Practical Morality?

Jason

Interesting debate between Sam Harris and William Craig on the subject of moral truths and values:

The God Debate II: Harris vs. Craig

Some tentative thoughts: I think Craig really trips himself up when he uses his own God = good tautology after criticizing Harris for playing semantic games and accusing him of using a tautology.

I also think it's interesting that Harris' reply at 1:50-52 is somewhat similar to the Buddha's reply to King Pasenadi in SN 3.8, which essentially gives the underlying basis for Buddhist morality (especially in regard to the principle of ahimsa or 'harmlessness').

This basis or argument for morality focuses on the moral character of the individual and revolves around seeing our desires for happiness and freedom from pain in all living creatures, particularly human beings. The essential premise here being that there's no one that's as dear to us as ourselves, that all sentient beings essentially want to be happy in their own way (according to their specific capacities), and that this is a fairly decent and logical reason to desire their happiness and well-being as well as our own. The reasoning is fairly simple. If our happiness and well-being comes at the expense of theirs, they'll do everything in their power to upset that happiness.

Conversely, if they were to infringe upon ours, wouldn't it follow that we'd do everything in our power to upset theirs? Looking at it from this perspective, where insecurity dominates the moral playing field (like never knowing if your doctor is going to cut you up in order to help five other patients), a world with moral security not only seems more desirable, but more conducive to the flourishing of conscious beings. Moreover, the former promotes a vicious circle of retribution, and one of the ways to break this circle is an ethical framework that takes the happiness and general well-being of others into consideration, which is one of the things that Harris seems to be promoting (although for slightly different reasons).

Of course, I don't think this presents an 'objective' basis for morality, but it certain seems like a practical one. Thoughts?

RichardH

Why the need for an objective basis for morality? Where does that need come from?.... and how can it end in anything satisfactory?

zenff

Hi Jason,

That’s interesting. I will open that link when I get home from work (it’s 7 in the morning).
Your comment made me think of Prisoner Dilemma type of computer simulations.
They suggest there’s an objective reason for moral behavior; it’s more successful in life in the long run. And so moral behavior is a probable feature of evolution.

That’s brief, but I hope the idea comes across.

Have a nice day.

Interest in the iterated prisoners' dilemma (IPD) was kindled by Robert Axelrod in his book The Evolution of Cooperation (1984). In it he reports on a tournament he organized of the N step prisoners' dilemma (with N fixed) in which participants have to choose their mutual strategy again and again, and have memory of their previous encounters. Axelrod invited academic colleagues all over the world to devise computer strategies to compete in an IPD tournament. The programs that were entered varied widely in algorithmic complexity, initial hostility, capacity for forgiveness, and so forth.
....
By analysing the top-scoring strategies, Axelrod[citation needed] stated several conditions necessary for a strategy to be successful.
Nice
The most important condition is that the strategy must be "nice", that is, it will not defect before its opponent does (this is sometimes referred to as an "optimistic" algorithm). Almost all of the top-scoring strategies were nice; therefore a purely selfish strategy will not "cheat" on its opponent, for purely self-interested reasons first.
Retaliating
However, Axelrod contended, the successful strategy must not be a blind optimist. It must sometimes retaliate. An example of a non-retaliating strategy is Always Cooperate. This is a very bad choice, as "nasty" strategies will ruthlessly exploit such players.
Forgiving
Successful strategies must also be forgiving. Though players will retaliate, they will once again fall back to cooperating if the opponent does not continue to defect. This stops long runs of revenge and counter-revenge, maximizing points.
Non-envious
The last quality is being non-envious, that is not striving to score more than the opponent (note that a "nice" strategy can never score more than the opponent).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma#Strategy_for_the_iterated_prisoners.27_dilemma

person

This is a fun Radiolab broadcast of the computer tournament @zenff describes.

http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/one-good-deed-deserves-another/

person

Just finished watching the debate. Thanks for sharing, it was very thoughtful and interesting. It really highlighted the difference in worldview between the need for an authority figure and a worldview without one.

I wish Sam Harris would have spent more time arguing for his position on the foundation for morals without the need for a higher authority and less time criticizing Christian thinking.

I also thought that when Dr. Craig was saying objective what he really meant was absolute and that Sam's basis for morality was a relativistic one. At least this is the way the distinction sounded to me. I appreciate a relativistic worldview because I think it holds closer to actual reality and thus leads to more effective solutions and outcomes to problems.

Harris' grounding for morality does seem to depend upon an acknowledgement of our shared humanity, or desire for well being I suppose if you include animals. Since not everyone cares about other people a justice system is still needed to police bad behavior. According to Craig and what I have read by Harris, Sam seems to be a pretty strict determinist and doesn't believe in any kind of free will. So I wonder what his beliefs on crime and punishment are?

I think for humanity a morality based upon a shared understanding of our desire for happiness and well being would in the long run lead to social cues and pressure for people to see others in a more compassionate light and is a world I would like to see.