By Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, argues that morality is a kind of science. He says that “the fact that people of different times and cultures disagree about ethical questions should not trouble us. It suggests nothing at all about the status of moral truth.”
He continues:
Imagine what it would be like to consult the finest thinkers of antiquity on questions of basic science: “What,” we might ask, “is fire? And how do living systems reproduce themselves? And what are the various lights we see in the night sky?” We would surely encounter a bewildering lack of consensus on these matters. Even though there was no shortage of brilliant minds in the ancient world, they simply lacked the physical and conceptual tools to answer questions of this sort.
Their lack of consensus signified their ignorance of certain physical truths, not that no such truths exist.
Do you agree with Harris? Is morality a kind of science, where we progress and learn as we go? That there are objective moral truths that can be discovered? It certainly does seem morality can be progressive — for instance, woman’s rights and ending slavery was almost unthinkable a few hundred years ago.
If morality is progressive, what do you think the next step will be? An end to war? An end to eating animals? An acceptance of homosexuality? More concern about the environment? An end to religion? Something else?
Or if you don’t think morality is progressive, why not?
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23 Comments
Great questions! I appreciated Sam Harris’s book though I certainly don’t agree with all his conclusions. There are a few moral issues that we can (almost) all agree on. Cannibalism, incest, and rape are social taboos that rarely find acceptance in any tribe or society. I believe the morals found within Judeo-Christianity are still applicable today. Obviously, there’s a lot of confusion about some of the Old Testament laws but there are three different kinds of laws: moral, civic, and ceremonial. We clearly have no need for the civic and ceremonial (though some are still applicable). The only ones left are the moral laws…these are the laws that help us to see the character of God. Jesus summed those laws up into loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Loving God means loving His creation so we need to exercise more responsibility when it comes to the environment. Loving people means caring for people and being involved in social justice issues and respecting people even if they have differing views and opinions.
It’s interesting that when you can follow those two moral commands, there isn’t much need for any others. I’m not going to covet my neighbor’s or steal from them or murder him if I love him. I’m certainly not going to eat him or do anything else that’s morally wrong. I might make a mistake and commit a smaller infraction (like lie about where I put the rake that I borrowed from him) but if I truly am growing in my love and respect for my neighbor, I don’t want to hurt him or her in any way.
So, I think morality today is declining because we are moving away from those Judeo-Christian values. I know you will probably disagree with me and think I’m being unfair to other religions or non-religious people but I have seen how God’s ways make sense…He created us after all, so He knows what’s best for us, for our country, for our environment, for our planet, etc. The world is in such a mess because we have forsaken God’s love. We are in such a mess because we our morality is deteriorating and want to consider that to be progressive.
One last thing should be said: I don’t think everyone who has said they are a Christian has been the exemplary moral leader they should have been. But that’s no reason to reject all Biblical principles. We have to confess that we are all human and we all make mistakes so let’s keep that in perspective.
@Nathan: What makes you think “morality today is declining”? From stats I’ve seen, murder, for instance, is ridiculously small compared to say, when, the Christian church was the ruling authority (aka The Dark Ages).
Also, if God wrote the Bible, why did he give instructions encouraging slavery (in both OT and NT), instead of simply saying “it is wrong to enslave people, who are made in the image of God”?
Don’t you think we’ve made moral progress since biblical times, when women and slaves were considered property? Where you could be stoned for stupid crimes that hurt no one?
This is the main area where I disagree with Sam Harris. Morality isn’t a science as it will always be subjective; it’s a product of human society, not a law of the universe.
@Alice: Well it’s certainly true morality isn’t a law in the universal sense — universal laws cannot be broken, whereas moral laws can. I also agree it’s a product of human society and thus subjective in some sense.
So here’s the question: Do you think it’s ever okay for, say, men to rape women and kill them? (I’m seriously curious to how you answer this question.)
I find the notion of “moral truths” and “moral progress” problematic. Surely “progress” is only meaningful when measured against some goal or standard?
Science has the goal of attaining an ever more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the universe, and progress on the goal is tested against physical reality by well-established methods. Claims that pass muster become “scientific truths”. Opposing claims are discarded as false.
