Science of morality - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Science of morality can refer to a number of ethically naturalistic views. Historically, the term was introduced by Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...

(1748–1832). In meta-ethics

Meta-ethics

In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics. Ethical...

, ethical naturalism bases morality

Morality

Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

on rational and empirical

Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....

consideration of the natural world. This position has become increasingly popular among philosophers in the last three decades.

The idea of a science of morality was more recently explored by author and neuroscientist Sam Harris

Sam Harris (author)

Sam Harris is an American author, and neuroscientist, as well as the co-founder and current CEO of Project Reason. He received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Stanford University, before receiving a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA...

in the 2010 book The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is a book by Sam Harris. In it, he promotes a science of morality and argues that many thinkers have long confused the relationship between morality, facts, and science. He aims to carve a third path between secularists who say morality is...

, and in even more depth by economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

and public policy analyst, Joseph Daleiden. Harris' science of morality suggests that scientists using empirical knowledge, especially neurology

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

and metaphysical naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism, also called ontological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, or just naturalism, is a philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those...

, in combination with axiomatic values as “first principles”, would be able to outline a universal basis for morality. Harris and Daleiden chiefly argue that society should consider normative ethics to be a domain of science whose purpose amounts to the pursuit of flourishing (well-being). They add that "science" should not be so narrowly defined as to exclude important roles for any academic disciplines which base their conclusions on the weight of empirical evidence. These ideas have not seen widespread acceptance by the scientific community, have been disputed by philosophers, and continues to generate public controversy - although they have also gained some support (e.g. Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members...

, Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

and others support the ideas).

Patricia Churchland

Patricia Churchland

Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She has been a Professor at the University of California, San Diego since 1984...

sometimes refers to a neuroscience of morality in relation to her book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. The term "science of morality" is also sometimes used for the description of moral systems in different cultures or species. For a collection of the hypotheses of how moral intuitions are thought by some to have evolved and emerged, see Moral psychology

Moral psychology

Moral psychology is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. Some use the term "moral psychology" relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development. However, others tend to use the term more broadly to include any topics at the intersection of ethics and psychology and...

and the Evolution of morality

Evolution of morality

The evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the...

.

The idea of a normative science of morality has met with many criticisms. These critics include Sean M. Carroll

Sean M. Carroll

Sean Michael Carroll is a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He is a theoretical cosmologist specializing in dark energy and general relativity...

, who argues that morality cannot be part of science. He and other critics cite the widely held "fact-value distinction

Fact-value distinction

The fact-value distinction is a concept used to distinguish between arguments which can be claimed through reason alone, and those where rationality is limited to describing a collective opinion. In another formulation, it is the distinction between what is and what ought to be...

", that the scientific method

Scientific method

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...

cannot answer "moral

Morality

" questions, although it can describe the norms of different cultures. In contrast, moral scientists defend the position that such a division between values and scientific facts is arbitrary and illusory.

Among other methodological issues that a science of morality would need to address include the Is-ought problem

Is-ought problem

The is–ought problem in meta-ethics as articulated by Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume , is that many writers make claims about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is...

(i.e. Can we, in any sense, determine how people morally ought to behave based on physical facts. If so, how?). There are also questions of Naturalistic fallacy

Naturalistic fallacy

The naturalistic fallacy is often claimed to be a formal fallacy. It was described and named by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica...

, where the alleged fallacy is deriving moral claims from natural facts (although the term is sometimes used very differently: to refer to the alleged fallacy of calling behaviours that are natural to humans "moral").

Overview

In its weakest form, science of morality is the idea that we do not need divine authority to be critical of any so-called 'moral system' that causes unreasonable suffering. Daleiden, Harris and others discuss or support a stronger case, however. It is the idea that, once we accept the premises that are necessary for any empirical, secular, and philosophical discussion, we can define "morality" in a relevant way. Presumably, societies can then use the methods of science to provide some of the best answers to moral questions. This means identifying which values and norms (e.g. free speech versus government censorship) are more likely to maximize the well-being of all conscious creatures. Harris says that it is the flourishing of every conscious creature that is then "morally good".
The scientific search for empirical

Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....

facts always requires operationalization

Operationalization

In humanities, operationalization is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the concept clearly distinguishable or measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations...

. In other words, investigators need to agree to define terms to some extent before reasonable discussion can even begin. Here, moral scientists purport to possess a more than adequate working definition: something is morally good if it promotes the flourishing of conscious creatures. Although moral norms have often been defined as requiring supernatural origins, science of morality thus understands morality to describe facts about nature (i.e. how creatures can live in harmony). Daleiden adds that society can no longer afford to wait and see which values cause cultures to fall apart, and which ones allow them to succeed: scientific methods are what is needed.

There are other linguistic and nomenclature

Nomenclature

Nomenclature is a term that applies to either a list of names or terms, or to the system of principles, procedures and terms related to naming - which is the assigning of a word or phrase to a particular object or property...

issues. Words, even in science, can be fuzzy

Fuzzy concept

A fuzzy concept is a concept of which the content, value, or boundaries of application can vary according to context or conditions, instead of being fixed once and for all....

and subject to revison and elimination

Eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist...

as knowledge progresses. The word atom

Atom

The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...

translates to "indivisible" - which was the common understanding of atoms until science progressed further. Already this foreshadows why the moral norms offered by a science of morality would not be moral absolutes

Moral absolutism

Moral absolutism is an ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them. Thus stealing, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good , and even if...

. This is a byproduct of the philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

in general; science does not make claims to certain truths. The norms advocated by moral scientists (e.g. rights to abortion

Abortion

Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...

, euthanasia

Euthanasia

Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....

, and drug liberalization

Drug liberalization

Drug liberalization is the process of eliminating or reducing drug prohibition laws. Variations of drug liberalization include drug relegalization, drug legalization, and drug decriminalization -Policies:...

under certain circumstances) would thus be founded upon the shifting and growing limits of human understanding. As human understanding improves, so does understanding of human nature itself. This is critical to science of morality, which cannot effectively base norms on a flawed understanding of those creatures being organized. Keeping itself consilient

Consilience

Consilience, or the unity of knowledge , has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes...

with the science of the day will make science of morality unintuitive at times. Daleiden says that the science rejects the idea of libertarian free will

Libertarianism (metaphysics)

Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism, which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism, which is an incompatibilist position, argues that free will is logically incompatible with a...

in favor of compatibilistic free will

Compatibilism

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define 'free will' in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism...

(discussed further below).
Even though flourishing remains a rather fuzzy term, it is far from meaningless. It is a decidedly grey area whether stealing someone's pencil or stealing their pen would be the more immoral action. Yet is likely that, in the majority of cases, forcing one class of people to cover themselves at all times in burka

Burka

A burka is a dress made from felt or karakul . Karakul being quite expensive, burkas were usually sewn from felt treated to look like karakul...

s under threats of violence is less moral than empowering the freedom to choose. Moral scientists maintain that to argue otherwise is to ignore empiricism and history (which have taught humanity a great deal about wellbeing), as well as all the moral strides that various societies have made against sexism

Sexism

Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...

, racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, and other causes of suffering. Even with science's admitted degree of ignorance, and the various semantic issues, moral scientists can meaningfully discuss things as being almost certainly "better" or "worse" for promoting flourishing. Harris hopes that seeing the role that science can play in normative ethics will empower critical thinkers to pass important "moral" judgment on the quality of fellow citizens' and societies' behaviors.

Science of morality acknowledges another crucial fact. Even once the terms of scientific moral discourse are accepted, this will not automatically cause moral behavior (i.e. not even among those who explicitly agree to the terms). Another main goal of the science of morality is therefore to discover the best ways to motivate and shape individuals. The aim is to make each citizen capable of balancing the desires of the present and the future, but also of themselves and others. Creating what Daleiden calls people who follow "conditioned self-interest", conditioned egoism, requires a program that applies everything psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

has discovered about humans, especially the most effective ways of promoting prosocial behaviors. Note that this does not at all suggest that the government, or any elite individual or group, should or would be solely charged with this task. Nor should the most private values, which have almost no bearing on society, be of much concern to society at all.

Although it does at times, science of morality does not necessarily conflict with the moral teachings of all religions. Daleiden says that the science does not even conflict with many other moral systems -which can often be understood as simply emphasizing certain aspects of the science.

Background

The idea that science could help make moral prescriptions may be relatively new. Determining what constitutes "science" versus "non-science" is the challenge known as the demarcation problem

Demarcation problem

The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience, between science and philosophy and between science and religion...

.

Philosophy has not always been understood as being very separate from science, and empiricism

Empiricism

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...

has long since started playing a major role in modern philosophy

Modern philosophy

Modern philosophy is a type of philosophy that originated in Western Europe in the 17th century, and is now common worldwide. It is not a specific doctrine or school , although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.The 17th and...

. The scientific method provides details, some of which challenge traditions or intuitions, about human nature. These details become vital to forming any conception of morality.

In philosophy

Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham

, in his book "Deontology, or The Science of Morality" (published in 1834, after his death) discussed some of the ways moral investigations are a science. He criticizes deontological ethics for failing to recognize that it needed to make the same presumptions as his science of morality to really work - whilst pursuing rules that were to be obeyed in every situation (something that worried Bentham).

Positivism

Positivism

Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....

and pragmatism

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...

are also philosophies related to the science. John Dewey

John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...

, a pragmatist, maintains that overly theoretical moral systems are not useful in real life. He believes that moral considerations, while they should not be oversimplified, must certainly make use of facts about everything from what the individual desires, what others desire, the nature of people

Psychology

(e.g. humans) in general, and even data about likely outcomes of behaviours.

Some positions on morality may hold that all facts are, in general, discovered by the sciences, but that there are no things worth calling "Moral" facts. These include certain forms of moral anti-realism, such as error theory as famously advocated by J.L. Mackie, and non-cognitivism

Non-cognitivism

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false...

as advocated by Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy. He recently retired as professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North...

. Science of morality operates under a philosophy of moral naturalism. This form of moral realism

Moral realism

Moral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:# Ethical sentences express propositions.# Some such propositions are true.# Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion....

is the view that moral facts are facts about nature.One prominent school of moral naturalist thought is that of the Cornell realists

Cornell realism

Cornell realism is a view in meta-ethics, associated with the work of Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and David Brink, who took his Ph.D. at Cornell University but never taught there...

, especially Richard Boyd

Richard Boyd

Richard Newell Boyd is an American philosopher who has spent most of his career at Cornell University, though he also taught briefly at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Berkeley...

and Nicholas Sturgeon. They hold that, although moral facts are natural facts, moral facts are not reducible to any other sort of natural facts. The two were therefore non-reductive moral naturalists. Cornell realism, in turn, has been crticized in papers by Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons

Mark Timmons

Mark Timmons is a Gaelic football player from County Laois in Ireland.He usually plays in defence for Laois and in 2003 was an integral part of the Laois team that won the All-Ireland Minor Football Championship title for the first time since 1997....

, who apply the "Moral Twin Earth" thought experiment. Other moral naturalists include reductionists Peter Railton

Peter Railton

Peter Albert Railton is John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1980. His research interests center on contemporary metaethics and normative ethics, as well as consequentialism...

and Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson

Frank Jackson is the name of:* John Jackson , full name Frank John Jackson, British Conservative Member of Parliament 1959–1964...

, and neo-Aristotelians

Neo-Aristotelianism

Neo-Aristotelianism is a view of literature and criticism propagated by the Chicago School — Ronald S. Crane, Elder Olson, Richard McKeon, Wayne Booth, and others — which means:...

such as Rosalind Hursthouse

Rosalind Hursthouse

-Biography:Hursthouse spent her childhood in New Zealand and taught for many years at the Open University in England. She was head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland from 2002 to 2005...

and Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson is an American moral philosopher and metaphysician, best known for her use of thought experiments to make philosophical points.- Career :...

. W.V.O. Quine similarly advocated "naturalizing" epistemology by looking to natural sciences like psychology for a full explanation of knowledge. This motivated naturalism in philosophy generally, helping give rise to a resurgence of moral naturalism in the last half of the 20th century.

Philosophical movements like eliminative

Eliminative materialism

and Revisionary materialism

Revisionary materialism

Revisionary materialism is the view that falls between Eliminative materialism and Reductive materialism when it comes to a particular psychological phenomenon....

warn that philosophy is like science in that it may need to redefine or eliminate concepts as human understanding progresses. For instance, science of morality may never provide an immutable definition of relevant terms like the "flourishing" that it pursues, because it must adapt to new scientific knowledge. Harris believes that our knowledge about humanity's history gives us an idea of what flourishing entails, and that modern scientific understanding offers even more insight (see positive psychology

Positive psychology

Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...

In the social sciences

Maria Ossowska

Maria Ossowska was a Polish sociologist and social philosopher.-Life:...

, polish sociologist and philosopher, thought that sociology was inextricably related to philosophical reflections on morality, including normative ethics. She proposed that science analyze: (a) existing social norms and their history, (b) the psychology of morality, and the way that individuals interact with moral matters and prescriptions, and (c) the sociology of morality.

Science of morality opposes the ideas of paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....

who argued that science and religion occupy "non-overlapping magisteria

Non-overlapping magisteria

Non-overlapping magisteria is the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that "science and religion do not glower at each other... [but] interdigitate in patterns of complex fingering, and at every fractal scale of self-similarity." He suggests, with examples, that "NOMA enjoys strong and fully...

". To Gould, science is concerned with questions of fact and theory, but not with meaning and morality - the magisteria of religion. In the same vein, Edward Teller

Edward Teller

Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...

proposed that politics decides what is right, whereas science decides what is true.

Popular literature

The theory and methods of a normative science of morality are explicitly discussed in Joseph Daleiden's The Science of Morality: The Individual, Community, and Future Generations (1998). Daleiden's book, in contrast to Harris, extensively discusses the relevant philosophical literature.

Sam Harris

Sam Harris'

Sam Harris (author)

first two books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation, attacked religious faith, and his latest attacks moral skepticism. InThe Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

The Moral Landscape

, Harris’ goal is to show how moral truth can be backed by “science”, or more specifically, empirical knowledge, critical thinking, philosophy, but most controversially, the scientific method. As described by philosopher Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...

