Sam Harris and the Moral Landscape

Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is several years old at this point but is still generating controversy. Ross Douthat's recent take on it is here. For my part,  Harris is worth reading because of the straightforward, transparent manner in which he argues his case; Harris is an honest atheist and sincerely wishes to rationally persuade his audience. He also has a certain philosophical naivete, such that he does not always perceive the philosophical consequences of his positions, consequences that atheists have long struggled to avoid. I think this latter aspect of Harris's writing accounts for the not quite friendly response he has gotten from some secular reviewers. But more on this later.

Harris has issued a challenge to critics, offering a cash award for the best criticism of his book and an even larger cash award if that criticism persuades him. (Given that Harris is by definition the judge of the latter, it's not too much of a leap to suppose that prize is in no danger of being won.) I might submit an essay to this challenge just to see what happens. If I do, the essay will run along ideas like the following.

Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape acknowledges a fundamental challenge to his attempt to determine human values through science: If it is through science that human values are to be determined, how is the value of science itself to be determined? Harris recognizes the only possible answer: Science cannot  determine its own value, so that value must be recognized pre-scientifically:

Science is defined with reference to the goal of understanding the processes at work in the universe. Can we justify this goal scientifically? Of course not. Does this make science itself unscientific? If so, we appear to have pulled ourselves down by our bootstraps. (p. 17 - all references to paperback edition)

In the chapter "The Future of Happiness", he argues in this way:

It seems to me, however, that in order to fulfill our deepest interests in this life, both personally and collectively, we must first admit that some interests are more defensible than others. Indeed, some interests are so compelling that they need no defense at all. (p. 191)

The interest of finding truth through science is, of course, the principal interest Harris has in mind. In the Afterword to the paperback edition, Harris puts the matter in a way that makes the philosophical implications clear:

The fatal flaw that Blackford claims to have found in my view of morality could be ascribed to any branch of science - or to reason generally. Certain "oughts" are built right into the foundations of human thought. We need not apologize for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps in this way. It is better than pulling ourselves down by them. (p.201-202, emphasis mine)

The italicized sentence is the one that will cause heartache in Harris's secular critics, for although Harris appears not to know it,  it is a foundational principle of traditional natural law philosophy, something modern philosophers have been hoping to discredit since the Enlightenment. Indeed, the typical modern philosopher thinks natural law philosophy was discredited at the dawn of the Enlightenment with the "discovery" of the fact-value distinction. This is why Harris's secular critics sometimes, like Colin McGinn, simply repeat the fact-value distinction and think they are done - for the fact-value distinction is a foundational principle of modern philosophy and functions as something of a litmus test. Denying it serves to identify oneself as one of those naive pre-modern philosophers who still believes in things like the natural law, and therefore may be justifiably and summarily dismissed (which is what McGinn does).

As I say, one of the attractive features of Harris is his relative philosophical innocence with respect to the larger philosophical battles waging around him. He simply calls things as he sees them, and does not hedge his views or couch them in obscurity for the sake of broader philosophical consequences. In this case, Harris acknowledges what is obviously true, that there are certain values (certain "oughts") that are self-evident to human reason and need no other justification. He does this because he sees the self-evident value of scientific inquiry. What he doesn't see (which his secular critics recognize with horror) is how much of modern philosophy is undermined, and classical philosophy affirmed, with that simple acknowledgement.

For starters, the Kantian project is shown to be misguided. For Kant's premise is that nothing can be truly known without a prior evaluation of the range of human reason - a "critique" of reason that defines its powers and limits. But if the value of something (in this case science) can be immediately known absent a prior critique, then the Kantian project is shown to be unnecessary and even counter-productive, since it may result in the obscuring of truth that can be immediately known yet might not survive a critique.

Harris doesn't see that the consequentialism he favors - and is popular amongst modern philosophers - is put in danger by acknowledgement of fundamental natural law principle:

Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all questions of value (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.) depend upon the possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequences at the level of experience - happiness, suffering, joy, despair, etc. - all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of conscious creatures (whether actual or potential). (p. 62)

But Harris has already given us an instance of where the talk of value without respect to potential consequences is not empty: Talk about the value of science itself, which is based on an "ought" built into the foundations of human thought, not demonstrated via its consequences. Given that Harris acknowledges the existence of at least one pre-consequentialist "ought", he must acknowledge the possibility that there might be others (maybe there isn't, but the possibility can't simply be dismissed without investigation). And if there are other pre-consequentialist "oughts", they must be discovered and understood and consequentialist conclusions evaluated in light of them rather than vice-versa.