What is the equivalent in the moral realm? What is the goal, and how are competing claims tested against it? The greatest possible happiness for the greatest number? (ie. utilitarianism) But why choose that goal instead of, say, maximum happiness for me at everyone else’s expense? The very choice of goal seems to be a moral choice, which makes the process rather circular.
If moral truth is anything, it would seem to be a fact about human psychology; something like: What rules keep a society functioning, in a way acceptable to most of its members? But humans have a lot of individual variation in what they find acceptable, and how much they care about the happiness of others. For example: some people are made uncomfortable by homosexuality, and find it unacceptable to live in a society where gays are out and accepted (and married). I OTOH, find it unacceptable that people who are doing no harm should be oppressed for stupid reasons like someone else’s sexual squeamishness.
How do we reconcile those differences, in order to arrive at something we can call a “moral truth”?
Great questions DF.
It seems to be that morality contains truths that can be discovered, as well as truths which shift over time.
An example of the former, and possibly one which answers the question at the end of your original post: I think we’ll eventually discover that empathy is key to both understanding your fellow human beings, and being able to work with them to be productive. Lack of empathy is a lack of morality.
An example of the latter: murder. Abortion. Causing the extinction of a species. The understanding of these things changes as our situation on this planet changes.
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No, I do not believe that absolute objective standards of morality exist. I may be wrong about that, of course, but I see an awful lot of moral relativism in the natural world. If such things exist, we sure are in short supply of evidence for them.
Morality is indeed progressive, but not to the point where every single standard we have today is ultimately meaningless.
There can be progress in the understanding of morality when morality is defined. Morality is a goal-based concept, and you’ll find that the differences in opinion about morality all boil down to difference in opinion on what our ultimate goal should be. Is it better to make God happy, or better mankind, and if the latter, what is better for mankind, happiness, contentment, knowledge, survival rate?
I say there can be progress when it is defined because there is progress in understanding of economics despite the fact that the measurements are subjective. Economists study the effects that different actions and circumstances have on the price of goods, currency, and securities etc. This price is subjective. It differs from person to person and is based on what someone is believed to be willint o pay for the item at any given time.
Even though it is subjective, progress can be made in understanding economics, so morality’s subjectivity does not preclude a concept of progress in its understanding.
What does preclude it is the goal. If the goal is actually to make God happy, then unsurprisingly the only people who can measure morality are the ones who claim to know when God is happy or not. You’ll see these people are saying that morality is on the decline. Whereas others claim that the security of mankind’s happiness is the goal and usually agree that we’ve made great moral progress over the last several hundred years.
Morality has to be progressive. If you believe it’s not. What’s the point in fighting for the good of all?
I don’t understand how theists tell us that holy books are human’s source for our morality, and yet they agree that morality is progresive when an atheist points out that there are plenty of very very bad examples of morality in the books (i.e. stoning, raping, slavery, killing).
Wouldn’t this mean that the word of God (holy books) is outdated? Wouldn’t an all knowing God anticipate changes in cultures over thousands of years and perhaps tell us the first time around that it’s NOT OK to rape and kill our daughters, instead of telling us that it is?
So much discontinuity, it is mindblowing…
@Daniel: Well I don’t think that I’d think it was ok but that doesn’t mean that morality isn’t subjective as Alice states. Take as an example the treatment of German women by Russian soldiers during the last months of WWII. By their subjective morality is was ok to rape and kill women. The question is what does this tell us – are there certain fixed morality laws, such as murder, that may only be over ridden by other extreme factors. In this case the behaviour of German soldiers previously and the general portrayal of Germans as an enemy to be hated? I don’t know the answer to this question but it does seem as though there are some moral truths out there which we are slowly but surely moving towards.
I love this question, thanks Daniel.
My feeling is that Harris is basically correct, but that Carl Sagan might be a better person to reference on this matter. Where Harris is cold and calculating, Sagan injects a bit of spirituality into the cosmos and isn’t afraid to attach moral values to his scientific conclusions.
As Eamon points out, this is a question of nomenclature, but his second option is blatantly at odds with the forces that seem to be driving nature. How I would define “moral progress” would be to consider how closely aligned science and morality are. If we view the universe from a strictly scientific perspective, we are left with what seems to be the desire for DNA to replicate itself, and for species to survive. So if we base our morality on only those things that contribute to these biological forces, we will arrive (ultimately) at some moral framework that is complemented by the realities of the universe.
