Might very well be, they are both going very deep with this because Alex really tries to understand Sam's point, where I think Sam's point is not accurate, so reaching an understanding won't be possible.
More like 2000+ years of context. This is the kind of stuff that's been discussed since the Greeks, and we have about as good an answer on it as they did.
@@lVideoWatcherl But Alex's point isn't accurate, either. We don't value pleasurable experiences; we value meaningful experiences, whether they're pleasurable (sex with someone you love) or not (excruciating triathlon run). And meaning isn't encoded in our brains' biology.
@@maxkho00 Why do you value meaning? Maybe because... ascribing meaning to a situation brings you pleasure? I would reckon you could totally express this all in terms of brain chemistry. In fact, current neuropsychology identifies multiple hormones, all linked to different kinds of 'feel-good', be it supression of pain, accomplishment or simply happiness. Se xual pleasure is just one of these, but of course Alex did not just mean that kind of pleasure, as we both are aware I'm sure. And also, _of course_ humans value pleasurable experiences in itself. Or, potentially and maybe more accurately, experiences that are especially pleasurable in any way _are_ what you likely deem 'meaningful'.
11:50 This is literally the crux of the disagreement. "Objectively better, *IF* better means navigating away from the worst possible misery for everyone [...]." Alex' point seems to be that the universe itself has no prescription to do what increases wellbeing. Sam's point seems to be that, if we agree that wellbeing is better than suffering and use that as a foundation for ethics, "right" behaviour is rather determined. The fundamental question is whether one accepts that suffering should be avoided and wellbeing enhanced.
@@JoBo301 they basically boil down to health. That’s the objective basis for suffering and wellbeing which is what’s agreed on between Alex and Rationality Rules when discussing Sam Harris’s objective morality.
My intuition and analysis of these two is that Sam is a bit more "serious" in that he cares more about how these philosophical ideas play out in the real world while for Alex, all of this is just an exciting jungle gym for his brain.
@@OriginalMindTrickI don’t agree with that. I believe Alex is having a genuine philosophical exploration while Sam is simply trying to fit things into the view he already holds.
I get the feeling he meditates a lot and is always trying his best to stay mindful. This makes him come across very relaxed and chilled out a lot of the time
Just you bro cause you’re not smart and you lack the intelligence and comprehension to know what they’re talking about. You should do the world a favor and never give an opinion on the topic since you’re so uninformed. No offense tho.
Harris is being a bit overly abstract simply for the sake of abstracting his abstract abstraction of abstractness. Aka, saying complex nonsense for the sake of sounding fancy.
@@rickfucci4512 Everybody has greed. It is just that people with empathy can understand what their greed can do to someone else and they fear living in a world where someone can do that to them.
Psychopaths also seek pleasure and avoid pain. Most people throughout most of history ate meat, doesn't mean that they don't have a preference, not to be eaten.
I think the literal fact that morality is also expressed as "judgement" that judgement is only about taste, the judgement is not built on anything that isn't a person taste interaction.
No, it's not. "Taste" pertains to me personally. My preference for an ice cream flavour, for example, has no importance in a universe, in which I don't exist. But my moral preferences for a universe, in which I am not, are just as strong as they are for a universe in which I do exist.
@@MrCmon113 "But my moral preferences for a universe, in which I am not, are just as strong as they are for a universe in which I do exist." Your preferences do not exist where you do not. This is still your preference we are talking about, though it's clear to me that it is a very meaningful preference for you.
Can somebody please explain to me what I am missing about Alex’s overall philosophy of morality? If morality is purely a matter of preferences, why is he going on his vegan campaign? Sure, you can say he would just prefer somebody to not eat meat, but this isn’t what he does: he frames it as if eating meat is wrong. The views of a non-vegan who subjectively sees no issue with eating meat (and, let’s assume, prefers it) would have to be on the same level as Alex’s view. This means that now Alex has no moral high ground, since there is no moral ground at all. And if this is true, we might as well equate Alex’s veganism to companies advertising products, for example “Everyone knows that cardigans are itchy, and I don’t like it when people suffer. So I’m on a campaign to get people to buy my own jumpers instead; I think they’ll be a lot happier, and as a bonus I get paid!” Obviously, Alex isn’t in it for the money, but if he were, why would it be any different? It’s all about what he wants and feels good to him. So given this, Alex would have to either concede and say that veganism is only a matter of his own personal preference (which seems to be contrary to his entire cause) or say that this is not a fair analogy. But how can this not be a fair analogy when it’s all subjective to what the individual wants? I see no ability to escape this other than claiming that morality is objective, or inventing an entirely new worldview/religion. Finally, I don’t understand why (from what I’ve heard) Alex only speaks as if humans are the only ones to blame, when most of the animal torture and death is at the claws of other animals. Shouldn’t we also be trying to make meat supplements for lions and tigers and bears and expecting them to go vegan too? And if he were to say we’d let them off the hook because of some hand-wavy “humans are higher life forms” or something, then that begs the question of what exactly separates humans from animals? How are we to quantify that? Many religious people would say it’s a soul, etc., but I’m sure Alex would reject that. This is an extremely important question to answer before one can have a cause establishing animal rights that all humans must follow, yet claim that these very same animals need not respect them.
I think if there was a way to control the behavior of animals, he would be for that. I think that keeping predator animals from eating other animals would be an insurmountable task, and thus irrational to campaign for. Humans can be reasoned with and talked into new positions, you almost have to start with humans and then move into the issue of animals hurting each other. Alex's view would be "boo, meat eaters" he dislikes that people eat meat, and thus he's driven to campaign for veganism. He wouldn't say that objectively you are wrong for eating meat, he's just expressing that he doesn't like it. Likewise, people eating meat are saying "yum, meat" it's their preference to eat meat because they enjoy it. Just because his worldview doesn't allow for objective statements doesn't mean he's not compelled to do things that he feels would improve the world. For the record, I'm not vegan, and I don't think Alex is anymore either tbh. I'm just trying to explain it in the best way I can as I understand it.
I would say that even if we don't believe in objective morality, we can still hold strong preferences about what the world ought to look like. We might say "boo for eating meat" and if less people ate meat we might say "yay for this world", but really there's probably a deeper understanding than that. One might think that "boo for needlessly hurting anything that can feel pain" or "boo for needlessly killing anything that is alive", which could then lead to "boo for eating meat". Now, I don't know what kind of arguments he uses, but I would imagine part of it is trying to get to these deeper preferences to find something that the target audience also prefers. If you can make someone understand that a, they also feel like "boo for needless killing", and b, that killing animals for meat is indeed needless, then if they are rational they would agree with "boo for eating meat". So it's not necessarily just trying to convince someone to agree with your preferences, but rather to "help them understand" what their own deeper preferences actually entail (and of course the reason you'd do that is because it leads to a world which is better according you your preferences). It should be said that using emotivism in logical arguments like this is another can of worms, but I think the overall point works.
A straightforward basis by which to parse this entire conversation is to notice that it's trying to get at the difference between DESCRIPTION and PRESCRIPTION. Everything else follows from this. Also notice that, except for this distinction, Alex and Sam are talking about the same phenomena and the same concerns. So is it a fundamental distinction, or something derivative or arbitrary? Well, I think it could hardly be more fundamental. It's the distinction between how things are and how things might be conceived. It's the distinction between (empirical) science and (conceptual) mathematics. It's the distinction between territory and map. It does not, however, provide a distinction between what is moral and what is not moral. Morality remains poorly grounded whether you attempt either a descriptive or prescriptive basis for it. Alex might say that it's sufficient to describe how preferences associate with possible choices. That's fine, but we aren't passive observers. Nothing happens until some choice is exercised, and that choice is ours to make. Sam might say that given these preferences, certain choices should be prescribed. That's fine, but we aren't emotionless robots seeking to optimize a set of parameters. If we can't sooner or later feel the preference, we have no warrant to follow the prescription.
@matthewphilip1977 Sam would say that distinction doesn't stop prescriptions from fields like medicine for maximizing health, why the added skepticism toward prescriptions from ethics for maximizing wellbeing?
@matthewphilip1977 I can get an ought quite easily by observing my own conscious mind. For example, I ought to stop writing this comment, because I am probably wasting my time arguing on the internet, and I also am extending my insomnia. But, I ought to continue writing this comment, because I could help you understand my point of view. It fulfills objective moral benefits to choose one way or the other. If I found another solution that achieved all my preferences, it would be objectively better to choose that one, compared to one of the two subpar options detailed above. This would be better, not for me alone, but for the entire universe, because I am a part of what is, and desires are the definition of "ought". If I have anything to contribute to this conversation, I think "wellbeing" is a trap word, which should be replaced with "fulfilling desires that are held". A universe full of blissful paperclip maximizers (experiencing qualia) is better than one where Yahweh tortures 90% of humans for infinite time, objectively, and you can tell because one contains desires being filled, and one doesn't. You can only tell this is the definition of "ought" by having desires yourself, just like you can only tell that you are conscious by being so (and a universe filled with nonsentient paperclip maximizers is amoral, or evil if filled with other sentient creatures that cannot defeat them). Desires are; they are an individuals experience of "ought"; "ought" exists, it is the desires.
@matthewphilip1977 We ought to help those in need because if we do, there will be less conscious experiences of the sort "Boo my life! I am wretched" which are experientially and experimentally inferior, objectively (I observe, in myself; I extrapolate, for others), to "Yay my life! Yippee"
@matthewphilip1977 > It is implicit, given that most people don’t want to waste time, or suffer insomnia, but given the context of the discussion, it's not enough for it be IMplicit. It's implicit for you, because you do not have direct access to my conscious experience? Are you saying that I can only infer I don't want to waste time (how?), but that this is not objectively true?
@matthewphilip1977 > desires are not the definition of ought, far from it. Desire means to want, to wish for; ought, in this context, means should, in a moral sense, and in other contexts, means should in a mere strategic sense. And yet, if you look at the extreme, a world in which there are many desires, but they are never fulfilled, is terrible; a hell where everyone is tortured, constantly, wishing vainly their suffering would end; and imagining seeing their loved ones, but remembering those were taken already into ever greater horrors, is OBJECTIVELY ONE OF THE WORST THINGS THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN. The same thing in a philosophical zombie universe doesn't matter; there are no morals in such a universe (if you enter, and are the only conscious being, you have direct access to all moral events. Maybe you decide you don't like hearing the screams of the zombies; helping them is good only so far as you benefit from helping them). The fact that this is not a reliable way to make decisions easily (ought he to marry her? Well, her grandma hates him, but grandma will die in 3 years, and she loves him, but he's concerned about whether he really loves her, and life will certainly get easier for both, but she's secretly having an affair also) doesn't mean that we can infer nothing about the objective state of the world before/after because it's complex. It means there's no simple test for what ought he to do, and neither is there a simple answer. Two desires fulfill even different kinds of satisfaction. The fact your desires conflict with another's doesn't mean that neither of you experience them though. The _morally best_ outcome would involve both of you somehow achieving all goals. The BEST OBJECTIVELY POSSIBLE UNIVERSE would be one where people never experience suffering, are able to motivate themselves without it to accomplish all flourishing goals they want anyways. It could be a blissful paperclip optimizer, though existence of humans means transitioning to this universe would require objective evil (death of all humans) though the death of any humans as it exists today is an objective evil. That ought not to happen, either. Someday we will make it not.
@@OhManTFE From what I infer, his line of argument was going to be something like, "you can't possibly have a subjective yuck/yum expression of this hypothetical experience-space that you don't understand...but objective data *can* say something about whether you might be likely to prefer it". Or something like that. But the argument never quite made it all the way out.
@@drangus3468objectivity pertains to that which can be proven to exist without a subjective agent’s involvement influencing the outcome, it is fundamentally flawed. No philosophical theory of ethics has ever credibly found an objective basis for morality that is not axiomatic, and Sam Harris is indeed amongst those who are unable to reconcile the subjective-objective division without redefining objectivity to something wholly different. Inter-subjectivity is essentially ethics by committee which itself is corruptible by the theological bases he so vehemently opposes. He’s not really convinced anybody but himself on this, hence his derisive dismissal of the cognitive abilities of those who dissent.
@@cornsockgabz I think he's just being persistently imprecise about his language as a way of engagement farming (or perhaps out of obtuseness or unwillingness to concede or insecurity...idk). It seems clear to me that he is talking about *objective facts about subjective morality*, as opposed to *objective morality*. Which would be fine and uncontroversial and uninteresting except he insists on calling these things *objective moral facts*. Or perhaps he is actually making the strong claim of having derived ought from is. This also would not surprise me; I have a low opinion of his logical rigour.
Can’t you just say humans are essentially pack animals, we’ve evolved to be social and have empathy because we need to work together to survive. We also have a hierarchy. I think that is sufficient in explaining “morality”, it’s ingrained into us already.
Very nicely put. Also this is being tested scientifically in primates. The books by de Waal are descriptions of the building blocks of morality and how it is the nature of the society or group that shapes it. But i guess this does not address the issue of whether the morality is objective or subjective. Because science describes a situation, it does not give a value judgement. So we can say morality has evolved, and this would imply that these values are not strictly speaking subjective but are also not objective in the sense Harris means.
I think that's more or less correct, but in many societies there was (and still is) a different morality for external and possibly competing groups. Sam would like the morality to be the same for all groups (ie no killing), which I also agree with.
Yes, but this description doesn't serve the purpose Sam is going for. He claims that morality can be defined objectively. He isn't just trying to figure out the basis of morality, but he's trying to argue that it's objective. You can see how he emphasizes that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. Basically, he wants to be able to state his opinions as if they were facts. Your common sense explanation of the basis of morality does not give him that.
But that logic means right and wrong are not objectively true. That would mean that terrorists killing newborn babies is not objectively (always) wrong. That cannot be.
@@billmartin3561 Well you are making a statement but you provide no objective reason why it needs to be so. In fact the only reason you are providing here is an emotional subjective reason, which is precisely how Alex says people approach the issue of morality. Now some rules for groups are usually universal because they are advantageous for societies. Otherwise those societies do not survive So people need babies in order to survive, that is why generally societies dont kill many of their babies, but all societies kill some of their own babies. Abortion,infanticide for specific reasons have been sanctioned in many societies. Now in the Bible itself, God has sanctioned the killing of babies and children in certain situations, so even God seems to think that in certain situations it is Ok to kill babies. With this I am not trying to justify killing babies. It is abhorrent, but the reasons for not killing babies are either emotional and subjective or are derivations from adapted behaviour that is advantageous. So not objective in the sense you are proposing.
What Harris misses, starting around the 10:30 mark, is that Adam and Eve will have conflicts of interest. Generally speaking, in between "the worst possible misery for everyone" and "maximal bliss for everyone", there is the possibility of bliss for me and misery for you. Whether that feels good to me depends on how much I value my own wellbeing over yours as an ultimate concern. In turn, the value system that maximizes my utility function depends on that. That makes the preference among value systems subjective, and, indeed *very* subjective.
Exactly! How in the hell are we meant to decide what is ‘best’ for everyone? Our judgement is eternally clouded by our pride and our attachment to some individuals over others.
In the Adam and Eve situation, that would never be true and any assumption that it is would be false on short sightedness. You can’t logically have the benefits of having a community (I assume these are mostly self evident, but to be clear they are all rooted in an enhanced ability to conquer adversity) AND put individualistic selfish needs above the general well being of that community. Caring for well being of others is inherently logical, and not at odds with the self.
@@zephyrjmilnesI think this falls into the realm of logical short sightedness. The “greatest good for the greatest number” comes from the fact that as we increase the size and complexity of our social structures, we are most secure (meaning the least susceptible to adversity) when we have the greatest number of people actively involved in the collective security (and all that means) of our society. Choosing to minimize the size of our community based on loose, mostly unscrutinized factors is a product of our lives being abstracted from the necessity of security.
@@Eric-sq1cc your assertion is the one Harris is making. It's a very interesting assertion. Do you have any evidence for it? There's none given in your post .
I think the confusion is that that what we call "pleasant" or "painful" in the individual context becomes "right" or "wrong" in the social context. This is why Sam wisely remarked that the issue of moral truths becomes evident when you add more people into the picture. However, in Alex's defense, whether such an objective moral truth can be identified for a a group of people, at a certain moment in time, is questionable as it is highly volatile and involves just too many factors. Therefore when it comes to deciding what is right (or wrong) for a group, we are invariably stuck with approximations, which inevitably makes us do something wrong for a minority of people over the long run.
I think you completely missed what Alex is sayin. Sam says that it becomes right or wrong but Alex's point is that that is not the same right and wrong this is spoken of when talking about morals. Sam just doesn't get it.
@@briansanchez6699 This is because Sam is an idiot. (Im certainly not as intelligent as him, but he has exposed his ill-will towards people with different opinions than him and other greater minds have put his philosophy to the dirt)
I fail to understand what the term "objective" means in these philosophical discussions. Objectively wrong is the phrase "if I hold an apple and I open my hand, the apple will go up to the sky". Planet earth's gravity guarantees that it will go down to the ground, independently who holds the apple. If some people agree with murder, how murder is objectively wrong? Who or what defines objectivity in this case? It seems an abstract definition where I can claim whatever I want objectively right or wrong.
