![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
facts vs values
Dec. 2nd, 2010 10:36 pmSo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
essius recently linked me to some stuff related to Sam Harris's new book The Moral Landscape, and it got me thinking about this topic again. First, here is Harris's 20 minute TED talk on the subject:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
And here is Sean Carroll's well-written response. He says basically what I would have said, and does a good job of explaining why science will never be able to determine fundamental values:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/05/03/you-cant-derive-ought-from-is/
What I found interesting about this is that, as I watch Sam Harris speak on the subject, I find myself more or less nodding my head and agreeing. But then when I read Sean Carroll's response, I'm reminded of why Harris is surely full of shit. So this got me thinking, what part of what Harris is saying do I agree with? And what part do I disagree with? This post is an attempt to explain where I stand on the issue.
One of the devices Harris used in an article he wrote for the Huffington Post to convince people morality is objective is linking to pictures of Muslim women who have been burned with acid, a common reaction when women in highly oppressive Islamic cultures turn down a potential mate or question the patriarchy... (warning, these pictures may be very disturbing):
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/alleyes/2009/11/terrorism-thats-personal.html
On the surface, it seems like he has a good point. I mean, who could look at these pictures and honestly say to themselves "yup, the society these women live in is just as ethical as any modern Western society... after all, who are we to judge? Their values are relative to their culture."
And I have some sympathy for that viewpoint. In fact, I think these women are being treated horribly, and I would even be willing to advocate a bit of cultural imperialism in this case... let's teach the men in these backwards Muslim cultures to be more tolerant of women, and more respectful... at least respectful enough not to throw acid in their face when they get turned down for a date. But the difference between Sam Harris and myself is that I don't pretend that there is some objective reason why I'm right and the men who threw the acid are wrong. Rather, I just claim that I care deeply about women and want to defend them against acts of aggression like this. It's a subjective concern, that not all people necessarily share. Indeed, I think the fact that there do exist men who engage in this behavior, and who defend it, is pretty strong evidence that my feelings there are not universal.
But there is a part of what he's saying that I agree with. And that's that many times, when people (or societies) debate what the most ethical course of action is in a given situation, the answer to that question can be informed by science, and in many cases settled by science. But whereas he interprets that as proof that science can say something about values, I do not. Why not? Because any question about best-course-of-action is determined by a combination of fundamental values and facts about the world. If you know what your values are, that still doesn't give you information about what the best way is to achieve them or how to maximize them. And that's where science can be helpful--in giving you an accurate understanding of the world so that you can make informed decisions rather than uninformed decisions about how to act. Harris confuses facts with values and thinks that if you're asking an ethical question (a question about whether a given action is ethical) then that means it's purely a question about values--it's not. While I haven't read his book so I can't say for sure, I get the impression from his TED video that all of his purported attempts at demonstrating objective morality take this form where he treats a combination of facts and values as if it is purely a question of values.
Let's look at a concrete example to see exactly how this works: the question of whether it is ethical to put a cap on CO_2 emissions (for example, cap and trade). Science can certainly inform someone on the answer to this question, because it hinges critically on whether or not emitting CO_2 into the air causes the increase in temperature that science says it does. On that point, I whole-heartedly agree with Harris. If it does not affect the temperature, then putting caps on CO_2 emissions will do nothing but hurt the economy. But it's very important to realize that it will only settle the question if people agree on the basic premise that global warming is bad. If they disagree on that then the science doesn't settle it. Now, you can take this a step further, and say that science can even inform us on the question of whether global warming is bad. It can do this because it can give us more information on what the effects of global warming will be. Someone who isn't aware of or doesn't believe the science may not realize all of the effects it has, and so they may come to a different conclusion about whether it is bad than if they were aware of the facts. However, this process has an end because fundamentally, all values are rooted in subjective desires, not objective facts. There's a fundamental difference between facts and values, and I just don't see how he can get around this.
