Simon Blackburn - The Great Debate: Can Science Tell us Right From Wrong? (6)

[smuggecko]

some great inforamtion here thanks

[oliskies1]

this guy is coming to my school in one month, i hope i get to see his presentation.

[jayejayeee]

you have some great stuff here

[ProfitMuhammed]

simon blackbum

[shellybirdy]

some great inforamtion here thanks

[jayejayeee]

great video thanks

[vashcerom]

I think that it is most likely that Sam was putting all intelligent reasoning, rationality and his evolutionary evidence on the same side as science, as opposed to religion, as the basis for determining right from wrong. I say this based on other conversations Sam has had on the subject. In this case Simon probably agrees with him in entirety, and so do I.

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

should we create a new religion without believing in a god

[ColdFrixion]

Unfortunately, the participants start with a faith based presupposition such as "morality _should_ be based on the well-being of conscious creatures", which itself isn't amenable to empirical verification. One has to accept such presuppositions for said arguments to be valid. If you believe cold-blooded murder is morally _wrong_, how would one set about proving such a belief? You have to first accept the aforementioned faith based presupposition and start with a base assumption.

[ladyvanda]

@ColdFrixion there's a word for your system of thought (thinking that the assertion ''cold-blooded murder is wrong'' ought to be faith-based). It's called sociopathy (or in proper modern term: antisocial personality disorder). There's no need to resort to extreme relativism to avoid discssing moral questions.

[ColdFrixion]

@ladyvanda Red herring, straw man and ad hominem all rolled into one. There was never an implication that any moral action, cold-blooded murder or otherwise "ought" to be faith based, as there's no wishful thinking involved -- they simply are faith based, and the reason why is simple. Morality always involves a base assumption or root presupposition from which an individual must work from. Moral base assumptions do not lend themselves to empirical verification.

[ColdFrixion]

@ladyvanda Science cannot prove such base assumptions. For example, is the belief that "charity is good" or "slapping a stranger is bad" based on faith or empirical evidence?

[Psity]

AAAAAaaannnnddddddd Blackwell wins, followed by Lawrence, then Patricia and Peter tied, and Harrys last, by my subjective taste to the Winner of the best Thinker of the Night!. The dude clearly express a point beyond what the others speakers intend to prove (that is, that we have desires beyond our well being, has long has we are informed of them correctly).

[DemokritosAbdera]

Blackburn have something sexual going on with fridges,

[monkeyrocketsurgeon]

the philosopher spends his time arguing with the strawmen they create.

it's nice and all that they are deep.  however they produce just more rambling.

scientists seem to say let's examine this shit, make the determinations based on the observable, reproducible and falsifiable. and get on with it.

my internet connection didn't come from philosophy, heck even our toilets came from science.

[Guaguanco11]

@monkeyrocketsurgeon "My internet connection didn't come from philosophy" - No, but your computer did. Aristotle invented logic. Philosophers in the early 20th century (especially Frege and Russell) made important improvements on Aristotle's logic and developed what is known as 'classical logic'. In the 1930's Alan Turing, a mathematician, used this newly developed logic to work out the basics of computing. Without logic there would be no computers.

[ItsameAlex]

@Ician100

Are you sexually unattractive?

[kahminsens]

That was a lovely introduction to Simon Blackburn.

[TheAlphaBaron]

scientism for the lost I'll put my ethical foundation on people how actually believe in God so we don't revert back to moral relativism

[twooffour]

@TheAlphaBaron

Well, the ethics of people who "believe in God" (as well as the ethics of God himself, it seems) go all the way from tyranny and bloodshed to democracy and peacefulness.

So take your pick. Just don't be relative about it!

[cuevasdecamuy]

I think this debate can have either answer depending on how you define science

[Sianburst]

Interesting! Think I'll round this off by going to the beer and getting a fridge.

[cutis1000]

I still wouldn't equate Christianity with Buddhism as Blackburn suggests. Christian suffering relates to man's rejection of god. Buddhism suffering relates to man's excessive desire and/or attachment to things and the material world. It's different. And Buddhism's sole purpose is on the reduction or elimination of suffering. That's not what Christianity is about at all. 

[panther451]

Just to clarify -- none of my posts were removed. The misunderstanding is my fault, and I have apologized to the video poster. By the way, this is a great video.

[panther451]

Yo, why was my post removed? That's stupid; it had a bunch of thumps up. So much for a sensible YouTube discourse; not that I should be surprised really.

[nondescriptman]

@panther451 if you think you had a post removed, which is not the case, why don't you enlighten us and repost it?

