Science can answer moral questions Sam Harris
I’m going to speak today about the
relationship between science and human
values now it’s generally understood
that that questions of morality
questions of good and evil and right and
wrong are questions about which science
officially has no opinion it’s thought
that science can can help us get what we
value but it can never tell us what we
ought to value and consequently most
people I think most people probably here
think that science will never answer the
most important questions in human life
questions like what is worth living for
what is worth dying for what what
constitutes a good life so I’m going to
argue that this is an illusion of the
separation between science and human
values is an illusion and actually quite
a dangerous one at this point in human
history now it’s often said that science
cannot give us a foundation for morality
and human values because science deals
with facts and facts and values seem to
belong to different spheres it’s often
thought that there’s no description of
the way the world is that can tell us
how the world ought to be but I think
this is quite clearly untrue but values
are a certain kind of fact okay they are
facts about the well-being of conscious
creatures why is it that we don’t have
ethical obligations toward rocks
why don’t we feel compassion for rocks
so because we don’t think rocks can
suffer and if we’re more concerned about
our fellow primates than we are about
insects as indeed we are it’s because we
think they’re exposed to a greater range
of potential happiness and suffering now
the crucial thing to notice here is that
this is a factual claim this is
something we could be right or wrong
about if we’ve misconstrued the
relationship between biological
complexity and the possibilities of
experience well then we could be wrong
about the inner lives of insects okay
there is no notion no version of human
morality and human values that I’ve ever
come across that is not at some point
reducible to a concern about conscious
experience
and it’s possible changes even if you
get your values from religion even if
you think that good and evil ultimately
relate to conditions after death either
to an eternity of happiness with God or
an eternity of suffering in hell you are
still concerned about consciousness and
its changes and to say that such changes
can persist after death is itself a
factual claim which of course may or may
not be true now to speak about the
conditions of well-being in this life
for human beings we know that there is a
continuum of such facts we know that
it’s possible to live in a failed state
where everything that can go wrong does
go wrong where mothers cannot feed their
children we’re strangers cannot find the
basis for peaceful collaboration where
people are murdered indiscriminately and
we know that it’s possible to move along
this continuum towards something quite a
bit more idyllic that - a place where a
conference like this is even conceivable
and we know we know that there are right
and wrong answers to how to move in this
space and what would would adding
cholera to the water be a good idea Oh
probably not it would it be a good idea
for everyone to believe in the evil eye
so that when bad things happen to them
they immediately blame their neighbors
probably not there are truths to be
known about how human communities
flourish whether or not we understand
these truths and morality relates to
these truths so in talking about values
we are talking about facts now of course
our situation in the world can be
understood at many levels there’s the
from the level of the genome on up to
the level of economic systems and
political arrangements but if we’re
going to talk about human well-being
we are of necessity talking about the
human brain because we know that our
experience of the world and of ourselves
within it is realized in the brain
whatever happens after death even if the
suicide bomber does get 72 virgins in
the afterlife in this life
his personality is rather unfortunate
personality is the product of his brain
okay and so and the contributions of
culture if culture changes us as indeed
it does it changes us by changing our
brains and and so therefore the whatever
cultural variation there is and how
human beings flourish can at least in
principle be understood in the context
of a maturing science of the mind
neuroscience psychology etc so what I’m
arguing is that values reduce to facts
to facts about the conscious experience
of conscious beings and we can therefore
visualize a space of possible changes in
the experience of these beans and I
think this is a kind of moral landscape
with peaks and valleys that correspond
to differences in the well-being of
conscious creatures both personal and
collective and one thing to notice is
that perhaps there are states of human
well-being that we rarely access that
few people access and these await our
discovery perhaps some of these states
can be appropriately called mystical or
spiritual perhaps our other states that
we can’t access because of how our minds
