Under The Olive Tree

The Toddlers are at it again!

One of “The Four Toddlers of Atheism” – Sam Harris, is featured on a website that boasts of having “shit that is worth repeating” – or something like that?  He even receives a byline from that guru of gurus – Richard Dawkins, “Read Sam Harris and wake up.” (see the transcript of Sam’s presentation below)

Sam was a featured speaker at a TED conference – we are not conspicuously informed as to when and where – but he is on stage in front of that grand TED logo, and refers to himself as being at “a conference like this.”  Pandering to his audience?  Maybe?

What Sam’s speech is about is the “relationship between science and human values,” – and you may have information more pertinent than is available to me as to why he would self-destruct in such a pitiful manner before such an auspicious audience – perhaps he was ill prepared to give his speech due to a hectic schedule or marital or “significant other” problems – who knows what factors influence such a disaster as this short but broad appeal for science having not only a voice in establishing the moral code for humanity, but the voice.

You may have found Sam’s rhetoric and pugnacious attitude as offensive as I did – and the examples in his presentation are numerous – but for setting a high water mark for moral insensitivity – none of Sam’s remarks stand out quite as blatantly as his referring to himself as [“I’m] the Ted Bundy of string theory.”  What is even more appalling is the audience’s reaction to this utterly useless and distasteful statement, laughter.

For those of you who are unaware of who Ted Bundy was, he was a monster who preyed on defenseless young women and girls – girls as young as 12.  Before he was executed in the electric chair in Florida in 1989 – he admitted to murdering at least 30 victims.  His method was to bludgeon them with a tire iron or something similar,  and then to rape and strangle them.  What’s worse is that he decapitated at least two of his victims with a hacksaw.  With other victims he indulged himself in necrophilia with their corpses – in some cases lying with them and putting makeup on their faces until their corpses were too decomposed even for him.  There is some speculation that he may have been responsible for nearly 100 such heinous crimes.

For Sam to so callously and flippantly refer to such an example is certainly a reflection of his own immature moral sensitivities.

Perhaps we could excuse him if his position and influence was not so far reaching.

Can you imagine the visual images and the emotional pain such an example must elicit in the hearts and minds of the parents and families of these young women? – or in anyone for that matter.

If this is an example of applying his scientific knowledge and secular values in society – then it sends out an alarm to every thinking person – but, Sam doesn’t stop there.

He paints those of religious faith with an extremely broad brush, from the rhetorical “either to an eternity  of happiness with God or and eternity of suffering in hell,” to his references to “72 virgins in the afterlife” for suicide bombers, or implying that all corporal punishment involves “beating a child with a wooden board, hard, and raising large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin,” – perhaps he thinks it is better to incarcerate the incorrigibles in our prison system where they have a good chance of being raped.  And since when were you suffering a  crime against you if you were made to feel humiliated about misbehaving in public?

But the coup d’ete has to be that no one who espouses faith in God has “made an intelligent analysis of the causes and condition of human and animal well-being.”  He even goes so far as to suggest that viewing moral dilemmas through the “endurance of religion as a lens” separates “most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering.”

Oh, and don’t miss his indictment that “the only people who seem to generally agree with [him]” on the idea that moral truths can be defined at all are in his opinion all “religious demagogues.”

If this is the best that a truly scientific approach has to offer in discovering moral truth – we may as well go back to the witchdoctors.

Perhaps we could just chuckle inside and say, “Give Sam a break – he and the other ‘Four Toddlers of Atheism’ are pretty new at this morals thing” – but in all honesty you just can’t ignore his core argument and the hair raising scenario that he is so subtly presenting.

Having led his audience through a series of comparisons where he contends that it is possible to find a balance point – or even several balance points along a continuum “towards something quite a bit more idyllic”  – he suggests that these points represent the moral truths that we all see the need for.  What he is really talking about is “relative truths” – kind of a scientific accumulation of opinion which will be so subjective that the average person will be patronized if they fail to see these “truths” established by “science” – or even if they do understand them and just don’t agree.  It is exactly this kind of moral relativism that results in statements like, “I am the Ted Bundy of string theory.”

 He proceeds to suggest that in the real world of science and knowledge, “a domain of expertise”, that there are certain moral opinions and practices that have no place and “must be excluded.”  He once again panders to his audience by using the most despised group in the world today – the Taliban.  Sam in using the most extreme example has an easy target, but make no mistake – his purpose in doing so is to heap the entire religious community into the category of those whose opinions of moral truths “must be excluded.”

Sam’s ideas get more radical than this – what with comparing the Dalai Lama’s chosen use of his time to how Ted Bundy “profitably” used his – to touching on much more serious ideas which he seems to believe represent science.

For example, Sam points out that “we live in a world filled with destructive technology,” and who would disagree with him there? – but then he states with equal certainty that “this technology can not be uninvented.”  He’s not talking about nuclear proliferation, is he?  Kind of reminds you of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and ICE 9 – or the much more real and serious and far reaching choices of scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, who, when given the choice to develop a nuclear weapon in the face of some scientific speculation that detonating a single nuclear device could more or less toast Earth’s atmosphere responded, “It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge and are willing to take the consequences.”

Or to quote Freeman Dyson in the documentaryThe Day After Trinity:

“I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles – this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

You could argue that the sole reason we are still faced with a possible nuclear annihilation is simply because scientists failed to exhibit the moral character to resist making such a device in the first place.  Sam seems to believe, in his toddler way, that “univenting” such things “can not be” done.  Is that the moral compass he is promising us.

In fact, by his own admission, he isn’t promising us anything – he is simply arguing that we should relinquish the establishing of our moral standards to “science.”  “I’m not saying that science is guaranteed to map this space, or that we will have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question.”

