24. Panel: This is Your Brain on Morality - Beyond Belief 2008

With Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Jonathan Glover, Marco Iacoboni, and Patricia Churchland moderated by Roger Bingham.

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This is from the Beyond Belief 2008 conference "Candles in the Dark." As the last installment of the Beyond Belief conferences, these videos address the most pressing topics of a society that truly aims at secularism at its core. Everything from human flourishing to politics are discussed at lengths by many of the greatest living minds.

The Science Network owns the rights to these videos (and I believe they can be found somewhere on Google Video as well), so if anyone should wish me to take these down, I will. I have released them here in order to provide these lectures with a broad audience. If you enjoyed these, please consider donating to The Science Network who made them possible: http://thesciencenetwork.org/membership

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[brindlebriar]

@Nojintt Yes, I think you've got it. Just to make sure I didn't miss anything, you agree with everything I wrote and decided re-state some of it your own words as well as to re-state what Sam said in the video. However, I think you failed to re-state the most important point, which is that Sam's solution is purly semantical. He proposes only to re-define "morality" to something more conducive to measurement, so that we can measure "it."

[Nojintt]

@Nojintt Third, there is a "right," which is truth. A lion can be wrong; he could think that there's danger but there's not, he was wrong. A person can be right or wrong too. Fourth, science does not directly make 'ought to' statements, but it does make 'if you want to do this, then you ought to do that.' For example, "if you want to live longer, then you ought to stop smoking." Sam Harris wants to be able to scientifically state "if you want to be moral, then you ought to..."

[Nojintt]

@brindlebriar First, science does not use the definition of "good" (or conversely "evil"). Second, the psychopath stating that they are happy could be speaking the truth. Scientists could make a hypothesis on this, since happiness is a construct within psychology. They could test it just as they could test whether someone is lying (which is often very hard). A psychopath stating that they are *moral* is currently something science can not answer. This is the area that Sam Harris wants to change.

[Nojintt]

@enlightendbel He believes in an empirical "happiness" as a neurologist; remember, that is his field of study. So instead of asking people to do some introspection (which has low validity), he'd rather look at what is happening in the brain (through EEG, MRI, etc.). The problem here is that right now it is tough (especially to get a large sample, or experiments that represent real life), but the point is that it is not impossible (and thus it exists). Surveys are far easier, but sloppy.

[brindlebriar]

But the dirty secret is that the psychopath is just as right, and knows it. If science defines, measures and augments happiness, it is yet a matter of opinion that happiness is 'good.' If you point out that almost everybody thinks it is, you have only discovered majority opinion, which is all, I think, science can discover about morality. The truth is what every lion in the jungle was born knowing: you don't need to be right, because there IS no right; you just want to win, so you try.

[brindlebriar]

It seems to me, though I favor the pursuit of a scientifc discovery of the nature of human happiness, and the subsquent development of a moral code we could all agree upon, to eliminate inter-group enmity, nevertheless, I doubt there is a morality to discover. It has to be created, proposed, and then accepted or rejected as contract by each individual, which is more or less what happens with religion already. The primary difference is faith in the competence of scientists rathern than a deity.

[enlightendbel]

Hrm, surveys about "are you happy" are not valid evidence if they are based on testimony by the surveyed. And all of them are because, as Sam Harris shows, there is no objective way to define happiness (yet), what he wants is to make this supposed empirical evidence actually empirical by researching what this happyness actually is.

Furthermore the "The Matrix" concept comes in here, Is being happy by living in an Illusion better then being slightly less happy by living in reality?

[Schutzstaffel23]

thanks for posting this. very good stuff here. more people need to come to this.