ought" by the very nature of how the "is" is given in experience in the first place. At a fundamental level, these is/ought units constitute what we experience as "self-evident" truths leading us to the value of logic, the usefulness of math, the perspectival nature of experience, the badness of eternal maximal suffering, etc. In principle, the higher-level "oughts" (e.g., "Should we condemn murder?") could be constructed out of these self-evident givens, once the underlying structures of experience are discovered. We don't currently know how to do this - we don't have a full-blown science of morality - but there is nothin, in principle, to prevent it. And I'd say that this, intuitively, is what Harris is getting at, even if he does not have the conceptual tools to explain the whole story. (Actually, I don't have all the tools at hand either, so a lot of what I've just said is sketchy, at best, and perhaps a bit sloppy, but it's the best I can do at the moment, given this short-post format.
Despite the amount you've written, your argument here is fairly straightforward:
1. There are underlying objective mechanisms which ascribe value to our subjective experiences.
2. Because these mechanisms are universally accessible, value is intrinsic ('built in') to all subjective experience.
3. Is and Ought are both based on subjective experience, subject to the same underlying mechanisms, thus ultimately inseparable.
You've not quite understood the Is-Ought distinction. Values systems (ethics, aesthetics) and factual knowledge (reason and evidence) are fundamentally different categories of knowledge. They are entirely different axiomatic systems.
That is why the Is-Ought problem is considered intractable in analytic philosophy. If values systems were objective, universal mechanisms that underpin all reason and evidence (ie. one is epistemically prior to the other), the problem would be easy to solve.
I think you've based your understanding of it on Harris's interpretation of the problem, which is written clumsily.
I think you've based your understanding of it on Harris's interpretation of the problem, which is written clumsily.
Actually, haven't studied Harris enough to know what is really going on with him. What I'm doing (very badly, I'm sure) is trying to look at his notion of a "science of morality" from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. (My background is primarily analytic, but I've been recently trying to decipher the Continental side of the watershed, and I find myself thinking that they are on to something and I'm struggling to clarify what that "something" is.) All I'm really trying to accomplish here is to suggest that the is/ought issue is not as clear and uncontroversial as you indicate. It is not necessarily the case that just because someone proposes objective grounds for values that they are simply ignorant of philosophy, or slept through their epistemology class. It could be that they approaching from a different angle than mainstream analytic.
Yeah, you can find philosophers on both side of the divide who claim that the other tradition is "not real philosophy" but I think that both sides have something of value to bring to the table, and neither has any clear knock-out case against the other. I've never seen Harris explicitly offer any phenomenological critiques, so my best guess is that his background is primarily analytic but, whether he realizes it, or not, it is really the continental tradition that stands behind his efforts to study the grounds of values.
Quote:
If values systems were objective, universal mechanisms that underpin all reason and evidence (ie. one is epistemically prior to the other), the problem would be easy to solve.
Not necessarily easy, but at least possible, in principle. It might take a paradigm shift in science to get there.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 08-29-2018 at 07:45 AM..
Actually, haven't studied Harris enough to know what is really going on with him. What I'm doing (very badly, I'm sure) is trying to look at his notion of a "science of morality" from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. (My background is primarily analytic, but I've been recently trying to decipher the Continental side of the watershed, and I find myself thinking that they are on to something and I'm struggling to clarify what that "something" is.) All I'm really trying to accomplish here is to suggest that the is/ought issue is not as clear and uncontroversial as you indicate. It is not necessarily the case that just because someone proposes objective grounds for values that they are simply ignorant of philosophy, or slept through their epistemology class. It could be that they approaching from a different angle than mainstream analytic.
Yeah, you can find philosophers on both side of the divide who claim the other tradition is "not real philosophy" but I think that both sides have something of value to bring to the table, and neither has any clear knock-out case against the other. I've never seen Harris explicitly offer any phenomenological critiques, so my best guess is that his background is primarily analytic but, whether he realizes it, or not, it is really the continental tradition that stands behind his efforts to study the grounds of values.
Not necessarily easy, but at least possible, in principle. It might take a paradigm shift in science to get there.
I was thinking along vaguely similar lines. If Harris was studying continental philosophy (such as post-structuralism or critical theory) during his BA in philosophy it may explain why he's not so familiar with some basic ideas in analytic philosophy.
It's worth clarifying that I agree with both Craig and Harris that objective moral values and duties exist.
The problem is the idea that value is intrinsic to factual knowledge, or that moral statements are reducible to scientific statements. These are the ideas that have come under the most sustained criticism in academic reviews of Harris's work.
No. Even Dave Rubin is in the list, and if you know anything about him, you’d know he’s not very intelligent (not insult, but he is no intellectual).
Also Ben Shapiro the war hawk is there.
Harris, Peterson, Shapiro, Rubin...I wouldn't consider any of these men to be intellectuals. Historically we reserved the term and the admiration for those that contributed new concepts and ideas in fields such as Philosophy, science, literature, art and psychology. Now we slap that term onto any speaker who can string together a coherent sentence. Unless I am very much mistaken, none of the new crop of high profile public intellectuals have contributed anything original or groundbreaking into public discourse. At least Chomsky did pioneering work in linguistics which to me merits his right to be called an intellectual.
Harris, Peterson, Shapiro, Rubin...I wouldn't consider any of these men to be intellectuals. Historically we reserved the term and the admiration for those that contributed new concepts and ideas in fields such as Philosophy, science, literature, art and psychology. Now we slap that term onto any speaker who can string together a coherent sentence. Unless I am very much mistaken, none of the new crop of high profile public intellectuals have contributed anything original or groundbreaking into public discourse. At least Chomsky did pioneering work in linguistics which to me merits his right to be called an intellectual.
These guys are serving an enormous public good, they are warning us of the problems and consequences of our actions in todays society. Sam and Jordan are intellectuals in philosophy. Rubin is a facilitator, Shapiro is more of a political and legal mind, but he's a straight genius well read on virtually anything he is asked. Ive yet to see him stumped.
Harris, Peterson, Shapiro, Rubin...I wouldn't consider any of these men to be intellectuals. Historically we reserved the term and the admiration for those that contributed new concepts and ideas in fields such as Philosophy, science, literature, art and psychology. Now we slap that term onto any speaker who can string together a coherent sentence. Unless I am very much mistaken, none of the new crop of high profile public intellectuals have contributed anything original or groundbreaking into public discourse. At least Chomsky did pioneering work in linguistics which to me merits his right to be called an intellectual.
These guys are serving an enormous public good, they are warning us of the problems and consequences of our actions in todays society. Sam and Jordan are intellectuals in philosophy. Rubin is a facilitator, Shapiro is more of a political and legal mind, but he's a straight genius well read on virtually anything he is asked. Ive yet to see him stumped.
Sam and Jordan twist words to make basic concepts sound profound. Shapiro talks fast so that it’s impossible to pin him down and then relies on establishment talking points (the US is a force for moral good, the western world is one unanimous block of Jewish and Christian values, etc.).
Rubin is nothing, he’s an empty void of a human being.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
