SO FAR, I'VE ARGUED THAT Sam Harris, in his talk at TED on science and morality, has:
- Failed to distinguish between natural values and moral values.
- Natural values are those that come naturally to human beings—finding food, shelter, love, warmth, and other things to be good, and their absence to be bad—without any need for a system of moral beliefs or reasoning to tell us what is good or bad.
These values are not moral in themselves, nor or they derived from morality, though they do provide the foundation for our understanding of goodness and badness.It would be absurd, for example, to think of someone feeling an ethical duty to seek out warmth when they were cold, or to find food when they were hungry.
On the other hand, there are another kind of values...
- Natural values are those that come naturally to human beings—finding food, shelter, love, warmth, and other things to be good, and their absence to be bad—without any need for a system of moral beliefs or reasoning to tell us what is good or bad.
- Moral values which are completely the product of a moral system.
Take, for example, what the radical right call "family values".
These are not the natural values associated with a functional family—the mutual caring and affection which arise without any need for an "ought" to motivate them.
Rather they are a combination of the very idea of "oughtness" with a specific worldview and the belief in a right and responsibility to force that world-view on others.
So, for example, the proponents of "family values" see it as their duty—their ethical obligation—to take the right to marry away from gays, or to force their religion down school children's throats by making them pray or recite words about the god of Christians.
This kind of "value" is quite different from natural values, and is very closely related to morality.
Once again, Sam Harris is quite correct to say that moral values are a kind of fact, which can be studied by science.
It is a fact that some people hold moral values that dictate their responsibility to force their views on others, for example.
It is a fact that one such value is the hatred of homosexuality for some people.
These facts can be studied scientifically.
He is also correct in saying that these are facts about human well being, though not in the same way as natural values are.
This brings us to the next issue with Sam Harris's talk, because he... - Assumed that values are "facts about the well being of conscious creatures."
We've already seen the sense that this is true with natural values, and noticed that it doesn't provide the "is to ought" link he's looking for.
In the case of moral values, if I didn't believe in gay rights, for example, it would either be:- An indication that I thought my well being (and that of my family) would be improved if gays were drummed back into the closet, or
- An indication that I thought their well being would be improved if they would just stop being gay.
Science does not address either of these reasons.
I speak from experience as an ex-fundamentalist.
In both cases the fundamental issue is a belief that gayness is wrong.
You could prove, scientifically, that gay people are happier, healthier, more civic-minded, even more likely to vote Republican, and it would make no difference to someone who held that particular brand of "family values".
You could even prove scientifically that having gay people around will make everyone happier, healthier, more civic-minded, and certain to vote Republican—and it still would not change their minds.
They don't believe that gayness is wrong because it harms human well being—they believe it harms well being because it is wrong.
The reasoning here is all from ought to is.
Which brings up a second distinction which is generally ignored in these discussions, and in Harris's talk, when he... - Implied a confusion between two separate meanings of the word "moral".
Next: Two senses of "moral"...