Your questions are very apt and this is exactly what leads people towards subjectivism (in some form) because they cannot find any good answers to those kinds of questions. "Objective" here is a metaphysical fact. If you believe that there is an objective morality, you believe that moral statements have a truth value that is defined and unchanging, just like natural facts such as the nature of gravity. One can either say that moral facts ARE natural facts (which maybe Harris is doing here), or that they are non-natural (like e.g. numbers are according to many) but still have a truth value just like natural facts. Alex here is rather saying that moral statements do not have a truth value, they're just expressions of preference and cannot logically be true or false (non-cognitivism). Another view is that moral statements could in theory have a truth value but as a matter of fact they do not (this is my attempt to summarize Mackie's views). Objectivists will say things like "any reasonably person would agree that murder is wrong" or "if (people learned that) murder wasn't wrong, then the would would be total chaos and that would be bad", but a subjectivist would say that these statements may well be true but are also completely irrelevant to the metaethical question of objective morality. One way you can defend it is by saying that most people would agree that murder is wrong, so it's reasonable to have that as your baseline until something else is proven. You cannot prove that murder isn't wrong. Therefore murder is wrong (to the best of our understanding). I don't agree with this view, but that's the closest I've come to a rational way of defending it.
@xway2 Very interesting analysis. For me, which I consider the morality subjective, the right or wrong is also abstract terms. And it is exactly the "majority" argument that makes it subjective for me. Slavery for centuries was morally acceptable from the majority of people in all cultures, now the majority is against it. There are plenty of similar examples where the "morally acceptable behavior" has changed through time and between civilizations. Is objective morality space and time dependent? In the case of murder, I believe it is mostly self preservation that stops us. We implicitly understand that, if we start killing people, nothing will stop others from killing us. Since survival is an instinct (all living beings want to survive, even the plants that we cannot define morality for them have defensive mechanisms against attackers), it is in our best interest to not allow others to murder us, thus we go into an agreement in our societies for no killings. In another perspective, if it was a "higher moral reason" that we do not kill, I fail to see it. In many animals we observe that the "no killing our species" is a norm, especially when they live in groups. Of course, you can see sometimes this rule to be broken, exactly as it happens with humans. However, how can we identify morality in animals?
I'm a big Sam Harris fan, but I'm in Alex's camp here. No matter how you dress up a "should" or "ought", it remains firmly in the realm of subjective judgement. And "Subjective" doesn't mean "less worth standing up for" than "Objective". It merely means we are continually required to reargue and justify our claims regarding it to others in our society. We can put to bed questions such as what 1 + 1 is equal to, but we really have to continue negotiating questions like, "How much of our GDP should we spend on housing and feeding the poor?"
For me it boils down to the fact that some actions are objectively better than others and that there would be an optimal moral way of behaving for every situation, that would be objectively the best. However, we often lack the bigger picture to grasp it, or are missing the pieces of the puzzle to reach that decision of absolute moral good for any given situation. So, we are left to act on the information we do have and try to move in the most possible good, given what we have
Time to take up horseback riding if you haven’t already yet Alex; there’s two apocalyptic horses vacant. You should of course the one that pisses off Peter Hitchens the most.
This was a great rip! Really enjoyed it and following the joust is always instructional on some level, even if only to make one reflect on the matter of communication itself. Specifically I felt Alex was somewhat attached to the comfortable feel for him in the term "preference" (now that's a preference!) I felt it bogged things down a bit unnecessarily, and as a thinker he could have used the opportunity to re-asses how universally this term is appropriate. I would have been interested in where things could have moved on to. But no matter, I can find more content with Sam around to see what else he's got to say about this. Good Show.
There's no fruitful discussion before the morality as its subject is properly defined and understood. Things can be good or bad depending on the assigned terminal goal. Only conscious entities can have a goal, thus the existence of goals and morality depends on the existence of conscious entities.
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani I'm not sure what you mean. But I would say "good" and "bad" are, at best, colloquial labels we apply to things or situations depending on context. Applying these labels serves more of a social function than an ontological one.
@@ericb9804 The context is the goal you want to achieve when labelling something as good or bad. Something is good if it helps you achieve your goals, and vice versa.
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani Ok, thats fine, but you seem to be ignoring that people can legitimately disagree over the extent to which any given "something" actually helps them "achieve their goals" or not - even if they also agree on what the goals are. In fact, its precisely these cases that are the source of our actual moral disagreements, so conceiving of "good and bad" in these terms isn't actually as helpful as you pretend.
Wow, reading the comments and seeing how many people are missing that living according to one's preferences IMPLIES the inclusion in those preferences to not be ill-treated by the group for one's said preferences trangressing predominate desires of individuals that have found, in the device of alliance, means to deliver said ill treatment. The group has predictable minimal standards (look at different cultures across time and space and see what moral attributes are common to them all) that are in-turn based on the subjective preferences of individual, predominate, human nature. This is why Alex's perspective is not an open door to chaos.
For the people who don't have English as their first language: "Wow, reading the comments, it's surprising how many people miss that living by your own preferences means also wanting not to be mistreated by the group for going against the group's dominant preferences. Groups have basic, predictable standards (you can see this in different cultures over time) which come from common human nature. This is why Alex's view doesn't lead to chaos."
For me the push back against Harris on this topic is a classic example of where the intellectual sophistication of academic philosophy becomes useless and stupid. It’s the ethical philosophy version of freshman epistemic skepticism-in which the possibility of knowing what is true is just seen as radically impossible. It leads to utterly impractical relativism that is also dishonest; because nobody lives and thinks that way in reality except New Age fundamentalist idiots. In this case, one need only ask on what we base our legal system once we’ve moved beyond scriptural authority. Honestly I feel like the philosophers nitpicking of the Moral Landscape is more about an in-group fetishizing of the ought-is holy cow. What else could moral judgments be based upon but what causes harm or benefit to conscious beings? Or is neutral…
The is-ought gap is not a "holy cow", its simply true. Descriptive and prescriptive statements are fundamentally different categories of logic. Many criticisms have been made of Harris's book, but I fail to see a single one based on the premise that "knowing what is true is impossible". What else could moral judgments be based on? A number of things. Is there any particular reason utilitarian metaethics are superior to these other ones? Your comment seems more motivated by frustration than by sound logical reasoning. Who are the "nitpicking philosophers" you speak of? Why are they wrong?
To the last question: Values, for example. Being honest to someone, telling the truth, even though it may hurt them. Or rational thinking, even though it might lead to unpleasant conclusions.
But then again, what is freedom? And if freedom is what we strive for on an individual level what would that freedom look like? When 'my freedom is not the same as your freedom'... Because subjective experiences of the physical world is guided by totally different parameters in my case than the guy or girl next to me...?
Even as I read all these comments and struggle to keep the flow of the logic from turning into chaos in my mind I laugh at how aggressively everyone calls everyone else an idiot or illogical for their positions. When trying to debate something this fundamental it just seems silly how absolutist everyone is. No one really has a superior vantage point, even if I know I lean towards Alex's side heavily. I think we are all trying to wrap our heads around this and what it means. Even if some won't admit it. So I guess this is objectively a difficult question to answer because it inevitably leads to disagreement, wink wink.
Starting on minute 6:00, Alex O'Connor is stating that there is no moral prescription for appreciating and enjoying beautiful music. Mortimer Adler deals with this in his book "Six Great Ideas". In the book he states that man has certain basic needs such as “love, friendship, knowledge, food, air and others things including beauty”. He goes on to say that when humans acquire things that they need, it "tends toward perfection". When they are deprived of things that they need, “it tends, toward destruction ”. Needs translate to rights. Deprivation of rights constitute injustice. This is where moral prescription comes in. The “Six Great Ideas” in book are "Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice."
Saying something tends towards something seems more like a statistical observation, rather than a ground rule. To me it sounds very much like Aristoteles' explanation of the elements.
This comment is meant as a comment and a question, not a judgement, even saying that first feels difficult. I have been look at the experience of psychopaths, Ive been wondering how this discussion of morality etc has an overlap with an exploration of psychopathology so called?
I believe the overlap is that psychopaths are not furthering the global well-being and that, potentially, if they could be healed, they would even reach higher quality levels of conscious themselves. I understand that Sam is not claiming that his system provides easy answers or can increase the experience for every individual; his only claim is that there are systematic ways to increase global well-being. The steps that help towards getting closer to that goal are the "good" ones, and if anyone likes to, they can call them the "moral" ones.
Objective morality on a secular humanist plane is silly. It literally boils down to collectively trying to find "more yums less boos"... No matter how much dodging and hedging he does, it is subjective.
It seems like Harris is talking about objective morality as an emergent property of how human brains work, rather than in the "prescribed from on high" sense you get from religion. Given how wildly differently different people experience the same things in some cases though, I'm not sure I understand how what he's saying works
@Letsthinkaboutit-mb7nn In the limit objective morality coincides with the objective meaning of words. Do we have a shared definition of "right" and "wrong"?
Alex, you've become my new favorite intellectual! Absolute powerhouse. Just wanted to give couple of cinematic feedback in terms of production: a) Have the shadow on the face-side closest to camera. b) On the total, make sure you use rule of thirds and place the subjects head on the top third. c) On the shot of you, the ISO seems to have been set too high (on a camera that doesn't support it) which results in noisy image. I would suggest investing in a Sony FX3 so that you can have 12800 ISO and get a crisp image. Keep doing your stuff, it's gold.
When I first started watching debates I would always have a Google search open so that I could quickly search anything that I didn't understand. Sounds a bit silly but it really does help.
@@ianx-cast6289 Or maybe it's complicated for you because of your limited ability to understand. Alex is exceptionally intelligent after all. But that said, many of us have no probably following his reasoning.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean you're the best one to explain something. Knowledge, wisdom and experience, among many other factors often trump IQ.
If we have to derive morality from a purely logical extrapolation of emotive-determinism, than one could argue that the more we expand our sense of self to incorporate the other, the more we all can solve the prisoner’s dilemma and mutually flourish.
You’ve raised a thought-provoking idea...expanding the sense of self to include others as a means to solve ethical dilemmas and achieve mutual flourishing. This resonates with elements of Christian morality, and even better...Christianity offers a more comprehensive foundation for morality and human flourishing. 1. The experience of expanding one’s self to include others aligns well with Jesus’ teachings. For example, Jesus commands humans to "love our neighbors as ourselves" (Mark 12:31) and even to "love our enemies" (Matthew 5:44). This radical inclusivity recognizes the interconnectedness of all humanity, echoing your point about solving the prisoner’s dilemma through shared empathy. 2. While logical extrapolation of emotive-determinism may produce moral guidelines, it has limitations: - Human emotions are often inconsistent, biased, or limited in scope. People tend to prioritize their immediate circle of concern (e.g., family, tribe) over distant or abstract others. Expanding empathy universally can be challenging without a higher moral anchor. - Emotions and logic alone lack an objective grounding. If morality is derived solely from human sentiment or societal agreements, it becomes subjective and changeable. Christianity addresses these gaps by grounding morality in the character of a transcendent God who defines what is good (Psalm 145:17; 1 John 4:8). 3. Christianity sees mutual flourishing as rooted in relationship...with God, others, and creation. This transcends a mere logical framework by introducing: - Intrinsic Worth: Every person has inherent value because they are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This provides a solid foundation for universal human dignity. - Selfless Love: While emotive-determinism may encourage mutual benefit, Christian love (agape) often goes beyond mutual benefit to sacrificial love. Jesus demonstrated this on the cross (John 15:13), calling His followers to live with the same selflessness. - Eternal Perspective: Christianity emphasizes not only flourishing in this life but also the eternal life to come, which affects how Christians view suffering, sacrifice, and the broader purpose of existence (Romans 8:18). 4. The prisoner’s dilemma highlights the difficulty of achieving trust and cooperation in a self-interested framework. Christianity offers a solution: - Transformation of the Heart: God empowers individuals to transcend self-interest through a renewed heart and mind (Romans 12:2; Ezekiel 36:26). This inner transformation makes it possible to consistently choose the good of others, even at personal cost. - A Model of Trust: Jesus, in His life and sacrifice, modeled complete trust and cooperation with the will of God (Philippians 2:5-8). His example inspires and enables Christians to trust God and prioritize others' well-being over self-interest. While logical extrapolations of human empathy are valuable, Christianity provides a foundation that goes further: grounding morality in the nature of God, offering a consistent standard for human dignity, and empowering people to live selflessly through God’s grace. Thoughts?
What Sam is missing is that what people agree to as being "moral" depends on the people involved. Even if being smashed in the face with a rock is universally DISLIKED, it doesn't make doing it morally wrong in an absolute sense.
True. The universe has no opinions on what is right and wrong, we do however. Any discussion of morality should keep that in mind. Morality should really be defined based on how conscious creatures like us, perceive things, I.e. pain and discomfort = bad, and Happiness, satisfaction, etc = Good.
I don't think that's a fundamental flaw. I think the bigger flaw is that he never addresses conflict. If the two people on the island can only find enough food for one person, what's the moral way to split it? How do you weigh the well-being of one person against another? Virtually all moral dilemmas stem from conflicts in which one person's well-being is weighed against another's, and his framework is useless for handling such questions.
@jaijaiwanted how do we know that being slapped is a bad experience? How do we know it's not actually a good experience, and we just identify it as bad? Something outside of ourselves must be telling us that we like or dislike the experience. In other words, if we're just hunks of meat with no transcendent standard, then it's all a bunch of bogus for anyone to say "like, "dislike, "good, bad, etc..... these are just random, meaningless terms. Unless...... there's a transcendent standard. Which, of course, there is.
@@Neil_85 differentiating good and bad, and pain and pleasure in the way I see it won’t make sense to you unless you first change the definition you are using for these terms. You seem to be thinking of pain and pleasure as a sort of infinite truth everywhere (god given and eternal…), whereas I just see it as how whatever living organism interprets a sensory input. We evolved to be repulsed by Pain because doing so aligns with the goals of procreation, and thus those genes that were repulsed by pain became more common, and then eventually dominated the species gene pool.
I'm confused about whether Sam is actually an objectivist or not. Objectivism is generally a belief in immutable laws that are true regardless of personal preference. Murder is wrong because of X, Y, Z, and whether or not you personally like that is out of the question. It sounds like he's literally describing what Alex said: I enjoy this because I do. It isn't objective, it isn't factual, and it isn't set in stone. Now, it's totally true that we can come up with objective measurements to achieve these desires and find out which actions lead to the desires I have, but the fact that I even want this in the first place is totally up in the air and arbitrary. I like action-adventure stories with some romance along the way. If you were to scientifically examine my preferences and my brain, you'd find that there are certain things that improve this preference of mine, certain patterns that tick the story with my brain, right and wrong answers as to how I should go about finding my favorite books and things writers should do if they want my attention. There are even things that a story COULD do that I haven't even read yet and would improve my enjoyment of the book beyond my ability to comprehend until I experience it. This is all true, but the fact that I like action-adventure stories with some romance involved is completely arbitrary, and if I didn't like it, which is totally possible, then all of this scientific development is useless, and we'd start the process again to fit my new desires. The fact that you can objectively study the inner-workings of my arbitrary preference doesn't make my arbitrary preference objective.
Your reasoning is solid except for one problem. Very often many of our preferences are not arbitrary at all and can actually be completely founded in logic rather than emotion.
@@shamanahaboolist Why should I believe this? And logic does not mean something is true. Lamarckism is a perfectly logical and consistent view on evolution but it's wrong. Furthermore something having logic, even an internally consistent one does not mean that it is objective. There's a logic to why someone who dislikes the taste of coffee would dislike coffee flavored ice cream. If something tastes like coffee, they do not like it. Coffee flavored ice cream tastes like coffee. Therefore they do not like coffee flavored ice cream. Just because there is a logic to this person's dislike, does this suddenly make it objective that coffee flavored ice cream is bad?
I think Sam Harris' version of objective is if enough people agree on something, even if they may disagree on other things, due to time, space, culture, genetics, etc. "Boo murder" from one person is objective. But if "boo murder" has arisen multiple times, far apart enough in time, space, culture, genetics, then evidently it is quite objective. We can argue about how objective it is, but surely you must agree that it is more objective than subjective. There is something outside of our subjective experience that causes people to "independently" come up with "boo murder".
I think the line "That does nothing deflationary for me" sums up my growing stance on this. morality is at its core subjective but so what? does that make it worse that something objective? That would require a subjective evaluation. many of the things we value most in life, indeed the vary act of valuing things is subjective. The short hands of "good" and "Evil" denote from a perspective what we believe to be beneficial of harmful to overall well being. Emotivism appears to be 90% correct in its observation of the state of things but goes to far in apparently discarding the value of value judgements and the short hands used by a moral system to denote those judgements.
"Nothing deflationary for me"... I don't think that's the issue, though. The question of the basis of morality is, in principle, a factual question. And we don't answer factual questions by commenting on the significance of the answer one way or the other. Who cares if Sam Harris feels quite relaxed about having a fundamentally subjective moral landscape? No-one. The point is not how we feel about the facts, but what the facts actually are.
The problem is that saying morality is subjective means people are willfully living in delusion. It’s like saying, “there are no right and wrong behaviors, but I will act like there are.”
@@johndeighan2495 It's not though. Morality is not a question of fact but of definition. Everyone has a slightly different moral framework. There is no "true" moral framework because morality is a human construct. That's why morality is inherently subjective.
@@featherton3381 If you read the comment again, you'll see I was talking about the basis of morality, not frameworks of morality. If it has a basis, what is it? That's a factual issue.