[Antifaschist99]

I don't think Blackburn has crushed Harris's point. Everything he did was discrediting neuroscience by stating that it could not determine real happiness. But that remains to be proven.

I also disagree with Harris. As is the case with virtually every theory of morality, the problem lies in legitimating it. I do agree with Sam that it is possible for neuroscience to determine what an individual should do for his/her own well-being, but justifying a longing for everyone's well-being is difficult.

[panther451]

@Antifaschist99 Neuroscience (facts) *inform* our values but don't determine them. Suppose research found that I am highly susceptible to becoming a sex addict. Does that mean I *ought* to be one? No, there is always a gap between facts and values. This is precisely why sociobiology is unsustainable. The fact that some "races" *might* be superior in some fashion or other doesn't license discrimination.

[Mthooz]

Unfortunately this debate is just the first task to complete in the battle against the stupidity of religious moral hubris/idealism. It is a rite of passage! A loss of innocence if you will!

We knew all along that religion could never give us a proper foundation for morality let alone provide us with objective/absolute moral facts/truths! But neither can science!

Once we see this and move on it will be one small step for secular morality, though still one giant leap for secularism in the US!

[Mthooz]

@soyousay18 Blackburn like most informed philosophers who have been educated in metaethics understands how hard it is to discover moral FACTS or moral TRUTHS in the same way that we discover "scientific" facts/truths. The reason is because "moral/evaluative facts" are not the same KIND of "facts" as scientific facts! Clearly there is NO SUCH THING!

However, we can ALL (including Blackburn) desire to help others to flourish. We dont need "moral facts/truths" to be scientific/objective for this.

[jst1g]

@soyousay18 Blackburn's an anti-realist about morality. That's right. But he's not the type of anti-realist who takes the "Screw everything!" or "Everything is permissible!" attitude. That's a different kind of view that Blackburn doesn't accept.

[panther451]

Blackburn is not a relativist; he's an ethical minimalist. He clearly states in the panel discussion that it is very "easy to see when things are going very badly." I lament that his well-articulated message has alluded you.

[TomFynn]

Finally! A debate about ethics, morals and science, where *all* participants have something genuinely interesting to say and you don't have to suffer the usual white noise from the religionists.

[OrderoftheWhiteHand]

Blackburn is a beast,

[panther451]

Sam Harris is brilliant, and I always enjoy listening to him. He speaks and writes with such clarity...it's inspiring. But I'm afraid I must join the chorus of philosophers here and say that Blackburn has pretty much destroyed Sam's specific treatise on science providing us definitive moral answers; I believe it is called "pwnage" in internet jargon. Am I correct?

[jonnykzj]

@panther451

How did we get to know that philosphers x,y,z were most probably right in the 1st place? IT was coz of our ADVANCEMENT IN SCIENCE i.e. by using the scientific method. Without that we couldnt be that sure. So Sam is as right as ever here and so is no.5. ALSO Sam talks abt a MORAL SPETRUM, NOT THERE BEING ONE DEFINITIVE ABSOLUTE MORAL STANDARD. Just like use science to say determine which medication is better given the circumstances, it can do the same for moral actions in a situation

[panther451]

@jonnykzj It's called the Naturalistic Fallacy. 

[wilthiswork]

@panther451 Yes, you are correct.

[NUGNESS123]

@panther451 yeah at least sam harris has something interesting to put forward to think about. 

[ryanruns]

@panther451 Correction: pseudo-philosophers

[panther451]

@ryanruns If Simon Blackburn is a pseudo-philosopher, I would graciously accept such a label to be at Cambridge and discuss moral philosophy for a living.

[ryanruns]

@panther451 "I must join the chorus of philosophers here" reads to me as the pseudo-philosophers of YouTube. There weren't a "chrous" of philosophers on the panel.

[panther451]

@ryanruns I'm afraid I don't see where you are going with this. You seem highly interested in semantics and ad hominems, which I don't really find engaging at this point.

[ryanruns]

@panther451 It wasn't that complicated... well, at least for an average guy like myself. Perhaps you are too much of an intellectual to grasp the simple things.

[ItsameAlex]

@panther451

No man, you're just not smat enough to see that sam harris is clearly correct.

[panther451]

@ItsameAlex It seems rather presumptuous to be attacking my intelligence (in fact, I have a very high IQ).

[sjestudio]

You can't separate beliefs from desires. You know the world the way you desire it.

The system of adversarial justice is predicated on that assumption. Prosecutors and defense attorneys are paid factotums, paid to be biased.

On gender: A man could not have written Pride and Prejudice.

Also "orientate" isn't a word yet is it?

