tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post1126559329157209350..comments2023-10-26T22:06:11.166+11:00Comments on Metamagician3000: Harris defends himself - on the need for a metric of "well-being"Russell Blackfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-26009536445384476262013-02-09T13:49:01.428+11:002013-02-09T13:49:01.428+11:00Sure, but Aristotle never thought that "flour...Sure, but Aristotle never thought that "flourishing" in that sense had a metric. My objection is not to using such concepts; it is to the passage in <i>The Moral Landscape</i> that only make sense if he thinks there is a metric to be applied. I.e. he continually speaks of quantifying various outcomes.Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-19798105368591697242013-01-23T08:42:23.203+11:002013-01-23T08:42:23.203+11:00Aristotle and Epicurus' flourishing are what S... Aristotle and Epicurus' flourishing are what Sam means.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03848209397234371879noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-90340551151265885652011-02-14T15:01:41.093+11:002011-02-14T15:01:41.093+11:00I don't think health has a metric either, but ...I don't think health has a metric either, but we have knowledge of both what improves and detiorates health and we strive to maintain a certain level of it, whatever that may be.<br /><br />Similarly, Harris argues for well-being, which I think of as long-range happiness or minimizing suffering, to entail similar knowledge based on a growing understanding of the brain and its interaction with society. I think the problem is that the science required to understand well-being is either infant or barely existent, and to Harris' worry, it may never be an area of focus because it's taboo for science to have a say on values.Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03193190723324894908noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-37326081866030985882011-01-26T13:01:53.123+11:002011-01-26T13:01:53.123+11:00No worries - I should be following the discussion ...No worries - I should be following the discussion a bit better than I'm actually managing.<br /><br />It's a very good discussion, and I especially like the fact that there are a few viewpoints here ... and yet we're all discussing it in a constructive way.Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-64828470482752876142011-01-26T12:01:16.054+11:002011-01-26T12:01:16.054+11:00Russell,
I would say that is probably pretty reas...Russell,<br /><br />I would say that is probably pretty reasonable although I think others were advocating that position more than I was. I (think) I am mostly in agreement with your position towards Harris's moral landscape. (Reading your book review was quite enjoyable) Mostly my comment was directed toward some of the sentiments expressed by others above (like the "Could there be a single metric for physical health?" comment) that I interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) to sound like:<br /><br />1) Medicine is an objective science.<br />2) Medicine deals with health.<br />3) 'Healthy' can be a fuzzy, hard to pin down term just like 'well-being' is.<br />4) Therefore we should expect that 'well-being' can have an objective science just like health has medicine thereby validating Harris's position.<br /><br />That line of reasoning seemed fallicious to me because IMHO 'healthy' means different things at different places in the argument and written out like that it seems to sort of be affirming the consequent too.<br /><br />Sorry if I didn't formulate my thoughts very well, I'm not trained in philosophy and just discovered your blog and was intrigued by the conversations. :)Jeremiahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06977623156609966553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-51555172879071153762011-01-26T09:54:54.972+11:002011-01-26T09:54:54.972+11:00Jeremiah, some of what you're saying sounds se...Jeremiah, some of what you're saying sounds sensible to me, but I'm losing track of who is defending what positions by now. Are you saying that Harris-style morality is not strictly objective but is (often) workable because it uses a concept that, while not a strict metric, roughly tracks what we care about? Or have I misconstrued your underlying position? If you're saying the above, I can see your point and would not necessarily disagree, or at least not very much.<br /><br />But as I say, I'm losing track. :(Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-75973851314293086402011-01-26T04:39:19.298+11:002011-01-26T04:39:19.298+11:00Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying bu...Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying but I think where I am coming from is this. There are kind of two concepts of 'healthy' that we are talking about here. One is a narrow, medical kind of healthy and the other is a wide more vague notion of healthy that could include things like emotional and mental health. If you take a common bioethical situation like if we should keep someone in a coma alive or not that is a question for the wide definition and morality in general but really doesn't impact our narrow evaluation at all which is just a question of, is their body functioning correctly or not, and in the case of the coma it is clearly not. What should be done about that situation is not a question for the narrow medical definition.