Some thoughts that came to me from this convo. 1. The core of the disagreement seems to be whether sufficiently objectively effective decisions towards individual or collective pleasure should be considered moral rules. I think of this as calling Newtons gravity equations a law. We're so good at predicting things based on it that it may as well be treated as a truth of the universe for daily decision making and serves as a pretty powerful rubric to this end. That said, treating it as a law doesn't allow for a true understanding of it's nature (i.e. relativity, which is probably also be incomplete), and means in extreme conditions relying on it would be problematic. Alex's approach protects against this and I think of it as considering the problem at the level of the physicist or the level of the engineer. 2. The iterative nature of moving towards pleasureable experience reminds me of gradient descent optimisation. Problem here is that there is a risk of falling into a local minimum based on starting conditions. This can be thought of locally (i.e. individual basis) and globally (i.e. societal or humanity basis). On an individual basis it might mean that based on your starting environment, genes, experience etc you might be doomed to a set of objectively effective decisions which are appicable to that environment but not others and there may not be a smooth pathway to a greater level of positive experience beyond a point. This puts an argument against Sam's approach given certain moral "certainties" may not be applicable to this individual and may even cause them direct harm, making them poor rubrics to follow. On a global basis, the same local minimum optimisation issue can be true, and so if the goal is absolute maximal pleasure for all there may not be a path there depending on starting conditions, or the path there requires going through worse experiences for all for a time as the broader space of possibilities is explored. Then the question of our ability to accurately predict the navigation comes up and would be inherently difficult. Different people would have different views and confidence in whether they believe they could accurately predict the impact of making things experientally worse for a time to make things experientially better later on. There would also be a lot of psychology in decision making relating to this and likely aspects of risk tolerance and various mechanisms for motivation towards and away from change. 3. Implied within Alex's stance, appears to be this iterative decent optimisation problem. I believe this is realistic in terms of how it points to how people tend to actually navigate the world with minor purtubations based on how well people think they can predict the future if they take on short term pain or discomfort. It doesn't: however, seem to consider if the ultimate conclusion of this optimisation problem will be the "best" objective outcome possible on all metrics. Although it equally, may well be the best realistic outcome. 4. Without knowing the full space of optimal solutions, it's possible that a distant global objective best outcome may supercede what is possible as a local objective best outcome given our starting conditions, which we can't reset. So the only way to get to the global objective best would be to intentionally navigate through worse conditions along the way, the process of which may result in a level of suffering that doesn't make the journey worth it (especially with the unknowns involved).
I wonder if Alex thinks "sacrificial love", whereby one gets fewer "yums" but does something for the sake of another's "yums", is in itself explainable by yums. Perhaps Alex would say there may be fewer yums but there could be at least one great big yum (in the mind) regarding sacrificial love (putting others' needs ahead of oneself). But does that really explain sacrificial love, since the best sacrificial love is getting no yums at all. I think Alex really has no explanation for sacrificial love - laying down one's life for others. Does Alex really think war vets defended our freedom by seeking the next set of yums?
I'd explain it as one big yum in the mind, but also the avoidance of continuing a life defined by the yuck of knowing you weren't good enough to do what was necessary/right by your standards.
“I,” “me,” “my”… That’s your problem right there. Morality is about considering the needs and desires of other people. As Levinas says, it begins when faced with another person. As long as all you’re thinking about is yourself, your happiness, your emotions, there’s nothing moral to consider.
@@knightspygaming1287 Not necessarily selflessness. You're correct that morality includes how we treat ourselves, so interactions with others are a subset. (I shouldn't have said "there's nothing moral to consider" in reference to oneself.) My point is that ethics is primarily concerned with how we treat others, so a completely self-centered focus misses the point. One doesn't have to be completely selfless to be moral--on the contrary, one ought to consider one's own good in addition to the good of others. To take a Kantian perspective, e.g., that one should treat all individuals as ends and not means, i.e. one should not treat others a means to one's own ends, then that also includes not treating oneself as a means to others' ends.
I read up on A.J. Ayers a while back in my study on ethics in college. So forgive me if I'm inaccurate in my assessments anywhere. The main issue I have with non-cognitivists such as Alex's Ethical Emotivism stance is that there are, in fact, truth-apt claims in moral positions. For example, what emotional states you and your parents regularly express in your formative years during adolescence will shape what genes are expressed later on as you grow up. This is a known in the study of epigenetics. These emotional habits you have later on in life lead you in life. They can lead you into a more trouble adulthood (childhood deviance leading to criminal behaviors later on) or more harmonious lifestyles (becoming a caring nurse/doctor that genuinely listens to their patients needs). This realm of ethical study is known as evolutionary ethics and it made me doubt much of the non-cognitivists positions and claims about ethics overall. But I diverge away from Harris also. I'm not sure where to place Harris' ethical position just yet. Maybe a universal prescriptivist? that argues for objective morality. But that position also suffers a number of ethical dilemmas that a RUclips comment could hardly cover. I would rather steel man Harris and get a more proper scope of his ethical position before saying anything against it.
how is this evolutionary ethics in any way not compatible with emotivism? seems like your attitudes being shaped by environment is presupposed by this sort of meta-ethical framework
also not sure if evolutionary ethics is what you’re saying here after doing some research, seems like that has more to do with grounding moral statements in evolutionary nomenclature (cooperation is good because it helped our ancestors survive) what you described just sounds like epigenetics which is entirely compatible with emotivism, or even an essential part of it
@@T1Xerxes I recommend the basics first. The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachel. Think it is at the 10th edition now. You can take notes on all the people Rachels mentions and read up on each person after that. That is the hard, experience based approach. Or you can cheese it and take some ethics courses in College. If you can't afford that, you can read through each ethical framework on Wikipedia, but don't skip the references or bibliography... especially if the Wiki article on whatever subject has been flagged.
Hello, sorry for the late reply. I have considered your reply for some time. I will answer your objection directly in a moment, but here is an analogy I have on the contentions between the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism divide. Much like how Christian Theologians will argue ad-hoc about their god idea against the irreligious. It seems like Christian Theology is always having to swim uphill to justify belief(s) in their god. This often happens after a scientific discovery, or new archeological evidence discredits a previously held theological position... This is a similar hunch I get from non-cognitivists. Our studies into human behavior through anthropology, evolution, and epigenetics often inform our cognitive judgements on moral decision making processes. They can also be used to help us to make a decision when faced with moral uncertainty. The non-cognitivists seem to have to "swim up stream" so to speak to re-assert their position. Hope that helps!
I agree with Sam, Our moral emotions and intuitions evolved as heuristic guides toward better states of consciousness and well being, much like our pain responses evolved as heuristic guides to avoid physical damage. Just as we can study pain and health scientifically despite their subjective elements, we can study well being and flourishing scientifically while acknowledging their roots in subjective experience. This suggests a middle path: Moral truth isn't purely subjective emotion, nor is it purely objective fact - rather, it exists in the space where objective facts about consciousness and well-being intersect with our evolved capacity to navigate the social world through emotional and rational faculties
This is the most difficult to follow exchange I’ve heard in some time. I can’t make heads or tails of what’s being said by either at almost any point in the conversation.
You're not alone. I see from comments this rests upon the "is/ought problem", which, no matter how many explanatory articles and videos I see, I will never understand.
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlllwithin the philosophical community, the consensus is, is that Sam Harris Cannot or Does Not understand the IS-OUGHT Distinction, hence everyone thinks he’s stupid
@@maidros85hilary putnam’s book on the fact/value distinction is relatively clear but i bet your consternation is bc you’re smart & you intuit the porosity SH cannot perceive.
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlll He directly adresses that in his conversation with Alex: if you think the "is-ought" disctinction debunks objective morality, you're literally just talking about grammar.
Making up stuff didn't get him the status of freethinker and rational thinker which he is known for. And especially for neuroscientist, his half life is about how mind works.
Great summary of the discussion. I struggle with philosoohers using modal universes to establish some doctrine or system. Seems to me that if a series of postulates are possible in a modal universe - a hypothetical universe that, in conception, does not offend logical rules - until such postulates can be seen to apply in the world in which humanity lives, they remain hypothetical. So, I see myself asking philosophers using modalities...why should I care? You've described to me a possible world that is not descriptive of the landscape in which I actually find myself. Why should I care about your conclusion?
I keep asking myself the same thing. Maybe I’m missing something but I think Sam is just saying a bunch of stuff to make it seem like he’s answered the question.
Humans just assume it is because humans are arrogant and vain 🗣💘. It makes no sense for an objective observer (a sapient non-human) to care about an arbitrary line in the sand.
There is no reason for a non-human intelligence to believe in that arbitrary 🎲 line in the sand. Humans are just so arrogant and vain 🗣💘 they usually don't think like that. 🙄
I've already had this conversation in my head. I dont need to see two people talk about something I can discuss with myself. But i watched it anyway. 🤷♂️
I think consciousness isn't as subjective as everyone thinks. I keep amazing myself with how well a reference point works in discussions of every kind, including this one. That reference point being the natural world. Take the color blue, I can know that many of my fellow humans can precieve that color through a myriad of ways, scientific and not. Though the perception of the color is subjective, the color objectively exists. The color blue exists in nature, so do we, and evolution allowed our consciousnesses to detect its prescence. Likewise, genetics has clearly shown us that our DNA is extremely similar from individual to individual, across races, which means the conservation of genes responisble for my ability to see blue is in you and billions of other humans I share the planet with. And what's fascinating is our understanding of deficiencies in seeing color whereby those incapable of seeing blue can now ware glasses specially constucted so that one with color blindness can see blue. None of this is possible without the acknowledgement of an objective reality. Thus, statements of health, wealth and prosperity are not as subjective as I might think. Which means guiding principles of morals and ethics do impact objective truths about reality which means the impacts have a range or spectrum dependant on a multitude of natural varibles that truley exist and find varying degrees of overlap with everyone's ability to experience the same.
No one believes there is no should or shouldn't. Anyone who walks down the street, gets attacked by a stranger who punches them in the face and breaks their legs will think their attacker shouldn't have done it.
@@ChristianIce If the attacker is the one attacking, then he isnt the one who was attacked now was he? Wheres the attacker's attacker if he STARTED IT?! How did close to a million psychopaths find a hive to psyc out together?
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." Romans 1:22-23
"Boo Murder!" Presumably, finding others who agree with Boo-Murder demonstrates its utility. My concern is that emotivism leads to mob rule, the mimetic contagion as described by Rene Girard. Scapegoating is critical to the success of mob rule and I would argue it inevitable to the evangelization of an emotivist expression.
One thing I haven't heard mentioned is how Harris's idea of the moral landscape seems really naively utilitarian: Like it seems like he would have to say that you ought always to pick options like wireheading or the experience machine, because he can't seem to justify not always picking the option which is "higher" on the moral landscape based on a simplistic utilitarian calculation.
@vakusdrake3224 Sam referred to an Adam and Eve scenario and that there would be a mutual understanding and desire to work together, while not smashing the other. My point is Sam is niave and when you substitute his people with the scorpion and frog, you gain the understanding of just because it may seem a mutual beneficial relationship doesn't mean the nature of one will embrace that part, but rather the nature of the beast will show itself and what will result is not a utopia Sam wants
@@Matthew-cp2eg I suspect I disagree with key aspects of your model of human evil here. Since it very much seems like when people behave selfishly or irrationally there's *usually* a reason why that was useful to one's genes in the ancestral environment. Which is to say that I don't think you're appreciating the ways these human flaws are not bugs they're usually features (though some are just bugs, since certain cognitive biases can also be observed in artificial neural networks) It's not just that people are randomly selfish and cruel, these things are the way they are for evolutionary reasons: People are selfish when they think it benefits them and they're cruel most often to people who are perceived as the outgroup or who personally wronged them. Hell even a decent fraction of our cognitive biases seemingly disappear when you ask people to put their money where their mouth is (as in when being correct actually matters). So I would not rule out rational cooperation in quite the same way you seem to be. Though I think that people's moral intuitions radically disagree in ways that cannot be easily or objectively reconciled, particularly when you start getting access to certain technologies. However, even the inability for everybody to get their most preferred outcome doesn't rule out rational negotiation for a compromise solution that completely satisfies nobody. I could also go on quite a lot about how much of what we think of as "human nature" is cultural adaptations that took off after we adopted agriculture. Since the most warlike and agriculturally efficient early societies would conquer their neighbors therefor creating a sort of cultural survival of the shittiest (since this translates to a far lower quality of life and physical/mental health for it's actual citizens) .
@@vakusdrake3224 I never said humans were evil or good. its much more like micro and macro economics, neither system works when applied to the other. And in this contradicting system there lies the ability for people to get along or not... However why there is competing systems, just like the overall system of economic there is a fundamental layer or driving force and that force for humans is one of self interest be it at a 1-1 or group level. This is about OBJECTIVE MORALITY, a structured framework that is supposedly within people to determine a right from wrong, something so inherently knowing that it doesnt need to be taught... If anything you laid the frame as to why there isnt an objective morality or is that your position? that there isnt one?
It’d be an objective truth that they thought the world was flat. It is an objective truth that there is a range of preferable and non-preferable experiences and each of us helplessly must navigate in this space unless we choose to end experience. That’s all Sam is saying. There are objective fact-based ways to navigate more and less icky “boo” experiences and have more “yay” experiences…and science has bearing in this process because it arises out of whatever the nature of reality is.
Its fascinating that such intelligent people talk for such a long time without sharing any information at all. I am beginning to believe more and more in the quote "intelligent people are very good at seeming intelligent".
@@lovespeaks777 Whatever helps you sleep, Craig moves the goalposts, talks ridiculous white noise. Look at his videos with Alex. How can you defend a god that let’s kids die of cancer that beg God for help and the let them die? You can’t …
Sam takes for granted over the fact that we all still have to AGREE in order for some "objective" truth to thrive. He doesn't even consider than you don't even NEED a majority to have a culture to see that murder is wrong. If it benefits a certain class than what do they care if a weak majority thinks? All the boos will be in deaf ears. Consequentialism is a weak argument to convince someone to stop what they are doing is wrong because they believe they are a special case. Unless you have a moral argument, it will always be at the mercy of doubt.
It’s an objective fact that we DO value certain things, by our nature. It’s not that we *should* (an ought) but we DO. There are better and worse ways to realize them. The ways to realize them, made a study, would be the study of morality. I swear I don’t see how people don’t see this. And, of course, we have to start with moving away from the things we don’t like, and moving toward things we do. Like medicine is a science. But, who is to say that health is better than sickness, or life better than death? We could easily find a place to stand, philosophically, that questions these values. But, we STILL have a science of medicine. This would be a similar assumption in a science of morality. Healthy > sickness + means = medicine Well being > suffering + means = morality. It is pretty simple. I don’t see the reason for all the confusion.
Is it an objective fact that all people value certain things? I would almost certainly disagree with that-like even some norms like murder, slavery, and cannibalism among others have been the standard in different societies. Morality much more seems to just be what people agree on at the time. I for one believe objective morality doesn’t exist and that it’s just a product of natural game theory-everyone wants what is best for themselves, and morality is just the optimal description of the solution that pops out maximizing outcomes for all the participants.
No it is not. Not everyone values life the same. Furthermore, not everyone has the same nature. That is yet another problem with people like Alex and Sam. They try to get everyone to think there is but ONE human nature when, in fact, there are infinite different human natures: we are all different. They are assimilators: they want everyone to assimilate and therefore push the false narrative of 'One Human Nature'. Christians value a fairytale afterlife more than this very real and short life we have. They don't value life as much as they say they do and certainly not as much as atheist. Life is "The Good" imo but not so much to most people. Most people don't even think what "The Good" is. Alex and Sam are either to dumb to comprehend this or they are liars and simply propagandists for the oligarchs. It is pretty clear to me which one it is because they both appear to be very smart. That means they are psyop agents for Capitalism and The Oligarchs. They are happy being the brightest mental midgets as long as they are on top. They don't care that they could be the least smart mental giant if it means they are not on top. Even the powers that be are not free from a capitalist society.
@@MelFinehout Medicine (at least as we know it now) isn’t objective either. Most doctors will tell you that it is both an art and a science in how you care for a specific patient. Also things that are generalizable to populations have little precision when mapping to the individual-for example, if a drug has shown a 30% decrease in mortality from disease in a certain population, the probability that it will help one patient is essentially 0. Many people smoke and don’t develop cancer or heart disease-they are just more likely. All that is to say that maybe you could see “objective morality” as some well-described guidelines for the best general way to live life for good outcomes, just like medical protocol or standards of care are the best-known general way to save life. But on the individual level, that “science” or objectivity disappears. What we think is “objective morality” is just our best guess at what we think is best for all people to adopt, just like medical guidelines are just our best guess. But because both can clearly be wrong (and often are), for example slavery or COVID, I would hardly call either one objective.
Everyone knows Sam is wrong - I suspect deep down he knows it as well - and most people appreciate his longing to be right. He wants there to be objective morality because he can’t not know that there is… as is true for us all. But he also must know that lexical sleight of hand won’t finally fool us, or himself, and that if one embraces a godless cosmos then one ought to summon the courage to face the ugly amoral reality. Let yourself let go, Sam… or let God take hold of you and be what God is: the eternal and universal ground of all truth, including moral truth, which is nothing other than the revelation of God’s nature.
