09.04.10

Harris and the morality conference at edge.org

Posted in General at 12:36 pm by nemo

Harris at Edge.org
We have commented here several times on this morality conference at edge.org. Beware of these people. As Harris notes, we confront the silly things people say about morality, including those by people like Harris.

Harris has that rational look, plus the ‘smart nerd’, about him, which will energize a fan club, but recall his basic confusions about torture after 9/11. He will never achieve anything in this field if he can’t deal with torture.
How we deal with terrorists with atom bombs is a hard question, but it was one that appeared in the Bush era to justify its fascist tendencies. And there was Harris like some kind of mouthpiece for the ‘serious’ folks who have learned their Darwin hard man lessons.
We must be suspicious of people who really want to neutralize ethics, and its bothersome demands on us. It is especially appealing in politicians who are such whores that the hope for some ethical relief lurks forever below the surface of consciousness.
Stuart Kauffman is another case of this: the capitalist gangster trying to justify market non-morality, and his reinventing the sacred text slyly attempts to use self-org theory to justify market ideology, even as he trashes Kantian ethics via contradictions in the categorical imperative.

There’s a question for Mr. Harris: will he produce an ‘ethics’ that the market crowd will approve of? We can be sure he will, I think.

There is a huge demand to rationalize the stubborn exception to scientism’s reign: ethics. So be doubly wary. The job frustrated Kant, so be wary of slick operators funded by creeps like Brockman claiming they will the solve the problem.

To navigate past these sophistries remember that ethics is about a human ‘will’ that can act in an ethical manner.
Scientism cannot handle that simple issue. So therefore it will never touch on the subject of morality. Clear?
Scientists are completely stubborn on this point, and will obsessively try to replace ethics with a causal theory and/or evolutionary claim.

Do your homework, read in the history of ethics, and then consider the issues as portrayed comprehensively by Kant and others like him (please note that Kant can’t provide simple answers here either, but his basic indications create the questions that can’t be set aside). Don’t let people like Harris do what the Darwinists do: keep you locked in such a narrow discourse that the history is lost and you will accept his premises. Then oversimplification no longer seems anomalous.

Ethics is not about neurobiology (or god). A strong case should be made that neuroscience should be off limits to ethical discourse (subject to possible exceptions and debates). The point was indeed essentially made by Kant, though not per se re: neuroscience, and his attempt to derive the ethical on independent terms was brilliant, one that was somehow disconbobulated by his own incomplete argument. But his stylized argument that ethics is known through reason raises a fundamental issue.
Ethical issues are independent of material realities and are equally independent of theistic confusions. Kant’s point may be too oversimplified, but his basic idea is vital to understand, or at least consider.
Trashy utilitarianism married to bad neuroscience and the rest of it is as far as this kind of PR ethics is going to get.
We will see when this book comes out.

The third project is a project of persuasion: How can we persuade all of the people who are committed to silly and harmful things in the name of “morality” to change their commitments, to have different goals in life, and to lead better lives? I think that this third project is actually the most important project facing humanity at this point in time. It subsumes everything else we could care about — from arresting climate change, to stopping nuclear proliferation, to curing cancer, to saving the whales. Any effort that requires that we collectively get our priorities straight and marshal massive commitments of time and resources would fall within the scope of this project. To build a viable global civilization we must begin to converge on the same economic, political, and environmental goals.

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