Transcription
You mentioned the definition of moralities being kind of problematic in Sam Harris’s *The Moral Landscape*. So can you tell me about this?
Um, yes. I think what the book does is conflates two things. On the one hand, um, really one major intention of Harris’s is to point out that there are moral truths and that there is something like a universal morality that is absolutely true. On the other hand, he also points out—this is equally a major thing for him—he wants to point out that there are objective, or rather I should say scientific, or he should say “scientific” to be more precise, truths about human well-being. Right, and for him, the two things are the same. Right? On the one hand, objective moral truth, universal morality; on the other hand, scientific facts about what increases well-being and what doesn’t. Now, I think the two things—he, for him, the two things are the same—and I think the two things are very different from one another. And I think that’s the major problem of the book, that he conflates or tries to combine these two things.
Now, what is different between the two? I think in order to understand this, we can go back to a philosophical—a short philosophical essay written, or actually written later on—it was actually a little presentation by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the famous philosopher. It’s nearly 100 years old, and then it was published much later. Anyways, Wittgenstein’s lecture on ethics. And in this lecture on ethics, Wittgenstein says very clearly there are two different ways in which we use the terms “good” or “right.” Either we use them in a relative sense or in a trivial sense. For instance, “This is the right way to go to London,” or whatever. This—to give you other examples—whatever. “This is a good meal,” or “This is a good swimmer,” or “This is a good tennis player.” This is an example that he uses, and that is always in a relative and a trivial sense. These are all examples for the usage of “good” or “right” in a relative or trivial sense, because it’s good or right relative to a certain perspective, to a certain activity, and so forth. It’s it’s it’s a concretely specified use of “good.” For instance, the right way to a place might be one that is faster than another way, or it might be one that is, whatever, safer than another way, or it might be more scenic than another way. Right? So this is what he means with “relative”—that it is relative to a specific criterion. Now, and that is different from the usage of “good” or “right,” what Wittgenstein calls in an absolute sense—that something is absolutely good, right. For instance, he gives this example: The tennis player—someone can say, “Oh, you’re not a good tennis player,” and then you can say, “Yeah, I don’t care. I just play for fun. I don’t really want to become a really good tennis player.” But that’s very different if someone—what’s very different is if someone uses the term “good” in an absolute way and says, “You’re not a good person.” Right? Then this is something where you can’t really say, “Oh, I I don’t really want to be a good person.” Right? That’s that is the usage of the word is on an entirely different level. It’s on this absolute level, and so not relative to anything specific. And Wittgenstein then says, in this app—we use this term—we speak of “good” or “right” in an absolute way, and actually that doesn’t really make sense, because it’s not tied to any kind of specific criterion. For, and and therefore we—it’s it’s something that has a great appeal to us, but it’s something that is beyond description and language, and actually also beyond understanding to a certain extent. So he thinks that’s a problematic use of language, and he comes to the—at least implicit—conclusion that while thinking in such absolute terms maybe something that is, let’s say, for humans even indispensable, it is not something that has any form of specific sense.
And that illustrates again the distinction, I think, that, or the mistake that Harris makes, because he tries to bridge these two usages of the word “good” or “right,” and he thinks, if we really find out what is good in any specific sense—namely, that it contributes to well-being—then we can somehow make this step and speak and and find out what is morally good. But I think that is the basic mistake that that he makes—that he conflates these two usages and thinks we can optimize the relative usage so that it becomes absolute, right? And that’s simply not possible. These are very different usages of the word, and they do something very different. And I would say the relative use of the words “good” and “right” is an amoral use of the words “good” and “right,” and that’s possible. And so I fully agree with Harris that it totally makes sense to scientifically find out what contributes to well-being. The point, however, is well-being always in a relative sense—well, the well-being in this way for that person in this context with regard to this criterion. But we can never, as Harris falsely assumes, you know, summarize everything and then jump from well-being in this this specific way for this specific person in this specific context to well-being as such, right? And he always implies that this is possible, and simply not—that’s simply not possible.
