30 thoughts on “Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions”
Before I start, let me say that I am going to hold Jon to his claim: “I think that Sam Harris is on to something here”
I am just giddy with excitement over this. I am effervescent. What a break through!!! This feels like an absolute coup to me. I almost don’t want to comment on it until others do because I fear people will be scared off by it simply because I agree with it. Yes, I said I AGREE WITH (almost all of) WHAT HE SAYS HERE.
Harris starts off reflecting on what philosophers call the “ought-is problem”. The objection (see Hume) is that you cannot get an ought from an is. The claim that there is a fact-value distinction, and you cannot get values from facts. Harris rejects the ought-is problem, saying that “values reduce to facts about conscious beings … and their well-being”
I am with Harris. I am not impressed by the ought-is objection at all. But what I found most interesting is what Harris relied upon to reject this. How is he rejecting it? By making an appeal (as Jon points out) to human flourishing. As Harris says, “Morality relates to truths about human flourishing.” In other words he appeals to eudaimonian ethics (eudaimonia is greek for “happiness” or “flourishing”). And here is the big schock: Harris frankly makes an appeal to something that looks an awful lot like the natural law (as eudaimonian ethics must). That is, he sounds a lot like a eudaimonian natural law ethicist (Aristotle, Aquinas). There are times during the talk where he just parrots (perhaps without realizing it) Aristotle and Aquinas.
I identified, in a recent post, 5 basic/natural inclinations of human beings. In other words, each of these things is a “human good” or a part of “human flourishing”. This is a “psychological” claim – a claim about human nature. (1) to seek the good, (2) to preserve oneself in existence, (3) to preserve the species (to unite sexually), (4) to live in community with others, (5) to use one’s intellect and will (to know and to act). A concrete example: No one would say that a person is healthy when they only eat junk food. No one would say that a person is flourishing when they do not have friends. These are the sorts of examples Harris himself has in mind.
Let’s look at the Harris talk. Here was his fact-value example: Science can tell us that cholera is bad for us (fact). Then, in light of the good of human flourishing, it is bad (value) to put cholera in our drinking water. Or it is bad to believe in the “evil eye” because this diminishes human community and cooperation. Again these fact/value assertions are made – and can only be made – from the basic pressupposition that human flourishing includes health (2) and community (4) and that truths can be known about what leads to flourishing and what does not. So factual claims are essential to making value claims. You have to know the nature of a thing in order to know its moral status (this is why, Harris says, we thinks apes have more moral status than rocks).
In short, he is making “nature claims”. I agree with Harris – science can tell us some things about human nature. And science can inform our morality because science is pretty damn good at discerning facts (like cholera is bad for us). But what is assumed throughout – rightly assumed, how could we not assume it? – is that human nature is informed with certain basic inclinations toward basic goods. I don’t see that Harris is moving at all away from the 5 basic aspects of human flourishing I mention above. In fact, his whole talk is built around (2) and (4).
Let me try to sum up a bit. Why am I saying he is doing natural law? Because Harris is saying that all of our morality is rooted in a basic claim: humans by nature seek well-being (flourishing) as a basic good. Some acts promote human flourishing (and so are good) while others frustrate human flourishing (and so are bad). In other words, acts that promote natural goods are morally applauded while acts that are contrary to the promotion of natural goods are morally blamed. That is eudaimonian natural law in a nutshell.
I will probably disagree with him about how much science can tell us about our “inner life”. I say science can say some things, but not all things. Much to my surprise, Harris almost admits as much when he days that science may not be able to answer all of these questions. He restricts himself to the claim that science can inform us about them. In holding that view, he finds himself sitting with Aquinas and Aristotle.
I do think Harris is probably not entirely aware of what he is sneaking in the back door. By focusing on human flourishing, you have to incorporate a teleological view of human nature here. And that is what Harris is doing! He is assuming that we are naturally inclined (have a natural telic orientation toward) to desire flourishing! Oh my God, Harris is a freaking Aristotelian?!?!?!
Another point of incredible overlap. Harris wonders whether because our notion of well-being is somewhat indeterminate (open), how could there be an objective morality? In response, he appeals to the concept of physical health. This is also indeterminate (does not have a clear and precise definition). Aristotle would say that this is because human life is variable, and you can only expect the amount of specificity from an inquiry that the object of the inquiry allows. Harris makes the exact same point. As Harris says, “Notice that the fact that the concept of health is open does not make it vacuous. The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is as clear as any distinction we make in science.” But not as clear as the distinctions we make in mathematics, Aristotle and I think Harris would say.
Following the analogy (physical health and moral health), he points out that there many be “many peaks” to a flourishing life. There is not one way. But this does not undermine the objective morality (ie, the natural law). “Think about how talk about food. I would never argue that there is one right food to eat. There is clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food. There is nevertheless a clear distinction between food and poison. The fact that there are many right answers to the question ‘what is food’ does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition.”
I use that EXACT EXAMPLE in my classes when I explain Aristotle! (Some of my lectures are online, perhaps Harris stumbled on them). Health requires you that you eat from some range of foods – it need not be radishes though. The moral life requires that you do a certain range of things – but it need not be giving to the United Way. But the important point – and Harris’ point – is that these truths about human nutrition, just like the truths concerning moral flourishing, are rooted in facts about human nature (psychology and physiology).
Harris asks, “Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human flourishing that we must be non-judgmental about [horrific practices like beatings, etc etc].” He then cites the practice by some of murdering their daughters who have been raped, and asks, “What are the chances that this represents a peak in human flourishing?” If I could rephrase his question – without altering the meaning – ‘What are the chances that such acts are in accord with our natural desire for flourishing that includes living in community?’ He then makes a judgement about soft porn by making an appeal to moderation (to applause from the crowd!). That moderation would be an important part of “psychological well-being” is as Aristotelian as it can get (not that only Aristotle thinks that).
One final point of remarkable overlap regards his discussion of moral expertise or talent and excluding the morally ignorant from discourse. Aristotle says, in the beginning of the Ethics, that bad and ignorant people should be excluded from discussion of human well-being. This is precisely what Harris says regarding the Taliban (again, to applause). I am left to wonder – would they have been applauding if he had read the EXACT SAME POINT from Aristotle’s text?? And “moral expertise” is just what Aristotle calls practical wisdom.