The minute you discover the first cause for action in this life there are certain conditions that must be met to keep that cause intact. You come into this world without reason but with values associated with your life. You may not fully grasp it, you want these pleasurable things instantly. Pain/pleasure comes before any choice or reason. As soon as you’re able to reason, you’ve experienced all that there is to know life is worth living. To say I want pain/death is to oppose the deepest fact about yourself. If you are born without the pleasure/pain mechanism you won’t last very long usually and the subject of morality becomes mute once you’re gone.
To say we just want 'pleasurable things' necessitates the causality of desire. In order to attain the values inline with one's personhood, you would also have to potentially desire pain through suffering, otherwise things like sacrifice, duty and childbirth would be unreasonable. If the ability to reason 'pleasurable things' gives us this understanding, then the anthropic principle would tell us that striving; or desire for a greater pleasure through pain, is necessary to attain reason, after all reason does not exist in a vacuum outside of experience. If these personal values must exist as a possibility before they are attained; and it is the case that its mutually beneficial to strive towards reasoning, then the causality of desire towards the attainment of the most 'true' possible values of oneself (Good) through conduct (morals) is objective.
@@altvibr The only thing in that list that is reasonable is the childbirth and no one is denying that good things can be obtained through particularly unpleasant acts. However, it must be consistent with one that desire to live.
Listening to atheist is a fucking headache. When I listen to pastors for our Christian faiths, our imams or our Muslim brothers, and even Buddhist Bhodivistas and Hindu Adiyogis, it’s always a breath of fresh air. So much knowledge and wisdom simply explained in lessons, our chores and devotions, our priorities and our unity, we work in tandem for common goals, very natural and spiritual connection stays alive and worked on. When athiest talk, it’s always a probing, dissecting, splicing and over simplifying shit, it takes you hrs, to weeks to years to dance around a simple notion when it comes to them, when we hear our mentors in our faiths, it’s simple yet gravitates towards prudence, always on progress, always on results of fruition. I love my Bible, my Christian fellowship and my churches I go to, comfort in this world of peril, strife and sorrow. Most athiest I talk to are on a string line of meds, always figgity, always know it alls, always on the brink of suicide, yet all the brethren’s of faiths I talk to are always calm and collective, ensuring and comforting. I don’t even bother with the naysayers anymore. I just turn to the people of obedience and steadfast faith. Stay up brethren’s of faith. You couldn’t pay me to debate an atheist or sit through their bullshit, you’ll be sent to a realm of chaos and uncontrollable bullshit. Stick to practicing the Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata, the Gita, the dhammapada and other holy books. Build stronger fellowships, and attend to your churches, mosques, temple gatherings and live.
Well, here's an atheist you can talk to that doesn't drink alcohol, doesn't use drugs and is happy with his life. You make it sound like you only know like 3 people or something! I get that it's comfortable to not think and just get told what to do; do this, do that, get a cookie. Simple things that are easy, that a child can do. But where's the challenge? As an adult, where's the interesting stuff and the understanding? There's none of that in church. You just get told and that's it. Have you ever thought that trying to understand things is difficult but it can also be rewarding?
Sam seems to be saying "Bad things are bad, and good things are good." Alex seems to be saying "Bad things are bad because I personally don't like them, and good things are good because I personally like them." In my view, the disconnect seems to be that Sam is making the leap to say that what is bad is objectively bad. Alex seems to be saying that that view is subjective, even if it can be proven that bad things have objectively bad outcomes.
"And so I look around the world, and there are certain experiences that are gonna make me suffer and some that are not. And so I pick the ones that don't make me suffer because I prefer them." We also see certain experiences that we know will make us suffer, but because they hold such great value, so as to make the result of the experience worth the suffering it will require. Now we all do a certain form of this (mothers bearing children, athletes training, and basically any laborer, etc.), but I hope you will give this some thought--it is worth it. And you may be a much better man than I for it, because when I was an atheist I could not see it. But as a Christian now I can tell you that the Christians I know see experiences that they know will lead to suffering but do not turn away from them because the reward of the experience is worth the suffering. And here's the part that is different: they suffer, but another receives the reward. If you wonder what I mean by this, look at some who preach in public--if you think they want to do that of their own will, think again. They are only being obedient to God. They are mocked, ridiculed, hated, sometimes attacked, sometimes spat on, sometimes threatened. I could not see this when I was an atheist. It seems so strange now that I could not, like a lens was distorted and I saw what actually was but as it was not. I hope you who read this will give it some thought.
Of course there's no objective morality. However, you can say in game theoretic terms that for a group of animals to thrive and reach a certain outcome, there are objective games they must play to reach that outcome.
I tend to agree with Sam. If we grant that yums are desirable and boos are avoided, it only makes sense that conscious beings will seek to maximize yums and avoid boos (suffering) and take whatever paths are available to get there. The problem Alex has is in calling that "objectively right." I don't know if you can really prove it one way or another since there's no explanation for consciousness/experience yet. Maybe if we ever get to the bottom of that we'll have a better framework for reasoning about these things.
This will be vague, Alex. You asked, "what am I missing". What you're missing isn't "what" it's "how". You and Sam want the same thing. How to agree on getting there is the "crux of the biscuit". It's not about how each of you think differently. That's baked into each of us by our uniqueness. It's how to put into our perspective the uniqueness of each other, and find the place for each of us to agree with the notion.,"that is objectively true". Good luck with that. The Golden Rule is something I use every day to inform my behavior. It covers my sense of morality and as I watch others adhere to the rule I find the approach works very well for me and them, getting along with others. I know that's simple. Sometimes it seems to me you're thinking too "hard".
So Sam Harris wants to "translate" (0:50) emotivist terms into objective morality but wants to "bracket" morality 7:37 and says that "objective facts about conscious systems" cannot be reduced to "objective facts about subjective preferences." 8:05 without saying how he made the leap.
Around the 7:15 mark Sam seems to almost make an argument for colonization. If a set of people are closed to certain outcomes that we deem to be objectively good, then…
If a group of people agree that burning someone at the stake is immoral but that same group says that it's moral if the person is a witch; is that an example of subjective societal reality?
The problem with the thought experiment involving taking a pill to gain a love of music is that it lends itself to infinite regression or recursion. Taking such a pill would entail a desire to have a desire for music. But what if you didn't have a desire for a desire for music? Does having a desire for a desire even make sense? And even if so, can we not take it even further, with questions about having a desire for a desire for a desire for music? And so on. To me, this suggests that a first-order desire for something is the only level of order that makes sense. I know that there's the complicated phenomenon of addiction, where a person desires a substance in one sense, while recognizing that the substance is harmful. In that case, though, I consider it a case of competing desires, in which case it's a matter of which desire is stronger, not a "nested" system of desires. And perhaps we can rethink the "music pill" thought experiment along those lines, too, where a desire to fit into wider society's love of music overtakes the personal aversion or apathy or music prior to taking the pill.
I have the desire to desire healthy food and exercise because I'd rather be healthy, but I currently have the actual desire to be lazy and eat fried chicken.
That has been a topic of contemplation for me over the past week or so. I was observing a desire to want to be compassionate and realized that wanting to desire something IS desiring it. This interesting string of logic seemed to come from self-criticism that I wasn't trying hard enough to be compassionate. After letting it go, I was able to return to my practice of cultivating compassion and trust the process with confidence.
So let me present this argument in a more accessible language: Harris: “If certain actions are taken, the possibility of them leading to more or less positive states of mind can in principle be assessed. Granted that positive states of mind, however conceived, are what we want, actions thus can, at least in principle, be talked about in an objectively moral way.” O’Connor: “Booo”
A very simple boil down. Acts that get us closer to traveling to the stars and spread amongst the galaxy (morally good). Acts that work against that, (morally bad).
Interesting take, but people like to drive coordinated efforts on tangents where sacrifices need to be made to get back on course. If a million people agreed that pursuing space travel is paramount to their social acceptance, questions would pop up like “how do we quell dissent about the way we’re going about this?” or “who speaks for as a group?” You know, the boring, non-scientific, political aspects of keeping everyone on the same page. I’m saying all of this because scientific achievement is scalable in an awesome way. Just one person is all it takes to make a real stride. If what you want to do is get people space traveling throughout the galaxy, you can begin this very moment on basic propulsion experiments. If materials are too expensive, you can start writing the software that will operate said propulsion in the future. It doesn’t need to be right or wrong. People will see that you’ve made an impressive step and give credit where it’s due.
Maybe I'm still not getting his point, but it seems to me morality is merely the expression of or individual and collective preferences in some domains, the extent and nature of which are continually shifting. Nothing in that is objective, all is subject to the individual and the collective. Sure we could apply objective measures to things (does x align with or contradict our preferences) but the preferences themselves are in no way objective. Oh, typed this just before getting to 8:11 so thanks Alex
9:10 Thinking of life as a game is actually a great way to understand objective morality. The player has to play by the game developers rules if he wants to win the game. One game might reward you for killing other players, while another game will punish you for it. Whether or not you "boo murder" or "yeah murder" depends on the game you are playing. The game of "real life" that we are playing will punish you for murder. That is objective morality.
A while ago I thought: every act is selfish because even the “selfless” acts we do are in anticipation of the guilt we’d feel if we didn’t act selflessly. The selfless act is delayed gratification in pursuit of long term gratification for us or our genes. A smarter person than me pointed out that while that is a perfectly valid definition of the word selfish, it serves no practical use in reality. We would simply have to redefine the word selfless as a consequence. While I agree you can hold the framework Alex does and it could be perfectly logical, I would like to see some practical use for defining the word preference in this way. Otherwise we may have a hard time making progress in the reduction of suffering
Achieving as much wellbeing as possible is as objective as you can get. Almost everyone agrees with getting more wellbeing, just like we all subjectively experience gravity but agree that it exists in an objective way. We can kind of objectively say that more wellbeing is morally better.
They don’t go down to the level of why there are certain things they prefer and why they prefer them. Preferences are not self-evident or simply programmed. That’s where the morality bit really comes into picture. Because there isn’t really any difference between “prefer” and “should”. They don’t exist without each other when it comes to actions.
Objective morality can not exist considering we as a collective "decide" on whats "right or wrong". For example, you cant say murder is wrong then say you agree with the death penalty. Almost everything has been justified one way or another over the course of human history.
@@MrPartch Uh..yes it does. You cant say that murder is "objectively morally" wrong then also agree with the death penalty. Morality is decided upon by the group. These morals are not held by every single human innately. So, yes, the example fits my proposition very well.
@@William89809 If you say all of the following: - Death penalty is murder - I am against murder - I am for death penalty You'd be contradicting yourself. You'd be a hypocrite. This however does not prove that objective morality cannot exist. I am not claiming that objective morality exists. I am just saying that your example doesn't have anything to do with it.
@@William89809 Someone who claims objective morality exists does not necessarily claim that there are acts every human being considers as morally wrong. Their claim is that there are acts every human being SHOULD consider as morally wrong, or that there are acts that are morally wrong REGARDLESS if everyone agrees or not. There is a big difference between the two
@matthewphilip1977 From what little i've read of Hume, he doesn't strike me as someone who had trouble figuring out something that obvious. His complaint, isn't with deriving of ought from an is, but with that the statements underpinning the ought are frequently omitted instead of being made explicit and explained. Not that there are no propositions that would lead to a reasonable ought. To quote Hume: "In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. *This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should be observed and explained*
@matthewphilip1977 I already did in the first comment i made. You are aware that people say stuff like, "i'm hungry, so i should get some food" all the time? And no one in their right mind considers it an unreasonable ought. You aren't seriously so confused about Hume's positions that you can't tell whether he wasn't sure whether one ought to prefer what is true over what is false? Even you did, in your previous post. Your confusion stems from not realizing that propositions about one's goals describe what is.
@matthewphilip1977I think Sam would agree with you here. That ought is meaningless. He even said it in the full video. Did u watch? It’s Alex and everyone else that’s trying to shove ‘ought’ into a conversation about whether morality exists. Everyone else is trying to force feed the topic with this vague word ‘ought’, while Harris is simply trying to connect the word morality back to conscious entities, ya know, something real & specific & not vague.
@matthewphilip1977 lol. You're a non-sequitur. If there are no propositions that would lead to a reasonable ought, then adding proposition "I want to get rid of this hunger" to an existing one wouldn't result in a reasonable ought either. And if it would then you've conceded the point. Propositions about "wants" that you keep making are statements about what is. No idea, since that's not what i said. I asked "how would Hume know that he "ought" to prefer what is true over what is false?" My question was specifically about Hume, since he has written on the subject.
As a theist and a Christian, I believe that morality requires agential (i.e. non-deterministic) discrimination between what we consider right and wrong. So I think the notion of materialist determinism denies us "choice" in any meaningful sense of the word. My question is, how can moral categories even be applicable if all of our thoughts, "choices", and actions can only unfold deterministically?
Just wanted to comment here to proudly share that I've been sober for 1,679 days.
Gj man
I'll drink to that.
No you just wanted to comment a made up story in a totally unrelated place for some sympathy through the like counter to make you feel better.
Wp, alcohol diff
@@Johnnystammywow
The title is perfect because I feel like I’m missing 30 years of context for this conversation.
Lol maybe you miss the pretentious attitude
Might very well be, they are both going very deep with this because Alex really tries to understand Sam's point, where I think Sam's point is not accurate, so reaching an understanding won't be possible.
More like 2000+ years of context. This is the kind of stuff that's been discussed since the Greeks, and we have about as good an answer on it as they did.
@@lVideoWatcherl But Alex's point isn't accurate, either. We don't value pleasurable experiences; we value meaningful experiences, whether they're pleasurable (sex with someone you love) or not (excruciating triathlon run). And meaning isn't encoded in our brains' biology.
@@maxkho00 Why do you value meaning? Maybe because... ascribing meaning to a situation brings you pleasure?
I would reckon you could totally express this all in terms of brain chemistry. In fact, current neuropsychology identifies multiple hormones, all linked to different kinds of 'feel-good', be it supression of pain, accomplishment or simply happiness. Se xual pleasure is just one of these, but of course Alex did not just mean that kind of pleasure, as we both are aware I'm sure.
And also, _of course_ humans value pleasurable experiences in itself. Or, potentially and maybe more accurately, experiences that are especially pleasurable in any way _are_ what you likely deem 'meaningful'.
11:50 This is literally the crux of the disagreement.
"Objectively better, *IF* better means navigating away from the worst possible misery for everyone [...]."
Alex' point seems to be that the universe itself has no prescription to do what increases wellbeing. Sam's point seems to be that, if we agree that wellbeing is better than suffering and use that as a foundation for ethics, "right" behaviour is rather determined.
The fundamental question is whether one accepts that suffering should be avoided and wellbeing enhanced.
Isn’t well-being completely subjective?
@@GyatRizzler69-of3wl exactly - how do you define wellbeing and how do you define suffering
@@JoBo301 they basically boil down to health. That’s the objective basis for suffering and wellbeing which is what’s agreed on between Alex and Rationality Rules when discussing Sam Harris’s objective morality.
@@heylo5274 physical health or mental health or spiritual health or moral health??/
The hilarity is the "IF". No Sam, if you use an "IF", you are no longer defining objective morality.
This is professional yapping
Professional Yapping is a great title!
Ranked yapping
My intuition and analysis of these two is that Sam is a bit more "serious" in that he cares more about how these philosophical ideas play out in the real world while for Alex, all of this is just an exciting jungle gym for his brain.
@@OriginalMindTrickI don’t agree with that. I believe Alex is having a genuine philosophical exploration while Sam is simply trying to fit things into the view he already holds.
@@evelcustom9864 Translation: You're an Alex fan.
Sam always looks like he just woke up
If only!
That’s why it’s called waking up with Sam Harris
He's been waking up since he took MDMA with his friend, quit school and went to india
I get the feeling he meditates a lot and is always trying his best to stay mindful. This makes him come across very relaxed and chilled out a lot of the time
He's aged severely
Hearing Alex say "Minecraft" is something I never knew I wanted.
Mein krohhft
You should adjust your wants and desires 😂
Timestamp?
@@Raphael4722 9:11
I like minecraft
Im just sitting here smoking a bong pretending like I have the slightest clue wtf they are talking about. Anybody else? lol
Well, you're a retarded pothead. Clearly nobody else is as adamant at proclaiming their loser status like you are.
Just you bro cause you’re not smart and you lack the intelligence and comprehension to know what they’re talking about. You should do the world a favor and never give an opinion on the topic since you’re so uninformed. No offense tho.
Word bruh 💨
Harris is being a bit overly abstract simply for the sake of abstracting his abstract abstraction of abstractness. Aka, saying complex nonsense for the sake of sounding fancy.
Same, but without bong
The objectives of psychopaths are way different than the objectives of normal people.
That's because they lack empathy. There is no such thing as morality either. Everything is based on empathy and fear.
@@Jake-mv7yo don't forget they have an abundance of greed.
@@rickfucci4512 Everybody has greed. It is just that people with empathy can understand what their greed can do to someone else and they fear living in a world where someone can do that to them.
Psychopaths also seek pleasure and avoid pain. Most people throughout most of history ate meat, doesn't mean that they don't have a preference, not to be eaten.
You made me think. Would a psychopath be able to be a good scientist who studies empathy?
Sam finally respecting the coaster is the best in this.
The conversation has at this point elevated to what Sam considers a civilized tone. This is why he now is respecting the coaster 😂
Yeah I remember that Triggerpod episode where he kept putting the drink on the table
the "boo watermark" was flipped
8:44 the there there is as
Sam is just a bitter rebel inside. Hence his refusal to use such "unnecessary creations". lol
I think the literal fact that morality is also expressed as "judgement" that judgement is only about taste, the judgement is not built on anything that isn't a person taste interaction.
