Is it possible to scientifically determine good and evil?

Question

Sam Harris has argued on many occasions - the earliest of which I'm aware of being in his book, The End of Faith, as well as later on in The Moral Landscape - that it is (at least theoretically) possible for us to scientifically determine what is good and what is evil. He argues that the only assumption we need to make for science to be able to make this determination is that it's bad for there to be a universe which results in the worst possible outcome for all sentient beings. Upon that foundation, he argues, we can theoretically build an entire scientific discipline of determining what should be done to maximize good (ie. that which is the opposite of the bad defined above) in the universe.

Is this logic flawed in any way? Clearly, this science would be extremely difficult to realize in practice (having to take every ramification in the universe of every action into account?!) - but is it theoretically sound?

Answer 1

There is no way to take a non-moral "is" and from that extract a moral "ought". (ref) This separation is usually called "Hume's Law". This has been not only a pretty self-evident, but also generally accepted law within philosophy, but nevertheless it regularly pops up wanna-be philosophers trying to break it and failing.

As science can only concern itself with what is, it can not talk about what ought it is impossible to scientifically determine any moral issue, including god and bad and evil.

More.

Answer 2

If  you take it as a given that "it's bad for there to be a universe which results in the worst possible outcome for all sentient beings" and presumably similarly that what is "good" is what results in the best possible outcome for all sentient beings, and if  you assume that you live in a universe obeying classical laws of physics (or you're willing to settle for quantum probabilities), and if  you have a computer with approximately the same amount of RAM as there are particles in the universe, then you would still  have the problem of dealing with a multi-valued objective function.

In calculating the "worst possible outcome for all sentient beings", do you weigh all sentient beings equally? Do you employ a hard cut-off in determining sentience? (E.g., how would a chimpanzee fit into all of this?)

So, no, it is not scientifically possible to determine good and evil, although given certain (philosophically inspired) assumptions  about what makes an action good and evil, it would be fair to say that science might allow us better guesses as to what actions are "good" and "evil".

Answer 3

Harris is either

1. engaging in a bit of circular reasoning when he uses what is effectively a synonym for good ("well-being") to define good, or
2. he is essentially grounding morality in what amounts to hedonism (which Dawkins more or less admits when he says that Harris bases his entire proposal on the removal of suffering).

(1) doesn't solve anything because it slips common notions of the good in through the back door. (2) opens up a Pandora's box of problems and consequences, some of which undermine Harris's other positions (e.g. biology doesn't prevent organisms, including humans, to evolve which experience pleasure/pain differently; if all activity, including science, becomes motivated only by pleasure, then why should the truth necessarily matter?; the questionable formulation of the common good and its raison d'être; and so on).

I wouldn't spend too much time on Harris's work. He's poorly versed in philosophy, and consequently philosophers don't take him very seriously (if I recall correctly, even Dennett once expressed serious reservations about Harris's competence in this area).

Answer 4

As far as Good and bad are seen as relativistic terms, science can help to know whether the outcome of a cause will be good or bad, however the final judgement has to be done on by the intellects of man. A good is good because it helps to advance towards a predetermined goal. The means to achieve that goal has to be vetted on moral grounds, and I feel science doesn't have such faculties to vet the path taken and there is exactly where the difference emerge For example, lets say population growth of a country is increasing at a very high level, and it is required to reduce it. Science can't see why it should be wrong to end life of some to achieve this, as long as it is an option to serve the purpose, though morally it is wrong.

Answer 5

Not surprisingly, most people here asserted that moral propositions are not under the scope of science. Perhaps it is one of the arguments to support the philosophical independence .

Generally, I agree with what most of the people here said, but I need to expound it further. Empirical inquiry does not solely refer to natural sciences if we are talking about moral philosophy. When we say Empirical or scientific inquiry, we simply refer to a meta-ethical justification stating that physical feelings can correspond to a certain moral value. Thus, hedonism and utilitarianism are forms of empirical justifications, because it equates goodness with pleasures. In a first glimpse, we cannot see any absurdity in that. After all if we are all satisfied, everything is good.

