I’ve enjoyed your responses to Sam Harris, but I have one concern. At times, you seem to argue for noncognitivism–the view that moral judgments are not judgments of fact, and so cannot be either true or false. Yet, you also seem to support moral relativism. These two approaches have some similarities, but they are not compatible. Moral relativists maintain that moral judgments are factual–they can be true or false–but that their truth or falsity is determined locally, and cannot be extended to other people. Noncognitivism is a much stronger position, I think.

This relates to a problem with Harris’ approach. He suggests that the issue here is a choice between moral relativism and moral realism: Sam Harris and the Moral Realism/Moral Relativism Myth.

The majority of non-theistic philosophy professors and PhD.s are neither moral realists nor moral relativists. (Though there are many non-theistic moral realists, despite Harris’ claim to being the lone gunman here.) Harris ignores this, hand-waving the philosophical terminology and the ideas it represents (such as noncognitivism), favoring a dumbed-down and ignorant discourse. This can only hurt the debate.

Harris plays into the religious moralists’ hands by suggesting that science must provide the sort of foundation for morality which theists demand. As you suggest, such a foundation is neither possible nor necessary for a robust morality. Atheists are no worse off than theists on this front. I would say atheists are (or should be) better off, since they (should) understand why morality does not require theoretical justification. Harris is not helping any.

Doubtful that you will even read this, but this is where I am finally convinced you are on the wrong side here: My opinion is that 25, 50, 100 years from now this will be answerable and therefore you will be seen on the wrong side of this issue.

I see this as no different than any other advancement in morality where the early defenders had little more than a greater share of empathy and foresight: Slavery/Slave trade, women’s rights, animal rights, etc.

Taking animal rights, you *would* be on logical/scientific grounds at some point in the past if you were to object to the statement: “The monkey brain *is* similar to the human brain w/r/t pain sensation and we (humans) dislike pain, therefore we *ought* not cause pain to monkeys with experiment X.” with “We do not have enough *scientific* evidence that the similarities between monkey and our brains are so similar, therefore we do not know if monkey ‘pain’ is like our own and so that is not a good enough argument to convince me to stop experiment X.” You would be right scientifically then, but you would be wrong morally then. And returning to our time, you would be seen as on the wrong side.

Finally, I am quite happy to condemn you *now* for your inability to recognize what I think will be commonly recognized in the future for this reason: I celebrate people like Thomas Paine, Lucretia Mott, Emma Goldman, Thomas Clarkson, etc. for their stands at the time and condemn those who did not take those stands: Yes, I do consider there to be a trend in history of “moral advancement” and that there are those who are the outliers who are looked back on as being more “advanced”. I consider this whole discussion similarly.

“From premises in indicative you can not derive conclusions in imperative.”

Seems clear enough, and brief !

I’d argue that deriving the Ought from the Is isnt necessary…

This is almost brilliant. Given the lack of a (nearly) universal connector between the two domains (Sam Harris says: you Ought to do what promotes the well-being of everyone, but a billion Muslims say: you Ought to do what Allah through Mohammed has commanded, etc), we should give it up as a lost cause.

The reason everyone wants to link Ought to Is, is that nearly everyone (except schizophrenics and creationists) broadly agrees on Is, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of competing Oughts with millions and billions of adherents each.

The analogy for Is would be if everyone in Europe thought the world was flat, and thousands of them claimed to have actually been to the edge, and seen the turtle underneath.