He does have one bout of silliness – putting up a picture of the Pope along with some other religious leaders and saying “they think they got their answers from a voice” and not from an analysis of human well-being. Slow down Harris – have you read Aquinas and do you know anything about Catholic morality?!?!!? That is NOT the Catholic view! What Haris does is EXACTLY what Aquinas does – he proposes a moral view rooted in a psychology of human flourishing that is discernible to natural reason. But I’ll forgive Harris his mishap (it is just habit for him). Overall this is an enormous move forward for atheists. Frankly it looks like a near full-scale acceptance of natural law ethics or at least its basic precepts — that morality is rooted in claims about [teleological] human nature/psychology and what it means to for a human to flourish. Harris – the ally of Aristotelians. Wow. Seriously, I could have – and indeed have – given almost the EXACT same talk straight out of Aristotle’s ethics. (I must add, it is clear that Harris and Aquinas would have some particular disagreements on the particular application of the natural law – about homosexuality say – but Harris has ceded the theoretical ground to the Thomists.
In this post I’ll try not to gloat. Here is one positive from this: assuming a number of SHAFTer types are attracted to what Harris says, we have now found some really important common ground between secular humanists and religious humanists (a la Aquinas and Pope John Paul II). It does not mean we’ll agree on every detail of human flourishing and what the natural law entails, but it does suggest that we have considerable shared ground.
I understood his comments to be more utilitarian, but I admittedly never understood natural law theory. Could Harris have made both utilitarian and natural law appeals in his talk? I don’t see why not. But if what Harris articulated is the natural law view, then sign me up.
Like you, I wonder how cognizant Harris is of his agreement with Aquinas and Aristotle. Given that Harris has a masters in philosophy, he’s probably at least somewhat aware.
I am not so sure that he would be aware, MA in philosophy or not. Prof Huenemann tells me that he never read Aristotle (or was it Plato?) in graduate school. I don’t know where Harris got his MA, but it is entirely possible that he did not read this stuff (particularly if it was an analytical and so a non-historical program). And many graduate schools don’t teach the natural law (it has become so associated with Catholicism that he gets wrongly dismissed as a “religious view”). Anyway, you would be surprised by how ignorant many philosophy professors are about these classical theories. Look at textbooks on things like the philosophy of mind – Aristotle is nowhere to be found even though his position is important and serious. Huenemann and I chuckled at his textbook for the Philosophy of Mind class last year – it was called something like “Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Mind” — and the oldest text was Descartes. That book pretended as if no one said anything of any merit about those questions until him (to his credit, Huenemann supplemented the textbook with some Aristotle).
I did not hear it as simply utilitarian because Harris’ account of “human flourishing” (and the psychology that underwrites it) seemed to be broader and more robust than mere psychological hedonism (though, as with Aristotle, pleasure would be included). Also, if it had been utilitarian it would have been really easy for him to say so. That said, virtue ethics/natural law is concerned with ends so consequences do of course come up in the moral analysis (unlike, say, deontological ethics).
I don’t know about Harris’s background in philosophy, but my guess is that he’s disowned as much of it as possible in his efforts to appeal to broader audiences. What he comes up with helps to prove a rough rule of thumb: that when people (at least in the anglophone world) try to just come up with some philosophy on their own, they end up sounding a lot like either Aristotle or Locke. Then the irritating thing is that they often turn around and say that old-time philosophers failed to appreciate these “new” insights!
On the substance of the talk: cool! Now all science has to do is give us some objective account of what constitutes human flourishing, and we’re off to the races! I wonder whether they’ll go the Benthamite route and start measuring “hedons”, or go the Darwin route and start measuring survival fitness, or go the sociological route and start measuring what sweeping portions of populations regard as pleasing. And, finally, I wonder whether we’ll be “happy” with what each of these measures may end up endorsing.
Actually this is where I think Harris sounds the most like a natural law theorist, though perhaps he is closer to the new natural law instead of the old (though I remain unconvinced that there is that big of a distinction).
Instead of reducing goods to one good (“hedons” or survival), he seems to speak in this way: As human there are a number of basic and incommensurable goods that are basic to human flourishing. These goods (self-preservation, community, etc) are close to being self-evident and they do not need to be inferred from some abstract theoretical understanding. I think that is very close to what he says, and that is straight out of the new natural law playbook.
As for the role of science: Science can help us clarify facts and this will be a service to our understanding of human nature generally and it will help us clarify what things will be values (that is, which things will lead to flourishing and which things will frustrate our natural ends). Now I am skeptical that science can do this all by itself, because I don’t think metaphysics can be reduced to physics. In fact, on pain of bringing forth a horse that has been beaten dead too many times to count, I don’t think science can explain the implicit teleology embedded in what Harris was saying!
On recent post from a different stream, Source suggested that SHAFTers might be more open to Alfonso Gomez-Lobo’s Morality and the Human Goods than they would be to Ralph McInerny’s Ethica Thomistica. Sherlock taught both books in a recent course. Both are excellent books and both are worth reading. Gomez-Lobo is defending a “new natural law” view while McInerny is defending the old natural law view. Very briefly: the new natural law view tries to do its work without relying too much on metaphysics. Instead it relies on practical rationality (we self-evidently desire, and don’t particularly need a metaphysical account of why, certain goods). The old natural law (McInerny) is the more traditional metaphysical account. Not surprisingly, both sides vehemently insist that Aristotle and Aquinas would be on their side.
I have sympathies with both, and think the new natural law is at least a better tactic in this day when people are so skeptical of metaphysics. However I can’t shake the feeling that the new natural law theorists are smuggling in more metaphysics than they admit. Harris’ view appears to be compatible with (if not identical to!) the new natural law. Going that route you avoid the fuss about teleology and the theism heart attacks that gives secularists. However I will continue to argue that the teleology is buried in there all the same.
I’ve always really liked the “new natural law” view, but I think you’re right when you hint it falls apart (i.e., relies on metaphysics–Gross!!) under close examination.
The other point concerning the new natural law and Harris’ talk here is this: one of the basic starting points of the new natural law is that the is/ought problem is a real problem and that the old natural law does not take it seriously enough. But Harris (following McInerny and the old natural law) does not think it is. Rather, Harris wants to investigate human nature (facts) and derive ethics (values) from it.
Forgive my ignorance, but when you say “that morality is rooted in claims about [teleological] human nature/psychology”, what do you mean by teleological? Are you saying that the human flourishing idea with the five claims about human nature presented can only be put for by a “prime mover” and that they have an ultimate goal?