No, it's not. "Taste" pertains to me personally. My preference for an ice cream flavour, for example, has no importance in a universe, in which I don't exist. But my moral preferences for a universe, in which I am not, are just as strong as they are for a universe in which I do exist.
@@MrCmon113 "But my moral preferences for a universe, in which I am not, are just as strong as they are for a universe in which I do exist." Your preferences do not exist where you do not. This is still your preference we are talking about, though it's clear to me that it is a very meaningful preference for you.
Can somebody please explain to me what I am missing about Alex’s overall philosophy of morality?
If morality is purely a matter of preferences, why is he going on his vegan campaign? Sure, you can say he would just prefer somebody to not eat meat, but this isn’t what he does: he frames it as if eating meat is wrong. The views of a non-vegan who subjectively sees no issue with eating meat (and, let’s assume, prefers it) would have to be on the same level as Alex’s view. This means that now Alex has no moral high ground, since there is no moral ground at all. And if this is true, we might as well equate Alex’s veganism to companies advertising products, for example “Everyone knows that cardigans are itchy, and I don’t like it when people suffer. So I’m on a campaign to get people to buy my own jumpers instead; I think they’ll be a lot happier, and as a bonus I get paid!”
Obviously, Alex isn’t in it for the money, but if he were, why would it be any different? It’s all about what he wants and feels good to him. So given this, Alex would have to either concede and say that veganism is only a matter of his own personal preference (which seems to be contrary to his entire cause) or say that this is not a fair analogy. But how can this not be a fair analogy when it’s all subjective to what the individual wants? I see no ability to escape this other than claiming that morality is objective, or inventing an entirely new worldview/religion.
Finally, I don’t understand why (from what I’ve heard) Alex only speaks as if humans are the only ones to blame, when most of the animal torture and death is at the claws of other animals. Shouldn’t we also be trying to make meat supplements for lions and tigers and bears and expecting them to go vegan too? And if he were to say we’d let them off the hook because of some hand-wavy “humans are higher life forms” or something, then that begs the question of what exactly separates humans from animals? How are we to quantify that? Many religious people would say it’s a soul, etc., but I’m sure Alex would reject that. This is an extremely important question to answer before one can have a cause establishing animal rights that all humans must follow, yet claim that these very same animals need not respect them.
I think if there was a way to control the behavior of animals, he would be for that. I think that keeping predator animals from eating other animals would be an insurmountable task, and thus irrational to campaign for. Humans can be reasoned with and talked into new positions, you almost have to start with humans and then move into the issue of animals hurting each other. Alex's view would be "boo, meat eaters" he dislikes that people eat meat, and thus he's driven to campaign for veganism. He wouldn't say that objectively you are wrong for eating meat, he's just expressing that he doesn't like it. Likewise, people eating meat are saying "yum, meat" it's their preference to eat meat because they enjoy it. Just because his worldview doesn't allow for objective statements doesn't mean he's not compelled to do things that he feels would improve the world.
For the record, I'm not vegan, and I don't think Alex is anymore either tbh. I'm just trying to explain it in the best way I can as I understand it.
I would say that even if we don't believe in objective morality, we can still hold strong preferences about what the world ought to look like. We might say "boo for eating meat" and if less people ate meat we might say "yay for this world", but really there's probably a deeper understanding than that. One might think that "boo for needlessly hurting anything that can feel pain" or "boo for needlessly killing anything that is alive", which could then lead to "boo for eating meat". Now, I don't know what kind of arguments he uses, but I would imagine part of it is trying to get to these deeper preferences to find something that the target audience also prefers. If you can make someone understand that a, they also feel like "boo for needless killing", and b, that killing animals for meat is indeed needless, then if they are rational they would agree with "boo for eating meat". So it's not necessarily just trying to convince someone to agree with your preferences, but rather to "help them understand" what their own deeper preferences actually entail (and of course the reason you'd do that is because it leads to a world which is better according you your preferences). It should be said that using emotivism in logical arguments like this is another can of worms, but I think the overall point works.
A straightforward basis by which to parse this entire conversation is to notice that it's trying to get at the difference between DESCRIPTION and PRESCRIPTION. Everything else follows from this.
Also notice that, except for this distinction, Alex and Sam are talking about the same phenomena and the same concerns.
So is it a fundamental distinction, or something derivative or arbitrary? Well, I think it could hardly be more fundamental. It's the distinction between how things are and how things might be conceived. It's the distinction between (empirical) science and (conceptual) mathematics. It's the distinction between territory and map.
It does not, however, provide a distinction between what is moral and what is not moral. Morality remains poorly grounded whether you attempt either a descriptive or prescriptive basis for it.
Alex might say that it's sufficient to describe how preferences associate with possible choices. That's fine, but we aren't passive observers. Nothing happens until some choice is exercised, and that choice is ours to make.
Sam might say that given these preferences, certain choices should be prescribed. That's fine, but we aren't emotionless robots seeking to optimize a set of parameters. If we can't sooner or later feel the preference, we have no warrant to follow the prescription.
@matthewphilip1977 Sam would say that distinction doesn't stop prescriptions from fields like medicine for maximizing health, why the added skepticism toward prescriptions from ethics for maximizing wellbeing?
@matthewphilip1977 I can get an ought quite easily by observing my own conscious mind. For example, I ought to stop writing this comment, because I am probably wasting my time arguing on the internet, and I also am extending my insomnia. But, I ought to continue writing this comment, because I could help you understand my point of view.
It fulfills objective moral benefits to choose one way or the other. If I found another solution that achieved all my preferences, it would be objectively better to choose that one, compared to one of the two subpar options detailed above. This would be better, not for me alone, but for the entire universe, because I am a part of what is, and desires are the definition of "ought".
If I have anything to contribute to this conversation, I think "wellbeing" is a trap word, which should be replaced with "fulfilling desires that are held". A universe full of blissful paperclip maximizers (experiencing qualia) is better than one where Yahweh tortures 90% of humans for infinite time, objectively, and you can tell because one contains desires being filled, and one doesn't. You can only tell this is the definition of "ought" by having desires yourself, just like you can only tell that you are conscious by being so (and a universe filled with nonsentient paperclip maximizers is amoral, or evil if filled with other sentient creatures that cannot defeat them).
Desires are; they are an individuals experience of "ought"; "ought" exists, it is the desires.
@matthewphilip1977 We ought to help those in need because if we do, there will be less conscious experiences of the sort "Boo my life! I am wretched" which are experientially and experimentally inferior, objectively (I observe, in myself; I extrapolate, for others), to "Yay my life! Yippee"
@matthewphilip1977
> It is implicit, given that most people don’t want to waste time, or suffer insomnia, but given the context of the discussion, it's not enough for it be IMplicit.
It's implicit for you, because you do not have direct access to my conscious experience? Are you saying that I can only infer I don't want to waste time (how?), but that this is not objectively true?
@matthewphilip1977
> desires are not the definition of ought, far from it. Desire means to want, to wish for; ought, in this context, means should, in a moral sense, and in other contexts, means should in a mere strategic sense.
And yet, if you look at the extreme, a world in which there are many desires, but they are never fulfilled, is terrible;
a hell where everyone is tortured, constantly, wishing vainly their suffering would end; and imagining seeing their loved ones, but remembering those were taken already into ever greater horrors, is OBJECTIVELY ONE OF THE WORST THINGS THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN.
The same thing in a philosophical zombie universe doesn't matter; there are no morals in such a universe (if you enter, and are the only conscious being, you have direct access to all moral events. Maybe you decide you don't like hearing the screams of the zombies; helping them is good only so far as you benefit from helping them).
The fact that this is not a reliable way to make decisions easily (ought he to marry her? Well, her grandma hates him, but grandma will die in 3 years, and she loves him, but he's concerned about whether he really loves her, and life will certainly get easier for both, but she's secretly having an affair also) doesn't mean that we can infer nothing about the objective state of the world before/after because it's complex. It means there's no simple test for what ought he to do, and neither is there a simple answer. Two desires fulfill even different kinds of satisfaction.
The fact your desires conflict with another's doesn't mean that neither of you experience them though. The _morally best_ outcome would involve both of you somehow achieving all goals. The BEST OBJECTIVELY POSSIBLE UNIVERSE would be one where people never experience suffering, are able to motivate themselves without it to accomplish all flourishing goals they want anyways. It could be a blissful paperclip optimizer, though existence of humans means transitioning to this universe would require objective evil (death of all humans) though the death of any humans as it exists today is an objective evil. That ought not to happen, either. Someday we will make it not.
I’ve taken that special Music pill before … and I’ll probably take it a few more times to come
What I don't understand about these experiences Sam keeps going on about is what is the point of doing it? Am I really worse off never having done it?
I'm a professional musician and I have been taking those music pills through my entire life😂
@@OhManTFE From what I infer, his line of argument was going to be something like, "you can't possibly have a subjective yuck/yum expression of this hypothetical experience-space that you don't understand...but objective data *can* say something about whether you might be likely to prefer it". Or something like that. But the argument never quite made it all the way out.
@@drangus3468objectivity pertains to that which can be proven to exist without a subjective agent’s involvement influencing the outcome, it is fundamentally flawed.
No philosophical theory of ethics has ever credibly found an objective basis for morality that is not axiomatic, and Sam Harris is indeed amongst those who are unable to reconcile the subjective-objective division without redefining objectivity to something wholly different. Inter-subjectivity is essentially ethics by committee which itself is corruptible by the theological bases he so vehemently opposes.
He’s not really convinced anybody but himself on this, hence his derisive dismissal of the cognitive abilities of those who dissent.
@@cornsockgabz I think he's just being persistently imprecise about his language as a way of engagement farming (or perhaps out of obtuseness or unwillingness to concede or insecurity...idk). It seems clear to me that he is talking about *objective facts about subjective morality*, as opposed to *objective morality*. Which would be fine and uncontroversial and uninteresting except he insists on calling these things *objective moral facts*.
Or perhaps he is actually making the strong claim of having derived ought from is. This also would not surprise me; I have a low opinion of his logical rigour.
Can’t you just say humans are essentially pack animals, we’ve evolved to be social and have empathy because we need to work together to survive. We also have a hierarchy. I think that is sufficient in explaining “morality”, it’s ingrained into us already.
Very nicely put. Also this is being tested scientifically in primates. The books by de Waal are descriptions of the building blocks of morality and how it is the nature of the society or group that shapes it. But i guess this does not address the issue of whether the morality is objective or subjective. Because science describes a situation, it does not give a value judgement. So we can say morality has evolved, and this would imply that these values are not strictly speaking subjective but are also not objective in the sense Harris means.
I think that's more or less correct, but in many societies there was (and still is) a different morality for external and possibly competing groups.
Sam would like the morality to be the same for all groups (ie no killing), which I also agree with.
Yes, but this description doesn't serve the purpose Sam is going for. He claims that morality can be defined objectively. He isn't just trying to figure out the basis of morality, but he's trying to argue that it's objective. You can see how he emphasizes that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. Basically, he wants to be able to state his opinions as if they were facts. Your common sense explanation of the basis of morality does not give him that.
But that logic means right and wrong are not objectively true. That would mean that terrorists killing newborn babies is not objectively (always) wrong. That cannot be.
@@billmartin3561 Well you are making a statement but you provide no objective reason why it needs to be so. In fact the only reason you are providing here is an emotional subjective reason, which is precisely how Alex says people approach the issue of morality. Now some rules for groups are usually universal because they are advantageous for societies. Otherwise those societies do not survive So people need babies in order to survive, that is why generally societies dont kill many of their babies, but all societies kill some of their own babies. Abortion,infanticide for specific reasons have been sanctioned in many societies. Now in the Bible itself, God has sanctioned the killing of babies and children in certain situations, so even God seems to think that in certain situations it is Ok to kill babies. With this I am not trying to justify killing babies. It is abhorrent, but the reasons for not killing babies are either emotional and subjective or are derivations from adapted behaviour that is advantageous. So not objective in the sense you are proposing.
Excellent Alex, love it..
Definitely showing the value of definition or should i say honesty of definition..👍✌️
What Harris misses, starting around the 10:30 mark, is that Adam and Eve will have conflicts of interest. Generally speaking, in between "the worst possible misery for everyone" and "maximal bliss for everyone", there is the possibility of bliss for me and misery for you. Whether that feels good to me depends on how much I value my own wellbeing over yours as an ultimate concern. In turn, the value system that maximizes my utility function depends on that. That makes the preference among value systems subjective, and, indeed *very* subjective.
Exactly! How in the hell are we meant to decide what is ‘best’ for everyone?
Our judgement is eternally clouded by our pride and our attachment to some individuals over others.
Interesting we're introducing themes of pride and selflessness as virtue or lack thereof.
In the Adam and Eve situation, that would never be true and any assumption that it is would be false on short sightedness.
You can’t logically have the benefits of having a community (I assume these are mostly self evident, but to be clear they are all rooted in an enhanced ability to conquer adversity) AND put individualistic selfish needs above the general well being of that community.
Caring for well being of others is inherently logical, and not at odds with the self.
@@zephyrjmilnesI think this falls into the realm of logical short sightedness. The “greatest good for the greatest number” comes from the fact that as we increase the size and complexity of our social structures, we are most secure (meaning the least susceptible to adversity) when we have the greatest number of people actively involved in the collective security (and all that means) of our society. Choosing to minimize the size of our community based on loose, mostly unscrutinized factors is a product of our lives being abstracted from the necessity of security.
@@Eric-sq1cc your assertion is the one Harris is making. It's a very interesting assertion. Do you have any evidence for it? There's none given in your post .
I think the confusion is that that what we call "pleasant" or "painful" in the individual context becomes "right" or "wrong" in the social context. This is why Sam wisely remarked that the issue of moral truths becomes evident when you add more people into the picture. However, in Alex's defense, whether such an objective moral truth can be identified for a a group of people, at a certain moment in time, is questionable as it is highly volatile and involves just too many factors. Therefore when it comes to deciding what is right (or wrong) for a group, we are invariably stuck with approximations, which inevitably makes us do something wrong for a minority of people over the long run.
I think you completely missed what Alex is sayin. Sam says that it becomes right or wrong but Alex's point is that that is not the same right and wrong this is spoken of when talking about morals. Sam just doesn't get it.
@@briansanchez6699 This is because Sam is an idiot. (Im certainly not as intelligent as him, but he has exposed his ill-will towards people with different opinions than him and other greater minds have put his philosophy to the dirt)
I fail to understand what the term "objective" means in these philosophical discussions. Objectively wrong is the phrase "if I hold an apple and I open my hand, the apple will go up to the sky". Planet earth's gravity guarantees that it will go down to the ground, independently who holds the apple. If some people agree with murder, how murder is objectively wrong? Who or what defines objectivity in this case? It seems an abstract definition where I can claim whatever I want objectively right or wrong.
Your questions are very apt and this is exactly what leads people towards subjectivism (in some form) because they cannot find any good answers to those kinds of questions.
"Objective" here is a metaphysical fact. If you believe that there is an objective morality, you believe that moral statements have a truth value that is defined and unchanging, just like natural facts such as the nature of gravity. One can either say that moral facts ARE natural facts (which maybe Harris is doing here), or that they are non-natural (like e.g. numbers are according to many) but still have a truth value just like natural facts. Alex here is rather saying that moral statements do not have a truth value, they're just expressions of preference and cannot logically be true or false (non-cognitivism). Another view is that moral statements could in theory have a truth value but as a matter of fact they do not (this is my attempt to summarize Mackie's views).
Objectivists will say things like "any reasonably person would agree that murder is wrong" or "if (people learned that) murder wasn't wrong, then the would would be total chaos and that would be bad", but a subjectivist would say that these statements may well be true but are also completely irrelevant to the metaethical question of objective morality. One way you can defend it is by saying that most people would agree that murder is wrong, so it's reasonable to have that as your baseline until something else is proven. You cannot prove that murder isn't wrong. Therefore murder is wrong (to the best of our understanding). I don't agree with this view, but that's the closest I've come to a rational way of defending it.
@xway2 Very interesting analysis. For me, which I consider the morality subjective, the right or wrong is also abstract terms. And it is exactly the "majority" argument that makes it subjective for me. Slavery for centuries was morally acceptable from the majority of people in all cultures, now the majority is against it. There are plenty of similar examples where the "morally acceptable behavior" has changed through time and between civilizations. Is objective morality space and time dependent?
In the case of murder, I believe it is mostly self preservation that stops us. We implicitly understand that, if we start killing people, nothing will stop others from killing us. Since survival is an instinct (all living beings want to survive, even the plants that we cannot define morality for them have defensive mechanisms against attackers), it is in our best interest to not allow others to murder us, thus we go into an agreement in our societies for no killings.
In another perspective, if it was a "higher moral reason" that we do not kill, I fail to see it. In many animals we observe that the "no killing our species" is a norm, especially when they live in groups. Of course, you can see sometimes this rule to be broken, exactly as it happens with humans. However, how can we identify morality in animals?
I'm a big Sam Harris fan, but I'm in Alex's camp here.
No matter how you dress up a "should" or "ought", it remains firmly in the realm of subjective judgement.
And "Subjective" doesn't mean "less worth standing up for" than "Objective". It merely means we are continually required to reargue and justify our claims regarding it to others in our society.