[jst1g]

@sjestudio Folks from the U.K. more often use "orientate." Folks from the U.S. more often use "orient."

Also, I don't desire to be broke, but I know I am. It seems like there's a separation between what I want and what I believe.

[Vic333]

@KripkeSaul

"Funny how retards like you always start ad hominem attacks."

This is the funniest thing I've read all day. I hope it was on purpose, but I fear it was not.

[danielfact]

Simon Blackburn ruined it when he said "I'm glad they do"...

[jplennon630]

...throwing words out like "circular" and "straw man." I am beginning to think that you do not really understand the meaning of these words. Perhaps you ought to take a Philosophy 101 course and then get back to me.

[jplennon630]

...religious person. It seems that if ethics describes how we ought to live, Harris believes that there is a knowable fact about how we ought to live. That undermines the complexity of moral dilemmas. "You might as well say 'how do we know anything is actually real?'" I'm not sure what prompted you to say this. Blackburn and Singer recognize that moral problems ought to be considered carefully, within their contexts. This is is the opposite of your charge of "getting you nowhere." You keep...

[jonnykzj]

@jplennon630

NO Sam doesnt say tht there is ANY ABSOLUTES FOR in sciencce we do NOT have any absolutes. He talks abt thetre being A SPECTRUM of right and wrong and that only by applying the scientific method can we determined WHICH IS MORE RIGHT OR MORE WRONG IN ANY GIVEN SITUATION. Neuroscience is a great PART in finding tht but not the only field where scientific research can be applied in order to determine morality as defined by wht maximizes benefit to cosncious beings.

[jplennon630]

...to these facts: do we resign ourselves to them? Or do we see them as charging us with the ethical task of helping others that are less fortunate? Harris has a brilliant scientific mind, and I support his current research, as the more we know scientifically, the better we can inform our moral decision making. By extending this absolutist mindset to ethics, however, he believes that there is a real, absolute, definitive conception of right and wrong - which sounds just like a devout religious..

[MrDarkbloom]

@KripkeSaul Stupid how???

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

why help africans because it makes us feel good ?? sad but true Simon

[KripkeSaul]

@FIGHTFANNERD3 Grow up comic geek. Take a couple of philosophy classes and you will see that not only is there nothing new to Harris, he is also utterly stupid. Funny how retards like you always start ad hominem attacks. As for Blackburn, he is probably the most intelligent on the whole panel. But wait, delving into philosophy means reading books and I can assure you that most of them do NOT contain pictures of muscular men kids liek you admire so much....

[drewlpuddle]

@KripkeSaul ...I'm deeply saddened that anyone liked this. The poster just took part in an action which (s)he admonished.

[KripkeSaul]

@drewlpuddle Liked what?

[jplennon630]

...case is wrong to tell lies? White lies? My point here is that moral problems are complicated - they exist in contexts. Phrases like "the moral landscape" or "the continuum of possible experience" are abstractions that take how we really live, how we handle ethical issues out of these contexts. It would be very strange to take our enormous plurality of values and reduce it to fact - the notion that some absolute, universal "answer" could emerge from this is an illusion.

[jonnykzj]

@jplennon630

NOBODY is arguing for any ABSOLUTES. Science NEVER advocates absolutes on any issue. BUT science can provide the answer for a most likely best possible moral action UNDER SPECIFIC CONDITIONS n as we advance using the scientific mehtod will make us delve into more n more details n get more answers to wht to do in ever more situations.

[jplennon630]

...is thinking of morality in these factual, absolutist terms that sounds like a pretty "definitive conception of moral truth" to me. An actual, absolute answer to a moral problem holds no meaning for us, as there is no context for it. Indeed, what would such a truth look like? Could we find an absolute answer to the question of whether or not deer hunting is unethical? How about an absolutely correct stance on abortion? Could one be found that tells us that univerisally, in every case...

[jplennon630]

...considering moral truth. Blackburn posits the more attractive view in his recognition of the complexities of our ethical dilemmas. By adopting a more minimalist conception of ethical truths, both he and Singer show that anyone purporting to be able to find moral answers is failing to grasp just exactly what that would entail.

[jplennon630]

...both espouse a similar view - that there is some fact of the matter regarding moral truth, facts that we can know. As Blackburn notes, this way of thinking is an illusion. In presupposing science as the correct method of inquiry for finding ethical truth, Harris and Krauss appear to set themselves up for failure - it is odd to assume that we will one day have actual answers for what is right and wrong, and such seems hopeless. Perhaps we would do better to abandon this way of considering...