are structured but other Minds possibly
could access them now let me be clear
about what I’m not saying I’m not saying
that science is guaranteed to map this
space or that we will have scientific
answers to every conceivable moral
question I don’t think for instance that
you will one day consult a supercomputer
to learn whether you should have a
second child or whether we should bomb
Iran’s nuclear facilities or whether you
can deduct the full cost of Ted as a
business expense
but if questions affect human wellbeing
then they do have answers whether or not
we can find them and just admitting this
just admitting that there are right and
wrong answers to the question of how
humans flourish will change the way we
talk about morality and will change our
expectations of human cooperation in the
future and for instance there are 21
states in our country where corporal
punishment in the classroom is legal
where it is legal for a teacher to beat
a child with a wooden board heart under
raising large bruises and blisters and
even breaking the skin and a hundreds of
thousands of children instantly are
subjected to this every year the
locations of these enlightened districts
I think will fail to surprise you we’re
not talking about Connecticut and the
rationale for this behavior is
explicitly religious the creator of the
universe himself has told us not to
spare the rod less we spoil the child
this is in proverbs 13 and 20 and I
believe 23 but we can ask the obvious
question okay is is it a good idea
generally speaking to subject children
to pain and violence and public
humiliation as a way of encouraging
healthy emotional development and and
good behavior okay is there any doubt
that this question has an answer and
that it matters now many of you might
worry that the notion of well-being is
truly undefined and seemingly
perpetually open to be reconstructing
their be a an objective notion of
well-being well consider by analogy the
concept of physical health
the concept of physical health is
undefined as we just heard from Michael
Spector it has changed over the years
when this statue was carved the average
life expectancy was probably thirty he
is now around 80 in the developed world
there may come a time when we meddle
with our genomes in such a way that that
not being able to run a marathon at age
200 will be considered a profound
disability you know people send you
donations when you’re in that
notice that that the fact that the
concept of health is open genuinely open
for revision does not make it vacuous
the distinction between a healthy person
and a dead one is about as clear and
consequential as any we make in science
now another thing to notice is there may
be many peaks on the moral landscape
there may be equivalent ways to thrive
there may be equivalent ways to organize
a human society so as to maximize human
flourishing now why wouldn’t this
undermine a an objective morality well
think of how we talk about food I would
never be tempted to argue to you that
there must be one right food to eat it’s
clearly a range of materials that
constitute healthy food but there’s
nevertheless a clear distinction between
food and poison okay the fact that there
are many right answers to the question
what is food does not make the decisions
not tempt us to say that there are no
truths to be known about human nutrition
now many people worry that that a
universal Mara morality would would
require moral precepts that
that admit of no exceptions so for
instance if it’s really wrong to lie it
must always be wrong to lie and if you
can find an exception well then there’s
no such thing as moral truth now why
would we think this consider by analogy
the game chess now if you’re going to
play good chess a principle like don’t
lose your queen is very good to follow
okay but it clearly admits of exceptions
with their moments we’re losing your
queen is a brilliant thing to do there
are moments where is the only good thing
you can do and yet the chess is a domain
of perfect objectivity the fact that
there are exceptions here does not does
not change that at all now this brings
us to the sorts of moves that people are
apt to make in the moral sphere okay
consider the great problem of women’s
bodies what to do about them well this
is one thing you can do about them you
can cover them up
now it is the position generally
speaking of our intellectual community
that well we might not like this we
might think of this as wrong in Boston
or Palo Alto who are we to say that the
proud denizens of an ancient culture are
wrong to force their wives and daughters
to live in cloth bags who are we to say
even that they’re wrong to beat them
with lengths of steel cable or throw
battery acid in their faces if they
decline the privilege of being smothered
in this way okay who are we not to say
this who are we to pretend that we know
so little about human well-being that we
have to be non-judgmental about a
practice like this I’m not talking about
voluntary wearing of a veil and women
should be able to wear whatever they
want as far as I’m concerned but what
does voluntary mean in a community where