But ethical non-naturalism challenges this ethical justification. Ethical non-naturalism argues that combining pleasures and satisfactions cannot constitute to anything aside from being pleasurable. As such, the term "good" is not a physical property, rather it is an irreducible component of a particular action. Thus, an action should satisfy a certain objective standard to deductively justify the intrinsic goodness of an action. This means that the term good is not empirical and is not synonymous to pleasures, because we will still ask what made pleasures good or right?I am not saying that hedonism is wrong. I am just saying sciences can use hedonism to make morality entirely empirical. But it failed because goodness is not an empirical property.

There are also other attempts to make morality scientific, one of which is through psychology. It argues that external influences shape our moral convictions. According to these people, mind sciences give a better view about morality. However, these sciences only discuss the "motivation to act", and not cannot justify an action. Suppose that a person killed a rabbit, mind scientists would assert that a person did that because there are some uncontrollable impulses that forced that person. But this does not account for any moral value. Is it immoral or moral? Therefore, mind sciences only compliments moral philosophy after it has justified the value of an action. it is sound to say that John became immoral, because his peers are likewise, because we have defined immorality. But it is absurd to say that John is influenced by his peers to kill, thus killing is immoral.

Answer 6

Yes, but that would require inclusion of concepts from Informations Theory, AI, Physics and coming up with some notion of Weighted Emotional Entropy and myriad of other conceptual structures that is by far beyound human comprehension, but when our superior robot overlords take over they will muse over how their human pets do a crude form of Philosophy and squable over definitions of good and evil instead of doing a simple (to them)compuation.The notion of Computational Philosophy Theory is maybe far beyound the reach of humans that can keep at most 7 things in their head but to a machine roaming over giga-tera flops of computational power will be just plain obvious.

Humans can be very well represenred as complex neural networks, and what ever that humans can perceive can also be modeled. Turing test will be turned around, those who pass it will be considered machines and those who don't will be the cute human pets.

To say that human morals can not be broken down to pure calculation is only short sighted arrogance on humans part.

PS: Instead of scientifically, good and evil can be computaionally calculated.

Answer 7

Science is wholly unable to tell us what should be. It can only tell us what is. If you imagine someone seeing a Lion tackling a Gazelle. Now we can in accordance with the scientific method perceive that the lion has killed the Gazelle. We can posit reasons as to why he does so. Maybe he is hungry. Maybe he is driven to survive and propagate.

Now can we use the scientific method to determine if the Lions SHOULD eat the Gazelle? No we cannot. Can we use the scientific method to determine if the Lion is being fair to the Gazelle? No we cannot. Science simply cannot answer these questions.

Now that does not make them not worthy of consideration. Neither does that mean we should a hold a view of agnosticism towards these questions. It simply means the scientific method cannot answer such a question.

It is to me a young budding scientist alarming to see such a claim. Atheism has no right to be spokes people for science as a whole. Neither does it have the right equate scientific enterprise with atheism.

You should remember that Sam Harris is only speaking for Sam Harris. His views are not the views of the scientific community as a whole. Their are many scientist on both sides of the religious divide which would disagree with him.

Answer 8

Yes, it is possible to scientifically determine what is good and what is evil if you allow definitions of good and evil.

Let us take an example: Is it evil to torture and maim babies for entertainment?

If you believe that this question is simply a matter of opinion, you have a purely local definition of good and evil that amounts to good being stuff you approve of and evil being stuff you don't.

If you do not believe that this question is a matter of opinion, than you must be taking the position that there is something about that action that puts it into the class of things that are "evil", as opposed to things that are good. Harris takes the position that "good" and "evil" relate to suffering and happiness, and that since the suffering and happiness of conscious beings are observable facts, we can use science to promote the latter and reduce the former. This is true, we can in fact use science to reduce suffering and increase happiness.

Harris defines this as "moral", which is where other people disagree with him. So what is interesting to me is that in terms of goals and facts, many people agree with Sam Harris, but they reject that you can define evil, and therefore reject the argument itself.