<br /><br />I think when people are proposing the similarity to 'well-being' they are basically saying 'well-being' is vaguely defined like the wide definition of healthy is and yet we have medicine so science is obviously working without good metrics. But doesn't this just equivocate and pivot on the definition of healthy? Subtly switching from the wide definition to the narrow? End of life questions are, as you said, thorny hotly debated issues just like what constitutes 'well-being' is, but questions of if my heart is properly pumping blood isn't open to much interpretation. The problem as I see it is that we don't have a true apple to apples comparison of the narrow definition of healthy as it relates to medical science and some equivalent definition of 'well-being'. Does that make any sense? It is a bit hard for me to articulate how I was looking at the issue.<br /><br />So I think distance from death works just fine for the narrow view of health. Certainly it is unsatisfactory in the wide view but I don't think we would claim that questions of bioethics are a hard science like medicine anyways. If people want to compare the measure of 'well-being' to bioethics I could get on board with that. I would just object when trying to compare it to the more well defined science of medicine solely on the use of imprecise words like 'healthy.Jeremiahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06977623156609966553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-42398844187472150772011-01-25T11:37:16.435+11:002011-01-25T11:37:16.435+11:00Health does actually turn out to be very difficult...Health does actually turn out to be very difficult, though. Fortunately, there are many clear cases - someone has a debilitating bacterial infection, so we try to cure it, or someone has a broken leg so we try to fix it. Most everyday medical practice is like that. But there are lots of less clear-cut cases that give conniptions to bioethicists and health policy folks. Distance from death won't do because there are many things we want from our bodies apart from that, and some may be in competition with it (e.g. what if I will live longer by adopting a way of life that actually makes me physically weaker, mentally less astute, and less happy?).<br /><br />This issue about health opens up the whole thorny "therapy" versus "enhancement" debate, on which there's now a vast literature. Do we want biomedicine to enhance our bodies and lives or something more modest and specific, like curing diseases and treating injuries?Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-68545177003452204572011-01-25T11:24:54.197+11:002011-01-25T11:24:54.197+11:00I'm no philosopher but...
I have to say I don...I'm no philosopher but...<br /><br />I have to say I don't quite get the comparison of measuring morality to the measuring of if someone is healthy. I would say the measurement of a person's health is simply how close they are to death. If you have a sucking chest wound we know from facts that you will die within minutes or hours. Your health is poor. If you have cancer it is similar. If you have no discernable faults in your body that indicate imminent near term death then you are 'healthy'. Using such a measure you can make statements about things like being over-weight as unhealthy because we know (facts again) that life expectancy is shortened and from biology about its impact on your body's ability to sustain your life. Health clearly has a measure or metric that well-being seems to lack.<br /><br />As for measuring well-being in terms of emotions like shame or anxiety it still seems to me you would have problems. For instance how would compare the shame of a person who has sex before marriage because their religion told them it was a sin to the shame of a person who is stealing money from an elderly person who doesn't know any better? Person A can feel shame in a situation where person B does not. What is going to tell us then whether that feeling of shame is appropriate to the situation and hence counts in the well-being calculus? It still seems that we are just talking about measuring 'what we currently think is right as a majority' which, if I understand Russell correctly, isn't really in dispute. But that is something entirely different than having something that tells us, outside of our own prejudices, that action A is objectively morally superior to action B.<br /><br />To me the moral landscape seems almost like a tautology. Basically, the moral landscape will tell us what actions are 'right' based on our current inclinations and the reason we know this is because we used our current inclinations to define what the moral landscape should measure (via our choice in the way we define 'well-being' or whatever word you want to use).Jeremiahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06977623156609966553noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-21884346235484945052011-01-22T07:33:49.239+11:002011-01-22T07:33:49.239+11:00Russell, I fathom that wide reflective subjectivis...Russell, I fathom that wide reflective subjectivism underpins any objective morality as Googling covenant morality for humanity- the presumption of humanism illustrates.<br /> This idea stems from John Beversluis's commentary on the Hobbes- Hume's subjectivism against what C.S. Lewis maintains in "C.S.Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion." Beversluis notes two points about this form of subjectivism that are objective.<br /> By objective I mean by the consequence of actions on people, other animals and the enviornment.<br /> Ignostic Morgan[ aka Skeptic Griggsy,Naturalist Griggsy, Skeptic Griggsy and Inquiring Lynn- Google any one of these names to find I mean business!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-13064891433766823672011-01-22T06:32:54.534+11:002011-01-22T06:32:54.534+11:00A response Harris could have made to your objectio...A response Harris could have made to your objection concerning a metric of well-being is that because conscious beings are natural phenomena that arise from the activity of a brain, what constitutes well-being could be determined from a thorough understanding of the neurology that underlies our mental states. <br />If one ties well-being to certain "positive" brain states, then one would have a metric. Whatever produces those brain states maximally across a given population constitutes the morally correct course of action. That fails to answer the question of why maximising well-being is what should be done in the first place, but it does seem to provide a metric, although, as is pointed out, an exceedingly difficult one to delimit; akin to counting grains of sand perhaps, but theoretically feasible.Zemblannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-14308524852908384432011-01-22T06:02:43.254+11:002011-01-22T06:02:43.254+11:00James Sweet: "The one thing that I wish you h...James Sweet: <i>"The one thing that I wish you had gone one step further with on the car analogy is to state explicitly that if someone tried to say that some hypothetical lemon of a car (the one with poor acceleration, poor handling, poor safety, uncomfortable, ugly, etc.) was better than a Civic, then in that case we wouldn't just "raise our eye[brow]s" as you say, but we could safely assert that that person was objectively wrong</i><br /><br />What if that person is functioning as a Judge at the Monterey (California) Concours d'Elegance? He's comparing a pre-war Silver Shadow with Russell's Honda???<br /><br />Nurse! More conditionals, Stat!Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10215784276660875929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-26883000211141221392011-01-22T05:32:41.493+11:002011-01-22T05:32:41.493+11:00(I'm sorry, I'm illiterate in Hebrew) said...(I'm sorry, I'm illiterate in Hebrew) said: <i>"The argument between you two can then be reduced to the question of whether there are Normal desires - whether the distribution of desires and their weights is roughly Normal, so that the bulk of humanity mostly shares the same underlying values and can therefore be addresses as a single moral community."</i><br />It seems to me that human psychology bears the same relation to cultural norms that a lumberyard does to a neighborhood of houses. You can find 2x4's, plywood, floor coverings and so on in the houses, but looking at a pile of dimension lumber won't tell you how to build a sound stud wall, let alone suggest a floor plan or zoning regulations. We don't know what are the elements of human cognition, we don't understand how they work to form a stable personality, and we don't understand how personalities interact to form stable societies. All of this is very much fit topic for inquiry (and we seem to be making progress). But knowing the distribution of available lumber is of only very limited use in understanding architecture or city planning. There are a <i>lot</i> of alternatives at every stage.<br /><br />Russell: <i>"But again, I do think that it's possible to make rational, non-arbitrary criticisms of, say, the treatment of women under Shariah law without relying on anything like a strict moral objectivism. In fact, that's my take-home message at the moment."</i><br />You don't need "strict moral objectivism", you don't need to give up cultural relativism, you need a willingness to root for the home team. <i>Our</i> home team is the common post-enlightenment morality. It's a political question, not a scientific one, but if handed the ball I am clear on what goalpost to go for. <br /><br />Actually, women are biologically not the same as men, different hormone cycles and so on; it would not be "objective" to treat them as if they were men, not that I personally think that sharia is a good response. (For emphasis I would like to repeat this argument saying "Men are different and should be treated differently; it would not be objective to treat them as if they were women.")<br /><br />(... I do think it's a bit evasive of Sam to respond to Russell over at Jerry's place rather than directly. But never mind.)Marshallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10215784276660875929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-22544545470260545542011-01-22T03:05:02.766+11:002011-01-22T03:05:02.766+11:00There are a number of good points here.