Continuing with the global warming example, let's say that science says that coastal cities will likely be flooded, hurting poor people (who can't get up and move inland easily) the most. If two different people hear that, and they both agree that hurting poor people is bad, then presumably both will be convinced that global warming is bad (or that it has at least one bad effect). But what if they don't agree that hurting poor people is bad? To a poor person, it seems fairly obvious and self-evident that hurting poor people is bad. But to a rich person, it's much less straightforward. If all of your friends and family are rich, and the only time you ever encounter poor people is when they are bugging you for change on the way to work, you might feel differently. Especially if the poorest people live in another country entirely, you might not care at all. And despite what people may say to the contrary, I strongly suspect this is the case for many residents of rich countries. Fundamentally, they don't care about some starving person in Africa, or some poor person living in a coastal city they'll never visit, because it's not going to affect their life or anything they will ever experience or have to deal with or worry about. It's not going to affect their family, their kids, their neighbors. They just won't see any bad effects from it at all. (Ok, for global warming, perhaps they will see some bad effects, but I think you see my point... it's far less of a concern for them than if it directly affected them.)
The hardest part of ethics is figuring out how to balance the interests of one person against the interests of another. And there have been all different kinds of proposed solutions in philosophy for how to deal with this. But the real fact of the matter is, people have different interests. When it comes to ethics, I think a lot of people like Harris like to pretend that all of our interests are the same, and that everyone in the "human family" all wants the same outcomes, and all cares about exactly the same things. But this seems trivially false--we don't care about the same things, we all care about different things. Yes, many of us care about other humans, and even in some cases other animals. But we all care by different amounts, it's highly dependent on things like what culture you were raised in, who your friends are, etc. I think the fundamental error that moral objectivists make is in assuming that we all care about the same thing. And every moral objectivist you ask will give you a slightly different thing that we supposedly all care about, whether it be survival of the species, a maximization of freedom, a maximization of happiness, self interest, altruism, honesty, virtue, loyalty, patriotism, dignity, sanctity, respect, fairness, justice, tolerance, etc. And it's probably true that most if not all people care about all of these things to some extent, but the issue is we all care by different amounts. Some people will care mostly about freedom while others will care mostly about happiness. Some will care so much about honesty that they put it above all the rest, some might do the same for loyalty or altruism. But I think it's fine for us to just admit that we disagree and try to get along. There's no need to pretend that we all care about the same things by exactly the same amounts in exactly the same proportions, because it's simply not true.
In the end, for practical purposes, there may be many things I agree with Sam Harris on. And I do think that, because the human species shares much of its DNA with each other, that we do happen to have a lot of shared values in common. And when you can find a value that nearly everyone shares to some extent, for example "preservation of life" then you can consider that "true" for practical purposes. But there's a very big difference between arriving at a consensus on the facts, and arriving at a consensus on values. People arrive at a consensus on facts through argumentation and it is often the case that one person is just wrong and has to be convinced by the other person. But with values, you never arrive at a consensus, there is only a consensus if people happen to start out nearby each other. If you don't happen to start out nearby each other, then you'll always have different values and there's nothing wrong with that. It's all a beautiful part of the diversity of our species.
So for practical purposes, it's fine to say "throwing acid in women's faces is just plain wrong" and expect that most others will agree. And if they don't agree, it's fine to ignore their opinions, because they're doing something the rest of us feel is very wrong. It's not that we ignore their opinions because they are mistaken about something, we ignore their opinions because they are advocating behavior that we really really don't like. And to me, because tolerance is a huge value that I hold and consider very important, I would only ever ignore someone's opinion on values if I feel like theirs very deeply conflict with mine, as is the case with someone who thinks it is ok to throw acid in women's faces. If it's a case where their values differ but I don't feel like they are all that harmful, then I try my best to live and let live... and I try to encourage others to do the same.
