LAST TIME I pointed out that Sam Harris's case, in his talk at TED, for a scientific morality depends on his introduction of a fundamental ought:
We ought to value the wellbeing of conscious creatures.
He still has to show a scientific basis for this fundamental ought, in order to bridge the "is to ought" gap.
This is what he attempts to do in the next section of his talk:
Why is it that we don't have ethical obligations toward rocks?
Why don't we feel compassion for rocks?
It's because we don't think rocks can suffer.
And if we're more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering.
Now, the crucial thing to notice here is this is a factual claim: This is something that we could be right or wrong about.
And if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects.
His position rests on this point—that the idea of an ethical obligation is a function of consciousness that can suffer.
It's really three points, which he has tied together:
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That we only have ethical obligations toward conscious creatures.
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That the continuum of consciousness—from a rock, at one end, to a human at the other—is tied to the ability to suffer or be happy.
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That all ethical obligations are only about the suffering or happiness of conscious creatures.
The third point doesn't necessarily follow from the first two.
There may be—and are—other things tied to consciousness then just pain and pleasure.
There also may be moral obligations that have to do with things other than conscious well being.
Take, for example, the moral obligation people often feel to honor the wishes of a dead relative—even people who don't believe in an afterlife.
People will often increase their own suffering, and sometimes that of others, in order to follow the wishes of someone who is now beyond any suffering, or even consciousness, at all.
This is certainly a "moral" issue, in the first of two usages of the word I described earlier—a belief or act based in an idea of rightness or wrongness—the person who does such a thing feels and thinks about it as a moral issue: a matter of doing what's right.
Sam has a way out, of course—he can argue that he is talking about "morality" only in the second usage: a belief or act based in a correct idea of rightness or wrongness.
That is, correct morality.
He can argue that while those people think that the issue is a moral one, they are simply mistaken—that a true morality only applies to the well being of a conscious creature.
But then he would be in the awkward, and unscientific, position of simply discounting any ideas of morality which didn't agree with his—just because they didn't agree with his.
In fact, he doesn't take the second approach, but instead presents an argument based on the first.
Next: Sam's Argument for His "Is to Ought" Jump...