If that is what you’re saying, I have to disagree. All of those five claims have very basic natural means of arising as traits in humans. I see no need to root that in a teleological argument. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, or maybe you can demonstrate why I’m wrong.
If I might joke a bit with Ben: If I read between the lines is Ben saying, “What you are saying looks true so long as signing on to it does not mean I have to believe in God.”
Teleological:
No, I do not intend a theology here. All I mean is this: there are principles of movement that are internal to human beings and these principles of movement are directed toward certain ends and goods. “Every art or applied science and every inquiry and similarly every action and choice seem to aim at some good; the good therefore has been well defined as that at which all things aim.” (first line of the Nicomachean Ethics). The task, then, is to work out what these natural goods are, and it is not all that controversial (according to Harris and natural law theorists): health (both psychological and psychological) and community look like two obvious candidates.
It seems to me that Aristotle could be co-opted by a kind of naturalism (though I have not thought about this enough to say for sure). Keep in mind that Aristotle has natural design without a designer (he rejects Plato’s intelligent designer view) even though Aristotle does have a “prime mover” (not, though, as efficient cause but as final cause).
That said, I think that the natural law will ultimately require an eternal law. I think Sartre is right on one thing (and maybe only one thing): if God does not exist then human nature does not exist either. But that theological point would come WAY down the line in the argument. And, following Aristotle, you could probably accommodate it without accepting anything too “theological”. Again I need to think more about whether Aristotle could be co-opted by naturalism. Harris’ talk suggests as much, though I don’t think he realizes that he is smuggling in teleology (materialists quite naturally smuggle in it since you cannot talk about things without talking about ends).
“If I might joke a bit with Ben: If I read between the lines is Ben saying, “What you are saying looks true so long as signing on to it does not mean I have to believe in God.” ”
Actually, I don’t feel that way at all. I hope you don’t think all atheists are that shallow. I’m a pretty weak atheist, and would be fine believing in a God given enough evidence. To put it bluntly, I’m not going to just hop on the God band wagon because it is convenient and makes me feel better. If “signing on” required a belief in god, we’d just have to go back to the issue of gods existence in the first place.
From what I was reading before, you were saying that the reason humans act on those 5 things are because a god made them to behave in this way. Following that claim is the rest of everything you were talking about. I was just disagreeing that there needed to be a god for those 5 human instincts.
My understanding of what you’re trying to say by teleology is that the five instincts are there to produce an end, whether that be to continue your genetic line mating or to survive by being a part of a group. From there, we’re just trying to find out what is good for us. Fairly straight forward.
“I think that the natural law will ultimately require an eternal law.” Maybe this isn’t the place for this, but if you could expound, I’d be interested.
My joke was meant entirely in jest.
I don’t know that I ever said quite so straightforwardly that “man has 5 inclinations because God made us that way”. I usually tried to avoid speaking quite like that, not only because it is a bad tactic but also because it invites considerable oversimplification and misunderstanding. I am a theist, so I do think God is ultimately the author of all things. But from the point of view of ethics I think we could reside in “proximate causes” without needing to revert back to what I would argue are ultimate causes.
In other words, I think you can do natural law while being ignorant of or even rejecting the eternal law. This because all humanists are going to want to start with a claim like: man and nature are intelligible things. But you know my and my sympathy with natural theology. Ultimately I think the intelligibility of the created order requires an intelligent Creator. Those that deny this can still speak intelligently about the “effect” (the world and the intelligibility of the things in that world) without knowing the cause (the ultimate author and ground of the intelligibility of the world). But you can see here why I would ultimately say, when I write my book titled “On Everything”, that you need the eternal law in order to ultimately ground the natural law.
I have posted a 1000 word essay on why morality is rooted in evolution rather than in the theological realm . I am just waiting for administrative approval .
The problem as I see it with “natural law” moralities, at least insofar as Kleiner and the Catholics formulate them, is that they take a series of what appear to be wholesome precepts dealing with survival, unity, community, etc. and make them moral imperatives. In essence, they take one of Harris’s local moral maximums, make it a global maximum — and then take all other local maximums and merge them into a single abominable minimum. You might think of this as a kind of tyranny of our interpreted natural state, as given us by authority. Because the landscape of our values is a constantly shifting terrain, this kind of freezing ultimately ends with a system occupying a suboptimal or perhaps even immoral position. As I can best describe it, the error can be thought of as attempting to reify the abstraction of our values, while instead, in order to remain vital, they must be constantly reevaluated. This is equivalent to saying that there actually is no “natural law,” while there may be a kind of meta-natural law. By recording our nature in doctrine you automatically commit error, and you almost guarantee a bad outcome somewhere down the line. The Church has had to deal with this repeatedly, most famously regarding contraception, its position regarding homosexuality and sexuality in general. It occupies a stifled position that should have remained flexible and principled at a higher level, instead it has become mired in a nuanced moral position that has become essentially arbitrary and nonsensical to the outsider. It’s an object lesson for what not to do. In Harris’s landscape Catholics occupy a single precipitous peak with vast chasms on all sides.
Harris’s real vision, whether it’s Aristotelian or not, is to create a true heterogeneous landscape with mutually respectful local maxima. To miss that is to miss the whole point of his talk.
Hunt says the problem “is that they take a series of what appear to be wholesome precepts dealing with survival, unity, community, etc. and make them moral imperatives. In essence, they take one of Harris’s local moral maximums, make it a global maximum … You might think of this as a kind of tyranny of our interpreted natural state, as given us by authority”
I don’t see that Harris is doing anything different. He starts with the value of health/survival (a general precept) and – with the help of some scientific facts – infers a moral imperative: don’t put cholera in the water. This is not a “local moral maxim”, it would hold globally. In fact, Harris is critical of those who worry excessively about “cultural imperialism” (a kind of tyranny). He is making claims about human nature and so his claims are by definition universal to all things human. What is the authority? On this Harris and the Catholic Church agree – the authority is human nature. And, as Harris says, who are we to say we don’t know enough about it to judge other cultures?
This does not mean that there won’t be local variability. Harris’s example here regards respecting women’s bodies. There is probably a mean between the extremes (to use Aristotle’s language) between the extreme of forcing women to wear cloth bags and the extreme of having oversexed soft porn on news stands across America (he got big applause for that line).
