How Sam's morality is short-sighted, takes away people's purpose in life, and would bring forth a Distopic future.
Welcome back. Today we're going to challenge Sam Harris and his philosophical views on morality. Although my previous content may indicate otherwise, I do respect Sam Harris as a highly influential person, and Sam Harris when presented with compelling evidence appears open minded and able to change his beliefs.
A common question from Religious people to Atheists is, where does your morality come from? Sam Harris should know, as he wrote his own book on morality titled, The Moral Landscape.
I intend to show the overarching flaws and consequences with Sam's morality. There's a excellent video online that critiques Sam's book from a purely philosophical perspective and regarding the history of morality, and I recommend watching it too. It's by the YouTuber "Cuck Philosophy". I'll put a link to it in the description.
There's also a video online of Ben Shapiro with Sam Harris, in which Sam Harris paraphrases from his book on his general view of where he sees morality coming from.
Combining information from both and sources, I will lay out Sam's definition of morality, give my own arguments on why I view Sam's morality as flawed from the perspective of VidarReturns.
In the video, Sam spends a lot of time doing his usual speech about how many problems exist in religious texts. He always qualifies what he says by saying some things in the religious texts are good, and other things are not, and concluding the text is not a Divine message.
While I agree that there are many flaws with popular Religious texts, the problem is that you can't say what is or is not good unless you have a definition of what is good. In his interview with Ben Shapiro, he specifically uses the words "happiness" and "misery" in referencing good and bad, and in his book, Sam defines goodness as the "well-being of conscious creatures".
Now I want to steelman Sam's idea as solidly as I can, trying to honestly portray his position accurately. His book he makes 2 primary points about well-being.
(1) some people have better lives than others, and (2) these differences are related, in some lawful and not entirely arbitrary way, to states of the human brain and to states of the world.
His book proposes many contrasting stories. Those of having the a virtually heavenly existence on Earth, and those of experiencing an enduring hell. Whatever brings well-being or happiness is good, and that which brings misery is bad. I'm not going to elaborate on the stories here, but Sam doesn't really specify much in terms of what is universally good or bad for everyone.
From his example stories, we might conclude Sam would say circumstances that universally cause misery would result from: starvation, immediate danger of death, lack of good health, most forms of physical pain, and mental anguish.
I must note here that many of the circumstances that cause misery are very abstract, and not strictly defined. He doesn't say specific things like, "Don't lie to people".
The final point to make is that he is primarily concerned with consequences. The intent of people's actions are not significant. If the consequences of someone's actions increase happiness or well-being, then it is deemed good. Sam believes that science could usefully define morality according to such "facts", about people's well-being. That morality must consider everything from emotions and thoughts to the actual actions and their consequences.
That is the summary of how I understand Sam's position on morality. If I've gotten this wrong, please leave a comment on how absent minded I am.
(1) As a minor critique to start off with, why does Sam limit morality to "conscious creatures"? It seems very arbitrary. The word "brain" is used many, many times in his book and Sam's expertise is in the study of brains, so perhaps he has a bias towards creatures with brains. Or perhaps Sam is implicitly basing his morality on the foundation of religions. A solid explanation is not given, but not everyone feels the same as Sam. There are people that believe you can be immoral towards all life. Let's have a look at some of them now.
Clearly not everyone shares the idea that humans should limit morality to "conscious creatures". The question is, why should anyone follow Sam's limited morality over another morality that would include being good towards all existing life? Where is the justification? It just seems very arbitrary. Again, I suspect is has something to do with Sam's bias towards beings with brains, but I'll get more into this later.
(2) There seems to be a problem of abstractness to Sam's morality. Sam believes in defining morality according to such "facts" about people's well-being. The problem is that many of these facts differ from person to person. Without universally applicable principals of what he considers "well-being", we must have some way to analyze every single individual in society, psychologically or otherwise. For example, having a pet increases the well-being and happiness of many people in the world, so giving someone their first pet could be seen as a moral good, but it's not for everyone. For some people, taking care of a pet is an absolute source of misery, and their are people that simply dislike pets in general. Or perhaps someone would only be happy with a pet snake, but giving a snake to the wrong person could terrify them.
Another example could be something as simple as telling a joke. Telling a good joke could make someone laugh and brighten their day. Telling the same joke to someone else could offend and trigger them into a negative psychological state.
The abstractness of Sam's morality means that what would be moral to do for one person would be immoral to do to another person, and the only way we can know many of these "facts" would be by building a scientific profile on every person. To me this seems a little extreme. Who is going to keep record of everyone's profile? We could see potential for this to play right into an Orwellian future where Big Brother has a psychological profile of every individual, for their own good, of course. Because it's the moral thing to do, and the State needs to enforce morality. Which leads me to 3.
(3) Sam states that (pg 45) "to say an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about it's consequences in the lives of conscious creatures". Sam's morality is centered around Consequentialism. That if actions result in well-being to those who are alive, then the actions are therefore good.
I may have missed it, but Sam doesn't seem to address conflicts where one person's life is deemed to cause suffering in the life of others? A murderer could be seen as someone who causes suffering. This is a conflict of people's "well-being". Does this murderer still have the right to well-being? If the consequence of executing the murderer brings the greatest well-being of others in society, then does execution become the logical course of action? Here we would have a case of, the well-being of the many trumps the well-being of the few.