We can put to bed questions such as what 1 + 1 is equal to, but we really have to continue negotiating questions like, "How much of our GDP should we spend on housing and feeding the poor?"
I'm happy to see that someone gets it.
That is not a moral question, it’s a loaded one lol
Exactly. And, you might want to examine whether Sam's other arguments are just as poorly made (guns, torture, bombing people, etc.).
@@TheHuxleyAgnosticu sound dumb, just stop
@@TheHuxleyAgnosticjust stop. Ur wrong g
For me it boils down to the fact that some actions are objectively better than others and that there would be an optimal moral way of behaving for every situation, that would be objectively the best. However, we often lack the bigger picture to grasp it, or are missing the pieces of the puzzle to reach that decision of absolute moral good for any given situation. So, we are left to act on the information we do have and try to move in the most possible good, given what we have
Time to take up horseback riding if you haven’t already yet Alex; there’s two apocalyptic horses vacant. You should of course the one that pisses off Peter Hitchens the most.
Could argue there are two horses seems Dawkins fell off his and Elmo here is riding a painted pony .
Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty, please.
Which one of these apocalyptic horsemen would enrage Peter Hitchens the most?
@@proudatheist2042his brother's of course
@@anthonyberard3507 Neither of those two come close to being intellectual in any capacity.
This was a great rip! Really enjoyed it and following the joust is always instructional on some level, even if only to make one reflect on the matter of communication itself. Specifically I felt Alex was somewhat attached to the comfortable feel for him in the term "preference" (now that's a preference!) I felt it bogged things down a bit unnecessarily, and as a thinker he could have used the opportunity to re-asses how universally this term is appropriate. I would have been interested in where things could have moved on to. But no matter, I can find more content with Sam around to see what else he's got to say about this. Good Show.
There's no fruitful discussion before the morality as its subject is properly defined and understood. Things can be good or bad depending on the assigned terminal goal.
Only conscious entities can have a goal, thus the existence of goals and morality depends on the existence of conscious entities.
Yes, and the difficulty is that people can disagree on the extent to which any given action helps them reach any given goal.
@@ericb9804 what makes things good or bad?
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani I'm not sure what you mean. But I would say "good" and "bad" are, at best, colloquial labels we apply to things or situations depending on context. Applying these labels serves more of a social function than an ontological one.
@@ericb9804 The context is the goal you want to achieve when labelling something as good or bad. Something is good if it helps you achieve your goals, and vice versa.
@@hamdaniyusuf_dani Ok, thats fine, but you seem to be ignoring that people can legitimately disagree over the extent to which any given "something" actually helps them "achieve their goals" or not - even if they also agree on what the goals are. In fact, its precisely these cases that are the source of our actual moral disagreements, so conceiving of "good and bad" in these terms isn't actually as helpful as you pretend.
Wow, reading the comments and seeing how many people are missing that living according to one's preferences IMPLIES the inclusion in those preferences to not be ill-treated by the group for one's said preferences trangressing predominate desires of individuals that have found, in the device of alliance, means to deliver said ill treatment. The group has predictable minimal standards (look at different cultures across time and space and see what moral attributes are common to them all) that are in-turn based on the subjective preferences of individual, predominate, human nature. This is why Alex's perspective is not an open door to chaos.
This is actually helpful and interesting thanks
@@ghostj5531 My pleasure.
For the people who don't have English as their first language:
"Wow, reading the comments, it's surprising how many people miss that living by your own preferences means also wanting not to be mistreated by the group for going against the group's dominant preferences. Groups have basic, predictable standards (you can see this in different cultures over time) which come from common human nature. This is why Alex's view doesn't lead to chaos."
For me the push back against Harris on this topic is a classic example of where the intellectual sophistication of academic philosophy becomes useless and stupid. It’s the ethical philosophy version of freshman epistemic skepticism-in which the possibility of knowing what is true is just seen as radically impossible. It leads to utterly impractical relativism that is also dishonest; because nobody lives and thinks that way in reality except New Age fundamentalist idiots.
In this case, one need only ask on what we base our legal system once we’ve moved beyond scriptural authority. Honestly I feel like the philosophers nitpicking of the Moral Landscape is more about an in-group fetishizing of the ought-is holy cow. What else could moral judgments be based upon but what causes harm or benefit to conscious beings? Or is neutral…
The is-ought gap is not a "holy cow", its simply true. Descriptive and prescriptive statements are fundamentally different categories of logic. Many criticisms have been made of Harris's book, but I fail to see a single one based on the premise that "knowing what is true is impossible". What else could moral judgments be based on? A number of things. Is there any particular reason utilitarian metaethics are superior to these other ones? Your comment seems more motivated by frustration than by sound logical reasoning. Who are the "nitpicking philosophers" you speak of? Why are they wrong?
To the last question: Values, for example. Being honest to someone, telling the truth, even though it may hurt them. Or rational thinking, even though it might lead to unpleasant conclusions.
But then again, what is freedom?
And if freedom is what we strive for on an individual level what would that freedom look like?
When 'my freedom is not the same as your freedom'... Because subjective experiences of the physical world is guided by totally different parameters in my case than the guy or girl next to me...?
Freedom is sinlessness.
@@LoseBellyFatNow0 Thanks for stating your subjective view on this.
@@smart-ass8518 It's my objective understanding of freedom.
Thanks for making this section more easily replayable until I wrap my head around the implications of what this all means.
Even as I read all these comments and struggle to keep the flow of the logic from turning into chaos in my mind I laugh at how aggressively everyone calls everyone else an idiot or illogical for their positions. When trying to debate something this fundamental it just seems silly how absolutist everyone is. No one really has a superior vantage point, even if I know I lean towards Alex's side heavily. I think we are all trying to wrap our heads around this and what it means. Even if some won't admit it. So I guess this is objectively a difficult question to answer because it inevitably leads to disagreement, wink wink.
Starting on minute 6:00, Alex O'Connor is stating that there is no moral prescription for appreciating and enjoying beautiful music. Mortimer Adler deals with this in his book "Six Great Ideas". In the book he states that man has certain basic needs such as “love, friendship, knowledge, food, air and others things including beauty”. He goes on to say that when humans acquire things that they need, it "tends toward perfection". When they are deprived of things that they need, “it tends, toward destruction ”. Needs translate to rights. Deprivation of rights constitute injustice. This is where moral prescription comes in.
The “Six Great Ideas” in book are "Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, and Justice."
Saying something tends towards something seems more like a statistical observation, rather than a ground rule. To me it sounds very much like Aristoteles' explanation of the elements.
This comment is meant as a comment and a question, not a judgement, even saying that first feels difficult. I have been look at the experience of psychopaths, Ive been wondering how this discussion of morality etc has an overlap with an exploration of psychopathology so called?
I believe the overlap is that psychopaths are not furthering the global well-being and that, potentially, if they could be healed, they would even reach higher quality levels of conscious themselves. I understand that Sam is not claiming that his system provides easy answers or can increase the experience for every individual; his only claim is that there are systematic ways to increase global well-being. The steps that help towards getting closer to that goal are the "good" ones, and if anyone likes to, they can call them the "moral" ones.
Objective morality on a secular humanist plane is silly. It literally boils down to collectively trying to find "more yums less boos"... No matter how much dodging and hedging he does, it is subjective.
It sounds to me like he just doesn't get what most people mean when they say "objective morality" or is actively trying to redefine it.
In your own words, define “OBJECTIVE”. ☝️🤔☝️
@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServiceswithout using words define "word"
It seems like Harris is talking about objective morality as an emergent property of how human brains work, rather than in the "prescribed from on high" sense you get from religion.
Given how wildly differently different people experience the same things in some cases though, I'm not sure I understand how what he's saying works
@@ltmcolen 🤣
@Letsthinkaboutit-mb7nn
In the limit objective morality coincides with the objective meaning of words.
Do we have a shared definition of "right" and "wrong"?
Probably my two favorite people to listen to, talking to each other. Love it! ❤
Dang I didn't know the guy from Zoolander was so smart
Alex, you've become my new favorite intellectual! Absolute powerhouse. Just wanted to give couple of cinematic feedback in terms of production:
a) Have the shadow on the face-side closest to camera.
b) On the total, make sure you use rule of thirds and place the subjects head on the top third.
c) On the shot of you, the ISO seems to have been set too high (on a camera that doesn't support it) which results in noisy image. I would suggest investing in a Sony FX3 so that you can have 12800 ISO and get a crisp image.
Keep doing your stuff, it's gold.
Good points. Though the "cinematic" aesthetic certainly should remain dialed back for a podcast setting. Just light a standard talking head.
As much as I like alax some talks he has with guests goes right over my head
That's because he tries to hide his ignorance with complicated trains of thought that lead to nowhere.
When I first started watching debates I would always have a Google search open so that I could quickly search anything that I didn't understand. Sounds a bit silly but it really does help.
@@ianx-cast6289 Or maybe it's complicated for you because of your limited ability to understand. Alex is exceptionally intelligent after all. But that said, many of us have no probably following his reasoning.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 It's not complicated for me at all. I understand what he is saying.
@@rasmuslernevall6938 Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean you're the best one to explain something. Knowledge, wisdom and experience, among many other factors often trump IQ.
If we have to derive morality from a purely logical extrapolation of emotive-determinism, than one could argue that the more we expand our sense of self to incorporate the other, the more we all can solve the prisoner’s dilemma and mutually flourish.
You’ve raised a thought-provoking idea...expanding the sense of self to include others as a means to solve ethical dilemmas and achieve mutual flourishing. This resonates with elements of Christian morality, and even better...Christianity offers a more comprehensive foundation for morality and human flourishing.
1. The experience of expanding one’s self to include others aligns well with Jesus’ teachings. For example, Jesus commands humans to "love our neighbors as ourselves" (Mark 12:31) and even to "love our enemies" (Matthew 5:44). This radical inclusivity recognizes the interconnectedness of all humanity, echoing your point about solving the prisoner’s dilemma through shared empathy.
2. While logical extrapolation of emotive-determinism may produce moral guidelines, it has limitations:
- Human emotions are often inconsistent, biased, or limited in scope. People tend to prioritize their immediate circle of concern (e.g., family, tribe) over distant or abstract others. Expanding empathy universally can be challenging without a higher moral anchor.
- Emotions and logic alone lack an objective grounding. If morality is derived solely from human sentiment or societal agreements, it becomes subjective and changeable.
Christianity addresses these gaps by grounding morality in the character of a transcendent God who defines what is good (Psalm 145:17; 1 John 4:8).
3. Christianity sees mutual flourishing as rooted in relationship...with God, others, and creation. This transcends a mere logical framework by introducing:
- Intrinsic Worth: Every person has inherent value because they are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This provides a solid foundation for universal human dignity.
- Selfless Love: While emotive-determinism may encourage mutual benefit, Christian love (agape) often goes beyond mutual benefit to sacrificial love. Jesus demonstrated this on the cross (John 15:13), calling His followers to live with the same selflessness.
- Eternal Perspective: Christianity emphasizes not only flourishing in this life but also the eternal life to come, which affects how Christians view suffering, sacrifice, and the broader purpose of existence (Romans 8:18).
4. The prisoner’s dilemma highlights the difficulty of achieving trust and cooperation in a self-interested framework. Christianity offers a solution:
- Transformation of the Heart: God empowers individuals to transcend self-interest through a renewed heart and mind (Romans 12:2; Ezekiel 36:26). This inner transformation makes it possible to consistently choose the good of others, even at personal cost.
- A Model of Trust: Jesus, in His life and sacrifice, modeled complete trust and cooperation with the will of God (Philippians 2:5-8). His example inspires and enables Christians to trust God and prioritize others' well-being over self-interest.
While logical extrapolations of human empathy are valuable, Christianity provides a foundation that goes further: grounding morality in the nature of God, offering a consistent standard for human dignity, and empowering people to live selflessly through God’s grace.
Thoughts?
What Sam is missing is that what people agree to as being "moral" depends on the people involved. Even if being smashed in the face with a rock is universally DISLIKED, it doesn't make doing it morally wrong in an absolute sense.
How do we even know that we dislike it?
True. The universe has no opinions on what is right and wrong, we do however. Any discussion of morality should keep that in mind. Morality should really be defined based on how conscious creatures like us, perceive things, I.e. pain and discomfort = bad, and Happiness, satisfaction, etc = Good.
I don't think that's a fundamental flaw. I think the bigger flaw is that he never addresses conflict. If the two people on the island can only find enough food for one person, what's the moral way to split it? How do you weigh the well-being of one person against another? Virtually all moral dilemmas stem from conflicts in which one person's well-being is weighed against another's, and his framework is useless for handling such questions.
@jaijaiwanted how do we know that being slapped is a bad experience? How do we know it's not actually a good experience, and we just identify it as bad? Something outside of ourselves must be telling us that we like or dislike the experience. In other words, if we're just hunks of meat with no transcendent standard, then it's all a bunch of bogus for anyone to say "like, "dislike, "good, bad, etc..... these are just random, meaningless terms. Unless...... there's a transcendent standard. Which, of course, there is.
@@Neil_85 differentiating good and bad, and pain and pleasure in the way I see it won’t make sense to you unless you first change the definition you are using for these terms. You seem to be thinking of pain and pleasure as a sort of infinite truth everywhere (god given and eternal…), whereas I just see it as how whatever living organism interprets a sensory input. We evolved to be repulsed by Pain because doing so aligns with the goals of procreation, and thus those genes that were repulsed by pain became more common, and then eventually dominated the species gene pool.
I'm confused about whether Sam is actually an objectivist or not. Objectivism is generally a belief in immutable laws that are true regardless of personal preference. Murder is wrong because of X, Y, Z, and whether or not you personally like that is out of the question. It sounds like he's literally describing what Alex said: I enjoy this because I do. It isn't objective, it isn't factual, and it isn't set in stone. Now, it's totally true that we can come up with objective measurements to achieve these desires and find out which actions lead to the desires I have, but the fact that I even want this in the first place is totally up in the air and arbitrary.
I like action-adventure stories with some romance along the way. If you were to scientifically examine my preferences and my brain, you'd find that there are certain things that improve this preference of mine, certain patterns that tick the story with my brain, right and wrong answers as to how I should go about finding my favorite books and things writers should do if they want my attention. There are even things that a story COULD do that I haven't even read yet and would improve my enjoyment of the book beyond my ability to comprehend until I experience it. This is all true, but the fact that I like action-adventure stories with some romance involved is completely arbitrary, and if I didn't like it, which is totally possible, then all of this scientific development is useless, and we'd start the process again to fit my new desires. The fact that you can objectively study the inner-workings of my arbitrary preference doesn't make my arbitrary preference objective.
Your reasoning is solid except for one problem. Very often many of our preferences are not arbitrary at all and can actually be completely founded in logic rather than emotion.
Is doing heinous things to a young child for no reason objectively bad?
@@shamanahaboolist Why should I believe this? And logic does not mean something is true. Lamarckism is a perfectly logical and consistent view on evolution but it's wrong. Furthermore something having logic, even an internally consistent one does not mean that it is objective. There's a logic to why someone who dislikes the taste of coffee would dislike coffee flavored ice cream. If something tastes like coffee, they do not like it. Coffee flavored ice cream tastes like coffee. Therefore they do not like coffee flavored ice cream. Just because there is a logic to this person's dislike, does this suddenly make it objective that coffee flavored ice cream is bad?
@@Lamont_Smythe Yes, provided we agree that the thing being done is heinous and without reason.
I think Sam Harris' version of objective is if enough people agree on something, even if they may disagree on other things, due to time, space, culture, genetics, etc.
"Boo murder" from one person is objective. But if "boo murder" has arisen multiple times, far apart enough in time, space, culture, genetics, then evidently it is quite objective. We can argue about how objective it is, but surely you must agree that it is more objective than subjective. There is something outside of our subjective experience that causes people to "independently" come up with "boo murder".
I think the line "That does nothing deflationary for me" sums up my growing stance on this. morality is at its core subjective but so what? does that make it worse that something objective? That would require a subjective evaluation. many of the things we value most in life, indeed the vary act of valuing things is subjective. The short hands of "good" and "Evil" denote from a perspective what we believe to be beneficial of harmful to overall well being. Emotivism appears to be 90% correct in its observation of the state of things but goes to far in apparently discarding the value of value judgements and the short hands used by a moral system to denote those judgements.
"Nothing deflationary for me"... I don't think that's the issue, though. The question of the basis of morality is, in principle, a factual question. And we don't answer factual questions by commenting on the significance of the answer one way or the other. Who cares if Sam Harris feels quite relaxed about having a fundamentally subjective moral landscape? No-one. The point is not how we feel about the facts, but what the facts actually are.
The problem is that saying morality is subjective means people are willfully living in delusion. It’s like saying, “there are no right and wrong behaviors, but I will act like there are.”
Has a massive impact on moral relativism and whether you believe that is real or not.
@@johndeighan2495 It's not though. Morality is not a question of fact but of definition. Everyone has a slightly different moral framework. There is no "true" moral framework because morality is a human construct. That's why morality is inherently subjective.
@@featherton3381 If you read the comment again, you'll see I was talking about the basis of morality, not frameworks of morality. If it has a basis, what is it? That's a factual issue.
Some thoughts that came to me from this convo.
