Facts & Values: Clarifying the Moral Landscape (Episode  

What morality you talking about America has more people in prison than rest of the whole worlds prisons combined

@@bigm317shhh, let the poor bastard be happy within the narrow walls of Sam’s thought experiments :).

@@bigm317What on earth are you on about?

@@bigm317 Sam Harris has a really basic view of morality. If he wants to join the objectivist crowd he should join JBP and Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the theistic sphere. His examples are just naive. There is no objective moral standard but there are shades of better and worse depending on your subjectively inserted value and I happen to agree with Harris' value on wellbeing. But if you measure wellbeing, find the indicies to support your claims and work towards those goals then, don't use preferred taste or weight measurements. It's just silly.

Do you now

Does he offer a response to Alex? I'd like to see Harris engage with moral antirealists who work in metaethics. I don't think his position would hold up well to scrutiny.

Why? Harris is an idiot. "Therefore there must be right and wrong answers, to questions of ..." artistic, musical, literary, theatrical, culinary, etc., etc., etc., ... likes and dislikes. What a maroon. Just because subjectivity objectively exists, doesn't mean there are objectively right and wrong answers.

I'd be unsurprised that he was given the heads up from Richard Dawkins, that Dawkins was releasing, one day ago, "Sam Harris Is Wrong About Morality"

@@samdg1234 I missed that! Thanks for the heads up. Will see what Dawkins has to say.

@@csquared4538 I certainly hope I haven't gotten your hopes up. I found it most disappointing. They hardly spent any time on the topic. I've no idea why he titled the video as he did.

​@@samdg1234O'Connor had posted a video titled that, so maybe Dawkins recycled that title to keep the interested viewers on the same path.

Came to the comments section to say this... you beat me to it.

Unfortunately that just won't do for the broader topic of metaethics, since there's more options on the table than just objective morality or moral relativism. There are many non-relativist subjectivist accounts of morality. And Sam Harris' view in many ways borrows ideas from them.

Also, how relevant is this solid grounding moral objectivists obsess over, anyway? Like suppose the most hippie, philosophically confused liberal person says to you that thy condemn slavery, that's how they feel. Are you really gonna tell them they don't actually feel that way morally? Or that their lack of philosophical grounding is more important? How could it be? Surely at the end of the day whether the person condemns slavery or not with their words and actions is what matters. Because even if there is some "objective truth" of the matter, that truth still has to be discovered, interpreted AND accepted as valid, subjectively. So it really cannot be reduced in the manner you suggest.

And moral objectivism of the christian variety justified in the centuries past.

​@@keithhunt5328he said nothing about Christianity. This shows the atheist position isn't about a lack of belief in god or believing there is no god. Being atheist is about being anti Christian. The IRS website has a policy on what to do if the taxpayer threatens suicide. There's nothing in it about sympathy or leniency. We are free range tax cattle. We are slaves.

Yeah, I feel like he gets flak for some of the things he ventures into, but what you said ^, his work in ethics, is paramount, and he frankly nailed it.

@@sunnyinvladivostok He didn't nail it. He barely even makes arguments. A lot of his positions consist of bare assertions or appeals to his own incredulity. For instance he claims that the only thing people can care about are conscious states and that anyone who claims to care about other things is just pretending. No evidence. No arguments. He just declares anyone who disagrees a liar. It's ridiculous.

Sam Harris's work on metaethics isn't nearly as good as plenty of authors working on this topic.

@@lanceindependent Fair enough & point taken, I do agree he treats his critics & criticisms unfairly harsh and disdainfully. I guess I am biased by enthusiasm for his attempt at proving a universal morality, which feels like a good thing to pursue and understand

@@sunnyinvladivostok I appreciate that response, thanks!

Case-by-case analysis. Navigate on the landscape to the best of our ability in each moment.

Telling a lie, like everything else, has numerous consequences such as loss of reputation when a lie is exposed. Most moral decisions are hard because of conflicting elements of wellbeing and harm.