Another way of saying the point is this: Harris recognizes that "certain oughts are built right into the foundations of human thought." He has in mind the value of science. We "ought" to prefer truth to falsehood and science is the best way of distinguishing between the two. His project is to recognize the value of science pre-scientifically, then use science to bootstrap a comprehensive theory of good and evil. All well and good.

But he fails to see certain consequences of this view. The first is that it is clear that the most important values are the ones known pre-scientifically, for it is on the pre-scientific value of science itself that Harris's whole project is based. All other values stand or fall on it. The second consequence is that there may be other pre-scientific values other than the value of science itself, other "oughts" built right into the foundations of human thought. Simply because Harris only recognizes the value of science and simply ignores any other possible pre-scientific values does not mean that they are not there (and, incidentally, violates Harris's oft-stated distinction between "no answers in practice" and "no answers in principle" p.  3)

It is no good to critique other possible pre-scientific values based on the results of Harris's scientific inquiry into morality: For those other potential pre-scientific values compete with science at the level of science's own value. To take the value of science for granted, then evaluate other potential pre-scientific values in light of science's conclusions, is simply to beg the question against other pre-scientific values that might compete with the value of science. Those other candidate's for value must be evaluated the same way the value of science was: Pre-scientifically.

What I have been just discussing exposes a typical misunderstanding of natural law philosophy found in writers like, well, Sam Harris. Traditional opposition to things like abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage and contraception comes in for rough treatment by Harris in The Moral Landscape, where he writes as though his scientific morality case against traditional views is conclusive almost before he states it. What he doesn't understand is that his case for his scientific morality on those questions begs the question against traditional natural law opposition to them: For that natural law opposition operates at the level of pre-scientific value, "oughts" built right into the foundation of human thought itself, and is susceptible to criticism of the "scientific morality" sort only to the extent that the question is begged.
The natural law opposition may be opposed, but it must be done in the same way that the pre-scientific value of science was defended - not through science, but a philosophical case.

The irony of Harris's project, an irony that I think his modernist critics recognize and want to distance themselves from, is that to the extent Harris is right he must leave off the scientific criticism of the things he most wants to attack (traditional moral views on matters sexual and life-related) and fight them on the traditionalists own turf in the arena of natural law. For the game is all about those pre-scientific values - by Harris's own account the most important ones - that he acknowledges exist but modern philosophers have been struggling to banish to the realm of mythology since the sixteenth century.

The Moral Landscape is, I think, a case of needing to be careful what you wish for.

I will have more to say about Harris's book and its relation to traditional thinking on morality in subsequent posts.

Dennis Prager and the Natural Law

Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly, thinks that religion doesn't provide us with a true moral compass. Dennis Prager responds to Richard Dawkins's at National Review here.

Unfortunately, Prager's argument undermines itself. He seems to favor some version of a divine command theory of morality: "To put this as clearly as possible: If there is no God who says, 'Do not murder,' murder is not wrong." He then goes on to denigrate reason in its quest to discover the nature of good and evil:

So, then, without God, why is murder wrong?

         Is it, as Dawkins argues, because reason says so?

My reason says murder is wrong, just as Dawkins's reason does. But, again, so what? The pre-Christian Germanic tribes of Europe regarded the Church's teaching that murder was wrong as preposterous. They reasoned that killing innocent people was acceptable and normal because the strong should do whatever they wanted. In addition, reason alone without God is pretty weak in leading to moral behavior. When self-interest and reason collide, reason usually loses. That's why we have the word 'rationalize' - using reason to argue for what is wrong.

The question naturally arises as to why Prager is writing the article at all. If reason is little more than rationalization, and if reason loses when it collides with self-interest, who is the intended audience? Those who already agree with Prager need no convincing, and those who don't won't be convinced by his arguments - since they will rationalize in favor of their self-interest. The only point of writing an article in the first place is if reason, at least sometimes, can overcome self-interest and rationalization and apprehend the truth. To the extent that Dawkins believes this more than does Prager, I'm on the side of Dawkins.