To wrap this up, there is one more point I'd like to make. In Sean Carroll's post he said that for practical purposes, this difference between subjective vs objective morality doesn't actually matter. But this is actually the one thing he said that I'd disagree with. Yes, for *most* practical purposes it doesn't matter and for most practical purposes, I would probably end up agreeing with Sam Harris. However, there are definitely real life situations where I think Harris's views become very dangerous and scary. And the real life situations have to do with things like cultural imperialism and with trying to impose top-down solutions for things that would be better handled by letting everyone choose for themselves and live out their own lives with their own values. This is the libertarian in me preaching, but one of the things that really worries me about hardcore utilitarians is that because they think they have some kind of moral calculus--some happiness function they can maximize--it gives them a tendency to try to meddle in people's lives to make them better. I'm fine with meddling if you can be sure that you are doing something for someone who doesn't understand some fact about the world that would make them happier. But I'm (usually) not okay with meddling because you think your value system is superior. In extreme cases, sometimes even that can be justified (such as trying to stop Hitler or perhaps the Taliban).
But what worries me is that someone like Sam Harris will be prone to meddle in many more cases than is justified. Because he's convinced himself that he has some objective reason why his views are superior, when it is really just subjective. That's the real life difference, moral subjectivists like myself tend to be more tolerant of other people, whereas moral objectivists tend to be well--moralizing. They have a tendency to support things like cultural imperialism. For example,geheimnisnacht pointed out to me that one of Harris's stated ways of determining ethics scientifically was to measure "how global civilization can best thrive". Whether Harris realizes this or not, this way of stating it in terms of "civilization" exposes an intolerant bias against uncivilized cultures such as hunter gatherer societies. For example, I wonder what Harris would have thought of the European genocide against native Americans. Arguably, wiping out the indiginous culture helped global civilization thrive. As did capturing uncivilized people in Africa and bringing them to the new world as slaves. So does that mean if you did one of Sam's fancy science experiments and proved that wiping the uncivilized people out helped the civilized people thrive better, then that proves that it was the ethical choice? I would disagree. I think, even if someone did such an experiment, I would not hop on board and say "yes, that's ethical".
Granted, I still haven't read his actual book. So I should probably give him more of a chance. But this is my current view of the situation, and while I will probably read his book at some point because I do find the subject fascinating, I think it is very unlikely to change my opinion on the matter. I think it is a lot more likely, I will read it and lose respect for Dawkins for recommending it.
essius recently linked me to some stuff related to Sam Harris's new book The Moral Landscape, and it got me thinking about this topic again. First, here is Harris's 20 minute TED talk on the subject:http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
And here is Sean Carroll's well-written response. He says basically what I would have said, and does a good job of explaining why science will never be able to determine fundamental values:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/05/03/you-cant-derive-ought-from-is/
What I found interesting about this is that, as I watch Sam Harris speak on the subject, I find myself more or less nodding my head and agreeing. But then when I read Sean Carroll's response, I'm reminded of why Harris is surely full of shit. So this got me thinking, what part of what Harris is saying do I agree with? And what part do I disagree with? This post is an attempt to explain where I stand on the issue.
One of the devices Harris used in an article he wrote for the Huffington Post to convince people morality is objective is linking to pictures of Muslim women who have been burned with acid, a common reaction when women in highly oppressive Islamic cultures turn down a potential mate or question the patriarchy... (warning, these pictures may be very disturbing):
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/alleyes/2009/11/terrorism-thats-personal.html
On the surface, it seems like he has a good point. I mean, who could look at these pictures and honestly say to themselves "yup, the society these women live in is just as ethical as any modern Western society... after all, who are we to judge? Their values are relative to their culture."
And I have some sympathy for that viewpoint. In fact, I think these women are being treated horribly, and I would even be willing to advocate a bit of cultural imperialism in this case... let's teach the men in these backwards Muslim cultures to be more tolerant of women, and more respectful... at least respectful enough not to throw acid in their face when they get turned down for a date. But the difference between Sam Harris and myself is that I don't pretend that there is some objective reason why I'm right and the men who threw the acid are wrong. Rather, I just claim that I care deeply about women and want to defend them against acts of aggression like this. It's a subjective concern, that not all people necessarily share. Indeed, I think the fact that there do exist men who engage in this behavior, and who defend it, is pretty strong evidence that my feelings there are not universal.
