Why Sam Harris is Wrong - A Critique of Sam Harris' 'The Moral Landscape' (in 2020)

Sam Harris' book is very influential, and rightly so. However, there might be something we need to dive deeper in order to see what is really at stake here.
This video is shot in 2020, which might be a bit late to the existing conversation, but better late then never!
#philosophy #samharris #moraltruth

We also talked about Jordan Peterson, William Craig, since they had some interesting debates with Sam Harris.

This is a very interesting conversation, because it might imply that there is something important missing in the existing conversation on morality.

What do you think?

Dr Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Program at the University of Macau. He wrote the book: "The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality", which focuses on morality and amorality.
(If you buy this book, or any other by Hans-Georg Moeller, from the Columbia University Press website, please use the promo code CUP20 and you should get a 20% discount.)

Clips mentioned:
"The Logical Incoherency of Atheist Sam Harris":

"The God Debate II: Harris vs. Craig":

"Jordan Peterson Discuss Sam Harris' View On Religion":

"Jordan Peterson - The Origins of Morality":

[tomburns]

Isn't the phrase "ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance" just a poetic definition of "arrogance"?

[jgarciajr]

Damn this guy is good. In a relative sense of philosophy.

[ivanasvobodova]

Fascinating! Please make more videos about whatever

[cassif]

It's very rare for me to have those amazing moments when someone perfectly puts into words something that I vaguely believed myself. This is the first time I've had such an experience in a long time.

[MayorMcC]

On jordon Peterson - “Some people say he’s a philosopher” so true lmao

[Lambda_Ovine]

Just like Zizek said, "If there's a God, then everything is permitted." Same with morality. If you believe you're morally justified, you'll do anything, let's demoralize our reasoning.

[mattiasovesson]

To quote another philosopher "only a sith deals in absolutes."

[macw.]

To me, I'd consider these to be moral claims, since he's saying we ought not use certain modes of thinking (i.e. dogmatic, absolute ones) because these modes are dangerous and cause problems. But I'm guessing that the way he's defining morality is restricted to absolute claims about right or wrong, so anything else is considered amoral.

[brisonmondry]

Love that trolley problem depiction: the track loops, so you only have to choose the order in which the people on the track die. much simpler

[AkasaBhikkhu-wnuk]

A truely universal presupposition of all "moralities" is "Obey".

[momobeach]

Does anyone else think it would just be easier if we tweak the definition of "morality" to include more subjective language, like: "relative to their goals", or "in their subjective opinion"?
This way there really wouldn't be debate about whether objective morality exists, because no matter how large a scale you try to look at it, morality will always be able to be framed in a subjective way, or relative to something. I have yet to hear anyone make this simple argument and would love to know if someone knows anyone who has, because in my opinion, this shatters any argument for whether objective morality exists.

[LarsRichterMedia]

"always on the brink of a religiously fundamentalist society" - this statement aged in a really "good" way

[tmsphere]

Ive been caught in this conundrum around “the importance of morals” and this helped me make a lot more sense of morality and regular ppl's obsession with it.

[karlnord]

A deontological virtue is, in some sense, the valuer making a "mountain out of a mole hill." Certainly we can ignore their claim that the valuation is "absolute" and just point out how it is useful to the speaker (or their religious identity). Then we can ask whether the speaker is motivated by some sort of mutually beneficial spirit. Sometimes people tell us to do something which is in their favor, but not theirs. (I.e., "Pay your taxes!" When the speaker is cheating on their taxes.)

We can break down valuations as individually subjective preferences and then look for commonalities---or inherent structures which are mutually beneficial.

The relative use of "good or right" are the only uses of "good or right" and so we shouldn't define "good or right" out of existence. These aren't amoral. We can't let a bad "absolutist" definition through out morality.

Certainly we can examine Christ's "Great Commandment" as a parallel to the gold rule---and discuss it in a game-theoretic sense of how human beings optimize their communal behavior---regardless of the absolutist language to the commandment.

[itheuserfirst]

Morality is a social construct, and is, therefore, always in flux. It depends on what might be gained, and what might be lost by adhering to it. It depends on empathy, but empathy can be fungible depnding on the circumnstances. Morality, like freedom, is at best, a negotiation based on how well our own needs are currently being satisfied. Humans often prefer order over principle. When order is at risk, morality becomes negotiable. I think the philosophy of homicide detectives sum it up best: "Under the right circumnstances, anybody is capable of anything."

[butterflyvision]

I agree with everything here, except for the last bit about the trolley problem which I think was poorly presented.

The trolley problem is not about choosing to kill 1 or 5 people, if it was it would be no dilemma. You would kill the 1, no problem.

Instead the trolley problem is about how to view moral responsibility relative to action and inaction, the train is already on the track which will kill 5 people. Someone other than you set that up so they would die. So if you do nothing they die, but if you change the tracks to save them you actively kill 1 person. The dilemma is about whether the inaction leading to 5 deaths carries more or less personal responsibility than the active killing of 1 person.

How does the trolley problem relate to real life? Is this abstraction, correctly understood, really as useless as Hans claims? Not at all.

Thousands of people die due to inaction every day, in fact you could go ahead and save lives in a matter of minutes by relatively trivial acts of charity, but most of us won't do that. We don't condemn this lack of action to any significant extent, despite the high death toll it has. But actively causing a death is considered one of the worst things you can do. The law reflects this too: letting people die is normally not a crime (and in the few situations where it is it's rarely prosecuted), but killing someone is. Perhaps the situation where you have to choose between lethal inactivity and killing someone isn't exactly real, but the confused moral intuitions that it highlights very much are.

Peter Singers child in the pond highlights the same problem, and I think this way of challenging moral intuitions is quite effective.

[v.ra.]

This presentation was clear, eloquent and significant. Thank you! Keep on doing what you’re doing, please

[dejvidlinguam]

Great video! One thing that struck was that if you were subscribe to the amorality idea proposed by the professor, you would effectively revert to a discussion of the improvement of wellbeing as used by Harris. You wouldn't be claiming that are your actions are absolutely moral or objectively good but you would be effectively using a form of calculus to make decisions.

[ViezeKnuf]

The idea of amorality as a coherently defendable ethical position is something I am going to take a dive into. This seems to be a possibly very fruitfull avenue to persue. Really refreshing stuff. Glad to have stumbled on this video.

[olivergroning]

Excellent contribution. I am always frustrated by the low level of logical coherence in discussions of the likes of Harris and Peterson, as they are not challenged for their inconsistencies. If the 'morally right' would exists in an absolute way, it would require an absolute measure of the well-being it creates. This immediately creates several big problems. First, how can I evaluate objectively the well-being of a person. Even if I could the second problem would be, how can I evaluate objectively the sum-total of well-being of a group of people effected by a morally charged actions. In this situation A might suffer a decrease of well-being and B might experience an increase. How can I add these up? Also, the same change of a situation for A and for B might mean different changes in 'well-being' for the two. The third problem is that for an objective evaluation of the amount of well-being created by an action, I would need to be able to assess this for all future times, which is impossible of course.
I am really baffled how any one would come to the conclusion that moral right or wrong can be anything but subjective (even if shared by a large group of people) and relative.