Sam Harris’ TED video and the danger of liberal atheist moral absolutism

5Apr/10

Sam Harris’ TED video and the danger of liberal atheist moral absolutism

A fellow graduate student recently shared the below Sam Harris TED video with me and I was quite surprised at the premise of the talk. In it, Sam Harris gives a spirited defense of moral absolutism, the idea that there are objective truths about what we should and should not value. Below is the video.

Harris correctly observes that "the only people who seem to generally agree with me (Harris) and who think that there are right or wrong answers to moral questions are religious demagogues, of one form or another, and of course they think there are right and wrong answers to moral questions because they got these answers from a voice in a whirlwind, not because they made an intelligent analysis of the conditions of human and animal well-being...the demagogues are right about one thing, we need a universal conception of moral values."

His conception of morality is remarkably close to the construct of moral absolutism vs. moral relativism, measured on the YourMorals.org site using agreement to statements like "Different types of moralities cannot be compared as to 'rightness'" with agreement indicating more absolutism and disagreement indicating relativism. Harris also states that "It is possible for whole cultures to care about the wrong things....that reliably lead to human suffering." The graphs I show below show that he is correct that moral absolutism among these groups does lead to human suffering...but it also leads to suffering when moral absolutism is supported by liberals and atheists.

Harris then spends much of the rest of the talk detailing how terrible things occur as a result of cultures that do not share his values. I am generally liberal and likely agree with Harris' values, specifically the idea that morality is mostly about promoting the well-being of people. However, I do not believe that my values should be the values of other people as well. I have two main counters to this idea:

- Even the most liberal person can be made to consider ideas of morality outside of the idea of the greatest well-being possible. For example, liberals believe in equity too, such that some people deserve more well-being than others. Jon Haidt's brother-sister incest dilemma confounds both liberals and conservatives meaning that there is a universal ability to moralize disgust, even if it is less developed in some than others. Harm and well-being are not the only considerations.

- Moral absolutism generally leads to more human suffering, not less, as people fight great wars to enforce their vision of morality on others. Consider the below 2 graphs of yourmorals data relating moral relativism, the opposite of absolutism, and attitudes toward war.

Moral Absolutism relates to Support for War across Religions

Moral Absolutism is related to Support for War - Across Political Groups

Moral absolutism is not just dangerous for the groups that Harris dislikes, but also for the liberal and atheist groups that he likely subscribes to as the slope of the regression line is negative in all cases, indicating that moral absolutism is positively related to support for war for liberals and conservatives, atheists and christians.

It may be easier to think of groups that cause wars out of excessive group orientation (e.g. Hutus vs. Tutsis) or excessive authoritarianism (e.g. Nazis)...but there are also groups that caused harm out of excessive concern for others' well-being (e.g. The Weather Underground) or out of an excessive desire for social equality (e.g. the communist Khmer Rouge). Moral absolutism, believing that you are more right about morality than others, can be thought of as the first step toward hypermoralism, harming others in support of your moral principles. Human beings are already good at believing that our moral system is superior, with war sometimes as the consequence....instead or narrowing our conceptions of morality, we should be working to expand our moral imaginations.

- Ravi Iyer

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Tagged as: moral absolutism, moral relativism, peace, religion, sam harris, war Leave a comment

Old Comments (7) Trackbacks (3)

Mattias
April 16th, 2011 - 14:23

This “…leads to more human suffering, not less, as people fight great wars to enforce their vision of morality on others.” isn’t entirely true, is it? =)
If a certain vision on morality in fact DOES promote more well being and less suffering, isn’t it our DUTY to enforce it? Even a great war will lead to more well being in the long run. A war is forgotten in a generation or two, 2000 years of oppression isn’t forgotten until… well a generation or two after the war that ended it!
Ravi
April 22nd, 2011 - 11:14

Mattias, that is a fair and logical point. I suppose I would say that this ideal scenario, where we engage in a war of liberation that ends and leads to a period of freedom and peace, is the exception rather than the rule. As such, I think the idea of a just war should be approached with caution (e.g. what we are trying to do in Libya) rather than certainty (e.g. our all out effort in Iraq). But that’s just my opinion and certainly people can disagree about how to promote well-being overall. It is my opinion that Harris’ absolutist style of thinking is likely to lead to less well-being overall.
Kendrick
December 12th, 2011 - 09:04