: “Harris’s concrete moral conclusions depend almost entirely on one venerable moral premise and a number of commonsense observations about human life, though they are accompanied by ritual reminders that everything about human experience and behavior depends on our brains. Harris’s book also presents some experimental data about the brain. Those data are largely irrelevant to determining the answer to substantive questions of right and wrong, but they do provide the setting for Harris’s important additional claim that the fact that moral judgments are produced by the brain…”

Harris, himself, described the “backlash” he had anticipated from this book: “cloudbursts of vitriol and confusion… Watching the tide of opinion turn against me, it has been difficult to know what, if anything, to do about it.” He deplores the case of Colin McGinn criticizing his book based solely on the review of Anthony Appiah; Harris explains that:

In the same lengthy Huffington Post "Response to Critics", Harris responded to three reviews, all of which claiming to have found critical flaws, as well as some merits: “As far as I know, the best reviews… have come from the philosophers Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel

, Troy Jollimore

Troy Jollimore

-Career & Education:Troy Jollimore was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia and attended the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1999, under the direction of Harry Frankfurt and Gilbert Harman. He has lived in the U.S. since...

, and Russell Blackford

Russell Blackford

Russell Blackford is an Australian writer, philosopher, and critic, based for many years in Melbourne, Victoria. He was born in Sydney, and grew up in Lake Macquarie district, near Newcastle, NSW. He moved to Melbourne in 1979, but returned to Newcastle to live and work in 2009.-Writing career:As a...

.”

Blackford highly recommend the book, noting Harris' overall criticism of moral relativism and offering a lengthy analyses of critical, though easily avoided errors, arising from Harris' unnecessary fact-value treatment and failure to provide a convincing account of obtaining “determinate, objectively correct answers…" Blackford goes on:
Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci is the chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College. He is also the editor in chief for the journal . He is known as an outspoken critic of creationism and advocate of science education.-Biography:...

adds that J. L. Mackie

J. L. Mackie

John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...

, whom Harris' dismissed, makes no such error. Pigliucci remarked: “a major problem with the whole project is precisely the stubborn attempt to overextend the reach of science which is properly labeled as scientism

Scientism

Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the systematic methods and approach of science, especially the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints...

”. He concurred with “Blackford’s own damning (though superficially positive) review”. Pigliucci highlights some closing words from Blackford:

Is–ought

What one ought to do to be moral depends on there being definition of what constitutes a 'moral' goal in the first place. A case in point: it seems one ought not to infect themselves with various diseases and eat rotten foods if one has a goal of being healthy. But there is no meaningfully 'healthier choice' (any more than there is a 'moral choice') unless we define these terms. Daleiden remarks that central here is the idea of the "contingent statement". This because ought-statements, he says, are of the form "if you want X, you ought to do Y." Moral oughts would thus be a type of contingent statement: "if you want to increase flourishing, you morally ought to do Z"

Patricia Churchland

Patricia Churchland

offers that, accepting Hume's is-ought problem, the use of induction from premises and definitions remains a valid way of reasoning in life and science.

Scientific methods

Some of the philosophy and findings of science are important to understanding how a science of morality might work.

Harris discusses little philosophy beyond warning that the science must not become entrenched in applying any specific moral system. Daleiden spends a great deal more time explaining how many ideas from philosophy might be applied within science of morality. He believes that the science must use hybrids from various approaches to ethics, law, and human nature. Daleiden finds especially useful the consequentialist metaethics of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...

, as well as John Rawls

John Rawls

John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....

's ideas of Justice as Fairness

Justice as Fairness

Justice as Fairness is the political philosopher John Rawls' conception of justice. It comprises two main principles of Liberty and Equality; the second is subdivided into Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle....

. Daleiden admires the veil of ignorance

Veil of ignorance

The veil of ignorance and the original position are concepts introduced by John Harsanyi and later appropriated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. It is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue The veil of ignorance and the original position are concepts introduced by John...

as a way of thinking about ethics objectively.

Daleiden warns that science is probabilistic, and that certainty

Certainty

Certainty can be defined as either:# perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or# the mental state of being without doubtObjectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no...

is not possible. One should therefore expect that moral prescriptions will change as humans gain understanding. The psychologist Leonard Carmichael

Leonard Carmichael

Leonard Carmichael was a U.S. educator and psychologist. Born on November 9, 1898 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received his B.S. from Tufts University in 1921 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1924...

discussed this idea as well. Daleiden continues: tradition should not be the basis of moral norms. While traditions can be appreciated as survivors of some form of natural group selection

Group selection

In evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group....

, this process is extremely slow, and it is a process where societies with poor values must fall apart. Empiricism, to moral scientists, is the more reasonable method of establishing norms. Daleiden says this is especially the case considering traditions too often become "time bound" based on the limited knowledge of the past, and are designed to meet the needs of people from those times.
All human actions depend on motivations. Harris and Daleiden both believe that research into the psychology and neuroscience of free will

Neuroscience of free will

Neuroscience of free will refers to recent neuroscientific investigations shedding light on the question of free will, which is a philosophical and scientific question as to whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions or decisions. As it has become possible to...

gives us good reason to reject Libertarianism

Libertarianism

Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

(which is a contra-causal form of free will

Free will

"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...

). Only compatibilistic free will

Compatibilism

is valid in their view; the form of free will that Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

called the only form of free will "worth wanting". Humans, then, sometimes have the freedom to act according to their motives, but the motives themselves are largely affected by other factors. Daleiden worries about the stigma attached to the word Determinism

Determinism

Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...

. He recommends thinking in terms of a "Law of Causal Behaviour": every effect has a cause, and so too does every human choice. That is why the causes of good behaviour can be identified and promoted (as discussed later). This also involves treating humans as morally responsible in practice (although, with compatibilistic free will, it would be committing the single cause fallacy to treat them as solely morally responsible).

Normative values and science have always been deeply intertwined. Harris explains that the scientific method has settled on values in answering the question "what should I believe, and why should I believe it?" It is thus a mistake to think of science as a value free enterprise.

Defining morality

The idea of morality has a long history, and the term has known many uses. Some do not change - and others are very different - when analyzed from the view of science of morality. This means a great deal of time must be spent on understanding and establishing the definition of terms, compared to other sciences. Traditionally, this has been solely the domain of the philosophy of meta ethics.

Luke Muehlhauser emphasizes that thinkers too often agree about matters of fact, although not about the ways of describing and classifying those facts. Muehlhauser says that his own moral system ("desirism") is an example of one of many unique ways of conceptualizing morality, but one of many that is compatible with a science of morality. There may be different compatible moral systems, but this does not make morals entirely relative. He contends that understanding the difference between factual and semantic (linguistic) disagreement can be more important than understanding any particular moral system - especially considering the consequences of inaction in these general matters.

Disputed terms in science

There may be some disagreement over the exact definitions of happiness

Happiness

Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources....

and suffering

Suffering

Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...

in general, concepts of great importance to science of morality, but Harris says that these disagreements should not be taken too seriously. He mentions that even a lack of firm agreement within the scientific community

Scientific community

The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...

over terms like "life" or "health" has not prevented researchers from making progress. Furthermore, it is even less likely that others' use of the term "healthy" in an unjustified manner would have any effect on the progress of more serious researchers and thinkers.