1. The core of the disagreement seems to be whether sufficiently objectively effective decisions towards individual or collective pleasure should be considered moral rules. I think of this as calling Newtons gravity equations a law. We're so good at predicting things based on it that it may as well be treated as a truth of the universe for daily decision making and serves as a pretty powerful rubric to this end. That said, treating it as a law doesn't allow for a true understanding of it's nature (i.e. relativity, which is probably also be incomplete), and means in extreme conditions relying on it would be problematic. Alex's approach protects against this and I think of it as considering the problem at the level of the physicist or the level of the engineer.
2. The iterative nature of moving towards pleasureable experience reminds me of gradient descent optimisation. Problem here is that there is a risk of falling into a local minimum based on starting conditions. This can be thought of locally (i.e. individual basis) and globally (i.e. societal or humanity basis). On an individual basis it might mean that based on your starting environment, genes, experience etc you might be doomed to a set of objectively effective decisions which are appicable to that environment but not others and there may not be a smooth pathway to a greater level of positive experience beyond a point. This puts an argument against Sam's approach given certain moral "certainties" may not be applicable to this individual and may even cause them direct harm, making them poor rubrics to follow. On a global basis, the same local minimum optimisation issue can be true, and so if the goal is absolute maximal pleasure for all there may not be a path there depending on starting conditions, or the path there requires going through worse experiences for all for a time as the broader space of possibilities is explored. Then the question of our ability to accurately predict the navigation comes up and would be inherently difficult. Different people would have different views and confidence in whether they believe they could accurately predict the impact of making things experientally worse for a time to make things experientially better later on. There would also be a lot of psychology in decision making relating to this and likely aspects of risk tolerance and various mechanisms for motivation towards and away from change.
3. Implied within Alex's stance, appears to be this iterative decent optimisation problem. I believe this is realistic in terms of how it points to how people tend to actually navigate the world with minor purtubations based on how well people think they can predict the future if they take on short term pain or discomfort. It doesn't: however, seem to consider if the ultimate conclusion of this optimisation problem will be the "best" objective outcome possible on all metrics. Although it equally, may well be the best realistic outcome.
4. Without knowing the full space of optimal solutions, it's possible that a distant global objective best outcome may supercede what is possible as a local objective best outcome given our starting conditions, which we can't reset. So the only way to get to the global objective best would be to intentionally navigate through worse conditions along the way, the process of which may result in a level of suffering that doesn't make the journey worth it (especially with the unknowns involved).
I wonder if Alex thinks "sacrificial love", whereby one gets fewer "yums" but does something for the sake of another's "yums", is in itself explainable by yums. Perhaps Alex would say there may be fewer yums but there could be at least one great big yum (in the mind) regarding sacrificial love (putting others' needs ahead of oneself). But does that really explain sacrificial love, since the best sacrificial love is getting no yums at all. I think Alex really has no explanation for sacrificial love - laying down one's life for others. Does Alex really think war vets defended our freedom by seeking the next set of yums?
I'd explain it as one big yum in the mind, but also the avoidance of continuing a life defined by the yuck of knowing you weren't good enough to do what was necessary/right by your standards.
What a stupid comment…
“I,” “me,” “my”…
That’s your problem right there.
Morality is about considering the needs and desires of other people. As Levinas says, it begins when faced with another person.
As long as all you’re thinking about is yourself, your happiness, your emotions, there’s nothing moral to consider.
So basically selflessness?
I think it is subset of morality, what you are talking about....
@@knightspygaming1287 Not necessarily selflessness. You're correct that morality includes how we treat ourselves, so interactions with others are a subset. (I shouldn't have said "there's nothing moral to consider" in reference to oneself.) My point is that ethics is primarily concerned with how we treat others, so a completely self-centered focus misses the point.
One doesn't have to be completely selfless to be moral--on the contrary, one ought to consider one's own good in addition to the good of others. To take a Kantian perspective, e.g., that one should treat all individuals as ends and not means, i.e. one should not treat others a means to one's own ends, then that also includes not treating oneself as a means to others' ends.
I read up on A.J. Ayers a while back in my study on ethics in college. So forgive me if I'm inaccurate in my assessments anywhere. The main issue I have with non-cognitivists such as Alex's Ethical Emotivism stance is that there are, in fact, truth-apt claims in moral positions. For example, what emotional states you and your parents regularly express in your formative years during adolescence will shape what genes are expressed later on as you grow up. This is a known in the study of epigenetics. These emotional habits you have later on in life lead you in life. They can lead you into a more trouble adulthood (childhood deviance leading to criminal behaviors later on) or more harmonious lifestyles (becoming a caring nurse/doctor that genuinely listens to their patients needs). This realm of ethical study is known as evolutionary ethics and it made me doubt much of the non-cognitivists positions and claims about ethics overall. But I diverge away from Harris also. I'm not sure where to place Harris' ethical position just yet. Maybe a universal prescriptivist? that argues for objective morality. But that position also suffers a number of ethical dilemmas that a RUclips comment could hardly cover. I would rather steel man Harris and get a more proper scope of his ethical position before saying anything against it.
how is this evolutionary ethics in any way not compatible with emotivism? seems like your attitudes being shaped by environment is presupposed by this sort of meta-ethical framework
also not sure if evolutionary ethics is what you’re saying here after doing some research, seems like that has more to do with grounding moral statements in evolutionary nomenclature (cooperation is good because it helped our ancestors survive)
what you described just sounds like epigenetics which is entirely compatible with emotivism, or even an essential part of it
Hi, what books would u recommend for someone starting their ethics journey. Thank you
@@T1Xerxes I recommend the basics first. The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachel. Think it is at the 10th edition now. You can take notes on all the people Rachels mentions and read up on each person after that. That is the hard, experience based approach. Or you can cheese it and take some ethics courses in College. If you can't afford that, you can read through each ethical framework on Wikipedia, but don't skip the references or bibliography... especially if the Wiki article on whatever subject has been flagged.
Hello, sorry for the late reply. I have considered your reply for some time. I will answer your objection directly in a moment, but here is an analogy I have on the contentions between the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism divide.
Much like how Christian Theologians will argue ad-hoc about their god idea against the irreligious. It seems like Christian Theology is always having to swim uphill to justify belief(s) in their god. This often happens after a scientific discovery, or new archeological evidence discredits a previously held theological position...
This is a similar hunch I get from non-cognitivists. Our studies into human behavior through anthropology, evolution, and epigenetics often inform our cognitive judgements on moral decision making processes. They can also be used to help us to make a decision when faced with moral uncertainty. The non-cognitivists seem to have to "swim up stream" so to speak to re-assert their position. Hope that helps!
I agree with Sam,
Our moral emotions and intuitions evolved as heuristic guides toward better states of consciousness and well being, much like our pain responses evolved as heuristic guides to avoid physical damage. Just as we can study pain and health scientifically despite their subjective elements, we can study well being and flourishing scientifically while acknowledging their roots in subjective experience.
This suggests a middle path: Moral truth isn't purely subjective emotion, nor is it purely objective fact - rather, it exists in the space where objective facts about consciousness and well-being intersect with our evolved capacity to navigate the social world through emotional and rational faculties
This is the most difficult to follow exchange I’ve heard in some time. I can’t make heads or tails of what’s being said by either at almost any point in the conversation.
You're not alone. I see from comments this rests upon the "is/ought problem", which, no matter how many explanatory articles and videos I see, I will never understand.
@@maidros85 I think Sam doesn’t understand the is/ought distinction or willing to admit that he’s wrong about it.
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlllwithin the philosophical community, the consensus is, is that Sam Harris Cannot or Does Not understand the IS-OUGHT Distinction, hence everyone thinks he’s stupid
@@maidros85hilary putnam’s book on the fact/value distinction is relatively clear but i bet your consternation is bc you’re smart & you intuit the porosity SH cannot perceive.
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlll He directly adresses that in his conversation with Alex: if you think the "is-ought" disctinction debunks objective morality, you're literally just talking about grammar.
4:16 what does he mean IF sociology were a science?
In with the very same question .
it’s ultimately difference between Hard Sciences & Soft Sciencex
he means that sociology is not capable of giving us the sort of things (theories) that physics or even biology can
Sam always sounds like he's just making it up as he goes along, and he does it with such confidence.
@matthewphilip1977are yall slow? 😂
Making up stuff didn't get him the status of freethinker and rational thinker which he is known for. And especially for neuroscientist, his half life is about how mind works.
Great summary of the discussion. I struggle with philosoohers using modal universes to establish some doctrine or system. Seems to me that if a series of postulates are possible in a modal universe - a hypothetical universe that, in conception, does not offend logical rules - until such postulates can be seen to apply in the world in which humanity lives, they remain hypothetical. So, I see myself asking philosophers using modalities...why should I care? You've described to me a possible world that is not descriptive of the landscape in which I actually find myself. Why should I care about your conclusion?
I still haven’t heard Sam answer the obvious challenge: Why is human well-being objectively good???
I keep asking myself the same thing. Maybe I’m missing something but I think Sam is just saying a bunch of stuff to make it seem like he’s answered the question.
Humans just assume it is because humans are arrogant and vain 🗣💘.
It makes no sense for an objective observer (a sapient non-human) to care about an arbitrary line in the sand.
I don't care for Sam's views on morality but its like you didn't listen to him.
You guys genuinely doubt that tho?
There is no reason for a non-human intelligence to believe in that arbitrary 🎲 line in the sand.
Humans are just so arrogant and vain 🗣💘 they usually don't think like that.
🙄
I've already had this conversation in my head. I dont need to see two people talk about something I can discuss with myself.
But i watched it anyway. 🤷♂️
I think consciousness isn't as subjective as everyone thinks. I keep amazing myself with how well a reference point works in discussions of every kind, including this one. That reference point being the natural world. Take the color blue, I can know that many of my fellow humans can precieve that color through a myriad of ways, scientific and not. Though the perception of the color is subjective, the color objectively exists. The color blue exists in nature, so do we, and evolution allowed our consciousnesses to detect its prescence. Likewise, genetics has clearly shown us that our DNA is extremely similar from individual to individual, across races, which means the conservation of genes responisble for my ability to see blue is in you and billions of other humans I share the planet with. And what's fascinating is our understanding of deficiencies in seeing color whereby those incapable of seeing blue can now ware glasses specially constucted so that one with color blindness can see blue. None of this is possible without the acknowledgement of an objective reality. Thus, statements of health, wealth and prosperity are not as subjective as I might think. Which means guiding principles of morals and ethics do impact objective truths about reality which means the impacts have a range or spectrum dependant on a multitude of natural varibles that truley exist and find varying degrees of overlap with everyone's ability to experience the same.
No one believes there is no should or shouldn't. Anyone who walks down the street, gets attacked by a stranger who punches them in the face and breaks their legs will think their attacker shouldn't have done it.
The attacker doesn't agree with that.
@@ChristianIce If the attacker is the one attacking, then he isnt the one who was attacked now was he? Wheres the attacker's attacker if he STARTED IT?! How did close to a million psychopaths find a hive to psyc out together?
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." Romans 1:22-23
Your god agrees with all the the stupidest and most selfish opinions of Bronze age herder patriarchs.
Love this use of words :)
@dominionphilosophy3698 yes
What you are missing is an actual point.
Huh?
"Boo Murder!" Presumably, finding others who agree with Boo-Murder demonstrates its utility. My concern is that emotivism leads to mob rule, the mimetic contagion as described by Rene Girard. Scapegoating is critical to the success of mob rule and I would argue it inevitable to the evangelization of an emotivist expression.
One thing I haven't heard mentioned is how Harris's idea of the moral landscape seems really naively utilitarian: Like it seems like he would have to say that you ought always to pick options like wireheading or the experience machine, because he can't seem to justify not always picking the option which is "higher" on the moral landscape based on a simplistic utilitarian calculation.
sam describes the scorpion and the frog and somehow believe the scorpion won't kill the frog because it's not in its best interest... yet it does.
@@Matthew-cp2eg It's not clear what point you're making
@vakusdrake3224 Sam referred to an Adam and Eve scenario and that there would be a mutual understanding and desire to work together, while not smashing the other.
My point is Sam is niave and when you substitute his people with the scorpion and frog, you gain the understanding of just because it may seem a mutual beneficial relationship doesn't mean the nature of one will embrace that part, but rather the nature of the beast will show itself and what will result is not a utopia Sam wants
@@Matthew-cp2eg I suspect I disagree with key aspects of your model of human evil here. Since it very much seems like when people behave selfishly or irrationally there's *usually* a reason why that was useful to one's genes in the ancestral environment. Which is to say that I don't think you're appreciating the ways these human flaws are not bugs they're usually features (though some are just bugs, since certain cognitive biases can also be observed in artificial neural networks)
It's not just that people are randomly selfish and cruel, these things are the way they are for evolutionary reasons: People are selfish when they think it benefits them and they're cruel most often to people who are perceived as the outgroup or who personally wronged them. Hell even a decent fraction of our cognitive biases seemingly disappear when you ask people to put their money where their mouth is (as in when being correct actually matters).
So I would not rule out rational cooperation in quite the same way you seem to be. Though I think that people's moral intuitions radically disagree in ways that cannot be easily or objectively reconciled, particularly when you start getting access to certain technologies. However, even the inability for everybody to get their most preferred outcome doesn't rule out rational negotiation for a compromise solution that completely satisfies nobody.
I could also go on quite a lot about how much of what we think of as "human nature" is cultural adaptations that took off after we adopted agriculture. Since the most warlike and agriculturally efficient early societies would conquer their neighbors therefor creating a sort of cultural survival of the shittiest (since this translates to a far lower quality of life and physical/mental health for it's actual citizens) .
@@vakusdrake3224 I never said humans were evil or good. its much more like micro and macro economics, neither system works when applied to the other. And in this contradicting system there lies the ability for people to get along or not... However why there is competing systems, just like the overall system of economic there is a fundamental layer or driving force and that force for humans is one of self interest be it at a 1-1 or group level.
This is about OBJECTIVE MORALITY, a structured framework that is supposedly within people to determine a right from wrong, something so inherently knowing that it doesnt need to be taught...
If anything you laid the frame as to why there isnt an objective morality or is that your position? that there isnt one?
if every human being woke up tomorrow and believed the earth was flat, would that make it an objective truth?
It’d be an objective truth that they thought the world was flat. It is an objective truth that there is a range of preferable and non-preferable experiences and each of us helplessly must navigate in this space unless we choose to end experience. That’s all Sam is saying. There are objective fact-based ways to navigate more and less icky “boo” experiences and have more “yay” experiences…and science has bearing in this process because it arises out of whatever the nature of reality is.
No. That would be a belief, which is not an objective truth.
Its fascinating that such intelligent people talk for such a long time without sharing any information at all. I am beginning to believe more and more in the quote "intelligent people are very good at seeming intelligent".
"Tell me that the entire conversation went over your head without telling me it went over your head."
@@Marknetics “professional yapping”. It looks like magic to the simpleton.
Its okay if you didnt understand the disagreement.
@@jackmerrideww 13 minutes to clearly describe Sam’s epistemological argument , already repeated 1000 times, is hardly worth it, even at 5x.
@@odinviken yea man. Its not for everyone. Good luck tho
This conversation goes over my head.
Does Sam not understand the question? It really seems like he’s just waffling without addressing the question.
William Lane Craig destroyed Harris’s moral position years ago in their debate.
lol. Low bar bill couldn’t destroy a sand castle.
He’s won every debate with flying colors
@@lovespeaks777watch Craig debate Christopher Hitchens, I mean you have to be trolling
@@Liveforever898That was a great debate and showed how Hitchens had no good arguments to defend his position
@@lovespeaks777 Whatever helps you sleep, Craig moves the goalposts, talks ridiculous white noise. Look at his videos with Alex. How can you defend a god that let’s kids die of cancer that beg God for help and the let them die? You can’t …
Mirrors pointing to mirrors with no hierarchy.
I like that.
Sam takes for granted over the fact that we all still have to AGREE in order for some "objective" truth to thrive. He doesn't even consider than you don't even NEED a majority to have a culture to see that murder is wrong. If it benefits a certain class than what do they care if a weak majority thinks? All the boos will be in deaf ears. Consequentialism is a weak argument to convince someone to stop what they are doing is wrong because they believe they are a special case. Unless you have a moral argument, it will always be at the mercy of doubt.
It’s an objective fact that we DO value certain things, by our nature. It’s not that we *should* (an ought) but we DO.
There are better and worse ways to realize them.
The ways to realize them, made a study, would be the study of morality.
I swear I don’t see how people don’t see this.
And, of course, we have to start with moving away from the things we don’t like, and moving toward things we do.
Like medicine is a science. But, who is to say that health is better than sickness, or life better than death? We could easily find a place to stand, philosophically, that questions these values.
But, we STILL have a science of medicine.
This would be a similar assumption in a science of morality.
Healthy > sickness + means = medicine
Well being > suffering + means = morality.
It is pretty simple. I don’t see the reason for all the confusion.
Is it an objective fact that all people value certain things? I would almost certainly disagree with that-like even some norms like murder, slavery, and cannibalism among others have been the standard in different societies. Morality much more seems to just be what people agree on at the time.
I for one believe objective morality doesn’t exist and that it’s just a product of natural game theory-everyone wants what is best for themselves, and morality is just the optimal description of the solution that pops out maximizing outcomes for all the participants.
@@soccutd77 you can argue the exceptions.
And I could say not everyone wants to live.
Does this make medicine an invalid science?
Agreed. People criticize Harris for what? ...articulating the obvious in a way that confuses them? It's just a battle of semantics.