You and Harris might not agree with the inference about homosexuality and contraception. That is fine. My point – and the point which I celebrated – was that it appears Harris has given up all of the important theoretical ground. He grants that you come up with both global and local moral laws by inferring them from basic desires rooted in human nature along with scientific facts which tell us what does and does not lead to the flourishing of those natural desires. That IS the natural law. Whether it is Catholic doctrine or not seems entirely beside the point. If it is true then it is true, and Catholics believing it does not make it false!
If Harris (or I) thought about it I think the view we favor would begin with natural law as per Aristotle but continue to refine it with contractual and democratic value. This reflects the history of natural law thinking once it was challenged and mostly dethroned by Hobbes and others. Our ethics are not completely provided for us by our nature and our relation with natural order. Hobbes would say that our ethics must consider our contractual obligation to others and “the sovereign,” although today he would probably be forced to spin things more democratically. This is the kind of thing that frees us from what I’ve called the “tyranny of our nature,” although it’s almost sure that many of the places that our inclinations conflict with our nature is merely mistaken interpretation of what our true nature is.
We are never relinquished from the essential requirements of nature. For instance, there is no political position we can put ourselves in that will make us immune to poison; however we can set ourselves free from, say, proscriptions against homosexuality because it conflicts with the natural function of reproduction. (I leave it as an open possibility, however, that this is a simplistic view of “our nature.” See comments on the latest post.) It goes beyond simply disagreeing with one or two of your or the CC’s inferences. The entire status given to our nature as sole arbiter for ethics is inflated and incorrect.
Just to head off one obvious criticism someone is going to come up with: I’m not advocating moral relativism, only keeping “value” in the conceptual realm and not instantiating it in a stultifying manner, which nearly all religion does.
Ooo, one final thought and I’ll shut up (for not). You will notice that as corollary to this, keeping value at conceptual level guards, as best it can, against stupid moralizing. For instance it is difficult (though possible) to go from values of fellowship, unity, agape, or what have you, to anti-homosexuality. Get my drift? It’s like an SAT question. Which one doesn’t fit? Conceptual value does not admit to stupid moral stricture.
Just on Kleiner’s earlier claim, that “These goods (self-preservation, community, etc) are close to being self-evident and they do not need to be inferred from some abstract theoretical understanding.”
“Close to being self-evident”?
I take it, then, that science and Aristotle are nowhere close to really answering moral questions.
Two points:
(a) That line “close to being self-evident” is actually from a book I have on the new natural law. Their argument is that moral philosophy does not require metaphysics. It is unnecessary to spend a lot of time doing metaphysics in order to argue for something like “man is a social animal”. That community and self-preservation are good is as about as self-evident as a claim about human nature could get, isn’t it? New natural law theorists suggest that these are starting points, not inferences. This is how Harris, in his talk, treats them.
For my part, I still prefer the old natural law that wants to bother with making metaphysical arguments about the nature of man.
(b) Why would Aristotle be nowhere close to answering moral questions if the basic goods of practical rationality were “self-evident”? I don’t understand what you are saying here.
I am here speaking on behalf of the new natural law (which I am not sure I agree with):
Perhaps this is a clearer way of putting it: New natural law theory says that the 5 basic human goods are first principles of practical rationality. It is usually thought by more traditional natural law that the principles of practical rationality are inferred from theoretical inquiry (metaphysics) into human nature. But they argue that the first principles of practical rationality have “autonomy” apart from any particular nature claim.
For my part, I think they may be making a good point if their point is about the order of knowing and the order of being. It does seem that the principles of practical rationality come first in the order of knowing even if they do not come first in the order of being. In other words, you don’t need a degree in philosophy and don’t need to engage in a bunch of speculative metaphysics about the nature of man to know that community is a basic good.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that most/all moral questions have pretty obvious answers; we just devote all our attention on the relative few about which reflective people disagree. I don’t see Aristotle and Harris as doing much more than surfing on that ocean of agreement. That’s a fine thing to do, but I wouldn’t advertise it as providing some special resource for answering moral questions. It doesn’t constitute an addition to our moral knowledge, or a justification of it, in any significant way.
Wait, that was a stupid comment from me. Obviously, Aristotle contributed *something* to moral theory, and other naturalists like Harris do as well: they offer views about where morality comes from, and offer guidelines meant to shape our moral thinking.
I think you are flattening the discourse a bit too much, Huenemann. I agree with you that most everyone has about the same kind of moral beliefs (generosity is good, lying is bad, etc etc). In other words, there is not a lot of disagreement about the content of moral laws. But there is considerable disagreement about how we arrive at those moral claims. For the most part, this is an academic question that does not much matter “in the real world”. Do you care if the guy who helped the old lady across the street is a Kantian or a Utilitarian? No, not really. Moral philosopher tend to disagree on everything except what we should actually do! But the question about how we arrive at moral truths becomes considerably more important when there is disagreement.
I read this morning that 58% of Americans support waterboarding. Isn’t that amazing/shocking? A solid number of good “salt of the earth” type Americans – the kind of person that we generally think has a pretty solid bank of moral values think torture is morally permissible. I don’t know how to argue with these people without turning to moral philosophy and the metaphysical backdrop that grounds morality to begin with. So I think it is important.
What I found interesting about Harris’ talk is that his answer to the moral philosophical question, ‘how do we arrive at moral truth?’, was a natural law answer — you look at the basic goods of practical rationality discerned through a careful investigation of human nature. This answer is different than the answer a Kantian would give, the answer a utilitarian would give (because they reduce human nature more than Harris wants to), and certainly different than the answer a divine voluntarist would give.
So I disagree with Huenemann that it is not all that interesting and important that contributes to our moral knowledge (granted, Huenemann quickly took that back, saving himself a big WHAT???!?! from me). Huenemann is right, this investigation into human nature probably won’t change much for 99% of our moral lives. But it does make a difference on the controversial things. And I think it makes another difference in that I, for one, think that having a theoretical account of practical moral truths is a good. Isn’t this what philosophers do, they seek the ‘why’ of things?
Here is Sam’s response to some common criticisms he’s received for this talk.
At the top of page 17 of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor succinctly nails on the head the problem with Harris’ substantive project ( –which, frankly, I take to pale beside the general, non-intellectual project of the “New Atheists”, namely to promote the health of liberal democracy by mainstreaming atheism and open mockery or indifference towards “religion”).