Do you believe that all facts are always true and in all cases? In my view there are a great many facts that are particular to particular circumstances and situations.

​@@CozmoBeregofsky In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.

@@stevem691 All conscious beings have a goal: to avoid dissatisfaction. Methods for doing so vary greatly from being to being, and also from moment to moment. It sounds like you've found a unique way that works well for you. You and I might have similar approaches, but we can accept that many others avoid dissatisfaction in their own unique ways.

What cogent argument did he make here? I didn't think he presented any good arguments.

To me he seems like an educated fool. Not to mention some serious racist vibes.

He's a complete and utter maroon.

Not that I've seen...was thinking the same thing...

I hope Sam will comment on very much philosophical project of Bryan Johnson "Don't die" at some point. It's worth being discussed even barring implementation details

@@alexanderg9670 the guy is a clown who somehow doesnt even understand or havent been told that 4% body fat isnt good for you...

@@wasdwasdedsf Ad hominem is irrelevant. My point that his philosophy is worth discussing. "Don't die" probably will resonate with more people than "Maximize well-being". It doesn't immediately require utilitarian calculus. My guess is that "Don't die" will be a great help of climbing on local peak of moral landscape for mankind And both are prefectly compatible btw

This video was probably produced a week or so before Dan died, I would guess his next video will talk about Dan. I'm pretty sure they were friends and on good terms

What do you think ought means? If your answer is duty or obligation, what do you mean by those terms?

@@ConceptHut the childish game of repeated "why" questions of "what do you mean by" doesn't prevent us from talking about the things in question coherently. Your demands are too strict. You aren't making those demands of the words you use in your questioning, are you? So why not quit the silly games?

@@Google_Censored_Commenter You seem upset.

@@ConceptHut "i'm not angry - i'm just disappointed"

@@Google_Censored_Commenter Who are you quoting?

From Sam? I didn't see much that was new here.

It is a scientific field of study. It's just not the case that the only way to consume reality is in terms of increases or decreases and well-being. Also Sam's way of characterizing the notion of well-being is so inclusive and under specified as to be effectively useless.

No. That could not be considered a scientific truth. If you're simply studying morality, the scientific truth is that people have a variety of different concepts of morality, and there is no objective, scientific, evidence that one is objectively correct. Sam subjectively picks one, measures others with the one he picked, and then rules the others wrong. That's somewhat like picking imperial and then saying metric is the objectively wrong way to measure things.

@@TheHuxleyAgnostic The core scientific truth about living organisms is their instinct to survive and reproduce. Achieving this relies on the well-being and overall success of human beings as a species. This is an undeniable scientific fact and it's relation to our values.

@@Pradeep_889 Sure, it's an objective fact that tons of species are wired to subjectively value self preservation. Does that translate into it being an objective fact that none of those species should be harmed, including humans? Including cows? Including dogs? Including chickens? Including cats? Etc. Don't we simply like ourselves, dogs, and cats more, so give them more value.

@@TheHuxleyAgnostic How can you ensure your own survival without relying on others? As a child, your chances of survival hinge on the well-being of your parents, who, in turn, depend on the type of society they reside in. If this holds true for one species, it holds true for others as well.

Maybe my favorite flavor is aluminum. You didn't think of that, did you?

I agree. I love vanilla and caramel but am not a fan of chocolate ice cream.

Wrong or right, we all live our own truth.

If it's that difficult - maybe Sam isn't for you

The dude was making what seemed to be a pretty obvious joke. Random pettiness isn’t appropriate, even with strangers on the internet.

@@NavAK_86enlighten us 🤣

@@NavAK_86 Extremely pretentious response.

What an idiotic comment

Me too. I think there are lots of other people it'd be cool for Sam Harris to talk to about metaethics, though.

What’s morally worse would be a copper-penny flavor.