when a girl gets raped her father’s
first impulse rather often is to murder
her out of shame but just let that fact
detonate in your brain for a minute your
daughter gets raped and what you want to
do is kill her
what what are the chances that
represents a peak of human flourishing
now to say this it’s not to say that we
have got the the perfect solution in our
own society commit for instance this is
what it’s like to go to a newsstand
almost anywhere in the civilized world
now granted for many men it may require
a degree in philosophy to see something
wrong with these images but if we are in
a reflective mood we can ask is this the
perfect expression of psychological
balance with respect to variables like
youth and beauty and women’s bodies is
this the optimal environment in which to
raise our children probably not okay so
so perhaps our someplace on the spectrum
between these two extremes that
represents a place of a better balance
perhaps perhaps there are many such
places again we’re given other changes
in human culture there may be many peaks
on the moral landscape but the thing to
notice is that there’ll be many more
ways not to be on a peak now the irony
from my perspective is that the only
people who seem to generally agree with
me and who think that there are right
and wrong answers to moral questions are
religious demagogues of one form or
another and of course they think they
have right answers to moral questions
because they got these answers from a
voice in a whirlwind okay not because
they made an intelligent analysis of the
causes and condition of human and animal
well-being and in fact the the endurance
of religion as a as a lens through which
most people view moral questions has
separated most moral talk from real
questions of human and animal suffering
this is why we spend our time talking
about things like gay marriage and not
about genocide or nuclear proliferation
or poverty or any other hugely
consequential issue but the demagogues
are right about one thing we need a
universal conception of human values now
what stands in the way of this well one
thing to notice is that we we do
something different when talking about
morality especially secular academic
scientist types when talking about
morality we value differences of opinion
in a way that we don’t in any other area
of our lives so for instance the Dalai
Lama gets up every morning meditating on
compassion and he thinks that helping
other human beings is an integral
component of human happiness yeah on the
other hand we have someone like Ted
Bundy Ted Bundy was very fond of
abducting and raping and torturing and
killing young women okay so we appear to
have a genuine difference of opinion
about how to profitably use one’s time
most Western intellectuals look at this
situation and say well there’s nothing
for the Dalai Lama to be really right
about really right about or for Ted
Bundy to be really wrong about that
admits of a of a real argument that
potentially falls within the purview of
science okay that we you know he likes
chocolate
he likes vanilla there’s there’s no
there’s nothing that one should be able
to say to the other that should persuade
the other now notice that we don’t do
this in science on the left you have
Edward Witten
he’s a string theorist if you ask the
smartest physicists around who’s the
smartest physicist around in my
experience half of them will say ed
Witten the other half will tell you they
don’t like the question so what would
happen if I showed up at a physics
conference and said string theory is
bogus you know it doesn’t resonate with
me it’s not how I choose to view the
universe the smallest scale I’m not a
fan
well well nothing would happen because
I’m not a physicist I don’t understand
string theory I’m the Ted Bundy of
string theory
I wouldn’t want to belong to any string
theory club that would have me as a
member okay but this is just the point
okay whenever we are talking about facts
certain opinions must be excluded that
is what it is to have a domain of
expertise that is what it is for
knowledge to count how have we convinced
ourselves that in the moral sphere there
is no such thing as moral expertise or
moral talent or moral genius even how
have we convinced ourselves that every
opinion has to count how have we
convinced ourselves that every culture
has a point of view on these subjects
worth considering does the Taliban have
a point of view on physics that is worth
considering no okay how is how is their
ignorance how is their ignorance any
less obvious on the subject of human
well-being
so so this I think is what the world
needs now it needs people like ourselves
to admit that there are right and wrong
answers to questions of human
flourishing and morality relates to that
domain of facts it is possible for
individuals and even for whole cultures
to care about the wrong things which is
to say it’s possible for them to have
beliefs and desires that reliably lead
to needless human suffering just
admitting this will transform our
discourse about morality okay we live in
it in a in a world in which the