In defend...There are a number of good points here.<br /><br />In defending Harris, several posters have suggested that there is a landscape with multiple peaks. Sensible, but that also implies that there may be multiple moral determinations depending on which peak one prefers. This is a bigger problem than just informing people, with the assumption that they will all converge on a standard set of values. How many would agree that 'global' well being is more important than their family's well being, accepting that any money they make above the global average should be taken to redistribute to strangers? 'Global' well being may suggest that, but most people would want to give high priority to their family first which is exactly how we evolved to behave.<br /><br /><br /><i>Person C beleives 'an uncomfortable, unreliable car that guzzles fuel while failing to accelerate, cornering with little stability, and braking dangerously' is the best car.</i><br /><br />This is essentially a straw man argument, few people would consciously do that. But some will fall far outside the conventional parameters. Let me illustrate that with a personal example. My vehicle (my favorite ever) is basically an offroad biased vehicle that rides like a brick, is noisy inside, and not great on gas. But it has a feeling of solidity and no no-fluff functionality that I really enjoy. Additionally when I travel miles deep into back country trails, I pick up additonal dents and scrapes (from rocks etc) which pretty much stay there as 'scars of honor'. To most people, this makes no sense whatever (why are you abusing your car?). To me it does.<br /><br /><br />Without going too far of track here, though, reasonable peole can come to different preferences without being wrong. Evolution guarantees also that there will always be significant diversity in fundamental behaviors because that is how species adapt to varying circumstances. There are risk takers and risk averse, there are leaders and followers. How much should a legal system limit activities 'protect people from themselves'? There will be strong disagreement on that between the risk takers and the risk averse. <br /><br />This is one area that frightens me when people try to come up with an overarching 'scientific' framework. There is a tendency to standardize people into a group rather than to allow for individual autonomy. We have government trying to 'guide' people (with varying degrees of coercion involved) in their living habits, eating habits, gambling habits, sex habits, health habits, etc. Once these guidelines become merged with 'moral imperatives' I can see a frightening increase in activity that the government feels empowered to enforce.jaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-57498736829159955232011-01-22T02:33:44.276+11:002011-01-22T02:33:44.276+11:00"Could there be a single metric for physical ...<i>"Could there be a single metric for physical health?"</i><br /><br />I think so. We decide between health outcomes, such as between having a relatively mangled limb or a prosthesis, or having a lean body suited for rock climbing or a stronger one for roller hockey. The fact that within one person non-arbitrary decisions are made implies that it can be done among multiple people.<br /><br /><i>"Person A believes the Honda Civic is the best car."</i><br /><br />This statement is literally meaningless without saying for whom. If he believes the Civic is the best car for everyone, he is objectively wrong. If he believes it is best for him, he is either objectively right or objectively wrong.<br /><br /><i>"Having said all this, I still can't imagine how to set those numbers in a purely objective way."</i><br /><br />Look at what conscious creatures want, and what would fulfill those desires. I think the answer involves that.Brianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11958115795753496384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-13350315441798256542011-01-22T01:47:44.410+11:002011-01-22T01:47:44.410+11:00I agree with DEEN that we can make comparative jud...I agree with DEEN that we can make comparative judgements without needing a specific metric. I don't have a metric for health, and it is a somewhat fuzzy concept, but surely a person in the final stages of terminal cancer is in a poorer state of health than a typical person. Well-being is an even more fuzzy concept than health, but I still think some people undeniably have more of it than others. We can make unimpeachable comparisons in extreme cases, even if we can't do so in most cases.<br /><br />We can reasonably vary in the criteria by which we judge health or well-being, but there are limits to this variation. If someone insists on judging well-being by the number of letters in a person's name, we can reasonably say that he's no longer talking about well-being at all.<br /><br />The situation with (non-moral) goodness is rather different, because the context tends to give or imply some purpose. If we say a car is good, we usually mean it's good for the usual purposes of a car. But in another context we might mean good for propping up a signboard, or good for dropping off a cliff! And I would say that this sort of descriptive meaning may be combined with a non-descriptive meaning which merely expresses the speaker's approval.Richard Weinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18095903892283146064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-42546983530612573452011-01-22T01:08:45.070+11:002011-01-22T01:08:45.070+11:00I think there's a reason why we have more issu...I think there's a reason why we have more issues with that sort of analysis for morals than for things like cars or knives: importance.