In practice, this is thanks to the fact that academics often establish and agree on other clear working definitions (the focus is to avoid debating words beyond necessity). Moreover, the usefulness of these scientific constructs

Construct (philosophy of science)

A construct in the philosophy of science is an ideal object, where the existence of the thing may be said to depend upon a subject's mind. This, as opposed to a "real" object, where existence does not seem to depend on the existence of a mind....

can be subjected to tests of construct validity

Construct validity

In science , construct validity refers to whether a scale measures or correlates with the theorized psychological scientific construct that it purports to measure. In other words, it is the extent to which what was to be measured was actually measured...

. This is one sense in which some definitions can be better than others. For instance, just as scientists have generally agreed on practical grounds of sorting "Earth's atmosphere" into 5 categories (i.e. layers), so too might they decide to sort "flourishing" practically into a number of categories (e.g. positive psychology

Positive psychology

is exploring the possibility that happiness comes in generally 5 varieties).

Harris also emphasizes that the ideas captured by the word "flourishing", like "health", may also change over time. Ancient civilizations, where life expectancies were around 25 years old, may not have expected we could some day consider healthy an individual living comfortably to over 80 years old. Likewise, humans are continuing to make strides in moral development, attaining new heights of cooperation and empathy, and discovering new horizons in the use of the word "flourishing" - the same way we have for the word "healthy". Jeremy Rifkin describes such key moral revolutions throughout human history inThe Empathic Civilization

The Empathic Civilization

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis is a 2010 non-fiction book written by Jeremy Rifkin. It connects the evolution of communication and energy development in civilizations with psychological and economic development in humans...

, and predicts a new revolution in which we overcome our tribe focused

Evolution of morality

empathy and extend it to others we may never meet.

The first step for the so-called science of morality is not, therefore, any sort of revelation. Rather, it is to establish early working definitions (which can and will evolve with time). Defining terms like this, based on implications for methodology and possible conclusions (see operationalization

Operationalization

In humanities, operationalization is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the concept clearly distinguishable or measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations...

) is an important part of any science. This is well demonstrated by the attempts of positive psychology

Positive psychology

to address topics about which many are opinionated. In such areas of science that overlap with philosophy or religion, arguments over the supposed meaning of a word sometimes stand in the way of progress. That is, discussions risk becoming arguments over what the definition of a word should be, rather than simply agreeing on other working definitions in order to facilitate communication. Two hundred year ago, Bentham said this is part of understanding how scientists can begin to debate moral facts; they must first define key terms like 'moral'.

"Morally good"

Michael Shermer

explains that this is where science of morality can come in. "The first principle is the well-being of conscious creatures, from which we can build a science-based system of moral values by quantifying whether or not X increases or decreases well-being". Activities like lying or stealing, and even certain cultural values, for example, will be more morally "wrong" because they tend to cause more suffering than alternative social practices.
Science of morality, then, is a social morality; it must mediate between the varied needs and desires of many individuals across time. Harris and Daleiden both contend that this is what many religious thinkers are doing, only they are factoring an after life into their pursuit of well-being.
Psychology

Psychology

holds that subjective

Subjectivity

Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...

experiences very often correspond to objective

Objectivity (philosophy)

Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...

facts (e.g. about the brain). For instance, clinical depression certainly has a subjective component (when feelings of depression are experienced

Qualia

Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...

by an individual) but it has also been operationally defined and objectively studied (e.g. described in terms of physical characteristics of the brain, resulting in a biology of depression

Biology of depression

Scientific studies have found that numerous brain areas show altered activity in depressed patients. It has not been possible to determine a single cause of depression.-Monoamine hypothesis:...

). These are concepts that are indispensable in science of morality.

This scientific conception of morality is also in a position to give meaning to the difference between oughts "in general" as opposed to "moral ought

Is-ought problem

s"; between "good for me" and "morally good". That is, once researchers have agreed to terms, there is a difference between arguing that "he ought to use more poison on his victim, since he wants to be a good murderer" versus "he morally ought to use no poison at all, since he wants to be a morally good person".

Bentham was opinionated regarding the purpose of what he called "morality". He says that "To detect the fallacies which lie hid under the surface, to prevent the aberrations of sympathy and antipathy, to bring to view and to call into activity those springs of action whose operation leads to an undoubted balance of happiness, is the important part of moral science." He was also critical of philosophers who respected only classical texts, rather than scientific methods, to understand and improve their moral systems.

Dewey notes that "We test scientific hypotheses by bringing about their antecedents and seeing if the results are as they predicted. Similarly, we test value judgments by acting on them and seeing if we value the consequences in the way the judgment predicted." Additionally, values, to Dewey, are clearly determined and modified, to some extent, during the pursuit of those values. For all the importance of science and philosophy, morality is ultimately practiced (or neglected) at the scale of life, with the myriad facts of specific situations.

With accepted terms for scientific discourse on normative morality, discussions that have no bearing on "the flourishing of conscious creatures" would simply not be moral discussions. Operationalizing terms related to morality or physics still does not prevent use and misuse outside the scientific community.

Limited relativity

In some sense, from a cosmic perspective, everything is irrelevant. According to Daleiden, a "cosmic perspective" is not how we realize the act of valuing; only conscious beings can determine what is of value for themselves. Science of morality is the empirical discourse of concern for the conscious experiences of creatures. While scientists should approach moral issues as objectively as possible, one should not expect that meaningful discussion can be had about increasing well-being from a perspective of complete indifference about well-being. This was discussed above, and is in much the same vein as the science of medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

. The focus on conscious flourishing is the cosmically arbitrary starting premise of science of morality. Ethical systems that do not grant that premise have always suffered from "cosmic irrelevance".

Moral relativists point out that different cultures, and even individuals, use 'morality' to mean different things. They may argue that scientists' defining "morality" as "maximizing people's flourishing" still amounts to just one culture's view (i.e. a different culture may value preserving nature instead of people's lives). The idea is that simply defining 'morality' grants no additional sort of authority to power - or more strongly, that there is no such authority at all when one group rejects the norms of the other.The disagreement, then, may be a practical one. That is, why does the definition of morality matter if nothing has changed? Perhaps there are facts about what tends to promote human flourishing (complete with notable exceptions like, again, psychopaths). It will still be the case that many are ignorant or in denial about such facts. At very least, this seems to be a case for abandoning the word "morality", which has metaphysical connotations to many, and adopting new language (e.g. from law, defining what it means to be a "goodcitizen")..
Harris engages various issues he thinks might be raised by relativists. Moral scientists do not seek some divine authority. Nor do they expect that the definitions of morality themselves will cause everyone to feel some metaphysical urge to be moral, or even cause any kind of punishment for delinquency (see the section Causes of flourishing below). Instead, supporters like Harris seek to show how "morality" can be meaningfully understood through the lens of science. Harris says, about morality, science, and rationality in general, in all of these things- "a person can always play the trump card, 'What is that to me?' -- and if we don't find it compelling elsewhere, I don't see why it must have special force on questions of good and evil". A person can always question or reject the terms of discourse (even in science). Harris maintains, however, that we can talk about morality as scientifically as anything else, and as usual, ignore those people who are not interested in discussion.

