Hi Platt,
Platt: > OK. You've told me your basis, and probably Harris's, for moral judgments -- > "common sense." To me this has the same shortcoming as Pirsig's critique of > "human rights." I'll cheer for "common sense," but spelling out what it > means in practice is another matter. You say, for example, that as a matter > of common sense we ought to improve infant mortality. Yet abortion on demand > is moral to many in our society, and infanticide is practiced in China and > elsewhere as a matter of common sense for population control. Or, if we were > to eliminate war and disease as a common sense good as you suggest, then > what's to prevent worldwide starvation? Good common sense intentions can > sometimes lead to unintended consequences worse than the initial problem. Steve: No, the basis for morality is not common sense. The basis for morality is that there are better and worse ways for humans to live so as to have the best chance of thriving. Consider what Harris calls, The Bad Life: "You are a young widow who has lived her entire life in the midst of civil war. Today, your seven-year-old daughter was raped and dismembered before your eyes. Worse still, the perpetrator was your fourteen-year-old son, who was goaded to this evil at the point of a machete by a press gang of drug-addled soldiers. You are now running barefoot through the jungle with killers in pursuit. While this is the worst day of your life, it is not entirely out of character with the other days of your life: since the moment you were born, your world has been a theater of cruelty and violence. You have never learned to read, taken a hot shower, or traveled beyond the green hell of the jungle. Even the luckiest people you have known have experienced little more than an occasional respite from chronic hunger, fear, apathy, and confusion. Unfortunately, you’ve been very unlucky, even by these bleak standards. Your life has been one long emergency, and now it is nearly over. Now consider what Harris calls, The Good Life: "You are married to the most loving, intelligent, and charismatic person you have ever met. Both of you have careers that are intellectually stimulating and financially rewarding. For decades, your wealth and social connections have allowed you to devote yourself to activities that bring you immense personal satisfaction. One of your greatest sources of happiness has been to find creative ways to help people who have not had your good fortune in life. In fact, you have just won a billion-dollar grant to benefit children in the developing world. If asked, you would say that you could not imagine how your time on earth could be better spent. Due to a combination of good genes and optimal circumstances, you and your closest friends and family will live very long, healthy lives, untouched by crime, sudden bereavements, and their misfortunes." Now his idea of the good life might not be the same as yours. But there ought to be no question that The Good Life is better than The Bad Life. Anyone who can not see this difference is just as incompetent to participate in an intelligent discussion of morality as someone who can't pass Algebra I would be to a discussion of physics. Acknowledgment of the difference between The Good Life and The Bad Life is all we need to agree about to understand that science can have something to say about at least some moral questions since the conditions that determine the human experiences associated with the good life as compared to the bad life are open to scientific study. Again, the basis of morality is not common sense. Harris thinks we ought to define morality as concerns for the well-being of conscious creatures capable of experiencing happiness and suffering. The basis of morality is then conscious experience. Do you have some alternative basis for morality to offer? Is there something other than conscious experience that ought to concern us? Obviously there simply can't be such an alternative basis since something that is completely unrelated to conscious experience cannot possibly concern anyone. As Harris said, put this alternative source of value in a box and what you will have in that box is by definition the least interesting thing in the world. So well-being captures everything that we can possibly value, and morality relates to the attitudes, intentions, behaviors, and conditions that can affect conscious experience of sentient beings. Unless well-being is an entirely random phenomenon, it is clear that science will have something to say about how to achieve it, i.e. about what is moral and what is immoral. Note that your objection about suffering is included in this broad notion of well-being. If suffering has any value, which is surely seems to, then its value lies in the long tern contributions of temporary suffering to long term well-being. Harris is well aware of this. He notes for example the fact that we have to struggle in frustration to learn a new skill or how we have to cut open a patient to operate and heal. Even if suffering has some value, avoiding suffering and pursuing well-being is always the goal even if that goal cannot be achieved without some suffering. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