<br /><br />Presuming that we all have at least a loose agreement on what we want a car for, we can certainly come to a general agreement on what would make a car better or worse for that purpose. But at the end of the day, there will be disagreements over the rankings of those factors -- as already stated -- that will lead to disagreements. But we're willing to accept that because it really doesn't matter to either of us whether you buy a Honda Civic or I buy a Ford Ranger; we're willing to let that be settled by personal opinion with at most a comment of "That's not what I would have done".<br /><br />We don't think that for morality, and I think rightly so. But those sorts of differences come into play. As we both know, you and I have a completely different idea of what considerations one should use in determining moral actions. However, you and I will agree on an awful lot of even the really big questions, for different reasons (see the Phoenix abortion case as an example; there's a long post on that on my blog which agrees with what was done, but for radically different reasons than you used). So, for the most part, our different moral values lead to the same behaviour. We, basically, buy the same or similar cars, most of the time.<br /><br />The issue, though, is that in at least some cases it's clear that you and I will disagree, and disagree strongly. And it's clear that in some of those cases you'll consider my moral decisions to be as "amoral" as those of the psychopath, say, and that I'll think the same about some of yours. Neither of us think the morality of psychopath is tolerable, but both of us think that, in some instances, the other's moral decisions are just as intolerable.<br /><br />At this point, there are major problems. If you want to try to tolerate my moral judgement in those areas of strong disagreement, then you open up the door to accepting the psychopath's as well. And if you want to be intolerant of my moral judgement there, you need something other than values particular to you to back it up.<br /><br />And this is because morality guides our behaviour in stronger ways than, say, car selection generally does. And because we think morality important -- or, at least, I do -- we don't just want "acceptable", but we want right. Because if we're going to make decisions that impact the lives of people and may even cause their deaths, we definitely want to be doing the right thing. That cries out for something beyond mere preference, which is what generally clashes in the car and knife cases when disagreements can't be settled.<br /><br />That importance, I think, is rightly why we're far less willing to accept anything that looks like "It's a matter of personal opinion" for morality. Whether that is right or wrong I cannot say.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-23887408486880818442011-01-22T00:56:30.847+11:002011-01-22T00:56:30.847+11:00"Person C may not be simply and strictly &quo..."<i>Person C may not be simply and strictly "wrong" but certainly seems unreasonable.</i>"<br />Person C may be wrong by not having considered all relevant aspects. For instance, as was mentioned above, person C may not be aware of how unsafe the car is. <em>We</em> may also be wrong in our judgement of person C's decision if <em>we</em> haven't thought of all aspects that are relevant to C. For instance, we may not be aware that person C simply can't afford anything better.<br /><br />All of these are factual matters, though, and should fall within the boundaries of science, at least in principle. The fact that we may never have full information on all aspects of a choice is a practical problem, for sure, but it's also a problem that sciecne in general faces. This has not stopped scientific progress, though.<br /><br />"<i>In a sufficiently extreme case, we might be able to say that the person apparently doesn't even understand what a car is for."</i><br />Actually, having different purposes for a car is probably quite common. For most, a car is primarily a means to get from A to B in some comfort and in a reasonably economical way. For others (say, those who are buying a second car), it may be more primarily a means to signal status. <br /><br />However, I don't know whether ignoring the purpose of a car as status symbol would count as a failure to take a relevant aspect into consideration, or just assigning a weight of essentially zero to this aspect.DEENhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01038312556912179499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-62268873368537212942011-01-21T23:49:46.302+11:002011-01-21T23:49:46.302+11:00Okay, but note that I didn't actually say C is...Okay, but note that I didn't actually say C is "wrong". I said we'd raise our eyes at C. We would, wouldn't we? <br /><br />And we'd be perfectly rational in so doing. <br /><br />As you say, there's a problem with setting the numbers in a purely objective way, even with a case as simple as that of judging the merits of motor-cars. But there are things that we can say to appeal to person C and at least get to this person to think about their real values. Do they <i>really</i> only care about styling? Do they <i>really</i> expect other people to take a judgment based only on styling seriously, and so on. In fact, in a case as simple as this, where the thing whose merit we are discussing has been designed for a particular purpose, we can probably say quite a lot this person. Person C may not be simply and strictly "wrong" but certainly seems unreasonable.