Ronald Lindsay, President of the Center for Inquiry

Center for Inquiry

The Center for Inquiry is a non-profit educational organization with headquarters in the United States whose primary mission is to encourage evidence-based inquiry into paranormal and fringe science claims, alternative medicine and mental health practices, religion, secular ethics, and society...

, made a similar point, and argued that scientists and skeptics should use the word "morality", because of the important connotations it still has with many people when it comes to motivating action.

The ideas of cultural relativity, to Daleiden, do offer some lessons: investigators must be careful not to judge a person's behaviour without understanding the environmental context. An action may be necessary and more moral once we are aware of circumstances. However, Daleiden emphasizes that this does not mean all ethical norms or systems are equally effective at promoting flourishing and he often offers the equal treatment of women as a reliably superior norm, wherever it is practiced.

Moral facts

It may be important to get clearer on the sorts of moral facts to expect from a science of morality.

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson

David Sloan Wilson

David Sloan Wilson is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of the author Sloan Wilson.-Academic career:...

says that, even though philosophers often highlight and discuss some of the most challenging moral situations, there are still many more "moral no brainers". Compared with morally grey issues, clearer cases of immorality can be more urgent and important to resolve. Michael Shermer opines that "It doesn't take rocket science - or religion" to deem the average acid attack

Acid throwing

Acid throwing is a form of violent assault.. It is defined as the act of throwing acid onto the body of a person "with the intention of injuring or disfiguring him out of jealousy or revenge"...

to be wrong. As philosopher Alonzo Fyfe points out, if one intends to cause a great deal of harm to many people, it is easy enough to guess which actions are likely to do the most damage (i.e. be the most immoral).

There are objective facts about things that are relative (i.e. relational

First-order logic

First-order logic is a formal logical system used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. It goes by many names, including: first-order predicate calculus, the lower predicate calculus, quantification theory, and predicate logic...

facts). For example, it might be a fact (not subject to anyone's opinion) that Alex would like to play a musical instrument more than would Jamie. Alex would flourish given the opportunity, but Jamie would not (unless Jamie's preferences change). It may therefore be a fact that it is more morally good to give the instrument to Alex than to Jamie precisely because the two people value different things. The existence of such moral facts does not directly rely on the individuals subjective opinions, whether or not they care about such facts, or whether they act morally (Jamie may exploit Alex, and it would remain a fact that this was a less moral option).
Science of morality will often discover multiple "moral peaks", or optimal ethical systems. Harris believes these are successes, because identifying moral peaks would necessarily mean identifying the more obviously sub-optimal ethical systems (and maybe some re-occurring obstacles to flourishing in societies). Moreover, some religious and private intuitions about what is right may be vindicated by science; this can happen whether or not the beliefs were held for justified reasons in the first place.

Satisfying every desire, or living in complete bliss, are not realistic goals in the eyes of Daleiden. Even the buddhist ideal of having no desires, and hence no unsatisfied desires, is extremely difficult to achieve and maintain for a whole society - not least of all for younger people (who, Daleiden says, have less self control). Science of morality could never yield a Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

. Nevertheless, science of morality could greatly increase well-being for very many people.

It is unlikely that humans will create a moral code that can answer all moral questions. The complexity of situations where flourishing is at stake does not lend itself to simple, unconditional rules (the field of Law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

demonstrates how complex these issues can get at the ground level). Balancing the flourishing of multiple conscious creatures is difficult, but it can even be a challenge to balance the flourishing of a single conscious creature - across different times (what psychologist George Ainslie

George Ainslie (psychologist)

George W. Ainslie is an American psychiatrist, psychologist and behavioral economist.Unusually for a psychiatrist, Ainslie undertook experimental animal research in operant conditioning, under the guidance of Howard Rachlin...

describes as a sort of 'community of selves in competition'). Dewey refuses to provide supreme principles or laws of morality because he believes real life is too dynamic. Daleiden says that moral absolutism

Moral absolutism

is a defunct pursuit; science of morality instead tentatively advocates general values (like high degrees of Free speech) or rules of thumb (like the Golden rule

Golden Rule

Golden Rule may refer to:*The Golden Rule in ethics, morality, history and religion, also known as the ethic of reciprocity*Golden Rule savings rate, in economics, the savings rate which maximizes consumption in the Solow growth model...

).

Any conclusions reached using science and regarding moral norms would not be absolute. Even a rule like "never cut open a child's stomach against their will" may find exception in certain cases such as emergency appendectomy. Likewise, it may sometimes be as practically impossible to determine the more moral route as it is to determine the number of birds in flight around the earth. The moral norms identified by science of morality will always be subject to revision in light of new evidence.

Moral traditions which focus on "will" may also be obsolete. Dewey called it "magical thinking" to believe that a desire to control immoral habits is enough to actually control them. He advocates the use of various methods to make it easier for people to do the right thing, and recognizes that some situations make it more challenging than others. Certain habits make moral behavior easier as well. These issues of moral responsibility

Moral responsibility

Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...

are especially relevant in light of modern science, including the neuroscience of free will

Neuroscience of free will

.

To the extent that there are moral facts, individuals or groups can be mistaken about these facts (instances of the illusion of introspection) whereas others may become moral experts (e.g. the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...

). For instance, over-emphasizing a value like submission might lead to more suffering than other values. Thus some groups or individuals, like the Taliban, may have as little a place in serious discussions about morality as they do in discussions about string theory

String theory

String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...

. Harris argues, "just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality."

Personism

Personism

Personism is a life stance that has been called the philosophy of Peter Singer. It amounts to a branch of secular humanism with different rights-criteria. The main distinction is that personists believe that rights are conferred to the extent that a creature is a person...

argues that we must include non-humans, to some extent, in any conception of a moral society. This is because conscious creatures exist along a large spectrum, at different ranges of "personhood".

Good behaviour

Critics might propose that science of morality fails to answer the question "even having defined good, why do it?", something that is often expected of a moral system. Even those philosophical theories that Daleiden admires most (utilitarianism and Rawlsian justice) are, in his view, incomplete, in that “neither theory seems to offer an adequate motivational basis to insure widespread acceptance." He comments elsewhere that evn the possession of a coherent moral system, based on reality, does not necessarily change or motivate a person's behavior.

That is why Daleiden says that society should aim for its members to aspire to more than egoistic behavior, or even rational egoism

Rational egoism

In ethical philosophy, rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. The view is a normative form of egoism. However, it is different from other forms of egoism, such as ethical egoism and psychological egoism...

. He confronts the hypothesis that everyone pursuing their own self-interest will somehow result in everyone cooperating, and calls it bunk. Instead, Daleiden advocates for "conditioned self interest" (aka conditioned rational egoists). These are individuals who pursue their self interest, and for various reasons, their self interest amounts to altruistic behavior. This is important, because humans have evolved many tendencies that can be maladaptive to civilized society. A case in point: our sometimes-uncontrollable aggression (see also evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...

).

In terms of Game theory

Game theory

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...

research, the goal is to create as many non-zero sum scenarios as possible. Daleiden expounds: Reaching the goal of conditioned self interest requires knowledge from fields including sociobiology

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...

, moral development

Moral Development

Moral development focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy to adulthood. In the field of moral development, morality is defined as principles for how individuals ought to treat one another, with respect to justice, others’ welfare, and rights...

.relevant researchers includeJean Piaget

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....

, Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...

and James Rest

James Rest

James Rest was a professor with the Department of Educational Psychology for the University of Minnesota. In 1982 he helped formally establish the Center for the Study of Ethical Development along with colleagues Muriel Bebeau, Darcia Narvaez and Steve Thoma...

and behaviourism.This includes differential reinforcement The result is a comprehensive program that encourages good behaviour. It starts with the knowledge that humans are one of many animals that have evolved altruistic tendencies

Altruism in animals

Altruism is a well-documented animal behaviour, which appears most obviously in kin relationships but may also be evident amongst wider social groups, in which an animal sacrifices its own well-being for the benefit of another animal.- Overview :...

. Besides altruistic instincts, the program comprises the development of a sense of social identity

Social identity

A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to...

, ensuring that there are consequences for actions, providing economic incentives, and lastly, providing moral training. Daleiden discuss the program's last element, prosocial moral training, the most.
Prosocial training includes everything from instilling explicit

Explicit

Explicit can mean:* Sexually explicit, content that might be deemed offensive or graphic* the final words of a text, which are immediately followed by a colophon...

virtues, building character strengths, and forming mental associations

Association (psychology)

In psychology and marketing, two concepts or stimuli are associated when the experience of one leads to the effects of another, due to repeated pairing. This is sometimes called Pavlovian association for Ivan Pavlov's pioneering of classical conditioning....

. Prosocial training also requires some level of practiced reasoning. Daleiden discusses moral development research by James Rest suggesting that intelligence, abstract reasoning, is also a factor in making moral judgments. Rest also emphasized that moral judgements alone do not predict moral behaviour. As Rest puts it “Moral judgement may be closely related to advocacy behaviour, which in turn influences social institutions, which in turn creates a system of norms and sanctions that influences people’s behaviour.” The point is: the entire prosocial training regime is an important part of creating conditioned egoists. Daleiden's last factor in prosocial training, mental associations, is quite familiar: he says it has been traditionally understood as the conscience

Conscience

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...

- where the student learns to feel empathy, and to feel regret for harming others. Unless an individual can, and begins to feel empathy, it may be unlikely that any amount of reasoning, or any coherent moral system will motivate them to behave very altruistically.

Discussing his proposed training, Daleiden says “Call it indoctrination if you wish; I find nothing repugnant in training children to be honest, kind, and hardworking.” Also described above are the reasons that it should be the intention of adults to shape children, or presumably "indoctrinate" them, to think critically. He adds that the focus is on especially socially relevant values (e.g. kindness, sharing, reasoning) and not the more personal, private values (e.g. a preference like writing novels versus painting on canvas).

Religion, although it is not the best method of determining moral norms, has often been very effective at promoting them. Religions often satisfy many of Daleiden's criteria for raising people to be conditioned egoists, especially by practicing the aforementioned elements of prosocial training. He suggests that this is what they are doing when they instill a sense of virtue and justice, right and wrong. They also effectively use art and myths to educate people about moral situations. Biologist Randy Olson believes that the use of the arts, including stories, is likely important for science communication

Science communication

Science communication generally refers to public media aiming to talk about science with non-scientists. This often involves professional scientists but has evolved into a professional field in its own right...

in general.

The role of government

Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World

Brave New World

Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...

and George Orwell's 1984 imagine dystopian future societies that control the populace by advanced scientific techniques. Harris argues that moral scientists approaching truths does not imply an "Orwellian future" with "scientists at every door". Instead, Harris imagines data about normative moral issues being shared in the same way as other sciences (e.g. peer-reviewed journals on medicine).

Earthly paradise

Harris claims that if some degree of conditioning, such transhumanism

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...

, or genetic modification allowed everyone greater well-being, then they would actually be good things.
Daleiden specifies that government, like any organization, should have limited power. He says "centralization of power irrevocably in the hands of one person or an elite has always ultimately led to great evil for the human race. It was the novel experiment of democracy – a clear break with tradition – that ended the long tradition of tyranny.” He is also explicit that government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

should only use law to enforce the most basic, reasonable, evidenced and widely supported moral norms. In other words, there are a great many moral norms that should never be the task of the government to enforce.

The role of punishment

To attain a society where people are motivated by conditioned self-interest, punishment

Punishment

Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....

must go hand-in-hand with reward

Reward

A reward may refer to:*Bounty , reward, often money, offered as an incentive*Reward website, website that offers rewards for performing tasks-Science:...

. For instance, prison remains necessary for many perpetrators of crimes. This is so, even if libertarian free will is false. This is because punishment can still serve its purposes: it deters others from committing their own crimes, educates and reminds everyone about what the society stands for, incapacitates the criminal from doing more harm, goes some way to relieving or repaying the victim, and corrects the criminal (also see recidivism

Recidivism

Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...

). At least, any prison system should be pursuing those goals. It is an empirical question as to what sorts of punishment realize these goals most effectively, and how well various prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

systems actually serve these purposes.

Research

Science of morality should identify basic components required for human flourishing, drawing heavily on findings from positive psychology

Positive psychology

. In a proto-scientific example, Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

suggested a hierarchy of needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity...

: basic physical survival, then social and self esteem needs, and lastly philosophical and self-actualization. In contemporary positive psychology, three years of research resulted in a systematic classification and measurement of universal strengths and virtues, Martin E. P. Seligman

Martin Seligman

Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. His theory of "learned helplessness" is widely respected among scientific psychologists....

and Christopher Peterson's Character Strengths and Virtues.

Research looking for optimal ethical systems can draw on all the methods of science

Scientific method

, especially those used by positive psychology. While this might include obvious methods like asking people to self-report what they think they need to flourish in life - psychology has shown that people are often surprisingly incorrect

Introspection illusion

The introspection illusion is a cognitive illusion in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable...

on these matters (particularly when it comes to making predictions and recollections). Some cases in point: having too many varieties of consumer goods actually creates consumer choice anxiety

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less is a 2004 book by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers...

; when it comes to removing bandages, Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight.-Biography:...

's research suggests that "getting it over with as quickly as possible" may cause more negative memories than if one went slowly (with breaks) while being careful never to reach a 'peak' in pain; stress is not always harmful (such stress is called Eustress

Eustress

Eustress is a term coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye which is defined in the model of Richard Lazarus as stress that is healthy, or gives one a feeling of fulfillment or other positive feelings. Eustress is a process of exploring potential gains....

). While very careful use of self-report can still be illuminating (e.g. bogus pipeline

Bogus pipeline

The bogus pipeline is a technique used by social psychologists to reduce false answers when attempting to collect self-report data. For example, social desirability is a common reason for warped survey results....

techniques), in the end, unconscious methods of inquiry seem to be more promising. Some unconscious methods of data collection include implicit association tests (IAT)

Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects in memory. The IAT was introduced in the scientific literature in 1998 by Anthony Greenwald, Debbie McGee, and Jordan...

and neuroimaging

Neuroimaging

Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain...

. In these ways, science can further our understanding of what humans need to flourish, and what ways of organizing society provide the greatest hope for flourishing.

Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel and researcher Cynthia Fu describe their findings that depression can be diagnosed very accurately just by looking at fMRI brain scans.
This is because researchers have made strides identifying neural correlate

Neural correlate

A neural correlate of a content of experience is any bodily component, such as an electro-neuro-biological state or the state assumed by some biophysical subsystem of the brain, whose presence necessarily and regularly correlates with such a specific content of experience.When the full ontological...

s for, among other things, emotions. A doctor's second opinion would still be used, they explain. But the two researchers suggest that mental illnesses may someday be diagnosable by looking at such brain scans

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI is a type of specialized MRI scan used to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging...

alone.

Extensive study of cooperation

The Evolution of Cooperation

The evolution of cooperation can refer to:* the study of how cooperation can emerge and persist as elucidated by application of game theory,* a 1981 paper by political scientist Robert Axelrod and evolutionary biologist W. D...

has shed some light on the objective (and subjective) advantages of teamwork and empathy

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...

.

There is evidence to suggest that a risk factor for becoming victims of bullying is deficient moral development. Examples of deficient moral development may be something like neglecting an agent's intentions during an action, or blaming them for accidents. In other words, victims of bullying may be more likely to make less accurate moral assessments, for some reason. The researchers also found that, in contrast, bullies were just as morally developed as victim defenders. The difference is that bullies are more able to disengage themselves. That is, for whatever reason, bullies end up suppressing their feelings of compassion and conscience.

Egalitarians point out the various adverse effects of the trickle up effect

Trickle up effect

The trickle up effect is an economic theory used to describe the flow of wealth from the poor to the affluent; it is opposite to the trickle down effect.-Relationship to the trickle down effect:...

(when money flows from the poor to the rich) when it causes Economic inequality

Economic inequality

Economic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...

. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert also explains, in his book Stumbling on Happiness

Stumbling on Happiness

Stumbling on Happiness is a non-fiction book by Daniel Gilbert. It was published in the United States and Canada in 2006 by Knopf, and has been translated into 20 languages. It is a New York Times bestseller.-Summary:...

, why excessive luxury goods(over and above having basic needs met) does not lead as reliably to happiness as a good job and social network. It is in a similar vein that Daleiden suggests that people do not need to be as motivated by excessive salaries they way they may be in the United States. Society could instead leverage other motives, even prestige or power.

Other implications

Philosopher Paul Kurtz

Paul Kurtz

Paul Kurtz is a prominent American skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism." He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for...

coined the term "Eupraxophy" to refer to a type of scientific and philosophical approach to normative ethics. Kurtz believes that the careful, secular pursuit of normative rules is vital to society.

Physicist David Deutsch

David Deutsch

David Elieser Deutsch, FRS is an Israeli-British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation in the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford...

tells the story that, answering a group of school children's question of why so many people feel hate so strongly, former president George Bush told them "There is evil in the world. But we can overcome evil. We're good". Deutsch says that, although secularists may wince at Bush's use of the word "good",

Deutsch is worried about the implications of moral nihilism

Moral nihilism

Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is neither inherently right nor inherently wrong...

being taken too seriously. He advocates defending (always as peacefully as is possible) values including tolerance, openness, reason, and respect for others. He adds that such a moral framework allows an alternative to war only if both sides embrace it.

Sean M. Carroll

Sean M. Carroll

maintains that, although we would like it to be, morality is not a scientific domain.
Some philosophers worry that morality

Morality

must be understood in relation to some sort of God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

in order to justify moral responsibility

Moral responsibility

. That is, they question the validity of any secular ethics

Secular ethics

Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance...

that conceive of morality without religion or God.

Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer

Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

argued in his book, The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty is a 2009 non-fiction book written by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. In it, Singer argues that citizens of affluent nations are behaving immorally if they do not act to end the poverty they know to exist in developing nations.The book...

, that it is important for all conscious creatures for nations to have "cultures of giving". He has expressed in books like Animal Liberation

Animal Liberation (book)

Animal Liberation is a book by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, published in 1975.The book is widely considered within the animal liberation movement to be the founding philosophical statement of its ideas...

that, because of so-called "speciesism

Speciesism

Speciesism is the assigning of different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership. The term was created by British psychologist Richard D...

", animal rights

Animal rights

Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...

are too often neglected by humanistic ethical movements. Singer holds more of a personistic stance.

Critics have suggested that a belief that some cultures are "wrong" or somehow less optimal could lead to paternalism

Paternalism

Paternalism refers to attitudes or states of affairs that exemplify a traditional relationship between father and child. Two conditions of paternalism are usually identified: interference with liberty and a beneficent intention towards those whose liberty is interfered with...

. As a result, one nation may force their own culture upon another-particularly because moral realists risk becoming dogmatic in their decisions about what is "bad". On the other hand, if it is agreed that a culture is suffering unduly - it may be a good thing if the other cultures save them from themselves. Generally, this need not ever require any force at all, as persuasion

Persuasion

Persuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding or bringing oneself or another toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic means.- Methods :...

and example can be far more effective. That is not to say that war is always avoidable, such as in extreme cases of fighting fascism.

During a discussion on the role that Naturalism

Naturalism

Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses, commonly labeled as supernatural, are either false or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.Naturalism may also refer to:-In the arts:...

might play in professions like Nursing

Nursing

Nursing is a healthcare profession focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life from conception to death....

, Philosopher Trevor Hussey calls the popular view that science is unconcerned with morality "too simplistic". Although his main focus in the paper is naturalism in nursing, he goes on to explain that science can, at very least, be interested in morality at a descriptive level. He even briefly entertains the idea that morality could itself be a scientific subject, writing that one might argue "..that moral judgements are subject to the same kinds of rational, empirical examination as the rest of the world: they are a subject for science – although a difficult one. If this could be shown to be so, morality would be contained within naturalism. However, I will not assume the truth of moral realism here."
In assessing specific measures of well-being, Daleiden disputes the usefulness of the common economic measure gross domestic product (GDP) as a meaningful indicator. His criticisms are in line with supporters using a more eclectic measure such as gross domestic happiness (GDH).

Daleiden provides examples of how science can use empirical evidence to assess the effect that specific behaviors can have on the well-being of individuals and society with regard to various moral issues. He argues that science supports decriminalization and regulation of drugs

Drug liberalization

, euthanasia under some circumstances, and the permission of sexual behaviors that are not tolerated in some cultures (he cites homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

as an example). Daleiden further argues that in seeking to reduce human suffering, abortion

Abortion

should not only be permissible, but at times a moral obligation (as in the case of a mother of a potential child who would faces the probability of much suffering). Like all moral claims in his book, however, Daleiden is adamant that these decisions remain grounded in, and contingent on empirical evidence.Joseph Daleiden's final word regarding his book, The Science of Morality, is that “[The study of ethics] should be included with the social sciences and be subject to as rigorous a scientific program of research as any other area of human behaviour. Lacking this scientific rigour, the moral conclusions drawn in this volume must be considered as working hypotheses, some with greater degree of evidentiary support than others. It is the process by which to assess and transmit moral norms that was the primary focus of this work, and I hope it will serve as a new way of deciding moral issues.”

