How Science Can Give Us Morality – Sam Harris

1:24:22 The answer to Harris's objection to O'Connor's supposedly psychotic use of the term 'preference' to refer to such an extreme circumstance is the same answer he gave in response to the objection to his use of such a casual term as 'well-being' to refer to the highest peaks and lowest depths of conscious experience.

This is Ti vs Te

Alex o Connor has rubbed off on him

I'm with Sam. When we get down to the fundamentals of anything we require some assumptions or axioms and then we can build the entire picture from that. It doesn't discredit the scientific approach to ethics enough by parroting "you can't get an ought from an is" just as Sam point out that it doesn't discredit all of physics by stating that arithmetic is built off of unproven axioms.

Also if we consider pragmatism and societies this is essentially what we're living with. People just recognise that it's cruel to burn others and we have laws against doing this. You may say that this is just emotivism but it's not because there are stark issues with emotivism and a good example is that of proximity. We feel more emotionally affected by those we can see, the classic drowning girl in a pond that we're walking past compared to a starving girl on the other side of the world. The emotivism may argue that it's more important to save the one we see but it's quite clear that if one is worth saving then both are worth saving.

Emotivism just doesn't quite cut it.

subjective Sam!

Nothing will be more ironic to me than after years of mocking meditating, learning I've been meditating for years. I hate that I know that now.

Because this generation is a joke and a meme (dont know what meme is exactly) wouldnt expect anything more

There is a thing labeled as the philosophy of domains that can take the place of all laws and adjust ethics to a decision value that is the healthiest and least criminal quality. It is known by scientists as "identities" involved in reaction set theory. We only need one law and one ethic and that is the philosophy of domains. It can be learned by anyone as easily as arithmetic. An example is the description of personal liberty as anything that can be contained to the individual person and not effecting another person or other persons property is allowed as that persons personal choice.

I lost respect for sam in this tbh.

Sam Harris’s “ethics is objective” claim boils down to smuggling in one subjective axiom—“maximize conscious well-being”—then slapping “scientific objectivity” on top.
There is no “good” or “ought” in physics; only neurons, dopamine, valence. Science can measure well-being gradients, but it can’t prove why we must maximize that specific function.
If our brains were wired to peak on rape, genocide or slavery, Harris’s system would call those objectively good too. The choice of goal is arbitrary.
He begs the question: assumes everyone already wants his axiom, calls dissenters psychopaths, and calls it objectivity. It’s clever rhetoric, not logic.
If every conscious being in the universe loved ice cream, "ice cream is delicious" would still not be an objective fact.
It would just be a universal subjective preference.
It's strong utilitarianism claiming objectivity without bridging the is-ought gap

43:37 i'll tell you exactly when and how this moment will happen: when every person in the west starts reading up on what ukrainians did in odessa in 2014

Alex admired and loved Harris even before meeting him and he has read all his books. Thank you for this wonderful interview ❤

I’d like to take a stab at challenging this, but I’d like to start by saying that I really enjoyed listening to your argument.

I also want to acknowledge that in order for my claim that morality is objective, the objectivity only apply to human. I believe that there are absolute “shoulds” and “should nots” for us humans that prioritizes humans as a whole.

The basis for my claim is that objective morality is grounded in biology. All living organisms are programmed to survive through replication/reproduction. In essence, every for of life has been “programmed” to continue.

That said, nature is imperfect, and 99.9% of species have gone extinct; Even though the program is designed to continue through replication, the genetic code is flawed. Even if it were perfect, it wouldn’t be enough to survive a world-ending asteroid. Even the species left the planet in time, then what.

Still, all life is programmed to survive; not as an individual (we die), but as a species.

This exposes my bias, but I see no other option as a human. Perhaps that makes me a specist (spell check?).

The objectivity of my claim is in the biological human objective, not determined by the individual human, to survive.

The measure of should/should not is determined by the effects that actions taken either contribute or work against that goal of human continuation.

I grant that many (maybe most) actions/choices are subjective insofar as they’re not known. But if you accept that human morality is grounded in our biological programming, we can say that the decision to simultaneously detonate all of the nuclear bombs, resulting in the extinction of human, this is objectively…”bad”.

