Janina Angeli M.

Magundayao Philosophy 171 X4

Morality and science:

A commentary on Sam Harris’ lecture entitled ‘Science can answer moral questions’

Sam Harris’ basic claim is this: science is able to answer moral questions by reducing values to
facts, which are capable of being regarded as true or false. While I generally agree with him on this, there
are a few points which I think this claim, as discussed in the lecture, has given less attention, more so
taken for granted. This paper aims to substantiate and, if possible, criticize the various aspects presented
in the lecture.
In the latter parts of human history, the cries of subjectivism and relativism were very appealing.
The losing grip of traditional authorities, like religion, on the people when it comes to the issue of morality
has made us want to find a new ground for why we believe a certain thing is right or wrong, true or false.
The supposed dichotomy between science and morality that we know of today is due to the radical shift in
perspective during the dawn of modern philosophy from a theological, metaphysical, and traditional
society where everything is attributed to a higher being, God, to a more empirical, physical, and scientific
society where plain speculations on the nature of things no longer count as valid explanations. This, I
believe, is exactly what is now happening to morality, especially today where connections between two
seemingly different concepts are being established using proofs that are verifiable by our sense
experiences.
The first point Harris tried to establish in his lecture is about our ethical obligations, and our
values as humans as well, being factual claims which we can be right or wrong about, as seen in our
conscious experience of our everyday lives. I do not contend with this, but I think that human values can,
on the one hand, be right or wrong, and on the other, better or worse. For the purposes of analogy, let us
examine the existence of gravitational force. It is true that there exists a force called gravity and we are
right to say that the said force is working on us right now. Despite the existence of this force, we cannot
say that it only has one specific degree of manifestation (one specific magnitude of its pull). Different
celestial bodies are scientifically believed to have gravitational pulls as well but the magnitude of the force
varies. In fact, this variation is also true for different altitudes even within the same planet. Now to
translate this analysis into a morality discourse, we can say that a specific human value like honesty is
deemed true, and right, in the sense that there really is such a value that is honored across most cultures,
if not all. There may be variations in the degree of honesty that each particular circumstance may call for,
but that is not to say that omitting details in a story or claiming certain statements to be true on the
account of one honest-to-goodness detail is a form of honesty nor dishonesty, unless we want to commit
the fallacy of bifurcation. The difference between scientific facts and moral facts, in this analogy, is that
scientific facts like the force of gravity may vary across space but not over time (assuming that there are
no new scientific breakthroughs that may render our facts to be mistaken), while moral facts, on the other
hand, may vary across space and across time. Human values are more fluid than natural phenomenon,
and this can be attributed to the fact that humans are conscious of themselves and the environment that
they live in which allows them to change. The choice of human values are not entirely subjective--these
values do not exist only for the individual’s liking. These values are like cookie cutters which already has a
designated form and individuals just comply with them, depending on the circumstance they are in. The
manner of choosing which value to uphold is not random either, but is, in a sense, scientific. When we
make choices, we employ scientific methods which include cost-benefit analysis, hypothesis testing, etc.
It may seem now that we are vying for situation ethics, but that does not actually refute Harris’
claim that there are objective truths--doing that will just be another bifurcation fallacy. As in his example,
it is wrong to lie but to claim that there is no moral truth on the basis of one exception is just pushing the
argument. We can remain objective while considering the situation at hand, it’s just a matter of evaluating
which of the facts are to count as objective and which are not. We should not fall into the ravines of
cultural relativism just because there are differences in the way people perceive moral facts. These
differences indeed exist and perhaps cannot be changed but to claim that there are differences is to
implicitly claim that there are some points which are the same across cultures, and these are to be
considered objective.
In Harris’ closing, he claims that there are answers to moral questions and I agree to this mainly
because the choices that we make are proofs that we see one option to be better than the others, and that
is to say, we see that the choice we made is the right one and all others are wrong, or will make the
situation worse off.
Janina Angeli M. Magundayao Philosophy 171 X4

Thoughts on Andy Thomson’s ‘Morality: From the heavens or from nature?’