I wonder if Prager has thought through his divine command theory of morality. The natural law view is that God wrote morality into the very fabric of the universe; it isn't something he later pasted on with the Ten Commandments. (Was murder okay before God announced its immorality on Sinai?)  Murder is wrong because it is the nature of rational creatures to be ends in themselves; it is true that God is ultimately responsible for the creation of this nature, but it is also true that it is possible to reason to the nature of man (to the extent of appreciating him as an end in himself) while failing to reason to the existence of God, or to God as conceived by Judaism and Christianity. If murder is only wrong because God says it is, rather than being written into the nature of man himself, then man can't be an end in himself (otherwise there would be the possibility of reasoning to morality which Prager denies). It would then follow that man may be licitly used as a means (rather than an end in himself) unless God has explicitly spoken against the case in question. Slavery, for instance, is the paradigmatic case of treating a man as a means rather than an end, and it is famously permitted in the Old Testament (as atheists are not shy about pointing out). Neither it is explicitly condemned in the New Testament, although here the case is a little more ambiguous given certain Pauline texts (e.g. the Letter to Philemon). Since God has not explicitly condemned slavery, what is the basis for condemning it? There is either a case founded on reason or there is no case at all.

Generally speaking, God's pronouncements to us are necessarily finite (we can only listen to so much) but the moral life is potentially infinite; it is forever presenting us with novel circumstances and situations. Either we can reason our way to an authentic moral understanding of such novelties, or our divine command version of morality will always be a day late and a dollar short.

Natural Law and the Pro-Life Movement

There is a very well-written open letter to Barack Obama from a Princeton senior on the National Review website. The author, Sherif Girgis, has the audacity of hope that Barack Obama will recognize the right to life of all Americans, including the unborn.

Girgis quotes the Declaration of Independence to the effect that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life." This is a standard appeal in the pro-life movement. Although I agree with the natural law argument against abortion, I don't find the Declaration as straightforward about the right to life as others do. The reason is that we have two competing natural right traditions, and the Declaration is not clear to which tradition it appeals.

One tradition is the "classical natural right" tradition that originates in Plato and is developed by Aristotle, the Stoics, St. Thomas Aquinas, and some modern thinkers like Hooker and Thomas Paine (an excellent, straightforward introduction to classical natural law can be found in Plato's Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law by John Wild.) This tradition finds its basis in nature and what common experience reveals about nature. Briefly, nature reveals itself to be an intelligible organization of dynamic beings. These beings have definite natures that are essentially dynamic and embody specific existential tendencies that they strive to fulfill. A puppy, for example, has a doglike nature and will naturally strive to fulfill its doggy nature. Similarly, man has a definite human nature and he has a natural inclination to fulfill himself as man. The specific difference of man, however, is his rationality; he not only has an end that fulfills him, but he can also rationally perceive that end. This gives man a freedom not granted to other animals. The dog is not aware of his own dogginess and fulfills his nature as a dog as a matter of course. Man, however, is aware of his own nature and it is his nature to fulfill himself through the rationality that is specific to him. He fulfills himself by coming to know his end and the means necessary to acheive it. The natural law refers to the principles that man comes to know as necessary to fulfill his nature. It is called natural both because it refers to the essential tendencies of man's nature and also because man can know it by his natural reason (i.e. without the necessity of revelation.)

One of the things that natural reason reveals is that man is by nature a social animal. It is his nature to live in communion with other men and respect them. This is the basis of justice in natural law and is the foundation of the pro-life natural law argument.

The Declaration of Independence, however, is ambiguous about the source of the rights it asserts. It writes that man is "endowed by his Creator" with certain unalienable rights. Now it is obvious that man is endowed with eyes, ears, hands, and a mind, whether we wish to say the endowment comes from "nature" or from "nature's Creator." So much is manifest from common experience. The classical natural law tradition of Plato and Aristotle concludes the natural law from this manifest human nature. The natural law follows on the human nature that we can all see and analyze for ourselves. The natural law, for the classical tradition, is not an endowment to man but a conclusion from man's nature. This is a very important difference, because man can lose certain endowments (such as his eyes or his ears or even his mind) and still be a man. And if he is still a man, the natural law follows from his nature. The natural law is in that sense unalienable - obviously a very important point for the pro-life cause. But if natural rights are an endowment, then man can lose that endowment and still be man; natural rights do not pertain to man as such. Natural rights become "alienable" even though the Declaration insists they are not. In fact, the Declaration seems to "protest too much." Plato and Aristotle had no need to insist that natural law is unalienable because it obviously is: It follows on man's manifest nature. By calling rights an "endowment", the Declaration puts them on the same footing as man's eyes, ears, hands and mind. Yet man does not obviously have rights the way he obviously has eyes, ears, hands and a mind.