Longterm effects of choices are not always so clear as the example given, but there are consequences that work towards or against our human goal. We can only do our best to predict the outcome that will follow. But with so many variables, we will get things wrong. The objective rights and wrongs exist, but that doesn’t mean they’re always known.

How did I do!? Either way, it’s been fun.

Sam's old, debunked, futile attempt and philosophical incoherent of moral objectivity through science is not only philosophically unprofessional, but if actually applied in any kind, is empirically extremely dangerous and would end up in a catastrophe and logically even nonscientific.

he can't move on because he wrote a book.

There is no objective morality, full stop
you can just choose religion. in fact, Sam has become a cult following, Sam being severally intellectually dishonest

18:40 "If we have any Duty in this world it must be to avoid the worst possible misery for everyone"
Answer: See "I have no mouth and I must scream" book. I highly argue, that is the worst possible scenerio–of literally any scenario.
Reasons being: all lifeforms (5 of them) suffer eternal hell. The last one (spoiler) to survive has no mouth and cannot breathe for eternity. If consciousness is experience, and if HE is the only one with a vantage point in the universe, and if time is linear (the past no longer exists. and therefore people in the past no longer feel). Then by mere fact the last man to suffer hell is the only one to experience, then consciousness all points to him: and his eternal suffering. There, I answered your guys question.

The fatal flaw with the moral landscape is that Sam allows his personal bias to corrupt the definition of objective. That breaks any scientific rigor in the theory, Sam winds up defining subjective things objective, and you just have mental masterbation.
The key to this whole thing is a strict rigorous devotion to the definition of objective and never violate it. Even if violating it makes you seem like a nice guy, never violate it

Objective morality is an oxymoron. You cannot argue morals are objective unless you change the definition of objective. That is not allowed .
Jesus how much time do academics sit around thinking about this shit. Y'all need to double check the definition of objective and start again. Hint: there is nothing at all I objective about a subjective thought. Something objective has existence and scientifically provable properties outside your mind. Period. Full stop.
Winston Churchill called. He said "actually I was thinking about Taylor Swift tickets".
– the fact that the stove will burn you is the objective part. How you react to it it the subjective part. Preventing your hand from burning is not a moral value, it's just that the stove is f*cking hot!!! More of an instinct than anything else.
– Not burning your kids hand for fun is a moral value.; and subjective
– just because you don't know about an objective truth it is still objective.
– whether Atlantis exists or not is an objective fact, just because you don't know the answer doesn't change that
– define wellbeing any way you like, it's subjective. It only exists in your mind nowhere else. Do all the academic backflips you want. It's subjective.
– your happiness is subjective. Whether your kid is being tortured in the next room is objective. You are getting confused when conflating objective and subjective statements in the same thought.
– 1+1 is always 2. It must be. It is not possible that it be anything else. It is objective. If something is good not evil, or right not wrong, or better not worse, DOES NOT MAKE IT OBJECTIVE . It's still only exists in your mind.
– think about objective moral values this way. If they were objective, you would not be capable of violating it. There isn't a moral value ever thought of that you could not violate . Therefore moral values are not objective.

Alex doing the same shit as Jordan Peterson bro what is this

Isn't "Objective Morality" an oxymoron? Morality, is mind-dependent, context-sensitive, and assessed through principles, values, and perspective while Objective implies fixed, universal, mind-independent truth. It tries to attach universality to something that is inherently dependent on human assessment.

Morality isn't some list of Do's and Don'ts. It's a collection of principles by which a person see the world through and assess whether something is right or wrong. In fact, you aren't practicing morality if you just blindly follow something without assessing it. That's conforming not evaluation.

Maximum Well-Being is too nuanced to set a fixed method of reaching it. Focusing only on the outcome (Maximum Well-being) can justify morally questionable ways of attaining it.

1:13:00 the everyone becomes a Bible reading and following Christian button

🤨 Throughout the hole show

People do intentionally amputate their limbs for the pure sensation of the pleasure of pain!!…
..

I can't but give Alex the winning hand, his British accent is just too convincing