But there is a part of what he's saying that I agree with. And that's that many times, when people (or societies) debate what the most ethical course of action is in a given situation, the answer to that question can be informed by science, and in many cases settled by science. But whereas he interprets that as proof that science can say something about values, I do not. Why not? Because any question about best-course-of-action is determined by a combination of fundamental values and facts about the world. If you know what your values are, that still doesn't give you information about what the best way is to achieve them or how to maximize them. And that's where science can be helpful--in giving you an accurate understanding of the world so that you can make informed decisions rather than uninformed decisions about how to act. Harris confuses facts with values and thinks that if you're asking an ethical question (a question about whether a given action is ethical) then that means it's purely a question about values--it's not. While I haven't read his book so I can't say for sure, I get the impression from his TED video that all of his purported attempts at demonstrating objective morality take this form where he treats a combination of facts and values as if it is purely a question of values.
Let's look at a concrete example to see exactly how this works: the question of whether it is ethical to put a cap on CO_2 emissions (for example, cap and trade). Science can certainly inform someone on the answer to this question, because it hinges critically on whether or not emitting CO_2 into the air causes the increase in temperature that science says it does. On that point, I whole-heartedly agree with Harris. If it does not affect the temperature, then putting caps on CO_2 emissions will do nothing but hurt the economy. But it's very important to realize that it will only settle the question if people agree on the basic premise that global warming is bad. If they disagree on that then the science doesn't settle it. Now, you can take this a step further, and say that science can even inform us on the question of whether global warming is bad. It can do this because it can give us more information on what the effects of global warming will be. Someone who isn't aware of or doesn't believe the science may not realize all of the effects it has, and so they may come to a different conclusion about whether it is bad than if they were aware of the facts. However, this process has an end because fundamentally, all values are rooted in subjective desires, not objective facts. There's a fundamental difference between facts and values, and I just don't see how he can get around this.
Continuing with the global warming example, let's say that science says that coastal cities will likely be flooded, hurting poor people (who can't get up and move inland easily) the most. If two different people hear that, and they both agree that hurting poor people is bad, then presumably both will be convinced that global warming is bad (or that it has at least one bad effect). But what if they don't agree that hurting poor people is bad? To a poor person, it seems fairly obvious and self-evident that hurting poor people is bad. But to a rich person, it's much less straightforward. If all of your friends and family are rich, and the only time you ever encounter poor people is when they are bugging you for change on the way to work, you might feel differently. Especially if the poorest people live in another country entirely, you might not care at all. And despite what people may say to the contrary, I strongly suspect this is the case for many residents of rich countries. Fundamentally, they don't care about some starving person in Africa, or some poor person living in a coastal city they'll never visit, because it's not going to affect their life or anything they will ever experience or have to deal with or worry about. It's not going to affect their family, their kids, their neighbors. They just won't see any bad effects from it at all. (Ok, for global warming, perhaps they will see some bad effects, but I think you see my point... it's far less of a concern for them than if it directly affected them.)
The hardest part of ethics is figuring out how to balance the interests of one person against the interests of another. And there have been all different kinds of proposed solutions in philosophy for how to deal with this. But the real fact of the matter is, people have different interests. When it comes to ethics, I think a lot of people like Harris like to pretend that all of our interests are the same, and that everyone in the "human family" all wants the same outcomes, and all cares about exactly the same things. But this seems trivially false--we don't care about the same things, we all care about different things. Yes, many of us care about other humans, and even in some cases other animals. But we all care by different amounts, it's highly dependent on things like what culture you were raised in, who your friends are, etc. I think the fundamental error that moral objectivists make is in assuming that we all care about the same thing. And every moral objectivist you ask will give you a slightly different thing that we supposedly all care about, whether it be survival of the species, a maximization of freedom, a maximization of happiness, self interest, altruism, honesty, virtue, loyalty, patriotism, dignity, sanctity, respect, fairness, justice, tolerance, etc. And it's probably true that most if not all people care about all of these things to some extent, but the issue is we all care by different amounts. Some people will care mostly about freedom while others will care mostly about happiness. Some will care so much about honesty that they put it above all the rest, some might do the same for loyalty or altruism. But I think it's fine for us to just admit that we disagree and try to get along. There's no need to pretend that we all care about the same things by exactly the same amounts in exactly the same proportions, because it's simply not true.