The self can be considered to be composed of personality and character. Personality can be considered how you behave because of how you feel about things. Character can be considered how you behave because of what you believe about things. With that framework, the spontaneity can be within your personality. Even if we all had exactly the same character, our personalities would differ. Not all of our character needs be the same for us all to have identical ethic, moral, and virtue frameworks. There is much more outside those three to believe and behave in response to.

It's an important topic but I don't think his take on it contributes much to the discussion. Harris has consistently shown a failure to engage with the literature on metaethics and on the relevant concepts, issues, and distinctions in the field.

@@lanceindependent perhaps. He does address that concern though

@@chazlewis8114 He talks about it but mostly in a glib way. Jokingly saying it's boring isn't a justification for ignoring it. Tbh his takes strike me as amateurish and uninformed even after years of feedback and reactions. I've seen almost no progress or growth with his views. Just the same overconfidence and talking points.

On that note, this was a terrible episode to gate behind a subscription. He should have just let this one run.

Unfortunately I don't find same to be clear on this topic at all and I think many others have the same reaction.

@@lanceindependent if you don’t mind, can you share what is not clear to you in Sam’s point of view on morality?

@@francdugas Sure. I just did a nearly three hour stream where I raise objections to this specific video. I don't think you can send links here, so look up "Why Sam Harris Still Doesn't Understand Morality" for the channel Digital Gnosis.

@@lanceindependent Thank you for sharing. I have a feeling that when you say you find him unclear, what you might actually mean is that you don’t agree with his views. Could you clarify? If his arguments are unclear to you, could you specify which argument or explanation you find the least clear? Alternatively, if you understand his position but disagree, could you tell me which point you disagree with the most? I would be curious to know and try to understand. For now I would prefer interacting with you than watching a video.

@@francdugas Sure. Sam says lots of things. Some of the things he says make sense and I agree, while others make sense and I don't agree. However, I also think his position is so unclear that I don't even know what exactly his position is or what his argument for it is. I know he'll say his position is this and his argument is that, but they strike me as too convoluted to reconstruct. He makes many claims and it's hard to cash them all out in a short RU-vid post, which is why I discussed them at length in the video I mentioned. Even so, some of the main issues are: (1) He does not provide any clear argument for why we should think morality is exclusively about wellbeing (2) His concept of "wellbeing" is vague and underspecified. (3) His position is so convoluted it's unclear where it fits within the landscape of contemporary metaethics. (4) His account is so vague and underspecified it doesn't seem equipped to address most issues in normative, applied, and population ethics. (5) His account is so vague it's hard to tell whether or not and to what extent it purports to and succeeds at providing concrete input on how individuals should go about deliberating on and deciding which course of action to take, morally speaking. (6) His dismissal of metaethics does him no favors. He doesn't appear to be aware of or to engage with basic issues in metaethics, or ethics more generally. It wasn't even clear whether he understood Alex's view, emotivism, when they had a discussion. Emotivism is something you'd learn about in intro to ethics courses that cover the basics of metaethics. (7) He often makes bare assertions without providing any arguments or evidence for them. For instance, in the full length version of the podcast, he claims that anyone who purports to assign moral value to considerations outside the scope of what he thinks are the only legitimate candidates of moral concern (conscious states), he simply claims these people are "pretending." Let's say they were pretending. How does he know this? What arguments and evidence does he have for it? as far as I can tell, absolutely none at all. He seems to me to simply assert his own position over and over and report incredulity at anyone possibly thinking otherwise. (8) Much of his claims on these matters consist of rhetorical fluff that fail to engage with arguments to the contrary or even indicate an awareness of their existence, or to make an argument for his position. (9) He sometimes will critique misunderstandings or confusions that genuinely are pretty weak, but fails to engage with stronger arguments for those positions. One example is his critique of people who infer from the fact that there are moral disagreements that there's no objective morality. This is a crude version of the argument from disagreement. It's a bad argument. But antirealists have better arguments than this, including more developed arguments from disagreement, as well as other arguments. Are any of them compelling? I don't think so, but Harris doesn't engage with them at all, and instead focuses on popular misconceptions. (10) He suggests that skepticism about moral realism has consequences but the main consequence he cites appears to be a form of cultural agent relativism. I don't know if I've ever met or even heard of a philosopher who endorsed such a view. I'm sure they exist, but it's not a common position among philosophers who are antirealists. And the specific form of relativism he discusses is one that has substantive normative moral aspects to it. Many other antirealist positions have few or no substantive metaethical implications. Since rejecting moral realism doesn't entail you'd endorse that specific theory, he simply hasn't showing that denying there are objective moral truths at all poses a problem. For comparison, some people who reject belief in God could join some violent radical secular group. But it does not mean that atheism is dangerous in general, simply because some atheists might join a violent radical secular group. These are just a handful of concerns off the top of my head when I'm about to go to sleep around midnight. I am sure if I listened to the whole podcast again there'd be half a dozen more, and maybe more than that. Sam Harris is absolutely terrible on the topic of metaethics. He is wildly out of his depth, and almost everything he says varies from trivial to confused to convoluted to false, with almost no substantive insights, novel points, or good arguments. It is quite literally some of the worst coverage of metaethics I have ever seen, and I make a point to listen to every youtube video, podcast, tiktok video, and so on that addresses metaethics and moral realism that I can find.