No it is not. Not everyone values life the same. Furthermore, not everyone has the same nature. That is yet another problem with people like Alex and Sam. They try to get everyone to think there is but ONE human nature when, in fact, there are infinite different human natures: we are all different. They are assimilators: they want everyone to assimilate and therefore push the false narrative of 'One Human Nature'. Christians value a fairytale afterlife more than this very real and short life we have. They don't value life as much as they say they do and certainly not as much as atheist.
Life is "The Good" imo but not so much to most people. Most people don't even think what "The Good" is.
Alex and Sam are either to dumb to comprehend this or they are liars and simply propagandists for the oligarchs. It is pretty clear to me which one it is because they both appear to be very smart. That means they are psyop agents for Capitalism and The Oligarchs.
They are happy being the brightest mental midgets as long as they are on top. They don't care that they could be the least smart mental giant if it means they are not on top.
Even the powers that be are not free from a capitalist society.
@@MelFinehout Medicine (at least as we know it now) isn’t objective either. Most doctors will tell you that it is both an art and a science in how you care for a specific patient. Also things that are generalizable to populations have little precision when mapping to the individual-for example, if a drug has shown a 30% decrease in mortality from disease in a certain population, the probability that it will help one patient is essentially 0. Many people smoke and don’t develop cancer or heart disease-they are just more likely.
All that is to say that maybe you could see “objective morality” as some well-described guidelines for the best general way to live life for good outcomes, just like medical protocol or standards of care are the best-known general way to save life. But on the individual level, that “science” or objectivity disappears. What we think is “objective morality” is just our best guess at what we think is best for all people to adopt, just like medical guidelines are just our best guess. But because both can clearly be wrong (and often are), for example slavery or COVID, I would hardly call either one objective.
You're really milking this one interview lmfao
As he should.
Hi Alex :)
At 1:50 they both agree the dislike of murder is an objective state. Would that not be subjective if it’s just merely an opinion?
Sam Harris is speaking gibberish.
8:44 “…the there there is as…”
Listening to Sam talk about how to ground yourself morally is like hearing an overweight alcoholic doctor tell you to stop smoking.
Sam Harris is immoral?
What has Sam Harris done to render you to judge him in such a way?
Right, he should be spending 90% of his wealth to supporting a village in a poor country.
Something tells me we're about to hear some river to the sea nonsense
@@groundrunner752 Abrahamic religions are hilarious
Everyone knows Sam is wrong - I suspect deep down he knows it as well - and most people appreciate his longing to be right. He wants there to be objective morality because he can’t not know that there is… as is true for us all. But he also must know that lexical sleight of hand won’t finally fool us, or himself, and that if one embraces a godless cosmos then one ought to summon the courage to face the ugly amoral reality. Let yourself let go, Sam… or let God take hold of you and be what God is: the eternal and universal ground of all truth, including moral truth, which is nothing other than the revelation of God’s nature.
The minute you discover the first cause for action in this life there are certain conditions that must be met to keep that cause intact. You come into this world without reason but with values associated with your life. You may not fully grasp it, you want these pleasurable things instantly. Pain/pleasure comes before any choice or reason. As soon as you’re able to reason, you’ve experienced all that there is to know life is worth living. To say I want pain/death is to oppose the deepest fact about yourself. If you are born without the pleasure/pain mechanism you won’t last very long usually and the subject of morality becomes mute once you’re gone.
To say we just want 'pleasurable things' necessitates the causality of desire. In order to attain the values inline with one's personhood, you would also have to potentially desire pain through suffering, otherwise things like sacrifice, duty and childbirth would be unreasonable. If the ability to reason 'pleasurable things' gives us this understanding, then the anthropic principle would tell us that striving; or desire for a greater pleasure through pain, is necessary to attain reason, after all reason does not exist in a vacuum outside of experience. If these personal values must exist as a possibility before they are attained; and it is the case that its mutually beneficial to strive towards reasoning, then the causality of desire towards the attainment of the most 'true' possible values of oneself (Good) through conduct (morals) is objective.
@@altvibr The only thing in that list that is reasonable is the childbirth and no one is denying that good things can be obtained through particularly unpleasant acts. However, it must be consistent with one that desire to live.
@@altvibr I’m going to be honest you may have lost me a bit.
Listening to atheist is a fucking headache.
When I listen to pastors for our Christian faiths, our imams or our Muslim brothers, and even Buddhist Bhodivistas and Hindu Adiyogis, it’s always a breath of fresh air.
So much knowledge and wisdom simply explained in lessons, our chores and devotions, our priorities and our unity, we work in tandem for common goals, very natural and spiritual connection stays alive and worked on.
When athiest talk, it’s always a probing, dissecting, splicing and over simplifying shit, it takes you hrs, to weeks to years to dance around a simple notion when it comes to them, when we hear our mentors in our faiths, it’s simple yet gravitates towards prudence, always on progress, always on results of fruition.
I love my Bible, my Christian fellowship and my churches I go to, comfort in this world of peril, strife and sorrow. Most athiest I talk to are on a string line of meds, always figgity, always know it alls, always on the brink of suicide, yet all the brethren’s of faiths I talk to are always calm and collective, ensuring and comforting. I don’t even bother with the naysayers anymore. I just turn to the people of obedience and steadfast faith.
Stay up brethren’s of faith. You couldn’t pay me to debate an atheist or sit through their bullshit, you’ll be sent to a realm of chaos and uncontrollable bullshit. Stick to practicing the Bible, the Quran, the Mahabharata, the Gita, the dhammapada and other holy books. Build stronger fellowships, and attend to your churches, mosques, temple gatherings and live.
Funny how opinions differ. When I listen to pastors, I usually want to leave, thinking "why do I have to endure this bullshit?"
@@stefanheinzmann7319 Could you give an example of something a pastor said that made you feel that way?
Well, here's an atheist you can talk to that doesn't drink alcohol, doesn't use drugs and is happy with his life. You make it sound like you only know like 3 people or something!
I get that it's comfortable to not think and just get told what to do; do this, do that, get a cookie. Simple things that are easy, that a child can do.
But where's the challenge? As an adult, where's the interesting stuff and the understanding? There's none of that in church. You just get told and that's it.
Have you ever thought that trying to understand things is difficult but it can also be rewarding?
@@jvalfin3359 Cute assertions.
Though you still didn't answer the question.
@@DistrictN9ne what question? The commenter I responded to didn't ask me anything and neither did you
Sam seems to be saying "Bad things are bad, and good things are good."
Alex seems to be saying "Bad things are bad because I personally don't like them, and good things are good because I personally like them."
In my view, the disconnect seems to be that Sam is making the leap to say that what is bad is objectively bad. Alex seems to be saying that that view is subjective, even if it can be proven that bad things have objectively bad outcomes.
"And so I look around the world, and there are certain experiences that are gonna make me suffer and some that are not. And so I pick the ones that don't make me suffer because I prefer them."
We also see certain experiences that we know will make us suffer, but because they hold such great value, so as to make the result of the experience worth the suffering it will require. Now we all do a certain form of this (mothers bearing children, athletes training, and basically any laborer, etc.), but I hope you will give this some thought--it is worth it. And you may be a much better man than I for it, because when I was an atheist I could not see it. But as a Christian now I can tell you that the Christians I know see experiences that they know will lead to suffering but do not turn away from them because the reward of the experience is worth the suffering. And here's the part that is different: they suffer, but another receives the reward. If you wonder what I mean by this, look at some who preach in public--if you think they want to do that of their own will, think again. They are only being obedient to God. They are mocked, ridiculed, hated, sometimes attacked, sometimes spat on, sometimes threatened. I could not see this when I was an atheist. It seems so strange now that I could not, like a lens was distorted and I saw what actually was but as it was not. I hope you who read this will give it some thought.
Of course there's no objective morality. However, you can say in game theoretic terms that for a group of animals to thrive and reach a certain outcome, there are objective games they must play to reach that outcome.
I tend to agree with Sam. If we grant that yums are desirable and boos are avoided, it only makes sense that conscious beings will seek to maximize yums and avoid boos (suffering) and take whatever paths are available to get there. The problem Alex has is in calling that "objectively right." I don't know if you can really prove it one way or another since there's no explanation for consciousness/experience yet. Maybe if we ever get to the bottom of that we'll have a better framework for reasoning about these things.
This will be vague, Alex. You asked, "what am I missing". What you're missing isn't "what" it's "how". You and Sam want the same thing. How to agree on getting there is the "crux of the biscuit". It's not about how each of you think differently. That's baked into each of us by our uniqueness. It's how to put into our perspective the uniqueness of each other, and find the place for each of us to agree with the notion.,"that is objectively true". Good luck with that.
The Golden Rule is something I use every day to inform my behavior. It covers my sense of morality and as I watch others adhere to the rule I find the approach works very well for me and them, getting along with others. I know that's simple.
Sometimes it seems to me you're thinking too "hard".
And when we do, as you say you have every day, the world is capable of getting to a higher level, for all.
Alex, please write a book.
i’m happy to see that i have some sort of understanding of this after watching debate and philosophy videos for like 6 months
So Sam Harris wants to "translate" (0:50) emotivist terms into objective morality but wants to "bracket" morality 7:37 and says that "objective facts about conscious systems" cannot be reduced to "objective facts about subjective preferences." 8:05 without saying how he made the leap.
Around the 7:15 mark Sam seems to almost make an argument for colonization. If a set of people are closed to certain outcomes that we deem to be objectively good, then…
Two of the best, thank you
Objective morality cannot exist for the same reason that doctrinal religion cannot exist sincerely. We don't know what is going to happen next.
This was great stuff.
Yep
“The there there is as conscious experience.” Great sentence.
I adore Sam Harris. Just how he approaches this conversation.. so clear, so smart, so fluent.
so genocidal ...
If a group of people agree that burning someone at the stake is immoral but that same group says that it's moral if the person is a witch; is that an example of subjective societal reality?
Yes, being a repeated example from human history, that is an example of the reality of subjective morality that we must contend with.
The problem with the thought experiment involving taking a pill to gain a love of music is that it lends itself to infinite regression or recursion. Taking such a pill would entail a desire to have a desire for music. But what if you didn't have a desire for a desire for music? Does having a desire for a desire even make sense? And even if so, can we not take it even further, with questions about having a desire for a desire for a desire for music? And so on. To me, this suggests that a first-order desire for something is the only level of order that makes sense. I know that there's the complicated phenomenon of addiction, where a person desires a substance in one sense, while recognizing that the substance is harmful. In that case, though, I consider it a case of competing desires, in which case it's a matter of which desire is stronger, not a "nested" system of desires. And perhaps we can rethink the "music pill" thought experiment along those lines, too, where a desire to fit into wider society's love of music overtakes the personal aversion or apathy or music prior to taking the pill.
I have the desire to desire healthy food and exercise because I'd rather be healthy, but I currently have the actual desire to be lazy and eat fried chicken.
That has been a topic of contemplation for me over the past week or so. I was observing a desire to want to be compassionate and realized that wanting to desire something IS desiring it. This interesting string of logic seemed to come from self-criticism that I wasn't trying hard enough to be compassionate. After letting it go, I was able to return to my practice of cultivating compassion and trust the process with confidence.
The helmet example he mentioned is much better & more accurate. Let’s discuss it
I didn’t hear about it in this clip. Is it in the larger podcast of which this clip is a part?
@@bike4aday no, they're different
So let me present this argument in a more accessible language:
Harris: “If certain actions are taken, the possibility of them leading to more or less positive states of mind can in principle be assessed. Granted that positive states of mind, however conceived, are what we want, actions thus can, at least in principle, be talked about in an objectively moral way.”
O’Connor: “Booo”
A very simple boil down. Acts that get us closer to traveling to the stars and spread amongst the galaxy (morally good). Acts that work against that, (morally bad).
Interesting take, but people like to drive coordinated efforts on tangents where sacrifices need to be made to get back on course. If a million people agreed that pursuing space travel is paramount to their social acceptance, questions would pop up like “how do we quell dissent about the way we’re going about this?” or “who speaks for as a group?” You know, the boring, non-scientific, political aspects of keeping everyone on the same page.
I’m saying all of this because scientific achievement is scalable in an awesome way. Just one person is all it takes to make a real stride. If what you want to do is get people space traveling throughout the galaxy, you can begin this very moment on basic propulsion experiments. If materials are too expensive, you can start writing the software that will operate said propulsion in the future. It doesn’t need to be right or wrong. People will see that you’ve made an impressive step and give credit where it’s due.
Why does every conversation that anyone has with Sam Harris feel like Sam is having a different conversation than the host?
Maybe it's because Harris isn't his real surname
Try videos on easier subjects.
Maybe I'm still not getting his point, but it seems to me morality is merely the expression of or individual and collective preferences in some domains, the extent and nature of which are continually shifting. Nothing in that is objective, all is subject to the individual and the collective. Sure we could apply objective measures to things (does x align with or contradict our preferences) but the preferences themselves are in no way objective.
Oh, typed this just before getting to 8:11 so thanks Alex
9:10 Thinking of life as a game is actually a great way to understand objective morality. The player has to play by the game developers rules if he wants to win the game. One game might reward you for killing other players, while another game will punish you for it. Whether or not you "boo murder" or "yeah murder" depends on the game you are playing. The game of "real life" that we are playing will punish you for murder. That is objective morality.
A while ago I thought: every act is selfish because even the “selfless” acts we do are in anticipation of the guilt we’d feel if we didn’t act selflessly. The selfless act is delayed gratification in pursuit of long term gratification for us or our genes.
A smarter person than me pointed out that while that is a perfectly valid definition of the word selfish, it serves no practical use in reality. We would simply have to redefine the word selfless as a consequence.
While I agree you can hold the framework Alex does and it could be perfectly logical, I would like to see some practical use for defining the word preference in this way. Otherwise we may have a hard time making progress in the reduction of suffering
Achieving as much wellbeing as possible is as objective as you can get. Almost everyone agrees with getting more wellbeing, just like we all subjectively experience gravity but agree that it exists in an objective way. We can kind of objectively say that more wellbeing is morally better.
They don’t go down to the level of why there are certain things they prefer and why they prefer them. Preferences are not self-evident or simply programmed. That’s where the morality bit really comes into picture. Because there isn’t really any difference between “prefer” and “should”. They don’t exist without each other when it comes to actions.
Objective morality can not exist considering we as a collective "decide" on whats "right or wrong". For example, you cant say murder is wrong then say you agree with the death penalty. Almost everything has been justified one way or another over the course of human history.
Your example doesn't have anything to do with your proposition.
@@MrPartch Uh..yes it does. You cant say that murder is "objectively morally" wrong then also agree with the death penalty. Morality is decided upon by the group. These morals are not held by every single human innately.
So, yes, the example fits my proposition very well.
@@William89809 If you say all of the following:
- Death penalty is murder
- I am against murder
- I am for death penalty
You'd be contradicting yourself. You'd be a hypocrite. This however does not prove that objective morality cannot exist. I am not claiming that objective morality exists. I am just saying that your example doesn't have anything to do with it.
@@William89809 Someone who claims objective morality exists does not necessarily claim that there are acts every human being considers as morally wrong. Their claim is that there are acts every human being SHOULD consider as morally wrong, or that there are acts that are morally wrong REGARDLESS if everyone agrees or not. There is a big difference between the two
@@MrPartch There is no such thing as acts which are morally wrong. ONLY things we have deemed as societies to be right or wrong.
You will never bridge the is/ ought divide. Hume is undefeated
if one could bridge the divide, what would that look like?
For example, how would Hume know that he "ought" to prefer what is true over what is false?
@matthewphilip1977
From what little i've read of Hume, he doesn't strike me as someone who had trouble figuring out something that obvious.
His complaint, isn't with deriving of ought from an is, but with that the statements underpinning the ought are frequently omitted instead of being made explicit and explained. Not that there are no propositions that would lead to a reasonable ought.
To quote Hume:
"In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. *This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should be observed and explained*
@matthewphilip1977
I already did in the first comment i made. You are aware that people say stuff like, "i'm hungry, so i should get some food" all the time? And no one in their right mind considers it an unreasonable ought.
You aren't seriously so confused about Hume's positions that you can't tell whether he wasn't sure whether one ought to prefer what is true over what is false?
Even you did, in your previous post. Your confusion stems from not realizing that propositions about one's goals describe what is.
@matthewphilip1977I think Sam would agree with you here. That ought is meaningless. He even said it in the full video. Did u watch? It’s Alex and everyone else that’s trying to shove ‘ought’ into a conversation about whether morality exists. Everyone else is trying to force feed the topic with this vague word ‘ought’, while Harris is simply trying to connect the word morality back to conscious entities, ya know, something real & specific & not vague.
@matthewphilip1977
lol. You're a non-sequitur.
If there are no propositions that would lead to a reasonable ought, then adding proposition "I want to get rid of this hunger" to an existing one wouldn't result in a reasonable ought either. And if it would then you've conceded the point. Propositions about "wants" that you keep making are statements about what is.
No idea, since that's not what i said. I asked "how would Hume know that he "ought" to prefer what is true over what is false?" My question was specifically about Hume, since he has written on the subject.
As a theist and a Christian, I believe that morality requires agential (i.e. non-deterministic) discrimination between what we consider right and wrong. So I think the notion of materialist determinism denies us "choice" in any meaningful sense of the word. My question is, how can moral categories even be applicable if all of our thoughts, "choices", and actions can only unfold deterministically?