This brings us to the alternative natural law tradition, the tradition that starts with Thomas Hobbes, goes through John Locke, and has become the dominant natural law tradition of today. This tradition views classical philosophy and its "natures" with suspicion and attempts to find an alternative foundation for natural right. Hobbes thought he found that foundation in his doctrine of the "state of nature." The "state of nature" isn't really about some primordial human past; it is about the basic human condition here and now. Man is clearly not equal in his endowments of virtue, talent or fortune; some men are born courageous and temperate and some are not; some are born into noble families and others are not. But even the lowliest servant in the castle is capable of poisoning the King. (Michael Corleone: "If there is one thing we have learned in this life, one thing we can be sure of, it is that you can kill anyone.") The equality of men, therefore, can be found in their vulnerability to violent death. The only way men can live, and that includes the King, is if they refrain from killing each other. This is what Hobbes means by saying that the state of nature is the "war of all against all." The "right to life" in this tradition is the right to defend yourself in the state of nature.

Why should anyone respect this right? Because they are as vulnerable as you are. Only if we respect each other's right to life can we live. And the King must respect the servant's right to life because the King is as mortal as the servant.

We can see that what is really behind the "right to life" in the modern tradition is the threat of violence. I have a right to life because I can assert that right and threaten your life if you choose to ignore me. Rights have no basis in nature; their basis is in the assertion of the right itself. The Declaration asserts that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." Suppose that you do not find that endowment self-evident, as apparently George III did not? That is beside the point. The Declaration does not ask for rational assent to its assertions of right, let alone rational assent based on a commonly known human nature. It asserts the rights and threatens violence if they are not acknowledged (specifically, the colonists will "throw off" the government if its rights are not respected.) What matters is that we find the rights self-evident, even if you do not, and we back up our assertions with guns rather than dialectical arguments. The self-evidence the Declaration asserts is subjective and particular, not objective and universal.

Our rights are unalienable, then, because our capacity for violence is unalienable. The King can't take away our right to life because he can't eliminate the vulnerability of his own mortal nature (or, by extension, the mortal nature of his imperial army.) But what about those who can't threaten the King with violence, say, the unborn and the elderly? The King is not worried about a revolution of infants or codgers. The unfortunate implication is that since they cannot assert a right to life, these folks have no right to life. This is why euthanasia and abortion are permanent temptations for our Republic.

This is some of the ambiguity involved in appealing to the Declaration of Independence in the pro-life cause. It is also, I think, why the argument from the Declaration does not get as much traction as pro-lifers suppose it will. Girgis, for example, asks some very pointed questions of Obama: Is the heart stilled in an abortion a human heart? Are the limbs torn apart human limbs? Girgis is arguing here powerfully but squarely from the classic natural law tradition; he is arguing from the nature of that which is killed in abortion. But the Declaration he earlier cites does not seem to base right in this tradition. It is possible for one to agree with Girgis's argument about the nature of abortion yet disagree that the Declaration demands that the rights of the unborn be respected. The rights in the Declaration are based on the assertion of right, not derived from a commonly known human nature. Since the unborn and the elderly cannot effectively assert their right to life, they have no right to life, even if they are human beings.

What needs to happen for the pro-life cause to succeed is for people to understand that classic natural law transcends such human documents as the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration does not demand that we respect the rights of the unborn, but the natural law we can know through common experience does. Classic natural law is not in conflict with the Declaration because the rights asserted in the Declaration truly are rights; but they are not a complete account of rights nor a complete account of the foundation of rights. It is true that I have a right to life because I can kill you. But I also have a further right to life, based on my human nature, that calls for respect even if I can't kill you. The Declaration is fulfilled in the classic natural law tradition, but it is not really based in that tradition.