Before I start, let me say that I am going to hold Jon to his claim: “I think that Sam Harris is on to something here”
I am just giddy with excitement over this. I am effervescent. What a break through!!! This feels like an absolute coup to me. I almost don’t want to comment on it until others do because I fear people will be scared off by it simply because I agree with it. Yes, I said I AGREE WITH (almost all of) WHAT HE SAYS HERE.
Harris starts off reflecting on what philosophers call the “ought-is problem”. The objection (see Hume) is that you cannot get an ought from an is. The claim that there is a fact-value distinction, and you cannot get values from facts. Harris rejects the ought-is problem, saying that “values reduce to facts about conscious beings … and their well-being”
I am with Harris. I am not impressed by the ought-is objection at all. But what I found most interesting is what Harris relied upon to reject this. How is he rejecting it? By making an appeal (as Jon points out) to human flourishing. As Harris says, “Morality relates to truths about human flourishing.” In other words he appeals to eudaimonian ethics (eudaimonia is greek for “happiness” or “flourishing”). And here is the big schock: Harris frankly makes an appeal to something that looks an awful lot like the natural law (as eudaimonian ethics must). That is, he sounds a lot like a eudaimonian natural law ethicist (Aristotle, Aquinas). There are times during the talk where he just parrots (perhaps without realizing it) Aristotle and Aquinas.
I identified, in a recent post, 5 basic/natural inclinations of human beings. In other words, each of these things is a “human good” or a part of “human flourishing”. This is a “psychological” claim – a claim about human nature. (1) to seek the good, (2) to preserve oneself in existence, (3) to preserve the species (to unite sexually), (4) to live in community with others, (5) to use one’s intellect and will (to know and to act). A concrete example: No one would say that a person is healthy when they only eat junk food. No one would say that a person is flourishing when they do not have friends. These are the sorts of examples Harris himself has in mind.
Let’s look at the Harris talk. Here was his fact-value example: Science can tell us that cholera is bad for us (fact). Then, in light of the good of human flourishing, it is bad (value) to put cholera in our drinking water. Or it is bad to believe in the “evil eye” because this diminishes human community and cooperation. Again these fact/value assertions are made – and can only be made – from the basic pressupposition that human flourishing includes health (2) and community (4) and that truths can be known about what leads to flourishing and what does not. So factual claims are essential to making value claims. You have to know the nature of a thing in order to know its moral status (this is why, Harris says, we thinks apes have more moral status than rocks).
In short, he is making “nature claims”. I agree with Harris – science can tell us some things about human nature. And science can inform our morality because science is pretty damn good at discerning facts (like cholera is bad for us). But what is assumed throughout – rightly assumed, how could we not assume it? – is that human nature is informed with certain basic inclinations toward basic goods. I don’t see that Harris is moving at all away from the 5 basic aspects of human flourishing I mention above. In fact, his whole talk is built around (2) and (4).
Let me try to sum up a bit. Why am I saying he is doing natural law? Because Harris is saying that all of our morality is rooted in a basic claim: humans by nature seek well-being (flourishing) as a basic good. Some acts promote human flourishing (and so are good) while others frustrate human flourishing (and so are bad). In other words, acts that promote natural goods are morally applauded while acts that are contrary to the promotion of natural goods are morally blamed. That is eudaimonian natural law in a nutshell.
I will probably disagree with him about how much science can tell us about our “inner life”. I say science can say some things, but not all things. Much to my surprise, Harris almost admits as much when he days that science may not be able to answer all of these questions. He restricts himself to the claim that science can inform us about them. In holding that view, he finds himself sitting with Aquinas and Aristotle.
I do think Harris is probably not entirely aware of what he is sneaking in the back door. By focusing on human flourishing, you have to incorporate a teleological view of human nature here. And that is what Harris is doing! He is assuming that we are naturally inclined (have a natural telic orientation toward) to desire flourishing! Oh my God, Harris is a freaking Aristotelian?!?!?!
Another point of incredible overlap. Harris wonders whether because our notion of well-being is somewhat indeterminate (open), how could there be an objective morality? In response, he appeals to the concept of physical health. This is also indeterminate (does not have a clear and precise definition). Aristotle would say that this is because human life is variable, and you can only expect the amount of specificity from an inquiry that the object of the inquiry allows. Harris makes the exact same point. As Harris says, “Notice that the fact that the concept of health is open does not make it vacuous. The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is as clear as any distinction we make in science.” But not as clear as the distinctions we make in mathematics, Aristotle and I think Harris would say.
Following the analogy (physical health and moral health), he points out that there many be “many peaks” to a flourishing life. There is not one way. But this does not undermine the objective morality (ie, the natural law). “Think about how talk about food. I would never argue that there is one right food to eat. There is clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food. There is nevertheless a clear distinction between food and poison. The fact that there are many right answers to the question ‘what is food’ does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition.”
I use that EXACT EXAMPLE in my classes when I explain Aristotle! (Some of my lectures are online, perhaps Harris stumbled on them). Health requires you that you eat from some range of foods – it need not be radishes though. The moral life requires that you do a certain range of things – but it need not be giving to the United Way. But the important point – and Harris’ point – is that these truths about human nutrition, just like the truths concerning moral flourishing, are rooted in facts about human nature (psychology and physiology).
Harris asks, “Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human flourishing that we must be non-judgmental about [horrific practices like beatings, etc etc].” He then cites the practice by some of murdering their daughters who have been raped, and asks, “What are the chances that this represents a peak in human flourishing?” If I could rephrase his question – without altering the meaning – ‘What are the chances that such acts are in accord with our natural desire for flourishing that includes living in community?’ He then makes a judgement about soft porn by making an appeal to moderation (to applause from the crowd!). That moderation would be an important part of “psychological well-being” is as Aristotelian as it can get (not that only Aristotle thinks that).
One final point of remarkable overlap regards his discussion of moral expertise or talent and excluding the morally ignorant from discourse. Aristotle says, in the beginning of the Ethics, that bad and ignorant people should be excluded from discussion of human well-being. This is precisely what Harris says regarding the Taliban (again, to applause). I am left to wonder – would they have been applauding if he had read the EXACT SAME POINT from Aristotle’s text?? And “moral expertise” is just what Aristotle calls practical wisdom.
