“Sam Harris: Science Can Answer Moral Questions” - Critique Paper

Sam Harris

Sam Harris began his argument by saying, “The separation between science and human values is an illusion,” adding “facts and values seem to belong to different spheres. This is quite clearly untrue. Values are a certain kind of facts. They are facts about the well beings of conscious creatures.” What is he trying to convey? Based on what he said, values are also facts about how people like us try to live a good life. If he considered values as facts, does it mean our moral values were created based on science facts? Or do scientific facts are based on moral values? We cannot say that a belief to be objectively true can be considered as a fact. He even pointed our ethical obligations towards the rock or insects. First of all, ethics concern is the morality of social beings. Since when can we talk to a rock and hurt it? He then justified that, “If culture changes us, it changes us by changing our brains. And therefore whatever cultural variation there is in the way human beings flourish can at least in principle be understood in the context of a maturing science of the mind…”  I probably I agree with him in this one. People change because the people around change. But does it make it scientific? That our brains control our ethical actions? Brain controls our actions and we reason out using our brain but acting according to our ethics what make us morally right or wrong. We live our lives base on our ethics and use our brain to absorb how to decide. He also gave example, which connects with moral relativism, that Muslim women cover their body completely so as not to offend their alleged god and then telling his audience that living in a different culture, we cannot avoid judging their well being because they do such practice. If we let empirical study to be the basis of what is right or wrong, scientific findings will show limited freedom of women which will develop conflicts between different cultures. 

So how can science answer a moral question if science can violate the morality of human beings? Even me, I don’t know the answer. He then argued between moral and scientific expertise. He used Dalai Lama and Ted Bundy as examples, “…there is nothing for the Dalai Lama to be really right about or for Ted Bundy to be really wrong about…” He then compared the differences of opinions of certain experts which telling that an expert certainly know which is right. He then connected it with science that when they talk about facts, certain opinions are excluded. So with morality, how can we say that there are no experts in moral sphere? People believe on he is an expert if he sound smart or can answer everything you asked. If a person is a moral expert, does it mean that all his life, he mastered how people act in a right way or wrong way, excluding each person’s beliefs? For me, I think he just has more experiences than others but cannot be considered as an expert because we different cultures and we cannot just simple follow what he says because he knows more than us. With his talk about science can answer moral questions, I definitely learned new something and widen my knowledge when it comes to science and moral reasoning.