The Abolition of Man

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

predicted in his 1943 philosophy book The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man

The Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis. It is subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools," and uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law, and a warning of the consequences of...

that a future generation of "conditioners" could change human nature through eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

, pre-natal conditioning, and an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology

Applied psychology

The basic premise of applied psychology is the use of psychological principles and theories to overcome problems in other areas, such as mental health, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law...

so that all future generations will share its moral values (or lack thereof) which they would presumably justify through science. This is not seen as a good thing however, as Lewis argues that it would be the effective end of the human race (thus the title, "the Abolition of Man") Lewis regards certain first principles in ethics shared across all major cultures to be the essence of humanity and argues that regarding these principles as subject to modification has a dehumanizing effect; ultimately reducing persons to objects to be manipulated by scientific technique, rather than fellow persons who use scientific techniques on objects. He says, "A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery."

Undesirable pursuits of flourishing

Many criticisms of science of morality revolve around the implications of calling "good" what allows a society to flourish.

In the past, some leaders have appealed to science dogmatically in order to justify certain moral claims. The results, like Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...

, have been much suffering, and lead some to believe we should avoid incorporating science too deeply into normative ethics. There may be fear that a science of morality might likewise produce an ethical system where everyone hedonistically

Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....

pursues merely their own interests. The promoter of science of morality might respond that such systems are not "good" as defined within the science, since it is not optimal for the flourishing of everyone in society. Moreover, there may be relativity in which pursuits cause flourishing and when (e.g. the same meal that disgusts one person could please another, the same meal that pleases that person could disgust them in another context, etc.) but this relativity obeys natural facts which science can attempt to understand in its consideration of all conscious creatures.

A more contemporary worry is that birth rate

Birth rate

Crude birth rate is the nativity or childbirths per 1,000 people per year . Another word used interchangeably with "birth rate" is "natality". When the crude birth rate is subtracted from the crude death rate, it reveals the rate of natural increase...

s go down as education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

goes up. Detractors of a moral science propose that living humans may some day decide that they would not flourish by raising children, dooming the human race without moral grounds to continue the species. Scientists might appeal to reasons it may be advantageous for the living to have children. Others would grant that this would mean the end of the human race but that, if this unlikely situation obtained, it would clearly not be a "bad" thing.

It is highly possible that ignorance

Ignorance

Ignorance is a state of being uninformed . The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult...

is bliss. Even if the ignorant are, to some extent, blissful, moral scientists would again have grounds to doubt that it is "morally good" since it carries very real risks to the individual, but even more to the flourishing of others.

Other proponents

Ronald A. Lindsay is a bioethicist, lawyer, and chief executive officer and senior research fellow of the Center for Inquiry

Center for Inquiry

(CFI). He likens discussions of morality, like discussions of the theory of evolution, to consist of arguments about details that are too often confused as arguments over basic tenets. In these moral discussions, he says, the public too often fails to go deeper than mere slogans. Lindsay says that morality is the practical enterprise of pursuing peace and happiness. He places great emphasis on the methodology of analyzing morality, and suggests that we: (a) gather the foundations on which we all agree, (b) identify the more culturally relative and relevant norms, and (c) analyze and create our moral system according to facts provided by science.

Vice president of CFI John Shook shows similar support. In his article "The Science of Morality", he writes "Could science determine morality through application of constructive engineering? The answer is yes." As long as we admit the critical role that philosophical reasoning must play, Shook imagines that "A scientific ethics will investigate all social institutions and propose reforms to anything involving human well-being."

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

had openly stated that science has little to say directly about morality. He has since said, about science of morality as friend and colleague Harris presents it in The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape

, that it "changed all that for me". In an online interview, Dawkins reiterated that he believes that Harris makes relevant points, and that, once one defines the moral goal as maximizing the wellbeing of creatures, science has much to say about what is actually morally good.

President of the Atheist Community of Austin Matt Dillahunty

Matt Dillahunty

Matt Dillahunty is the president of the Atheist Community of Austin, and is also a host of the live internet radio show "Non-Prophets Radio" and of the Austin Public-access television cable TV show "The Atheist Experience....

said that he was thinking of things similarly to the way they are presented in The Moral Landscape. On The Atheist Experience television show, Dillahunty was answering a caller's question about where he disagrees with Harris on other matters (regarding the use of the word "atheist"). However, before discussing areas of disagreement, Dillahunty explains that he normally agrees with Harris and says: "When he came out with The Moral Landscape I had actually been running around at universities giving a talk about the superiority of secular morality, and I stopped doing it because I didn't feel the need to keep doing this as long as the book was out and he and I were thinking similarly about this."

Patricia Churchland

Patricia Churchland

is a philosopher at University of California - San Diego well known for supporting eliminative materialism

Eliminative materialism

(the position that certain terms used in materialistic philosophies need elimination or revision). To Churchland, the ideas of philosophers should be grounded in science, making them more like "theoretical" scientists. She cites facts about early visual processing, explaining that valence is assigned to stimulus subconsciously; this process is seen in children and may have a large biological component. Churchland uses this an example of science limiting the scope of relevant philosophical theories.
Regarding her book Braintrust, some of what she discussed on evolutionary neurological understanding of facts/values and is/ought, falls within the general structure that Sam Harris has laid out. She describes what he is asking us to envision, that if false beliefs were factored out, the remaining evaluative facts should become apparent, and that should result in a agreement on values. She agrees especially it would be most likely at the extreme ends of the spectrum, in the clear-cut cases of flourishing or not flourishing.

However, Churchland anticipates a lot of cases lie in the middle ground, that can lead to disagreement and it's uncertain whether this might be due to a disagreement about facts, or a fundamental disagreement on values. She continues, that there may be cases where there are simply no more facts that can shed any light on the matter. She also mentions pernicious cases, such as questions involving just war and preemptive strikes, were there is always most likely be some value disagreement. Referring to Harris understanding of a science of morality, she says he handles many issues very well, but Churchland claims to play devil's advocate

Devil's advocate

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, just for the sake of argument. In taking such position, the individual taking on the devil's advocate role seeks to engage others in an argumentative...

, and offers three worries: arrogance (or silliness) on the part of academics, in providing condescending or unrealistic advice; ideological enthusiasm at the behest of demagogy, as in the cultural revolution

Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...

in China; and finally, do-goodery that takes on a bad problem and makes it worse, when one ought not to have interfered on a presumption of having the normative high-ground.

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

says that science, broadly enough defined to consist of general reason and evidence-based belief, is certainly how we learn what is right and wrong. On the other hand, Pinker says that "science" is often understood as separate from philosophy and other necessary components of good moral thinking, which would make science necessary but insufficient. Asked whether science can tell us what is right and wrong, Pinker says "Yes and No", depending on how broadly or narrowly a science is being discussed.

In debate, Peter Singer

Peter Singer

expressed the same contingent agreement with the idea of a science of morality (i.e. he agrees that broadly defined, science can tell us what is right and wrong). Sam Harris explained that he is appealing to the broad use of 'science' which he says means more than lab coated researchers in laboratories - it includes secular philosophizing and scientific theory.

Overview

Background

In philosophy

In the social sciences

Popular literature

Sam Harris

Is–ought

Scientific methods

Defining morality

Disputed terms in science

"Morally good"

Limited relativity

Moral facts

Good behaviour

The role of government

Earthly paradise

The role of punishment

Research

Other implications

The Abolition of Man

Undesirable pursuits of flourishing

Other proponents

See also

Cited literature

Further reading