He does have one bout of silliness – putting up a picture of the Pope along with some other religious leaders and saying “they think they got their answers from a voice” and not from an analysis of human well-being. Slow down Harris – have you read Aquinas and do you know anything about Catholic morality?!?!!? That is NOT the Catholic view! What Haris does is EXACTLY what Aquinas does – he proposes a moral view rooted in a psychology of human flourishing that is discernible to natural reason. But I’ll forgive Harris his mishap (it is just habit for him). Overall this is an enormous move forward for atheists. Frankly it looks like a near full-scale acceptance of natural law ethics or at least its basic precepts — that morality is rooted in claims about [teleological] human nature/psychology and what it means to for a human to flourish. Harris – the ally of Aristotelians. Wow. Seriously, I could have – and indeed have – given almost the EXACT same talk straight out of Aristotle’s ethics. (I must add, it is clear that Harris and Aquinas would have some particular disagreements on the particular application of the natural law – about homosexuality say – but Harris has ceded the theoretical ground to the Thomists.
I am stunned and just pleased beyond pleasure.
In this post I’ll try not to gloat. Here is one positive from this: assuming a number of SHAFTer types are attracted to what Harris says, we have now found some really important common ground between secular humanists and religious humanists (a la Aquinas and Pope John Paul II). It does not mean we’ll agree on every detail of human flourishing and what the natural law entails, but it does suggest that we have considerable shared ground.
I understood his comments to be more utilitarian, but I admittedly never understood natural law theory. Could Harris have made both utilitarian and natural law appeals in his talk? I don’t see why not. But if what Harris articulated is the natural law view, then sign me up.
Like you, I wonder how cognizant Harris is of his agreement with Aquinas and Aristotle. Given that Harris has a masters in philosophy, he’s probably at least somewhat aware.
I am not so sure that he would be aware, MA in philosophy or not. Prof Huenemann tells me that he never read Aristotle (or was it Plato?) in graduate school. I don’t know where Harris got his MA, but it is entirely possible that he did not read this stuff (particularly if it was an analytical and so a non-historical program). And many graduate schools don’t teach the natural law (it has become so associated with Catholicism that he gets wrongly dismissed as a “religious view”). Anyway, you would be surprised by how ignorant many philosophy professors are about these classical theories. Look at textbooks on things like the philosophy of mind – Aristotle is nowhere to be found even though his position is important and serious. Huenemann and I chuckled at his textbook for the Philosophy of Mind class last year – it was called something like “Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Mind” — and the oldest text was Descartes. That book pretended as if no one said anything of any merit about those questions until him (to his credit, Huenemann supplemented the textbook with some Aristotle).
I did not hear it as simply utilitarian because Harris’ account of “human flourishing” (and the psychology that underwrites it) seemed to be broader and more robust than mere psychological hedonism (though, as with Aristotle, pleasure would be included). Also, if it had been utilitarian it would have been really easy for him to say so. That said, virtue ethics/natural law is concerned with ends so consequences do of course come up in the moral analysis (unlike, say, deontological ethics).
I don’t know about Harris’s background in philosophy, but my guess is that he’s disowned as much of it as possible in his efforts to appeal to broader audiences. What he comes up with helps to prove a rough rule of thumb: that when people (at least in the anglophone world) try to just come up with some philosophy on their own, they end up sounding a lot like either Aristotle or Locke. Then the irritating thing is that they often turn around and say that old-time philosophers failed to appreciate these “new” insights!
On the substance of the talk: cool! Now all science has to do is give us some objective account of what constitutes human flourishing, and we’re off to the races! I wonder whether they’ll go the Benthamite route and start measuring “hedons”, or go the Darwin route and start measuring survival fitness, or go the sociological route and start measuring what sweeping portions of populations regard as pleasing. And, finally, I wonder whether we’ll be “happy” with what each of these measures may end up endorsing.
Actually this is where I think Harris sounds the most like a natural law theorist, though perhaps he is closer to the new natural law instead of the old (though I remain unconvinced that there is that big of a distinction).
Instead of reducing goods to one good (“hedons” or survival), he seems to speak in this way: As human there are a number of basic and incommensurable goods that are basic to human flourishing. These goods (self-preservation, community, etc) are close to being self-evident and they do not need to be inferred from some abstract theoretical understanding. I think that is very close to what he says, and that is straight out of the new natural law playbook.
As for the role of science: Science can help us clarify facts and this will be a service to our understanding of human nature generally and it will help us clarify what things will be values (that is, which things will lead to flourishing and which things will frustrate our natural ends). Now I am skeptical that science can do this all by itself, because I don’t think metaphysics can be reduced to physics. In fact, on pain of bringing forth a horse that has been beaten dead too many times to count, I don’t think science can explain the implicit teleology embedded in what Harris was saying!
On recent post from a different stream, Source suggested that SHAFTers might be more open to Alfonso Gomez-Lobo’s Morality and the Human Goods than they would be to Ralph McInerny’s Ethica Thomistica. Sherlock taught both books in a recent course. Both are excellent books and both are worth reading. Gomez-Lobo is defending a “new natural law” view while McInerny is defending the old natural law view. Very briefly: the new natural law view tries to do its work without relying too much on metaphysics. Instead it relies on practical rationality (we self-evidently desire, and don’t particularly need a metaphysical account of why, certain goods). The old natural law (McInerny) is the more traditional metaphysical account. Not surprisingly, both sides vehemently insist that Aristotle and Aquinas would be on their side.
I have sympathies with both, and think the new natural law is at least a better tactic in this day when people are so skeptical of metaphysics. However I can’t shake the feeling that the new natural law theorists are smuggling in more metaphysics than they admit. Harris’ view appears to be compatible with (if not identical to!) the new natural law. Going that route you avoid the fuss about teleology and the theism heart attacks that gives secularists. However I will continue to argue that the teleology is buried in there all the same.
I’ve always really liked the “new natural law” view, but I think you’re right when you hint it falls apart (i.e., relies on metaphysics–Gross!!) under close examination.
The other point concerning the new natural law and Harris’ talk here is this: one of the basic starting points of the new natural law is that the is/ought problem is a real problem and that the old natural law does not take it seriously enough. But Harris (following McInerny and the old natural law) does not think it is. Rather, Harris wants to investigate human nature (facts) and derive ethics (values) from it.
Forgive my ignorance, but when you say “that morality is rooted in claims about [teleological] human nature/psychology”, what do you mean by teleological? Are you saying that the human flourishing idea with the five claims about human nature presented can only be put for by a “prime mover” and that they have an ultimate goal?
