I'VE BEEN ARGUING THAT Sam Harris can greatly strengthen his case for allowing science to inform morality by abandoning the top-down approach he outlined at TED, and adopting an emergent approach based on natural human values.
So far, it's become clear that a natural approach:
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Bridges the "is to ought" gap better than the top-down approach,
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Embraces a broad range of values better than the top-down approach,
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Allows for more flexibility than the top-down approach,
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Provides a more respectful, and more effective, rhetoric than the top-down approach, and
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Is a more accurate description of actual human morality.
But Sam has other concerns, as well.
He begins by returning to the question of truth, but quickly moves on to burqas:
So, for instance, if it's really wrong to lie, it must always be wrong to lie, and if you can find an exception, well then there is no such thing as moral truth.
Why would we think this?
Consider, by analogy, the game of chess.
Now, if you're going to play good chess, a principle like, "Don't lose your Queen," is very good to follow.
But clearly it admits of exceptions.
There are moments when losing your Queen is a brilliant thing to do.
There are moments when it is the only good thing you can do.
And yet, chess is a domain of perfect objectivity.
The fact that there are exceptions here does not change that at all.
That is, Sam recognizes that the top-down, fact-based, deductive approach to morality doesn't provide the kind of flexibility we experience in hands-on human morality.
But since he is advocating just such a system, he opts for an escape hatch which reduces truth from a value to a tactic.
This is not necessary if we come from a natural model.
Truth is a value in and of itself, but so are care and loyalty.
Natural values naturally compete in the real world.
If the Nazis ask you if you're hiding Jews, you lie.
It's the moral thing to do.
Period.
It doesn't mean you don't value the truth, or even honesty.
It simply means that in this situation honesty isn't the most important value, just as food isn't the most important value to someone who's trying to disarm a bomb.
Wisdom includes the ability to discern which values should apply to which situation, and when.
Sam continues:
Now, this brings us to the sort of moves that people are apt to make in the moral sphere.
Consider the great problem of women's bodies: What to do about them?
Well this is one thing you can do about them, you can cover them up.
Now, it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that while we may not like this, we might think of this as "wrong" in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags?...
Well, who are are we not to say this?...
I'm not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil -- women should be able to wear whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned.
And later...
...the question is, what is voluntary in a context where men have certain expectations, and you're guaranteed to be treated in a certain way if you don't veil yourself?
And so, if anyone in this room wanted to wear a veil, or a very funny hat, or tattoo their face -- I think we should be free to voluntarily do whatever we want, but we have to be honest about the constraints that these women are placed under.
And so I think we shouldn't be so eager to always take their word for it, especially when it's 120 degrees out and they're wearing a full burqa.
So Sam wants to make a case that "putting women in cloth bags" is immoral.
But because he is still trapped in his top-down approach, he has to frame it as somehow a violation of "the well being of conscious creatures".
This is, as the moderator pointed out at the end of the session, not an easy case to make—and, in fact, Sam never really makes it.
What he does instead is subtly appeal to the real issue, which involves the natural value of freedom.
It's not that burqas are bad, it's that these women, or at the very least some of them, don't get a choice—they are forced to wear them.
And who are we to say, even, that they are wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?
...But what does voluntary mean in a community where, when a girl gets raped, her fathers first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?
Of course we would all agree that murder and beatings and battery acid are wrong in their own right, violating the human value of care.
But the focus of Sam's language is on a different natural value: freedom, specifically, moral freedom—freedom from being forced to fit into someone else's moral values.
Next: The Irony from Sam's Perspective...
