![]() I never said that science is irrelevant to moral questions, only that it cannot decide them by itself.īrent, just ask any libertarian for those examples. Jojje, right, one way to look at what I'm saying is that philosophy deals with how we settle the axioms. The reason Harris is wrong is because you first have to decide what is moral (e.g., what kind of situation or goal justifies inflicting pain), then ask science to provide you with the best course of action. Ian, clearly my example has nothing to do with your counterexample: I never said that inflicting pain is always immoral. Thinkmonkey, my problem with Dawkins and Coyne is different, but stems from the same root: their position on morality is indeed distinct from Harris' (at least Dawkins', I don't recall having read anything by Coyne on morality), but they insist in applying science to the supernatural, which is simply another form of the same malady that strikes Harris: scientism, the idea that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having. Predictably, he misses the point and, as thinkmonkey put it, does not seriously engage the literature. Harris has posted a short response to my essay: If you keep using this "scientism" and its cognates as casual terms of abuse, people might start to confuse you with the other people who are so fond of using such terms to slander their opponents: postmodernist pseudointellectual hacks (Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, etc.) and other religious apologists (too many to list). In fact, Dawkins is on record as having repeatedly said that evolution is the LAST place to look for substantial ethical claims (which is not to deny that what we typically think of as moral behavior is something that evolved in us and other organisms). ![]() On a separate note: Why the completely gratuitous cheap shot about the "misguided scientistic attitude that Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne have come to embody so well," Massimo? To my knowledge, neither Dawkins nor Coyne has ever even remotely suggested any argument that crosses or simply ignores the fact-value gap. Or, as Sydney Morgenbesser famously described our collective work: "You make a few distinctions. ![]() Philosophy may be where all the unanswered questions live, and may not get a lot of respect thereby, but at least we try to avoid these kinds of messes. ![]() Perhaps these arguments have not settled very much, but they have at least established some shared terminology and made important distinctions: Without knowing the terminology and understanding the important distinctions (and the reasons for them), Harris cannot help but be confused - and to introduce still more confusion when he attempts to engage with his critics. Sam Harris has simply not done the hard work needed to understand the historical and ongoing arguments in ethical theory and metaethics - the context in which the argument he wishes to make *must* be situated. As I commented elsewhere regarding the ongoing discussion of Harris' TED talk in the blogosphere (including some additional attempts at clarification offered by Harris himself): ![]()
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