It seems to me that you missed the whole point of Harris’ argument. Harris himself covers that conflict of the notion of objective moral values. Carefully watch from around 7:40-13:15. His whole point is that as matured human beings, as a species, we should be coming to a point where we can differentiate between what is ultimately valuable, and what is a matter of mere taste, or preference. In other words, Harris leaves room for differences in value on his “spectrum.” So I am not sure how your argument stands.
Ravi
December 19th, 2011 - 04:03

I get what Harris thinks we *should* value. I just don’t think he (or anyone) can prove what we *should* value scientifically. Moreover, the belief that you know what we should value, and therefore others are wrong, is what often leads to less, not more human and animal well-being.
jeff
February 24th, 2012 - 20:46

I just stumbled across this blog while working on a moral psych paper. Overall there is some very interesting research! I’ve got to say that a number of things in this post seem a little off to me. Starting with the two main counters:

1) It is easy here to bite the bullet and say that liberals who say consensual incest is wrong are just confused. Even if there is a universal ability to moralize disgust, it doesn’t mean it is a proper source of moral judgment. Some argument needs to be made for why disgust is morally relevant, especially since even those in Haidt’s experiments do not explicitly argue disgust is a good enough ground for a moral judgment. Equity seems like possibly a better candidate, but there is a long line of utilitarian moral philosophy which tries to show why concern with equity and other goods can reduce to concern with harm. I am not sure they are wrong.

2) There seems to be something odd with the implication that moral realism (probably a more accurate term for what I understand Harris’ project to be) is morally wrong. Setting that aside for a second, it seems unlikely that very many wars have been fought for moral reasons. Rather everybody, even (especially?) if their side is in the wrong, has to give reasons that are congruent with their moral identities and cultural narratives. I suspect it is more likely that wars are really about resources, power, economics, and the like, and the moral reasoning is post hoc propaganda rather than having much causal force. It seems plausible that people with lower SES and less education are both more likely to be moral realists and more likely to be susceptible to government and religious propaganda. I would also point out that relativism would entail that no wars are actually unjust and would logically undercut much principled opposition to wars.

Perhaps relativists do act more morally than realists. I am not sure that this holds once you control for intelligence, SES, education, etc. It seems unlikely that a principled relativist is any more moral than a principled utilitarian or Kantian.

On a final note, I don’t think relativism gets you out of thinking you are right and others are wrong. Presumably you do think that Harris and moral absolutists are wrong. I would also imagine that you do support harming others in support of your moral principles. You might (?) oppose capital punishment and even prison terms, but presumably if so, you still think that society should have some punishments for people who commit certain crimes. Those punishments, even if milder than current standards would be a form of harming others for moral reasons (e.g. “they deserve it,” “it will improve general welfare” etc.).

I agree that we should work on expanding our moral imaginations, but I take that “should” to be a moral “should.” If it isn’t a moral “should” what is it? I think a self-interested “should” here is both implausible and not what you mean. I take your argument against hypermoralism and Harris to be a utilitarian one: there are worse consequences for human (and animal?) welfare if people are hypermoralists, therefore we shouldn’t be hypermoralists.
Ravi
February 25th, 2012 - 10:35

Jeff….

I don’t think moral absolutists are morally wrong. I think they are mistaken when they think they can objectively answer subjective questions. Who is to say whether disgust is or is not a proper source of moral judgment? Harris will say things like “it seems clear that morality is about human and animal well-being”, but it just isn’t that clear when you think about it. Some people care about the traditions of their group or they think that some humans (e.g. prisoners) don’t deserve much well-being. Some people believe that killing an old tree is wrong while others don’t. I don’t think Harris idea about what morality is is necessarily wrong. I just think it’s his opinion, and I’m confused by how this basic distinction between opinion and fact is lost on him.

However, I’m sure that for those who simply despise religion, there is not much I can do to convince them. For them, I have a practical “should”, meaning that if they want to have the outcomes they’d like in the world (e.g. fewer wars, a goal I share), they are going about it in the wrong way. Being more absolutist about what is or is not moral leads to more, not less, conflict in the world. That is my main proposition.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful comment!
Karim
July 30th, 2012 - 12:03

Thanks for a great blog! I had the following thoght. Philosophical (as opposed to Harris) moral absolutists (or moral realists) make the following claims:

(1) Normative sentences (“you ought to do X!”) express propositions.
(2) Some such propositions are true.
(3) Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion.

These claims are compatible with the notion of considerable moral uncertainty, thus allowing moral realists to be cautious when making moral judgments. My point is that moral realism does not imply the kind of moral chauvinism that Harris seems to espouse.