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It was some days ago when I did watch your video.
It gave me the impression that it was little more than a poorly veiled attempt to criticize Islam.
He lost me completely when, at the end, during the brief interview, he was asked if it did come to be that it could be scientifically tracked in the brain, and it turned out his ideas of what's optimal for mankind (morally)were wrong,would he accept that.
He pulled the politicians favorite trick of not answering the question....reinforcing my idea that he was most interested in criticizng Islam.
Did I watch the wrong video?
It was some days ago when I did watch your video.
It gave me the impression that it was little more than a poorly veiled attempt to criticize Islam.
He lost me completely when, at the end, during the brief interview, he was asked if it did come to be that it could be scientifically tracked in the brain, and it turned out his ideas of what's optimal for mankind (morally)were wrong,would he accept that.
He pulled the politicians favorite trick of not answering the question....reinforcing my idea that he was most interested in criticizng Islam.
Did I watch the wrong video?
I think you saw the Comedy Central video, which is brief and fun, but probably not the best for understanding his logic. The TED video is about 20 minutes long, and here he has room to dive into more detail and examples. (But is still entertaining to watch.) I think he criticises Islam in both videos, but this is just part of his general style of attacking religions of all sorts.
I guess I might have to break down and try to paraphrase his position myself, but he says it so well in the TED video that I would rather see people respond directly to his words, rather than to me. Maybe tonight I will try to transcribe a few key phrases.
My own personal motivation is to go deeper than Sam Harris and try to investigate what might count as the ontological basis for grounding moral precepts, as well as identify some of the possible scientific grounds (in the OP article I mentioned neurology and sociobiology). I'm not certain if any of this is really possible. That is why I'm asking for input in this thread.
I think you saw the Comedy Central video, which is brief and fun, but probably not the best for understanding his logic. The TED video is about 20 minutes long, and here he has room to dive into more detail and examples. (But is still entertaining to watch.) I think he criticises Islam in both videos, but this is just part of his general style of attacking religions of all sorts.
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I just checked...it was the TED video.
It all would be very interesting IF we had reached the point of being able to discern these things in a medical/scientific way ....but we can't.
His style is certainly more palatable and potentially convinciing than a street corner preacher or even some people here, but I didn't hear anything new.
The question you did NOT answer is this:
Did some intelligent designer have to design the intelligent desiger?
And the reason I ask is this: If you can plausibly take intelligence itself as fundamental then why can't I plausibly take a pre-intelligent qualitative (experiential) chaos as fundamental? Why couldn't the fundamental elements of a primordial qualitative chaos begin to exhibit intelligent behavior?
The so-called question attempts to reach beyond the extant data and beyond the brute fact premise. It is a juvenile attempt to instigate the "turtles all the way down" crap . . . and unworthy of intellectual debate. We needn't go beyond the Big Bang to explain the universe . . . neither do we need to go beyond an intelligent conscious universe. BUT . . . we can certainly more logically proceed from a brute fact (premise) of intelligence or consciousness . . . to intelligence or consciousness . . . than we can logically proceed from a premise of unintelligence or unconsciousness to a predicate of intelligence or consciousness. We can proceed from a designed and ordered universe . . . to order and design . . . more logically than we can proceed from chaotic disorder and lack of design to order and design. You do know about logic, right? All your euphemistic "self-organizing" nonsense masks the necessary existence of consistent order, design and process in your presumed chaos . . . oxymoronic.
Quote:
Intelligent behavior is part of the "easy" problem - we already know the basic principles by which randomly arranged elements following simple rules can collectively exhibit infinitely complex collective behaviors. If these complex behaviors are the behaviors of fundamentally experiential reality then why can't we say that these behaviors are examples of intelligence occurring where previously there was no intelligence (there was just pre-intelligent experiential chaos).
More euphemistic jargon explaining nothing. "Random" or "chaotic" means we are too ignorant to understand the causal chain or the order. The existence of "rules" (simple or not) and principles implies design, order, and intelligence within your presumed "pre-intelligent experiential chaos" . . . oxymoronic yet again.
Quote:
Does every instance of a pattern occurring in any sort of material necessarily imply an intelligent designer who designed the pattern?
Haven't your philosophy mentors taught you to dig deeper than the pattern to the processes that produce the pattern?
I seem to be prone to random thoughts today.......conscious intelligence derived from nothing more than a physical process explains all the myriad mental(thought) disorders that are physical/chemical in nature as opposed to environmental.
Designed (as by the Christian version of god) seldom, if ever, explains the why of physical disorders.
Since the processes of the brain are purely physical ( and I'll add what Mystic never does).... in my opinion....there is , again, no need or even good explanation for an intelligent design of any order.
The brain and all it produces is happenstance and how ideas, including morals, are determined by the environment as well as empathy, which is pretty much relies on a selfish/non-altruistic emotion.
If it doesn't stray too far off the op..I declare there is no such thing as altruistism (as commonly defined)
(May be sorry later to have hit "post reply" since this is a drive-by posting)
I just checked...it was the TED video.
It all would be very interesting IF we had reached the point of being able to discern these things in a medical/scientific way ....but we can't.
His style is certainly more palatable and potentially convinciing than a street corner preacher or even some people here, but I didn't hear anything new.
I agree. Harris gives a good introduction and motivates reasons for thinking that we should be able to have a science of morality, but he does not go much further. He does not get into any details of how this might work. (At least in the video he doesn't. I have not read his book.)