Excuse me, isn’t’ that what “scientific truths” are supposed to be about?

And perhaps this is where the scenario does get hair raising – when science becomes so smug in its self-evaluation that it can stand in the public square – much like a toddler who has just discovered that his parents must react to his temper tantrums – and not only demand a voice in things they themselves admit they know little or nothing about – but to go as far as to boast that through science the day is coming “when we meddle with our genomes in such a way that not being able to run a marathon at age 200 will be considered a profound disability.”

But remember, there is no guarantee as to if or whether they will be able to understand or harness the great forces of love and hate, war and peace, and the incredible ability of human beings to overcome in the face of overwhelming adversity – just by faith, and if there is no “guarantee” then what exactly is Sam’s point?

It lies in these few words, the “domain of expertise” – and the consequent obeisance of the uneducated and the uniformed – and those outside the fraternity of the chosen, the scientific community.  Sam and his colleagues are eager to establish the idea that they are the only ones who represent “true” knowledge – and as such that they should have the power to decree “scientific moral standards” – after all, power is useless unless you can exercise it.

I will give Sam credit for one thing – he does question the present almost pervasive exploitation of women and the sexualization of female children.  Perhaps this is a good place for Sam and his colleagues to start, by discovering the truths of a single moral issue – the treatment of women worldwide.  It is easy to say that such truth would immediately impact and be embraced by at least 50% of the human race – women, along with a good percentage of men.

Once they have shown how their “domain of expertise” can be applied to a single issue – then perhaps the rest of their argument is worth considering.  I wish them a hearty “good luck” in tackling this single issue – but until they can solve it, moral issues might be best left to your poets, and your priests and prophets.

The following is the transcript of Sam Harris’ presentation at TED.

I’m going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values. Now, it’s generally understood 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 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 constitutes a good life?”

So, I’m going to argue that this is an illusion — that 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 can not 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 is 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. Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures.

Why is it that we don’t have ethical obligations toward rocks? Why don’t we feel compassion for rocks? It’s 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 this is a factual claim: This is something that we could be right or wrong about. And if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects.

And 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 its 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 can not feed their children, where strangers can not 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, to 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. Would adding cholera to the water be a good idea? Probably not. Would it be a good idea for everyone to believe in the evil eye, so that when bad things happened 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, our situation in the world can be understood at many levels — ranging 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 wellbeing 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 — his rather unfortunate personality — is the product of his brain. So — the contributions of culture — if culture changes us, as indeed it does, it changes us by changing our brains. And so therefore whatever cultural variation there is in 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 value is reducable 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 beings. And I think of this as kind of a 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 wellbeing 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 there are 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. (Laughter) 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.

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, hard, and raising large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin. And hundreds of thousands of children, incidentally, 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, lest we spoil the child: This is in Proverbs 13 and 20, and I believe, 23. But we can ask the obvious question: 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 good behavior? (Laughter) Is there any doubt that this question has an answer, and that it matters?

Now, many of you might worry that the notion of wellbeing is truly undefined, and seemingly perpetually open to be reconstrued. And so, how therefore can there be 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 Specter, it has changed over the years. When this statue was carved the average life expectancy was probably 30. It’s now around 80 in the developed world. There may come a time when we meddle with our genomes in such a way that not being able to run a marathon at age 200 will be considered a profound disability. People will send you donations when you’re in that condition. (Laughter)

Notice 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. Another thing to notice is that 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 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. There is clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food. But 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. Many people worry that that a universal morality would require moral precepts 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 is no such thing as moral truth.

Why would we think this? Consider, by analogy, the game of chess. Now, if you’re going to play good chess, a principle like, “Don’t lose your Queen,” is very good to follow. But clearly it admits of exceptions. There are moments when losing your Queen is a brilliant thing to do. There are moments when it is the only good thing you can do. And yet, chess is a domain of perfect objectivity. The fact that there are exceptions here does not change that at all.

Now, this brings us to the sort of moves that people are apt to make in the moral sphere. 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 while we may 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? And who are we to say, even, that they are 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?

Well, who are are we not to say this? Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human wellbeing that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this? I’m not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil — 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 fathers first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?
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 are the chances that this represents a peak of human flourishing?

Now, to say this, is not to say that we have got the perfect solution in our own society. For instance, this is what it’s like to go to a news stand 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. (Laughter) 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?” I mean, is this the optimal environment in which to raise our children? Probably not. Okay, so perhaps there is some place on the spectrum between these two extremes that represents a place of better balance. (Applause) Perhaps there are many such places –
again, given other changes in human culture there may be many peaks on the moral landscape. But the thing to notice is that there will 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, not because they made an intelligent analysis of the causes and condition of human and animal well-being. In fact, the endurance of religion 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 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. 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.

So, we appear to have a genuine difference of opinion about how to profitably use one’s time. (Laughter) Most Western intellectuals look at this situation and say, “Well, there is 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 real argument that potentially falls within the purview of science. He likes chocolate, he likes vanilla. There is nothing that one should be able to say to the other that should persuade the other.” 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 is 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. (Laughter) So, what would happen if I showed up at a physics conference and said,”String theory is bogus. It doesn’t resonate with me. It’s not how I chose to view the universe at a small scale. I’m not a fan.” (Laughter) Well, nothing would happen because I’m not a physicist, I don’t understand string theory. I’m the Ted Bundy of string theory. (Laughter) I wouldn’t want to belong to any string theory club that would have me as a member.

But this is just the point. 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. (Laughter) How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human wellbeing? (Applause)

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 that 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. We live 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 can not 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 notions of human wellbeing, than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or 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. (Applause)