'What Am I Missing?' Sam Harris vs Alex O'Connor on Objective Morality

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[johnconnor]

Just wanted to comment here to proudly share that I've been sober for 1, 679 days.

[WhiskeyActualTV]

The title is perfect because I feel like I’m missing 30 years of context for this conversation.

[JuBerryLive]

Judaism: Murder is necessary.
Islamism: Murder is necessary.
Christianity: Murder is always bad.
Sam Harris: Murder is probably not ok in our current 21st century moral landscape.
Jordan Peterson: What do you mean by "murder" ?

[Pyriphlegeton]

11:50 This is literally the crux of the disagreement.
"Objectively better, *IF* better means navigating away from the worst possible misery for everyone [...]."

Alex' point seems to be that the universe itself has no prescription to do what increases wellbeing. Sam's point seems to be that, if we agree that wellbeing is better than suffering and use that as a foundation for ethics, "right" behaviour is rather determined.

The fundamental question is whether one accepts that suffering should be avoided and wellbeing enhanced.

[TheHumanistKnight]

the flaw with this line of reasoning is that morality is almost never an individual construct. It's a collective one. We don't follow moral rules solely to benefit our own personal pleasure, but in order to participate in a collective where we gain benefits from that participation. You don't need a moral framework to live as an individual. You only need one in order to live in a community as part of a collective.

[zakkmiller]

Im just sitting here smoking a bong pretending like I have the slightest clue wtf they are talking about. Anybody else? lol

[odinallfarther]

Perhaps it's me but I heard him talk but i did not hear him say any thing .

[weedlol]

Hearing Alex say "Minecraft" is something I never knew I wanted.

[beliefisnotachoice]

Alex nailed it, there are objectively better and worse ways to achieve my subjective preferences. Sam disagrees and then explains in a way that demonstrates that he actually agrees.

[Jacktrades]

I'm a big Sam Harris fan, but I'm in Alex's camp here.
No matter how you dress up a "should" or "ought", it remains firmly in the realm of subjective judgement.
And "Subjective" doesn't mean "less worth standing up for" than "Objective". It merely means we are continually required to reargue and justify our claims regarding it to others in our society.
We can put to bed questions such as what 1 + 1 is equal to, but we really have to continue negotiating questions like, "How much of our GDP should we spend on housing and feeding the poor?"

[Carbonbank]

I’ve taken that special Music pill before … and I’ll probably take it a few more times to come

[Ethan-qorx]

Can’t you just say humans are essentially pack animals, we’ve evolved to be social and have empathy because we need to work together to survive. We also have a hierarchy. I think that is sufficient in explaining “morality”, it’s ingrained into us already.

[caine]

Sam finally respecting the coaster is the best in this.

[psychologicalsuccess]

I think the literal fact that morality is also expressed as "judgement" that judgement is only about taste, the judgement is not built on anything that isn't a person taste interaction.

[DemainIronfalcon]

Excellent Alex, love it..
Definitely showing the value of definition or should i say honesty of definition..👍✌️

[hamdaniyusuf_dani]

There's no fruitful discussion before the morality as its subject is properly defined and understood. Things can be good or bad depending on the assigned terminal goal.
Only conscious entities can have a goal, thus the existence of goals and morality depends on the existence of conscious entities.

[aeonexoriginal]

I read up on A.J. Ayers a while back in my study on ethics in college. So forgive me if I'm inaccurate in my assessments anywhere. The main issue I have with non-cognitivists such as Alex's Ethical Emotivism stance is that there are, in fact, truth-apt claims in moral positions. For example, what emotional states you and your parents regularly express in your formative years during adolescence will shape what genes are expressed later on as you grow up. This is a known in the study of epigenetics. These emotional habits you have later on in life lead you in life. They can lead you into a more trouble adulthood (childhood deviance leading to criminal behaviors later on) or more harmonious lifestyles (becoming a caring nurse/doctor that genuinely listens to their patients needs). This realm of ethical study is known as evolutionary ethics and it made me doubt much of the non-cognitivists positions and claims about ethics overall. But I diverge away from Harris also. I'm not sure where to place Harris' ethical position just yet. Maybe a universal prescriptivist? that argues for objective morality. But that position also suffers a number of ethical dilemmas that a Youtube comment could hardly cover. I would rather steel man Harris and get a more proper scope of his ethical position before saying anything against it.

[fredventure]

Alex, you've become my new favorite intellectual! Absolute powerhouse. Just wanted to give couple of cinematic feedback in terms of production:
a) Have the shadow on the face-side closest to camera.
b) On the total, make sure you use rule of thirds and place the subjects head on the top third.
c) On the shot of you, the ISO seems to have been set too high (on a camera that doesn't support it) which results in noisy image. I would suggest investing in a Sony FX3 so that you can have 12800 ISO and get a crisp image.

Keep doing your stuff, it's gold.

[profundus]

I think the confusion is that that what we call "pleasant" or "painful" in the individual context becomes "right" or "wrong" in the social context. This is why Sam wisely remarked that the issue of moral truths becomes evident when you add more people into the picture. However, in Alex's defense, whether such an objective moral truth can be identified for a a group of people, at a certain moment in time, is questionable as it is highly volatile and involves just too many factors. Therefore when it comes to deciding what is right (or wrong) for a group, we are invariably stuck with approximations, which inevitably makes us do something wrong for a minority of people over the long run.

[starfishsystems]

A straightforward basis by which to parse this entire conversation is to notice that it's trying to get at the difference between DESCRIPTION and PRESCRIPTION. Everything else follows from this.

Also notice that, except for this distinction, Alex and Sam are talking about the same phenomena and the same concerns.

So is it a fundamental distinction, or something derivative or arbitrary? Well, I think it could hardly be more fundamental. It's the distinction between how things are and how things might be conceived. It's the distinction between (empirical) science and (conceptual) mathematics. It's the distinction between territory and map.

It does not, however, provide a distinction between what is moral and what is not moral. Morality remains poorly grounded whether you attempt either a descriptive or prescriptive basis for it.

Alex might say that it's sufficient to describe how preferences associate with possible choices. That's fine, but we aren't passive observers. Nothing happens until some choice is exercised, and that choice is ours to make.

Sam might say that given these preferences, certain choices should be prescribed. That's fine, but we aren't emotionless robots seeking to optimize a set of parameters. If we can't sooner or later feel the preference, we have no warrant to follow the prescription.