If that is what you’re saying, I have to disagree. All of those five claims have very basic natural means of arising as traits in humans. I see no need to root that in a teleological argument. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, or maybe you can demonstrate why I’m wrong.
If I might joke a bit with Ben: If I read between the lines is Ben saying, “What you are saying looks true so long as signing on to it does not mean I have to believe in God.”
Teleological:
No, I do not intend a theology here. All I mean is this: there are principles of movement that are internal to human beings and these principles of movement are directed toward certain ends and goods. “Every art or applied science and every inquiry and similarly every action and choice seem to aim at some good; the good therefore has been well defined as that at which all things aim.” (first line of the Nicomachean Ethics). The task, then, is to work out what these natural goods are, and it is not all that controversial (according to Harris and natural law theorists): health (both psychological and psychological) and community look like two obvious candidates.
It seems to me that Aristotle could be co-opted by a kind of naturalism (though I have not thought about this enough to say for sure). Keep in mind that Aristotle has natural design without a designer (he rejects Plato’s intelligent designer view) even though Aristotle does have a “prime mover” (not, though, as efficient cause but as final cause).
That said, I think that the natural law will ultimately require an eternal law. I think Sartre is right on one thing (and maybe only one thing): if God does not exist then human nature does not exist either. But that theological point would come WAY down the line in the argument. And, following Aristotle, you could probably accommodate it without accepting anything too “theological”. Again I need to think more about whether Aristotle could be co-opted by naturalism. Harris’ talk suggests as much, though I don’t think he realizes that he is smuggling in teleology (materialists quite naturally smuggle in it since you cannot talk about things without talking about ends).
“If I might joke a bit with Ben: If I read between the lines is Ben saying, “What you are saying looks true so long as signing on to it does not mean I have to believe in God.” ”
Actually, I don’t feel that way at all. I hope you don’t think all atheists are that shallow. I’m a pretty weak atheist, and would be fine believing in a God given enough evidence. To put it bluntly, I’m not going to just hop on the God band wagon because it is convenient and makes me feel better. If “signing on” required a belief in god, we’d just have to go back to the issue of gods existence in the first place.
From what I was reading before, you were saying that the reason humans act on those 5 things are because a god made them to behave in this way. Following that claim is the rest of everything you were talking about. I was just disagreeing that there needed to be a god for those 5 human instincts.
My understanding of what you’re trying to say by teleology is that the five instincts are there to produce an end, whether that be to continue your genetic line mating or to survive by being a part of a group. From there, we’re just trying to find out what is good for us. Fairly straight forward.
“I think that the natural law will ultimately require an eternal law.” Maybe this isn’t the place for this, but if you could expound, I’d be interested.
My joke was meant entirely in jest.
I don’t know that I ever said quite so straightforwardly that “man has 5 inclinations because God made us that way”. I usually tried to avoid speaking quite like that, not only because it is a bad tactic but also because it invites considerable oversimplification and misunderstanding. I am a theist, so I do think God is ultimately the author of all things. But from the point of view of ethics I think we could reside in “proximate causes” without needing to revert back to what I would argue are ultimate causes.
In other words, I think you can do natural law while being ignorant of or even rejecting the eternal law. This because all humanists are going to want to start with a claim like: man and nature are intelligible things. But you know my and my sympathy with natural theology. Ultimately I think the intelligibility of the created order requires an intelligent Creator. Those that deny this can still speak intelligently about the “effect” (the world and the intelligibility of the things in that world) without knowing the cause (the ultimate author and ground of the intelligibility of the world). But you can see here why I would ultimately say, when I write my book titled “On Everything”, that you need the eternal law in order to ultimately ground the natural law.
I have posted a 1000 word essay on why morality is rooted in evolution rather than in the theological realm . I am just waiting for administrative approval .
I’ll approve it, but brace yourself for the coming onslaught Neal ha ha.
I am excited for it
The problem as I see it with “natural law” moralities, at least insofar as Kleiner and the Catholics formulate them, is that they take a series of what appear to be wholesome precepts dealing with survival, unity, community, etc. and make them moral imperatives. In essence, they take one of Harris’s local moral maximums, make it a global maximum — and then take all other local maximums and merge them into a single abominable minimum. You might think of this as a kind of tyranny of our interpreted natural state, as given us by authority. Because the landscape of our values is a constantly shifting terrain, this kind of freezing ultimately ends with a system occupying a suboptimal or perhaps even immoral position. As I can best describe it, the error can be thought of as attempting to reify the abstraction of our values, while instead, in order to remain vital, they must be constantly reevaluated. This is equivalent to saying that there actually is no “natural law,” while there may be a kind of meta-natural law. By recording our nature in doctrine you automatically commit error, and you almost guarantee a bad outcome somewhere down the line. The Church has had to deal with this repeatedly, most famously regarding contraception, its position regarding homosexuality and sexuality in general. It occupies a stifled position that should have remained flexible and principled at a higher level, instead it has become mired in a nuanced moral position that has become essentially arbitrary and nonsensical to the outsider. It’s an object lesson for what not to do. In Harris’s landscape Catholics occupy a single precipitous peak with vast chasms on all sides.
Harris’s real vision, whether it’s Aristotelian or not, is to create a true heterogeneous landscape with mutually respectful local maxima. To miss that is to miss the whole point of his talk.
Hunt says the problem “is that they take a series of what appear to be wholesome precepts dealing with survival, unity, community, etc. and make them moral imperatives. In essence, they take one of Harris’s local moral maximums, make it a global maximum … You might think of this as a kind of tyranny of our interpreted natural state, as given us by authority”
I don’t see that Harris is doing anything different. He starts with the value of health/survival (a general precept) and – with the help of some scientific facts – infers a moral imperative: don’t put cholera in the water. This is not a “local moral maxim”, it would hold globally. In fact, Harris is critical of those who worry excessively about “cultural imperialism” (a kind of tyranny). He is making claims about human nature and so his claims are by definition universal to all things human. What is the authority? On this Harris and the Catholic Church agree – the authority is human nature. And, as Harris says, who are we to say we don’t know enough about it to judge other cultures?
This does not mean that there won’t be local variability. Harris’s example here regards respecting women’s bodies. There is probably a mean between the extremes (to use Aristotle’s language) between the extreme of forcing women to wear cloth bags and the extreme of having oversexed soft porn on news stands across America (he got big applause for that line).
