False or Trivial?

Monday night, Sam Harris was on the Daily Show promoting his new book on how science can help us to determine our moral values: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. I wanted to say a bit about this because I'm disappointed in Harris.

There are two ways of taking what it seems that he's arguing for (I confess, I haven't read the book, but only seen interviews with him about it). The first way of taking his thesis is what I wrote above, that science can determine our values for us. This isn't what he seems to be talking about in the interviews, however. He seems to be speaking, rather of using science as a tool for determining what the best methods for maximizing our moral values are, specifically, human well-being; the old utilitarian standard.

Now, in the first case, there is a rather serious problem known as "the naturalistic fallacy" or sometimes the "Is/Ought" fallacy, first argued for by my boy David Hume in A Treatise on Human Nature when he was a lad of my age, or younger in the 18th century. It is a widely accepted principle. Simply put: you cannot derive normative statements from descriptive ones. Or, to make it stronger: you cannot derive any single normative statement from any set, however large, of descriptive statements. It can't be done. In which case, Harris' thesis would be a non-starter.

The second possible thesis is much more reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that it has been argued for over and over again for nearly as long as the naturalistic fallacy has been known. Most recently, in The Life You Can Save Peter Singer has argued for it. In which case, Harris' thesis gives us nothing new at all.

Dubious options, indeed.

I can only speculate about what Harris' intentions are for writing this book. So, what follows is nothing more than speculation. What it seems to me is that the only purpose of this book is to run afoul of people who adhere to theologically-grounded moral theories, rather than to challenge the theories themselves (although, I'm sure he does a bit of that, too). My conjecture is that Harris (and Dawkins and Dennett and Hitchens) feel as though the remaining bits of the picture need to be filled in for a comprehensive atheism. But secular ethics has been around for centuries. That's nothing new.

Perhaps the attempt is to further raise the authority of science. But, as I say, it must have it's limits. They are logical limits, and cannot be broken.

A Consequentialist's Thoughts on John Travolta's trip to Haiti

To quote Kurt Vonnegut's Uncle Alex, "Well, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

What's nice? This.

John Travolta uses his personal jet to fly supplies to the people of Haiti (I hope it isn't lost on you that I say "the people of Haiti" rather than "Haiti"). This is an action of positive moral value. Why? Because it will help people who need to be helped.

I am going to belabor this point, so bear with me.

It's moral value is not affected by being in accord or not being in accord with the man's principles, or the principles of Scientology. It may or not be, I don't even know. Would being in accord with said principles be the cause of the good done by the action?

It's moral value is not affected by being in accord or not being in accord with the principles of "Christian morality" (whatever they are supposed to be!). Again, would being in accord with these principles be the cause of the good done by the action?

It's moral value is not affected by the presence of the press. Even if he did this for the sake of publicity, it doesn't affect the moral appraisal. That is to say, his intent is not relevant. Would performing this action out of a desire to become famous preclude the good that is done by the action from being good?

What I want to say is the basis for evaluating Mr. Travolta's actions (and not just his, ours as well, and those of anyone else) ought to be the consequences of the action. There are problems with this standard, to be sure, just as there are problems with any other ethical or moral standard (if anyone wants to raise some of them, I'll happily try and defend myself).

Mr. Travolta's claim in this clip echos a standard of Peter Singer's ethics: If we can help someone in need, at relatively little cost to ourselves, then we ought to do so. In his book, The Life You Can Save Singer goes to great lengths to spell out exactly what "relatively little cost" means for acting to end world poverty. I think we can summarize it somewhat imprecisely by "whatever you can stand to lose anyway without altering your standard of living." That doesn't, of course, mean that there won't be sacrifices. A pet example of Singer's is drinking tap water rather than bottled water. Another is wearing canvas shoes rather than shoes that are a) more expensive and/or b) made from animal skins. We can lose these luxuries without changing our standard of living, however.

Further, the cost is "relatively little" compared to the harm that may result from failure to act in accordance with this principle. Not flying supplies to the people of Haiti, say, may be tantamount to allowing someone to die. We needn't pad the numbers, although surely more than one life can be saved by Travolta's action: just one life saved is sufficient to outweigh the cost of flying the supplies there yourself, in your own jet, especially if you have the time and resources to do so.

Now, we don't all have private jets, or millions of dollars. And if we all did, and we all flew supplies down there, we'd probably not be able to land our planes. My point in holding up this example as an example of an action with positive moral value is not to say that we should do what John Travolta did. But to say that we should act according to the principle that explains why his action is good.

Well done, Mr. Travolta, and thanks for the good news.