[MrDarkbloom]

@jplennon630 I'm sorry, but what you're advocating is, in real world terms, is pointless and to the point of being intellectually dishonest. It's the old 'science can't prove science argument' again and again which will get you nowehere. You might as well say 'how do we know anything is actually real?". Redundant and circular... this obsfucation results and a real world failiure of compassion for people suffering NOW. Is this your moral justification not to take more action to help people???

[jplennon630]

@MrDarkbloom I'm afraid you have failed to understand my position if you equate it with the saying "science can't prove science." I have no qualms with being an absolutist about science - that it can and does tell us very real, definitive facts about the world. I believe Blackburn and Singer are in agreement that science is right when it comes to describing the world as it is. However, it does not tell us how the world ought to be. Ethics enters the picture when we consider how to respond to...

[jonnykzj]

@jplennon630

As i said we will answers EVER INCREASING IN ACCURACY. science never claims to have any absolute truth nor is it likely that we will using it but itd always give us the best possible answer at any time it's used in comparison to any other known method.

[jplennon630]

“I’m afraid ethics is – and remains – a very difficult subject, and it’s a complete illusion to suppose that science will give us all the answers.” Blackburn's final comments subtly shows the biggest flaw in Harris' and Krauss' views. Assuming that science can give a knowable, definitive answer to moral quandaries is presupposing an absolutist, fact-of-the-matter method of inquiry. It is ironic that Harris holds such a definitive conception of moral truth, as Christianity and Islam both...

[MrDarkbloom]

@jplennon630 Straw man after straw man. Harris has stated many times science is NOT guaranteed to give us all the answers to moral questions. He is also uses 'science' in the broader sense of honest and rigorous enquiry and observation. Harris doesn't hold a "defintive conception of moral truth" - listen to him talk about a moral landscape. You are misunderstanding just about every important point here.

[jplennon630]

@MrDarkbloom I apologize for not being clearer in my posts. Harris' apparent concession that science cannot give us all of the answers to our moral dilemmas is not an adequate response to my objection, as it it precisely statements like this - statements that presuppose that there could ever be some "answer" to any given moral problem - that indicate how his position is problematic. It is Harris' entire framework of moral thought that I criticize. He claims that "values reduce to facts." It is..

[MrDarkbloom]

@jplennon630 Values DO reduce to facts about the universe. Some kinds of moral dilemmas may never find suitable solutions - just like Sam has said over and over. The fact that clearly many of our moral questions CAN be assagued by appeals to proper scientific enquiry is obvious.

[redetrigan]

@MrDarkbloom

1. You need to distinguish between "facts about the universe" and the sorts of facts that science has access to (i.e. empirical facts). Plenty of moral realists will agree that there are moral "facts" without agreeing with Harris.

2. Harris appears to take for granted the truth of Utilitarianism. If that's true, then obviously science will inform moral judgments; no one denies this. But what science won't settle is the question of whether Utilitarianism is the correct doctrine.

[MrDarkbloom]

@redetrigan I'm sorry, but what you're advocating is, in real world terms, is pointless and actually intellectually dishonest. It's the old 'science can't prove science argument' again and again which will get you nowehere. You might as well say 'how do we know anything is actually real?". Redundant and circular... this obsfucation results and a real world failiure of compassion for people suffering NOW. Is this your moral justification not to take more action to help people??? A strawman decoy?

[MrDarkbloom]

Mr Harris needs to properly debate and school Mr Balckburn as he doesn't seem to understand what Mr Harris is actually saying. Have you actually listened to Sam talking about the moral landscape??? You're throwing up strawmen - making out that a lot of stuff disagrees with Harris, when he has spoken at length about all of this and has good points on everything.

[johan3248]

@MrDarkbloom How come so many people like or dislike people and not what they are saying? What is the problem if they actually agree? If there are winners or losers, it should be the ideas and not the people.

Sure it is nice to get rid of god, but not so nice to replace him with a man and keep worshipping. One would still remain under an authority.

[jplennon630]

@MrDarkbloom @MrDarkbloom I'm afraid I don't see how Blackburn is committing a straw man fallacy here. The issue being discussed is "whether or not science can tell us right from wrong." Harris provided his stance on the issue, and now Blackburn provides his stance. Blackburn is not responding to Harris. As such, there is no misrepresenting of Harris' argument by Blackburn. Blackburn disagreeing with Harris is not a problem; they're on opposing sides of the issue. This seems to me quite obvious.

[dhfjal]

definitely the best talk of them all

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

@dhfjal no not realy

[chyckenfeet]

well, he's right about not really being a motivational speaker. maybe he'd be better if he went to the beer and had a few fridges first