In the end, for practical purposes, there may be many things I agree with Sam Harris on. And I do think that, because the human species shares much of its DNA with each other, that we do happen to have a lot of shared values in common. And when you can find a value that nearly everyone shares to some extent, for example "preservation of life" then you can consider that "true" for practical purposes. But there's a very big difference between arriving at a consensus on the facts, and arriving at a consensus on values. People arrive at a consensus on facts through argumentation and it is often the case that one person is just wrong and has to be convinced by the other person. But with values, you never arrive at a consensus, there is only a consensus if people happen to start out nearby each other. If you don't happen to start out nearby each other, then you'll always have different values and there's nothing wrong with that. It's all a beautiful part of the diversity of our species.
So for practical purposes, it's fine to say "throwing acid in women's faces is just plain wrong" and expect that most others will agree. And if they don't agree, it's fine to ignore their opinions, because they're doing something the rest of us feel is very wrong. It's not that we ignore their opinions because they are mistaken about something, we ignore their opinions because they are advocating behavior that we really really don't like. And to me, because tolerance is a huge value that I hold and consider very important, I would only ever ignore someone's opinion on values if I feel like theirs very deeply conflict with mine, as is the case with someone who thinks it is ok to throw acid in women's faces. If it's a case where their values differ but I don't feel like they are all that harmful, then I try my best to live and let live... and I try to encourage others to do the same.
To wrap this up, there is one more point I'd like to make. In Sean Carroll's post he said that for practical purposes, this difference between subjective vs objective morality doesn't actually matter. But this is actually the one thing he said that I'd disagree with. Yes, for *most* practical purposes it doesn't matter and for most practical purposes, I would probably end up agreeing with Sam Harris. However, there are definitely real life situations where I think Harris's views become very dangerous and scary. And the real life situations have to do with things like cultural imperialism and with trying to impose top-down solutions for things that would be better handled by letting everyone choose for themselves and live out their own lives with their own values. This is the libertarian in me preaching, but one of the things that really worries me about hardcore utilitarians is that because they think they have some kind of moral calculus--some happiness function they can maximize--it gives them a tendency to try to meddle in people's lives to make them better. I'm fine with meddling if you can be sure that you are doing something for someone who doesn't understand some fact about the world that would make them happier. But I'm (usually) not okay with meddling because you think your value system is superior. In extreme cases, sometimes even that can be justified (such as trying to stop Hitler or perhaps the Taliban).
But what worries me is that someone like Sam Harris will be prone to meddle in many more cases than is justified. Because he's convinced himself that he has some objective reason why his views are superior, when it is really just subjective. That's the real life difference, moral subjectivists like myself tend to be more tolerant of other people, whereas moral objectivists tend to be well--moralizing. They have a tendency to support things like cultural imperialism. For example,
geheimnisnacht pointed out to me that one of Harris's stated ways of determining ethics scientifically was to measure "how global civilization can best thrive". Whether Harris realizes this or not, this way of stating it in terms of "civilization" exposes an intolerant bias against uncivilized cultures such as hunter gatherer societies. For example, I wonder what Harris would have thought of the European genocide against native Americans. Arguably, wiping out the indiginous culture helped global civilization thrive. As did capturing uncivilized people in Africa and bringing them to the new world as slaves. So does that mean if you did one of Sam's fancy science experiments and proved that wiping the uncivilized people out helped the civilized people thrive better, then that proves that it was the ethical choice? I would disagree. I think, even if someone did such an experiment, I would not hop on board and say "yes, that's ethical".Granted, I still haven't read his actual book. So I should probably give him more of a chance. But this is my current view of the situation, and while I will probably read his book at some point because I do find the subject fascinating, I think it is very unlikely to change my opinion on the matter. I think it is a lot more likely, I will read it and lose respect for Dawkins for recommending it.
