Sam Harris' 'The Moral Landscape'

Con has essentially staked his entire case on two premises identified this round. Let's see how he fares. Consider Con’s own source [5]. Go directly to the paper cited by rationalwiki, and you will find this:"An essay by Sober (1994) entitled "Prospects for an evolutionary ethics" provides an excellent account of the naturalistic fallacy from a combined evolutionary and philosophical perspective. According to Sober, Hume would regard the following argument as deductively invalid:Torturing people for fun causes great suffering (factual premise)Torturing people for fun is wrong (ethical conclusion)However, if we supply an additional premise, the argument can be made deductively valid:Torturing people for fun causes great suffering (factual premise)It is wrong to cause great suffering (ethical premise)Torturing people for fun is wrong (ethical conclusion)More generally, a factual statement must be combined with an ethical statement to derive an ethical conclusion. Hence, ought cannot be described exclusively from is.The word "exclusively" is a crucial part of the naturalistic fallacy. If we remove it, the statement "ough cannot be derived from is" implies that the facts of the world have no relevance to ethical conclusions. This is an absurd..." so on and so on. [6] Con has inadvertently demolished his own argument, and all but admitted to us that “Is - Ought” actually poses no serious challenge whatsoever to Harris, because Harris has augmented facts with general (and rather obvious) ethical principles. Using a set of commonly accepted set of values and principles, like respect for evidence, first do no harm, etc… is necessary to do medicine. Using a set of commonly accepted set of values and principles, like it is right to avoid movement towards the worst possible world for everyone, is necessary to do the kind of moral science Harris advocates. I see no difference in how “value” is used differently in this context, so I don’t know what else to say to Con except that we’ll have to agree to disagree. I am beginning to suspect Con might be so confused about Craig’s claims of equivocation that he’s throwing it out there just in the hopes that maybe we’ll buy it. In order for Harris to be guilty of equivocation, there would have to be at least two considerably different definitions of morality, and Harris would be trying to pull a fast one on us by subtly trying to swap in one meaning for the other. So then… where is Con’s other definition of “moral good”? Con has already consigned theistic morality to being an invalid red herring and not within the context of this debate - so it’s gone – along with it any DCT tools, rusty and broken as they are, to help cast doubt against my case. What’s left then? If “moral good” is not to be understood as something akin to “that which supports the well-being of conscious creatures” then I would very much like to know what else you could possibly suppose the definition should be. “…if there is some possible world where moral good is not equal to the moral landscape (peaks of well-being), then there is no possible world where moral good is equal to the moral landscape, otherwise the law of identity would be false.” Fine showmanship. However, as per usual, Craig is misrepresenting his opponent’s position. By extension, Con is attempting to use Craig’s sword to slash at the straw man which only vaguely resembles Harris, and which certainly has nothing to do with any of the arguments which I have presented in this debate [7]. If he wants more of an answer than that from me, then I’d be delighted to provide one in my final round, even if it means forgoing conduct. For this, all Con must do is show me the citation where Harris’ claims, in the context implied by Craig, that “moral good is equal to the moral landscape.” I won’t be holding my breath. Let’s revisit the two premises Con actually needs to defeat: 1) some people have better lives than others. Affirmed. Con has already conceded this. His objection that it doesn’t really matter because it still doesn’t get us to morality was also overcome in our discussion on Hume. 2) these differences relate in some lawful and not entirely arbitrary way, to states of the human brain and to states of the world. Affirmed. Con gambled his entire debate on Craig’s “knockdown”, and lost his bet, for he provided no other substantive attack against premise 2. To drive home my point, the claim that electricity relates to heat in a lawful and not entirely arbitrary way is not the same as making the claim that electricity is equal to heat. Since Con did not respond to my Advancing the Case section, all the arguments contained within stand. I have met the necessary conditions to show that Sam Harris did offer a sound moral ontology, while at the same time, Con has landed no effective blow against my argument, and his own position has crumbled. I thank the readers for their attention, and I thank my opponent once more for a debate I’ve very much enjoyed, and hope it is the first of many such occasions. References 5) http://rationalwiki.org... 6) http://evolution.binghamton.edu... 7) http://rationalwiki.org...