And what if we have a world where many people are starving, and there are a few people that have exorbitant wealth. Would it be moral to take the wealth of the few to feed the many that are starving? So long as well-being is overall increased, it would seem to be good according to Sam's morality. Sam's morality can't say "Don't steal" or "Respect the property of others", because if stealing can increase well-being more than respecting people's property, then it would necessarily be good. This idea of morality could lead someone to break into Sam's home, steal his large flat screen television, and pawn it to feed hungry children around the world. Just to be clear, I'm not recommending anyone do that, but according to Sam's morality, it would seem to be a morally good action.
The huge problem I see here is that Sam's morality only considers the well-being of those here and alive today. We can imagine a scenario of redistributing the wealth Billionaire's in such a way that it massively increases the well-being of the majority currently in society for the rest of their lives, and results in a society with no more Billionaire's or Millionaire's. Everyone of roughly equal financial worth. This is would be a kind of soft Communism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Today there are Wealthy people who are able take their wealth and resources and efficiently manage them, building factories and increasing technology, which increases their personal wealth, and also increasing the combined wealth of society. When wealth is taken from these individuals, it ceases to continue generating wealth in society. But if the more important goal is to increase the well-being of everyone alive, then that should be an acceptable outcome.
This kind of soft Communism doesn't account for the well-being of future generations, and people who do not yet exist. We could justify that commercial and technological improvements do not need to continue for future generations, because the important value is well-being of those who are alive today. We can sacrifice the future for the well-being of the current generation. If human civilization ends the day after this current generation dies, then it was all worth it, because we had "well-being".
I made a video previously on the end of civilization and coming of human extinction.
(4) In his interview with Ben, Sam states everything's ultimately about the brain. Whether people have well-being or not. It all comes back to how people are able to experience the world. Then in the interview, Sam drops the ultimate bombshell on himself. He remarks at the idea of the invention of a happy-pill.
37:20 A cure for sadness, a pill that perfectly cancels the feeling of greif.
Realistically though, the theoretical happy-pill seems to expose the problem of how Sam's morality doesn't encompass the things of value beyond good feelings. The idea of morality simply being to relieve people of all mental pain and suffering and have everyone in a utopian state of bliss. Biased by his field of neuro-science, he sees everything being about the brain.
mind, brain compilation
32:40 it's all mental in the end
Instead of a happy-pill, let's make it a more realistic future and imagine a happy-cyber implant. A cyber implant that makes a person no longer experience pain, suffering, or discomfort of any kind. Everyone has it, and it just works 24 hours a day without fail. It makes us completely immune to any pain or suffering. The epitome moral good! How quickly would civilization die off? What time would you get up in the morning? Would you go to work? Why? Maybe you'd rather stay home and have a meal instead of go to work; but then again, why would you eat if you're never again hungry? You no longer feel hunger. If you couldn't pay your rent and got evicted, it's no problem, because sleeping on the street in the rain or snow would be just as comfortable as sleeping on a soft bed.
It's here we wreck Sam's morality and expose how it completely falls apart, because it shows the absolute absurdity of his moral good. That as Sam defines it, if the epitome of moral good ever was achieved, then it would surely lead to the destruction of mankind. But wait, because in his interview with Ben, Sam himself even agrees with me.
38:55 We are right to want to be anchored to reality.
39:10 States of happiness totally divorced from the reality of our lives, and our actual relationships, and the conscious experiences of other people, that would be a bad thing.
39:50 Brave New World where everyone is perfectly medicated, that's not good.
Yes, very good, and very correct, but not according to the morality Sam has defined on being about the brain. He can't make those cases at all, not even 1%; because if being completely medicated and divorced from the reality of our lives increases well-being, then according to Sam's own definition, it is morally good.
In summary, the I see the major failure of Sam's morality being that it doesn't recognize anything about the lineage of human existence. It doesn't recognize anything in regards to the past or future. It shares similarities to Hedonism in that it only concerns itself with those in the present. Humans, like other animals, come from a long line of descendants, and it was the sacrifices of those descendants that made it possible for us to to be alive today. We are genetic organisms and have genetic drives beyond that of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance.
To illustrate my point, here's a brief story of a species of spider called Stegodyphus Lineatus. After this spider's eggs hatch, the mother vomits out everything she can to feed the hatchlings. Days later, after she is empty and has given everything she can to them, she then gives them her life. She provokes the new offspring into eating her. They then begin to liquidate and consume the last of their mother before going to start their own lives.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stegodyphus_lineatus
Humans will sacrifice, work, and save for offspring which do not even yet exist. Sam's morality shows absolute disrespect to the genetic lineage of human suffering and sacrifice made for future generations. He doesn't recognize that we aren't simply pleasure seeking creatures. The key point is this, pain and pleasure are not an end unto themselves. They are indicators in guiding us to our true purpose in life, and recognizing that we do have a purpose in life. The purpose of generating a better future for tomorrow. That without this purpose, we are lost as a species. That pain and pleasure are what drive us toward our purpose, even at the expense of our own lives, and in the absence of pain and suffering, humans would not exist.
Link to my previous video series on Sam Harris and Donald Trump.
As of 2019, I'm still working on releasing the guide First Principals of Vidar. It will be released in 2020.
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