Unless you're Muslim or African American

He doesn't make a good case for moral realism at all. Every account of moral realism is trivial, false, or unintelligible.

Sam didn't invent sociology. We already have a study of societies. We already measure the human condition, in all kinds of ways. There are indexes for happiness, freedom, democracy, poverty, education, life expectancy, crime, safety, etc., etc., etc. There are already existing peaks and valleys, based on those scientific measures. He also didn't invent what he agreed was already a widely understood given ... That, if you set a subjective value, there are then objectively better and worse was to get what you value, and science can help. If I value building a nuclear power plant, or a nuclear bomb, there are then objectively better and worse ways to achieve either of those goals, and science can help achieve them. Likewise, if I subjectively value human well being, or human suffering, there are then objectively better and worse ways to achieve either of those goals, and science can help. In all of those cases, objectivity and science don't care what you do, any which way. The question is all about whether science/objectivity can tell us what to value, and the answer is no. He has never actually got beyond what he stated was a given, at the start. Science doesn't care if you want to blow up the world. It will help you do it.

You really don’t have free will.

@@charliewalker9443 You actually do.

@@justanothernick3984 You really, really don’t.

That was excellent and it was more than Sam Harris or his supporters deserved. Their certainty is what's morally repulsive. Sam Harris gets up in the morning convinced that he's got the real inside scoop and other mere mortals someday will reach his exalted level but this, after all, has been his bread and butter, for the last 20 years. He can't admit he may not have the inside scoop after all.

I'll have you insisting, in no time, someone's preferences are wrong when they're about to poke you with a red hot poker.

What do you think ought means?

@@MD-bu3xc He actually addressed this in the video -- saying morality is what ought to be true is the same as saying science is what's in the bible. Both are random assumptions that aren't useful. Don't try and attack someone if you can't even comprehend their basic ideas first lmao Human wellbeing can be measured objectively and there isn't a good reason to not use that as morality.

Health is a specific kind of well being. What's your definition of well being?

It's not priceless. It's a poor excuse not to study the topic he's talking about. Imagine if he were dismissing climate change then said he's refusing to engage with what climate scientists say because terms like "acidification" and "interglacial" are boring. This isn't much different.

What's he on point about here specifically?

@@lanceindependent All of the above.