I am not a moral relativist, and I don’t think relativity is necessary if you build a framework of morality that complements reality. As our understanding of reality (and its forces) change, our morality should likely change with it, but reality has one absolute definition (I think), so there is ultimately one absolute morality as well.
The cannibals thought they were right, as did the Maya with thier virgin sacrifices.
Animals only kill to eat and survive, or when provoked to defend.
We have an expanded frontal lobe that makes connections and helps us reason.
Holding onto moral beliefs that are a result of superstition and ignorance isn’t smart.
Science and expanded knowledge are evolving morality now.
The morals mentioned above; murder, rape, incest, stealing, cheating (definition from Wall Street anyone?), are pretty universal.
What about bad diet and over-eating ?(harmful), smoking? (harmful), drug abuse? (harmful).
Where do universal morals end, and the rights of the individual begin?
“It’s all good”, as they say, but there are almost as many definitions of what “good” is as there are people.
That’s why the “Government by the People” concept is so cool. When working properly, it should allow the commuities within our society to choose what is “good”.
Democracy is messy. Certainly not black and white or cut and dried as control freaks want it to be. The good of the many weighed against the morals of the individual. Objective vs. subjective. I love democracy.
It comes back to having an educated populace.
Jim Etchison writes, partially in reply to me: If we view the universe from a strictly scientific perspective, we are left with what seems to be the desire for DNA to replicate itself, and for species to survive. So if we base our morality on only those things that contribute to these biological forces, we will arrive (ultimately) at some moral framework that is complemented by the realities of the universe.
I have to dispute this: I take very seriously the dictum that you cannot derive a moral Ought from an empirical Is. The fact that DNA tends (not “desires” — anthropomorphism obfuscates clear thinking) to copy itself is not a guide to what we should do, any more than gravity should be taken as forbidding flight (or multi-story buildings). Despite my subjective discomfort with the position, I am forced to be a moral relativist for lack of evidence of any clear moral absolute.
Which doesn’t mean I won’t fight for human rights, or to defend the weak, out of simple compassion and a rational prudence regarding my own welfare (if some justification must be given).
Comparing morality to science isn’t so crazy as it may seem. Science is subjective in its own way, as all of science is done through human observation. And all observation is subjective. Therefore science is subjective, though it’s a shared subjectivity among many scientists. This is evident in many scientific controversies where scientists disagree about interpretations of the same evidence obtained through the scientific method.
Basically our view of the universe is subjective to our human state – we see the universe through the lens of humanity’s eyes. There are very few true scientific truths we have discovered that are factual, immutable laws. And some scientists speculate even those laws might be different in other parts of the universe.
So it’s not a stretch to put human morality in the realm of science. Morality is subjective and our understanding and implementation of it is progressive, as is science.
I think it’s less that morality is progressive, than it is that a progressive outlook tends to be a better fit to the usual definitions of ‘moral’. And even that isn’t all that clarifying.
After all, it wasn’t enlightenment that ended slavery, it was economics. Abolition couched itself in moral and religious terms, and I don’t doubt that the great majority of abolitionists actually saw it in those terms, but really, slavery didn’t fall until it was no longer economically viable to the majority of the nation. Ironically enough, two generations after making slavery more necessary, the Industrial Revolution made it unnecessary.
Ultimately, though, it’s the progressive forces that come to define morality, or relative to whom morality is later defined, mainly through the emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, which are in the main liberating themes. Often they recognize those rights and freedoms before moderates and conservatives do. Progressives recognized that ’separate but equal’ was actually ’separate and unequal’ before the rest of the country did. I think they’re doing the same now with gay marriage.
Of course, it depends on one’s definition of morality. The self-appointed ‘guardians of morality’, the Wildmons and Dobsons and Phelpses, are far more interested in simply shoving their own narrow-mindedness down everyone’s throats than they are in creating a fairer, more loving world. Which in my book, makes them very immoral.
