I have now been asked my opinion on Sam Harris’ talk, ‘Science can answer moral questions’ (TED talk, Feb 2010), so often that I can no longer withhold it without losing serious face.
Harris’ core idea is not new, although it may be packaged to appear like it is. The basic form of his argument is that of Utilitarianism, in that ‘during moral decision making, something gets maximized’. Accordingly, many of the arguments that can be brought to bear against Utilitarianism can be leveled against Harris’ model.
But what is it that gets maximized? This is one major problem. Using the analogy of Harris’ ethical landscape, what determines the ‘evil’ depths of valleys, the ‘virtuous’ heights of mountain summits? And, more importantly, what is the decision to use a particular measure (‘happiness’/’utility’/’human wellbeing’) grounded on?
Take for instance Harris’ wild exclamation: “Why is it that we don’t have ethical obligations towards rocks?” Don’t we? You see, Harris wants to normalize his ethical landscape with humans as the measure. But how did he come to decide on this particular weighting? And how to determine how, for instance, Argentinian army ants weigh in vis-à -vis anopheles spp. mosquitoes?
Also, Harris understates the importance of knowledge. You see, for his system to find application, we first need to know what the landscape looks like. But as pointed out by G. E. Moore over a century ago, this involves very difficult, usually impossible, predictions about future consequences.
Lastly, it needs to be said that Harris’ talk was unnecessarily inflammatory, and did not paint a fair and representative picture of opposing viewpoints, not to mention Islamic culture [as if there were such a unified thing].