The point of Andy Thomson’s lecture can be summarized in the claim that morality comes from
nature because our moral judgments are hard-wired to our brains, and are thus innate. His lecture, I
believe, is a response to Francis Collins’ view that morality is a gift from God, and this implies that our
ability to make moral judgments is a proof of God’s existence. I agree with Thomson in saying that our
capacity to make moral judgments is not an indicator of the existence of God nor of any supreme being,
nor of anything metaphysical for that matter. To claim something like that would be non-sequitur, even if
the natural origin of moral emotions were not established yet, since something that is internally felt
cannot be directly attributed to an external cause. It may be the case that someone feels good when one
does a particular act and the feeling may be said to have been caused by it, but the case might be that
these things are mutually exclusive. The connection between them is made up by that someone and it is
possible that another person may do the same act yet not feel the same goodness (or badness) that the
other felt.
Now, if moral thinking were for social doing, and if morality builds and binds, then would that
mean that without the social there will be no morals? I agree with the latter question in part, but I have to
mention that I believe that the social world has a great role to play when it comes to forming the moral
consciousness of the people. As a student of the Social Sciences, I hold the theory of institutionalization of
social facts, which of course includes morals, to be true. In a nutshell, the theory states that an act has to
go through the process (institutionalization) before it becomes embedded it within an organization or a
society as an established norm or custom. Socially accepted acts were just simple acts done in habit, which
later turns into a social current until the society decides for the value of that act (either socially acceptable
or taboo). That is to say that a certain act, say inflicting pain to living being, becomes wrong only if one’s
society condemns it. With regard to the first question, I think that these actions are, in a sense, not
attributable to the actor. The explanation to why this is so will be clarified later.
Before we are misled into thinking that I am vying for moral relativism here, I have to reiterate
that acts were first habitual before they become institutionalized and embedded in a culture, a point
which I think will provide a key in reconciling the sociological theory of morals with Thomson’s theory of
its natural origins. In the most basic level, a habit is formed out of an individual’s repeated practice of a
certain act. When more than one individual does this certain habit, it then becomes a social current. If it is
passed through many generations, it is then considered to be a social fact and hence, and is
institutionalized. In this context, I think Thomson’s theory comes in on the individual level, at the stage
where a certain act is still in the process of being translated into a habit. As automatic responses of the
brain, our moral judgments make us do certain acts, acts which it deems fit for a situation, without
actually giving it thought. When the act, say, pushing the switch to save five workers at the cost of one in
the first train track dilemma, was warmly accepted by the society, the individual can then confer the act
the attribute of being good and hence act in the same way when faced in a similar situation (and this is
where he or she establishes a connection between the act and the feeling). If the act, however was not very
well accepted, the individual will be sanctioned so that it comes to him or her that what he did was wrong
and will thus decide not to resort to the same thing again. These things, I believe, happen as precursor to
the formation of an individual’s habits. Since the individual lives within a society, he or she, in one way or
another, imparts his or her habits to another individual then to another, as it goes through the process of
acceptance or condemnation by the society to be a social current, then the process begins again for it to
become an institutionalized social fact.
In conclusion, I see that Andy Thomson has eliminated the empyrean origin from the discourses
of morality, but by doing so, he has intensified the clash between the natural origins of morality and its
social underpinnings. It may be said that I am pushing the argument here, but I think that this whole
discourse of the origin of morality will eventually boil down to another nature-versus-nurture dilemma.
While science can accurately validate the origins of morality in nature, particularly the parts of a human
person’s brain, the social sciences can still claim that these biological fixtures as limitations in humans can
be overcome through constant practice and social interactions, in one way or another. After all, both
disciplines are empirically observable, it is just how these observations are explained that sets the
difference.