boundaries between nations mean less and
less and they will one day mean nothing
we live in a world filled with
destructive technology and this
technology cannot be uninvented it will
always be easier to break things than to
fix them it seems to me therefore
patently obvious that we can no more
respect and tolerate vast differences in
in notions of human wellbeing then then
we can respect or tolerate vast
differences in the notions about how
disease spreads or in the in the safety
standards of buildings and airplanes we
simply must converge on the answers we
give to the most important questions in
human life and to do that we have to
admit that these questions have answers
thank you very much
thank you
go ahead of us sir
so some combustible material there yeah
whether in this audience or people
elsewhere in the world hearing some of
this they’ve all be doing the screaming
with rage thing all right there as well
some of them language seems to be is
really important here you do when you
talk about the veil you’re talking about
women dressed in cloth bags you know
I’ve lived in the Muslim world spoken
with a lot of Muslim women and some of
them would say something else they would
say no you know this is a celebration of
female specialness it helps build that
and it’s an expression it’s a result of
the fact that and is arguably a
sophisticated psychological view that
male lust is not to be trusted
ROH I mean can you engage in a
conversation with that kind of woman
without seeing kind of cultural
imperialist yeah well I think this is I
tried to broach this in a sentence
watching the clock ticking but the the
question is what is voluntary in a
context where men have certain
expectations and certain and you’re
guaranteed to be treated in a certain
way if you don’t veil yourself and so if
anyone in this room wanted to wear a
veil or a very funny hat or tattoo their
faces or do I think we should be free to
voluntarily do whatever we want but we
have to be honest about the constraints
that these women are placed under and
and so I think we shouldn’t be so eager
to always take their word for it
especially and when it’s 120 degrees out
and you’re you’re wearing a full burqa a
lot of people you know want to believe
in this this concept of moral progress
but can you reconcile that I think I
understood you to say that you could
reconcile that with the world that
doesn’t become one-dimensional well we
all have to think the same paint your
picture of what you know rolling the
clock 50 years forward 100 years forward
how you would like to think of the world
balancing moral progress with richness
well I think once you admit that we are
on path toward understanding our minds
at the level of the brain in some
important detail then
you have to admit that that we are going
to understand all of the positive and
negative qualities of ourselves in much
greater detail so we’re going to
understand positive social emotion like
empathy and compassion and we’re going
to understand the factors that encourage
it whether they’re genetic whether
they’re how people talk to one another
whether they’re economic systems and
insofar as we begin to shine light on
that we are inevitably going to converge
on on that fact space so everything is
not going to be up for grabs it’s not
going to be like you know veiling my
daughter from birth is just as good as
as teaching her to be confident and and
well-educated in the context of men who
do desire women you know so it’s it’s
it’s we oh I don’t think we need an NSF
grant to know that veiling compulsory
veiling is a bad idea but at a certain
point we’re going to be able to scan the
brains of everyone involved and actually
interrogate them you know I mean do
people love their daughters just as much
in these in these systems and I think I
think they’re right clearly right
answers to that and if the results come
out that actually they do are you
prepared to shift your instinctive
current judgment on some of these issues
well yeah modulo one obvious fact that
you can love someone in the context of a
truly delusional belief system so that
you can say like because I I knew my gay
son was going to go to hell if he if he
found a boyfriend I chopped his head off
and that was the most compassionate
thing I can do if you get all those
parts aligned yes I think you could
probably be feeling the emotion of love
but again then we have to talk about
well-being in a larger context you know
it’s all of us in this together it’s not
one man feeling ecstasy and then blowing
himself up on a bus some this is a
conversation I would actually love to
continue for hours we don’t have that
layout if you know the time thank you
that means that really an archaic
what does a machine know about itself
can it know when it needs to be repaired
and when it doesn’t in industries like
manufacturing and energy they’re using
predictive analytics to detect signs of
trouble helping some companies save
millions on maintenance because machines
seek help before they’re broken and
don’t when they’re not that’s what I’m
working on I’m an IBM er let’s build a
smarter planet