But this makes me wonder if you followed the link in the OP, which lead to an article that talked about two ideas:
1) Donald Pfaff's neurobiological theory of the Golden Rule
2) de Waal's theory social primate theory
Do you see any potential in either of these efforts?
Yes. That was a good thread and it touched on three aspects I think important.
1) sex should be approached as something natural and enjoyable and not as something 'dirty' or 'sinful'
2) something fundamental in our education is when we are first asked 'how would you like it if someone did that to you?' and we first learn about the golden rule.
3) much of what we use as a basis for morality, social interaction and the like is based on evolved instincts which can also be observed in the other animals. Of course we can reason and have social codes beyond the animals. Of course it isn't always easy to find out what's right or even what 'right' is. But that is no more a reason to reject the strong indications that natural processes is what it's down to and the Bible - based theory of God - given absolute morality is simply Moral creationism. Time it went on the junkheap.
I agree. Harris gives a good introduction and motivates reasons for thinking that we should be able to have a science of morality, but he does not go much further. He does not get into any details of how this might work. (At least in the video he doesn't. I have not read his book.)
But this makes me wonder if you followed the link in the OP, which lead to an article that talked about two ideas:
1) Donald Pfaff's neurobiological theory of the Golden Rule
2) de Waal's theory social primate theory
Do you see any potential in either of these efforts?
One question I have it this: Let's suppose that we do develop really good scientific theories about the origins of our moral sense (e.g., let's assume that Pfaff's theory and de Waal's theories are proven correct). Would this mean that we have identified the basis for OBJECTIVE precepts?
In a way we could say that. The veneer theory of Huxley and co was allright in its way, at least getting away from the idea that we are basically angels who have Fallen and going onto 'we are brute beasts who have developed a veneer of compassion'. It strikes me that it was still thinking in terms of Good and Bad. The basis, if it can be traced down to evolved reactions, is what it is and the good and bad aspects are purely the way humans evaluate it. Even compassion, selfness and altruism are human concepts.
So if Plaff's ideas about neurobiological impulses and De Waal's evolved compassion ideas are correct (and they certainly commend themselves to me) it is a step on to understanding the link between evolution and morality, and that means that we can get away from the geocentric system of god - given moral absolutes which has only prevailed so long because it was Church endorsed.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-13-2010 at 09:39 AM..
It was some days ago when I did watch your video.
It gave me the impression that it was little more than a poorly veiled attempt to criticize Islam.
He lost me completely when, at the end, during the brief interview, he was asked if it did come to be that it could be scientifically tracked in the brain, and it turned out his ideas of what's optimal for mankind (morally)were wrong,would he accept that.
He pulled the politicians favorite trick of not answering the question....reinforcing my idea that he was most interested in criticizng Islam.
Did I watch the wrong video?
Ok, so I have roughly transcribed a few sentences from Sam Harris's talk (the TED video). Here are some of the basic ideas I would like to hear you folks critique:
It is often thought there is no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be. But I think this is clearly untrue. Values are certain kinds of facts. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
If we are more concerned about the well-being of primates than we are about insects or rocks, it is because we think they are exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering. Notice that this is a factual claim. This is something we could be right or wrong about. If we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience, then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects. There is no version of human morality and values that is not at some point reducible to concern about conscious experience and its possible changes.
We know there is a range of experiential states from horrible suffer on one end of the spectrum to great joy on the other, and we know that there are right and wrong answers to moving within this space. For example, would adding cholera to a city's water supply be a good idea? Probably not. There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish, whether or not we understand these truths, and morality relates to these truths. So when we talk about values, we are talking about facts.
If we are talking about human well-being, we are of necessity talking about the human brain, because we know that our experience of the world, and of ourselves within it, is realized in the brain. Whatever cultural variations there are between how human beings flourish can, in principle, be understood in the context of a maturing science of the mind.
So here is what I'm arguing:
Values reduce to facts about the conscious experiences of conscious beings.
So we can visualize a space of possible changes in the experiences of these beings. I think of this as a kind of moral landscape with peaks and valleys that correspond to differences in the well-being of conscious creatures.
I'm not saying that science is guaranteed to map this space or that we will have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question. But if questions affect human well-being, then they do have right and wrong answers, whether or not we can find them.
Is it a good idea, generally speaking, to subject children to pain, violence and public humiliation as a way of developing healthy emotional development and good behavior? Is there any doubt that this question has an answer, and that it matters?
Now, you may worry that the notion of "well-being" is undefined. How can there be an objective notion of well-being? Consider by analogy the concept of physical health. The concept of physical health is not well defined, and has changed over the years. Notice that the fact that concept of health is genuinely open for revision does not make it vacuous.
There may be many peaks on the moral landscape – many equivalent ways to achieve human flourishing. Would this undermine the idea of an objective morality? Think of food. There are many ways to eat healthy, but nevertheless there is a clear distinction between food and poison. The fact that there are many right answers to the question "What is good food?" does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition.
Many people worry that any objective moral precept would have to allow no exceptions. So if it is objectively wrong to lie, then it must always be wrong to lie. If you can find an exception, then there is no such thing as an objective moral truth about lying. But why should we think this? Consider chess for an analogy. A objectively good rule for playing chess is that you should try not to lose your queen. But obviously there can be exception. There are times when sacrificing your queen is a brilliant thing to do. There may be times when it is the only good thing you can do. And yet chess is a domain of perfect objectivity. The fact that there are exceptions here does not change that at all.
Old_Cold: Concerning his answer to that last question, I think he did answer the question. He said "Yes" [he would change his views] but only if we are taking into account the larger context. I think this is a good answer.
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