@@js2567 I'd be happy to discuss this with you. I recently reviewed this video with Digital Gnosis and offered a comprehensive critique, which you can find by searching for "Sam Harris Still Hasn't "Solved" Morality w/ @lanceindependent." I also wrote a summary of some of my objections (those I recalled off the top of my head) to someone else in this thread, which I'll repeat: " Sam says lots of things. Some of the things he says make sense and I agree, while others make sense and I don't agree. However, I also think his position is so unclear that I don't even know what exactly his position is or what his argument for it is. I know he'll say his position is this and his argument is that, but they strike me as too convoluted to reconstruct. He makes many claims and it's hard to cash them all out in a short RU-vid post, which is why I discussed them at length in the video I mentioned. Even so, some of the main issues are: (1) He does not provide any clear argument for why we should think morality is exclusively about wellbeing (2) His concept of "wellbeing" is vague and underspecified. (3) His position is so convoluted it's unclear where it fits within the landscape of contemporary metaethics. (4) His account is so vague and underspecified it doesn't seem equipped to address most issues in normative, applied, and population ethics. (5) His account is so vague it's hard to tell whether or not and to what extent it purports to and succeeds at providing concrete input on how individuals should go about deliberating on and deciding which course of action to take, morally speaking. (6) His dismissal of metaethics does him no favors. He doesn't appear to be aware of or to engage with basic issues in metaethics, or ethics more generally. It wasn't even clear whether he understood Alex's view, emotivism, when they had a discussion. Emotivism is something you'd learn about in intro to ethics courses that cover the basics of metaethics. (7) He often makes bare assertions without providing any arguments or evidence for them. For instance, in the full length version of the podcast, he claims that anyone who purports to assign moral value to considerations outside the scope of what he thinks are the only legitimate candidates of moral concern (conscious states), he simply claims these people are "pretending." Let's say they were pretending. How does he know this? What arguments and evidence does he have for it? as far as I can tell, absolutely none at all. He seems to me to simply assert his own position over and over and report incredulity at anyone possibly thinking otherwise. (8) Much of his claims on these matters consist of rhetorical fluff that fail to engage with arguments to the contrary or even indicate an awareness of their existence, or to make an argument for his position. (9) He sometimes will critique misunderstandings or confusions that genuinely are pretty weak, but fails to engage with stronger arguments for those positions. One example is his critique of people who infer from the fact that there are moral disagreements that there's no objective morality. This is a crude version of the argument from disagreement. It's a bad argument. But antirealists have better arguments than this, including more developed arguments from disagreement, as well as other arguments. Are any of them compelling? I don't think so, but Harris doesn't engage with them at all, and instead focuses on popular misconceptions. (10) He suggests that skepticism about moral realism has consequences but the main consequence he cites appears to be a form of cultural agent relativism. I don't know if I've ever met or even heard of a philosopher who endorsed such a view. I'm sure they exist, but it's not a common position among philosophers who are antirealists. And the specific form of relativism he discusses is one that has substantive normative moral aspects to it. Many other antirealist positions have few or no substantive metaethical implications. Since rejecting moral realism doesn't entail you'd endorse that specific theory, he simply hasn't showing that denying there are objective moral truths at all poses a problem. For comparison, some people who reject belief in God could join some violent radical secular group. But it does not mean that atheism is dangerous in general, simply because some atheists might join a violent radical secular group. These are just a handful of concerns off the top of my head when I'm about to go to sleep around midnight. I am sure if I listened to the whole podcast again there'd be half a dozen more, and maybe more than that. Sam Harris is absolutely terrible on the topic of metaethics. He is wildly out of his depth, and almost everything he says varies from trivial to confused to convoluted to false, with almost no substantive insights, novel points, or good arguments. It is quite literally some of the worst coverage of metaethics I have ever seen, and I make a point to listen to every youtube video, podcast, tiktok video, and so on that addresses metaethics and moral realism that I can find."

Please explain further

Too many examples over his time as a notable thinker, show he is being generous with those statements. Bad Faith of many critics are available amongst the ‘misunderstood.

This is what I read RU-vid comments for

Probably Sam's main objective is to defend atheism against the very clear and difficult to defeat, Premise A: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Premise B: Objective moral values do exist. Conclusion: Therefore, God exists. It appears the syllogism is valid with true premises. At least we can't live as if it is true.