<br /><br />(Mind you, there's no straightforward metric for unreasonableness either. However, we can recognise people who are so uncompromising about their own very idiosyncratic values that the rest of us would rather avoid them, not give them power, not want them around if we can help it, and so on.)<br /><br />In a sufficiently extreme case, we might be able to say that the person apparently doesn't even understand what a car is <i>for</i>. <br /><br />But my point is partly that even in these straightforward cases involving things like knives and cars we can end up with room for perfectly legitimate disagreements, while at the same time we have perfectly good, non-arbitrary reasons to judge some knives and some cars (and some laws, political systems, etc.) as "good" ones even if it's theoretically possible for someone to disagree without, strictly speaking, making an error. <br /><br />We're not stuck with a forced choice between totally arbitrary judgments and purely objective ones. It's more complicated than that, but it seems to me (I won't insist that it's clear) that we are actually quite fluent in recognising and negotiating the complications in most cases. We only seem to lose sight of this with claims that we consider moral ones.Russell Blackfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12431324430596809958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-81219423906268391342011-01-21T20:35:02.572+11:002011-01-21T20:35:02.572+11:00There is a problem with your analogy with car meri...There is a problem with your analogy with car merit-points, which I did not realise until reading James Sweet's post. To paraphrase:<br />Person A believes the Honda Civic is the best car.<br />Person B believes the Mazda is the best car.<br />Person C beleives 'an uncomfortable, unreliable car that guzzles fuel while failing to accelerate, cornering with little stability, and braking dangerously' is the best car.<br /><br />This value judgement is based on several factors weighed like this:<br />Factor A*importance+Factor B*importance... etc.<br /><br />So, why can you say that person C is wrong? He merely puts a different importance to different factors than person A and person B. If A and B both have their best car by their own values, then C can have the best car by his own values. This makes the comparison loose ground, in that we still look objectively at the value of a car, and just have difficulty zooming in on the exact metric.<br /><br />Back to talking about the beach, someone uses a certain method to determine it's 1.6 billion grains of sand, the other comes up with another method and determines it's 1.5 billion grains of sand. Because of uncertainty, one of them can't say the other is wrong, but they can laugh in someone's face if he says there are only 10 grains of sand on the beach. Clearly this person is doing something wrong in determining the amount of grains of sand.<br /><br />Back to person C. Imagine that all he finds important is how a car looks. Then he is doing something wrong. Driving a safer car would reduce the risk of injury for him, a more fuel friendly car would open up money for him, a less loud car would reduce arguments with his neighbours. He does not realise his well-being could be increased by doing these things, or has a well-being that needs adjustment.<br /><br />What we can basically conclude from this is that people ought to put a certain importance on things and deviating to far from the norm is socially wrong. If the well-being of others is factored standardly with factor 2, then someone is selfish if he uses factor < 1.5, and a bastard if he uses factor < 0.5<br /><br />Having said all this, I still can't imagine how to set those numbers in a purely objective way. I just can't figure out whether that's because it is difficult, like Sam Harris says, or because it is impossible.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-17780356127737219842011-01-21T15:47:05.304+11:002011-01-21T15:47:05.304+11:00I think the fact that Harris refers to it as a &qu...I think the fact that Harris refers to it as a "landscape" implies that he's already thinking that moral judgement will have a multi-valued measurement rather than a single value. In his book, he also discusses how different reasonable people may disagree about how to weight different factors which is again a nod towards this multi-valued evaluation.<br /><br />So rather than being challenged by your example of ranking cars or knives, I suspect that this may be exactly what he's thinking of. When you look at car guides, there are 4 star and 5 star cars, and there are 0 and 1 star cars. We may be at the point where we can distinguish between the 0 and the 5 stars without having detailed metrics, and what you're saying is that we'll have to design some sort of moral evaluation matrix before we can distinguish between the 4 and 5 stars (or even between two 5 stars). I agree but even without a comparison matrix, we can say that a rust-bucket car which breaks down every 20km and bursts into a fireball if you apply the brakes too hard is an objectively worse car than a brand new Honda. We may need more details later but for now, the moral world has plenty of rusty Ford Pintos amongst the new Hondas - how much quantification do we need to decide between them?<br /><br />So in the end I agree that there's more work to be done, but I also agree with Harris that this need not detract from his work, nor does it necessarily need to be something that he needs to complete. Am I missing something or is there some reason why he needs to flesh out these details?Adrianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08694840174170043470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-3722218942928361932011-01-21T15:06:23.027+11:002011-01-21T15:06:23.027+11:00For the concept of well-being, see:
* Crisp, Roge...For the concept of well-being, see:<br /><br /><b>* Crisp, Roger. "Well-Being." In <i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>, 2008: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being</b><br /><br />Theories of well-being:<br /><br />According to one group of theorists, "well-being consists in the greatest balance of pleasure over pain." – What is good is good for me, you, or us; and what is good for me, you, or us is what <i>feels good to</i> me, you, or us.<br />So, in the (arguably utopian) state of perfect hedonistic well-being all people would only have pleasurable experiences and no painful ones. The essence of well-being thus understood is <b>pleasure-experience</b>.<br /><br />According to a second group of theorists, "people's well-being [consists in] in the satisfaction of preferences or desires, the content of which could be revealed by their possessors." The essence of well-being thus understood is <b>desire-satisfaction</b>. Then, the (arguably utopian) state of perfect well-being is attained when all of my, your, or our desires are satisfied.<br /><br />According to a third group of theorists, well-being consists "neither merely in pleasurable experience nor in desire-satisfaction. Such items might include, for example, knowledge or friendship."<br />I'm not sure whether I'm right, but it seems to me that the essence of well-being thus understood is some sort of <b>value-actualization</b>. For example, people who have many friends experience (partial) well-being because the value of friendship is actualized in their life. Then, the (arguably utopian) state of perfect well-being is attained when all of my, your, or our values are actualized.Myronnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-92041322322787412962011-01-21T11:37:45.789+11:002011-01-21T11:37:45.789+11:00Hi! You said: It's this: We cannot make object...Hi! You said: <i>It's this: We cannot make objectively binding comparisons of well-being unless we have a metric for well-being. We need to know what "well-being" actually is, and it needs to be something that comes in units of some kind, so comparisons can be made.</i><br /><br />Umm .. I guess I disagree: Missing an arm is worse than not. Missing a leg is worse than not. Missing an arm may or may not be worse than missing a leg: Maybe different people can (reasonably) disagree. But I have no "units" for this: How about losing an arm is 73 and losing a leg is 82; for me of course!czrpbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05411515424273328980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-18573674672014429152011-01-21T10:39:17.876+11:002011-01-21T10:39:17.876+11:00Maybe this is off base but it makes sense to me no...Maybe this is off base but it makes sense to me now. On the issue of a metric for well-being. <br /><br />Could there be a single metric for physical health? Several metrics? Maybe average life-span, chronic pain, # of diseases, aliments, disorders of all types, #'s of extremely painful events, risk of disease? If you could have such metrics for physical health, why couldn't you likewise have some for "well-being". For one thing, physical health clearly has a lot to do with overall well-being. But in addition it seems you could bring in a science of the mind. Can we not arrive at reasonable criteria for an open-ended conception of "well-being"? <br /><br />Fear, hatred, shame, guilt, anxiety, etc.? Can anyone sensibly say that those states can't be generally considered "bad"? What would 'bad' mean if all of our negative emotions are not bad? While it would be of course, impossible to get all of the relevant data, objective answers would seem possible in principle, if not always in practice.<br /><br />Again, does physical health have a single metric? If not, how does it make sense to ask for one in the case of <i>health</i> in a much broader sense? What are the units of physical health? I don't understand why, say, the metric of 'amount of anxiety experienced over a lifetime' would be an arbitrary 'well-being' metric. (Of course well-being is much more than not feeling anxious, but can one sensibly say that it is good to experience a lot of anxiety in one's life?) <br /><br />The entire section 'making judgments of merit' doesn't seem to contain anything that would be a problem for Harris' thesis. When I read it saw 'many equivalent ways to thrive', 'many peaks on the moral landscape', and 'not one right food to eat'.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07406577241792279707noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24761391.post-41205573618891758132011-01-21T10:35:04.242+11:002011-01-21T10:35:04.242+11:00Excellent post!
The answer to your desperate ques...Excellent post!<br /><br />The answer to your desperate question is of course: because many people <i>want</i> simple explanations and models for everything. Acknowledging complexity is difficult, and slows down decision processes.Alex SLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00801894164903608204noreply@blogger.com