Re: Do some survival instincts conflict with Social Evolution of Humans
Reply #68 - January 19, 2011, 01:29 AM
Some of the problems I have with Sam Harris' idea:
- Like I said, the very definition of morality as being what's best for the majority of people is itself not inherent in what morality is; it's a definition that certain people give to the term. I believe it was Richard Dawkins who, while saying he supports Harris' idea, admitted that it relies on a huge assumption on what is morality. Therefore, any values derived from this definition cannot be called objective; they're dependent on the point of view given to you through your definition.
- Harris shows an audience a picture of women wearing burkas next to one of women wearing bikinis and from there concludes that there's absolute morality, but the audience itself is subjective. Had he presented his images to a largely Muslim audience, the reaction would've been different.
- Science by its very nature is an abstract generalization, a model. It does not take individuals into account other than as statistical figures, and there are bound to be deviations in any collection of data. For example, if what Harris says becomes true and scientists become able to find out what makes people happy, do you really think it's likely that they're going to find that it's the same for every single person? If so, do you believe we should ban things that we find make people unhappy? Suppose we took a sample of a thousand women, do you think in every single one of them we're going to find, for example, that bikinis make them happier than burkas? That seems quite unlikely, because surely there are women who would rather cover up. But even if in the unlikely event that we find every single woman in the sample would indeed be happier wearing a bikini than a burka, do you suppose that can be generalized to every woman in society?
- Sam Harris' idea put in practice will simply be a scientific approach to utilitarianism, which is very oppressive: it puts the aggregate, social good above the individual good and as such neglects the individual. As the famous saying goes, "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." And we need to stop looking at people as statistics, as "millions" and start looking at them as individuals, each and every one of them. Giving people a statistic, a certain value, that's the cause of everything wrong in the modernist age: sweatshop labour, poverty, famine, war, genocide.... Admittedly, some people are given a higher value than others, but even if we were all given the exact value, we would still be dots in a chart, and if we didn't fit with the majority, we will be neglected, trodden upon. Every person has infinite value, so every person is as valuable as every other person put together. A society that oppresses even one person continues to be unjust.
- The very conception of his idea relies on the modernist notion that things are divided into binaries, in this case, good vs. bad. But is there really a definite good and a definite bad? Can you say that if every woman used reason, she would see that wearing a burka is definitely bad? Do you really believe in pure reason, and that certain people use reason and reason alone in coming up with their moral decisions? Do cultures and influences not play a huge role? The concept of absolute knowledge relies on the belief that through reason people's beliefs will converge and thus there will be a certainty, we will find out what is True, because something that every single person agrees upon has to be True. But so far there doesn't seem to have been any sort of consensus, partially because it's impossible for anyone to not be influenced by anything other than reason.
- I'm not saying I don't believe some people are more free than others, but like I said previously, that itself relies on my own subjective definition of what is morality, and it also relies on my own subjective cultural influences, etc.
- I'm not by any means opposed to science and reason, but they need to be put in their place, and their place is not the seat of government. And don't you think it's a bad idea to put science in the hands of the powerful? I think we know what happens when scientists start having vested financial and political interests: think of the manufactured "controversy" over global warming due to corporations funding science. What makes you so sure that if science were given so much power, scientists aren't going to be corrupted? Governments will likely use the argument of science to pass whatever they desire and will make sure that science is on their side.
Topic: Do some survival instincts conflict with Social Evolution of Humans