Forgot a point I meant to make. If morality is a science, it is so in the sense that sociology is, not in the sense than chemistry and physics are. Except in broad and general terms, it’s not quantifyable, and even then there’s almost always some sort of exception, and we hide the exceptions and contradictions between terms of law and terms of art. The state executes a person who murdered even though the practical upshot—the termination of a life by direct action rather than natural causes—is the same. Only the circumstances, in the eyes of the law, differ.
@murrowcronkite
You’ve obviously never met my cat. :) Some animals kill just for the hell of it.
Dolphins attack and kill porpoises, and not for food nor to protect their own access to food. They also kill baby dolphins. Male lions kill babies fathered by other lions. Birds peck each other to death in the nest.
Chimpanzees kill other baby chimpanzees. There are documented cases, initially from Jane Goodall, of a mother/daughter chimpanzee pair who would take babies of other females and bite their heads open. They take the dead baby and eat it, sharing it with their friends. This has been documented several times since. Some speculate it could be due to population pressure, others think that it is simply to improve the chance of certain offspring to survive by killing their competition.
The concept that animals just don’t kill (except to eat or protect their offspring or access to food) is directly contradicted by the evidence.
Speaking as someone fresh out of an actual ethics class…
we should just give up, kill everyone and let something evolve out of rats or hyenas. They’d probably make a better job of it. Oh gods, oh gods.
But seriously, I have the feeling that morality is more like science in its workings than in its basic characteristics. What matters is the consensus, and the possibility of new theories.
Someone up there talked about slavery being abolished, but that was only in the US. Slavery in Britain was abolished much earlier, when there was still a lot of rough physical labour to be done in their Caribbean colonies. The British, in fact, maintained a fleet trying to catch every slaver running the Slave Coast route and send the slaves home, at enormous expense, simply because their subjects had decided it was right.
One thing you see is that we make very few steps backwards in morality, and when we do make those backwards steps, religion is almost always cited as a cause. The only major backwards step taken in the last 200 years was the Nazi regime, and that came out of the worst economic disaster in history, when people were desperate for any way out.
But then, it’s hard to make backwards steps when you’re standing facing away from a precipice, and that’s where we’ve been for most of our history.
Accepting evolution means accepting that an awful lot of your ancestors were rapists (and that the next ancestor down was the product of rape) and murderers. That’s often how genes survived and spread. But no one wants a world where murder and rape are routine. So obviously we can’t draw our morality from the real world. We have to work it out for ourselves.
@wazza: I’ll agree that morality seems to be taking a generally forward direction but the Third Reich is hardly the only example of a backwards step. To name but a few the Armenia Genocide, Stalin in general, Pol Pot in general, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the Rape of Nanking. To me it always seems that the behaviours of communities is fine balancing line and anything that upsets that structure can lead to untold atrocities but what would have been thought to be “moral” people. Take the example of what happened as the Third Reich marched across Easten Europe – local issues based on ethnic background came to the fore leading to the murder of thousands of people by what had basically been neighbours. How does this happen?
Eamon you make very good points, and made me think harder about what I’m saying.
I think humanity needs a framework of principles to base its society on. That framework is our “morality” even though (you are right) morality really doesn’t exist. Nature is entirely neutral and what we see now is–as far as I can tell–a complete accident. However, humanity still requires a set of rules and policies, and those rules will be either good for humanity, or not good for it. So what I’m proposing is that our “morality” should be a set of principles that encourage the survival of our race, and thus aligned with science.
Don’t you think it’s interesting that your suggested “progressive” truths are all capital-P Progressive?
Or did you notice?
Could it not be that the ultimate truth is rightwing-conservative??
Reality leans left. You can determine this easily, Michael. Try this:
Which side favors rational thought?
Which side bases its opinions on verifiable things, repeatable experiments and the scientific method? If the right wing conservatives had the truth on their side, would not rational thought be on their side as well? If so, why do they use the deceptive methods of faith and belief in the supernatural? Why does the truth have to be the writings of one particular bronze age cultic god, taken from a book that we know to be deliberately mistranslated as well as strung together from sources that disagreed with each other?
Rational thought and the truth go hand in hand. If you find your side disagrees with reason, then you may be ready to progress yourself into becoming a better person.