You and Harris might not agree with the inference about homosexuality and contraception. That is fine. My point – and the point which I celebrated – was that it appears Harris has given up all of the important theoretical ground. He grants that you come up with both global and local moral laws by inferring them from basic desires rooted in human nature along with scientific facts which tell us what does and does not lead to the flourishing of those natural desires. That IS the natural law. Whether it is Catholic doctrine or not seems entirely beside the point. If it is true then it is true, and Catholics believing it does not make it false!
If Harris (or I) thought about it I think the view we favor would begin with natural law as per Aristotle but continue to refine it with contractual and democratic value. This reflects the history of natural law thinking once it was challenged and mostly dethroned by Hobbes and others. Our ethics are not completely provided for us by our nature and our relation with natural order. Hobbes would say that our ethics must consider our contractual obligation to others and “the sovereign,” although today he would probably be forced to spin things more democratically. This is the kind of thing that frees us from what I’ve called the “tyranny of our nature,” although it’s almost sure that many of the places that our inclinations conflict with our nature is merely mistaken interpretation of what our true nature is.
We are never relinquished from the essential requirements of nature. For instance, there is no political position we can put ourselves in that will make us immune to poison; however we can set ourselves free from, say, proscriptions against homosexuality because it conflicts with the natural function of reproduction. (I leave it as an open possibility, however, that this is a simplistic view of “our nature.” See comments on the latest post.) It goes beyond simply disagreeing with one or two of your or the CC’s inferences. The entire status given to our nature as sole arbiter for ethics is inflated and incorrect.
Just to head off one obvious criticism someone is going to come up with: I’m not advocating moral relativism, only keeping “value” in the conceptual realm and not instantiating it in a stultifying manner, which nearly all religion does.
Ooo, one final thought and I’ll shut up (for not). You will notice that as corollary to this, keeping value at conceptual level guards, as best it can, against stupid moralizing. For instance it is difficult (though possible) to go from values of fellowship, unity, agape, or what have you, to anti-homosexuality. Get my drift? It’s like an SAT question. Which one doesn’t fit? Conceptual value does not admit to stupid moral stricture.
Just on Kleiner’s earlier claim, that “These goods (self-preservation, community, etc) are close to being self-evident and they do not need to be inferred from some abstract theoretical understanding.”
“Close to being self-evident”?
I take it, then, that science and Aristotle are nowhere close to really answering moral questions.
Two points:
(a) That line “close to being self-evident” is actually from a book I have on the new natural law. Their argument is that moral philosophy does not require metaphysics. It is unnecessary to spend a lot of time doing metaphysics in order to argue for something like “man is a social animal”. That community and self-preservation are good is as about as self-evident as a claim about human nature could get, isn’t it? New natural law theorists suggest that these are starting points, not inferences. This is how Harris, in his talk, treats them.
For my part, I still prefer the old natural law that wants to bother with making metaphysical arguments about the nature of man.
(b) Why would Aristotle be nowhere close to answering moral questions if the basic goods of practical rationality were “self-evident”? I don’t understand what you are saying here.
I am here speaking on behalf of the new natural law (which I am not sure I agree with):
Perhaps this is a clearer way of putting it: New natural law theory says that the 5 basic human goods are first principles of practical rationality. It is usually thought by more traditional natural law that the principles of practical rationality are inferred from theoretical inquiry (metaphysics) into human nature. But they argue that the first principles of practical rationality have “autonomy” apart from any particular nature claim.
For my part, I think they may be making a good point if their point is about the order of knowing and the order of being. It does seem that the principles of practical rationality come first in the order of knowing even if they do not come first in the order of being. In other words, you don’t need a degree in philosophy and don’t need to engage in a bunch of speculative metaphysics about the nature of man to know that community is a basic good.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that most/all moral questions have pretty obvious answers; we just devote all our attention on the relative few about which reflective people disagree. I don’t see Aristotle and Harris as doing much more than surfing on that ocean of agreement. That’s a fine thing to do, but I wouldn’t advertise it as providing some special resource for answering moral questions. It doesn’t constitute an addition to our moral knowledge, or a justification of it, in any significant way.
Wait, that was a stupid comment from me. Obviously, Aristotle contributed *something* to moral theory, and other naturalists like Harris do as well: they offer views about where morality comes from, and offer guidelines meant to shape our moral thinking.
I think you are flattening the discourse a bit too much, Huenemann. I agree with you that most everyone has about the same kind of moral beliefs (generosity is good, lying is bad, etc etc). In other words, there is not a lot of disagreement about the content of moral laws. But there is considerable disagreement about how we arrive at those moral claims. For the most part, this is an academic question that does not much matter “in the real world”. Do you care if the guy who helped the old lady across the street is a Kantian or a Utilitarian? No, not really. Moral philosopher tend to disagree on everything except what we should actually do!
But the question about how we arrive at moral truths becomes considerably more important when there is disagreement.
I read this morning that 58% of Americans support waterboarding. Isn’t that amazing/shocking? A solid number of good “salt of the earth” type Americans – the kind of person that we generally think has a pretty solid bank of moral values think torture is morally permissible. I don’t know how to argue with these people without turning to moral philosophy and the metaphysical backdrop that grounds morality to begin with. So I think it is important.
What I found interesting about Harris’ talk is that his answer to the moral philosophical question, ‘how do we arrive at moral truth?’, was a natural law answer — you look at the basic goods of practical rationality discerned through a careful investigation of human nature. This answer is different than the answer a Kantian would give, the answer a utilitarian would give (because they reduce human nature more than Harris wants to), and certainly different than the answer a divine voluntarist would give.
So I disagree with Huenemann that it is not all that interesting and important that contributes to our moral knowledge (granted, Huenemann quickly took that back, saving himself a big WHAT???!?! from me). Huenemann is right, this investigation into human nature probably won’t change much for 99% of our moral lives. But it does make a difference on the controversial things. And I think it makes another difference in that I, for one, think that having a theoretical account of practical moral truths is a good. Isn’t this what philosophers do, they seek the ‘why’ of things?
Here is Sam’s response to some common criticisms he’s received for this talk.
At the top of page 17 of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor succinctly nails on the head the problem with Harris’ substantive project ( –which, frankly, I take to pale beside the general, non-intellectual project of the “New Atheists”, namely to promote the health of liberal democracy by mainstreaming atheism and open mockery or indifference towards “religion”).