Ethical Naturalism - Morality As A Science

Morality As A Science

Author Sam Harris has argued that we overestimate the relevance of many arguments against the science of morality, arguments he believes scientists happily and rightly disregard in other domains of science like physics. For example, a scientist may find herself attempting to counter-argue philosophical skeptics, when Harris says she should be practically asking – as scientists would in any other domain – "why would we listen to a solipsist in the first place?" This, Harris contends, is part of what it means to practice a science of morality.

Physicist Sean Carroll believes that conceiving of morality as a science could be a case of Scientific imperialism and insists that what is "good for conscious creatures" is not an adequate working definition of "moral". In opposition, Vice President at the Center for Inquiry, John Shook, claims that this working definition is more than adequate for science at present, and that disagreement should not immobilize the scientific study of ethics.

In modern times, many thinkers discussing the fact-value distinction and the Is-ought problem have settled on the idea that one cannot derive ought from is. Conversely, Harris maintains that the fact-value distinction is a confusion, proposing that values are really a certain kind of fact. Specifically, Harris suggests that values amount to empirical statements about "the flourishing of conscious creatures in a society". He argues that there are objective answers to moral questions, even if some are difficult or impossible to possess in practice. In this way, he says, science can tell us what to value. Harris adds that we do not demand absolute certainty from predictions in physics so we should not demand that of a science studying morality.