In the “Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human
Values,” atheist Sam Harris argues that we do not need religion to tell us what
is right and wrong. Instead, science can do this for us.
Atheist Steven Pinker praises the book:
·
Harris makes a powerful case for a morality that
is based on human flourishing and thoroughly enmeshed with science and
rationality.
“The Free Press” (FP)
argues that Harris has provided the necessary objective basis for morality in
science:
·
Indeed, our failure to address questions of
meaning and morality through science has now become the most common
justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many
secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to “respect” the hardened
superstitions of their more devout neighbors.
Harris is understandably trying to find an objective basis
for morality. Without this, we are left with a virtual Tower of Babel, where each individual chooses what is right for him
without any higher and objective standard to mediate among a cacophony of
subjective opinions. As FP writes, Harris believes that he has found this
objective standard in science:
·
Harris demonstrates that we already know enough
about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that
there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life.
Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at
increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of
human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as
Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim
morality.
Harris is clearly right about the costs of moral relativism.
However, based on the FP appraisal, I don’t think that he has been able to
address the critique of the skeptical philosopher David Hume:
·
I am surprised to find, that instead of the
usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition
that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is
imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or
ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it
should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given,
for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a
deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do
not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the
readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the
vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and
virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by
reason.
According to Hume, Harris’ system is a one of the “vulgar
systems of morality.” Here is why - Hume correctly observed that there exists
an impassable chasm between what “is” and what “ought to be.” While science can
tell us how we might love another, it cannot tell us why we ought to love one another. Science can guide us as to how to
serve our beloved healthy foods instead of arsenic, but it cannot tell us why we should love our beloved, in any
objective sense.
Likewise, there are many other values that science cannot
supply. For instance, “Why should we value the human over a mosquito, a
termite, or the Ebola virus?” Science might tell us how to value the human over the virus by purifying water and
disinfecting contaminated objects. However, science cannot tell is why we should value the human over the
virus.
Science is the servant of our values. It cannot invent
values. However, FP writes:
·
Harris foresees a time when science will no
longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of
“morality”; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do
to live the best lives possible.
Notice that science depends upon a pre-existing, assumed
value – “to live the best lives possible” or “human flourishing.” FP doesn’t
seem to recognize that science cannot serve us until we first inform science how to serve us. It can only serve us
after we instruct science that we want to live “the best lives possible.”
But what is the best possible life? Some would say that the
best possible life involves a high degree of suffering. Others maintain that
life is an illusion, which we must not indulge but transcend, while others will
insist that it is all about the survival-of-the-fittest. Does science favor any
of these views? Certainly not! It can make no moral pronouncements.
In the latter case, science might serve the Social Darwinist
by inventing tools of mass destruction to eliminate the “inferior races.” This
is because science cannot generate its own values. Nor can science indict the
Social Darwinist for having violated an objective value.
Based upon FP, I do not see how Harris has offered the moral
relativist any objective means to escape their moral relativism.
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