Another thing that I—that is very interesting about Wittgenstein’s paper for me personally—that’s maybe even more interesting—is that he also says the the if we if we use the term “relative”—if we use the terms “good” or “right” in a specific sense—it’s not only relative, it’s also trivial. Trivial in which way? Then he gives another example, which I find very impressive. He says, “If we could write a book in which the words ‘good’ and ‘right’ would be used in an absolute sense, then all other books would explode.” What does he mean by this? Well, if we would be capable of saying, in language, “This and that, or that is absolutely good and right,” then all other books which speak about what is good and right would be, you know, would be insignificant compared to this other book. We wouldn’t need to read them, right? And if you think about this—which I think is true—therefore it’s not even desirable to try to speak or to imagine that there would be such a book, because then everything that we did so far, everything that we do in every moment of our life would be trivial, would be insignificant, right? So I wouldn’t even—that’s Wittgenstein thereby at least hinting at a major problem of morality—namely, that it speaks in a register which at least implicitly denies the significance to everything other than this kind of, you know, language. If you really claim that you are that you are identifying moral truth in an absolute way, then implicitly you say what everyone else is doing is insignificant and trivial to my endeavor. So it devalues implicitly all other human activities, and I think that is already a very major problem of morality and also of religious discourse in general. I think Wittgenstein identified that quite well. So um, yeah. So the problem with Harris is not only that he conflates the two senses, but also, of course, that—at least from my perspective, following up on Wittgenstein—that moral truth or a universal morality does not exist. It is impossible to, you know, speak of it in language. And in addition, again, it is not even desirable to speak in that kind of mode or to think in that kind of mode or to act in that kind of mode, because it implicitly devalues basically everything else. Everything else. And therefore it’s even an a kind of a dangerous, arrogant attitude that isn’t very helpful and that does not improve human well-being.
So what morality is, in fact, is neither the scientific attempt to identify that which is good or right, because that is always relative or trivial. So that’s not really morality. So Harris is, I think, wrong in claiming that the scientific attempt to increase well-being is a moral endeavor. And I think he’s wrong in saying that moral truth or universal morality exists, or that it is desirable to speak or think or act as if it would exist. What is morality actually? Well, morality is, in actuality, in our life, precisely to speak in terms of moral truth or of a universally valid moral laws or something like this. So morality is a form of communication, right? The morality is not the quality of a proposition or the quality of a principle, because it’s an illusory quality. It doesn’t exist, just like, as I believe, God doesn’t exist. Right? So moral truth does not exist in the similar way as God doesn’t exist. Right? So but that God doesn’t exist doesn’t mean that we don’t have religion. Right? Of course, religion exists. It’s a specific way of thinking, acting, and it’s a whole social system that comes from it. And in a similar way, morality—in the sense that Harris thinks it exists, namely in the form of actually existing true moral propositions—instead of being this actually existing morality—is a specific discourse. So the that’s what—rea—just as religion is not something that depends on the existence of God, but is a specific social practice, specific form of communication that, you know, relates to a certain unrealistic assumption. Likewise, morality is a specific discourse, a specific way of acting that is relates to and derives from making unrealistic assumptions about something that doesn’t exist. So that is also partly why you don’t think morality is very good to choose for—to find as you are immoral—just as religion is very problematic. And Harris is one of the person—people—who pointed this out best in, you know, contemporary society—is one of the main critics of religion. But I think in a similar way, he should be critical of moral discourse for the very same reasons.
So when whenever we look at what morality actually is as a specific form of discourse, a specific form of communication, then we can see it is very closely tied to conflict, to division, often to violence, right? It is a form of communication that makes makes people think in terms of good and evil, and once they start think and act in terms of good and evil—that, for instance, sometimes can be used to make them do things that otherwise they wouldn’t do—for instance, kill other people. So this kind of discourse, this kind of communication, this kind of thinking is not always, but potentially very dangerous, and it is very often—typically, just like religious discourse, which is what Harris describes—but in the same way also moral moral discourse, moral communication is used in order to make people, for instance, do certain violent acts or hate other people or condemn other people, which otherwise would be very difficult to convince them to do so. And this is also what the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann says: Moral language is very dangerous. It is something that is has the potential to create social conflict, to, um, you know, entice violence, and so forth and so forth. So it is something that it’s a it’s a form of communication and thinking that, that is empirically speaking highly problematic.
I want to give you one example, which is actually the example that Harris begins the book with. Yes, the first example he gives—he gives many good examples—and my conclusion of the example would be the absolute opposite or would be the total opposite of what what his conclusion is. The example is: He speaks about violence in schools, violence and education. That’s still today in America—it is—I found this surprising, but it’s what he says—that it’s still common, or at least was until recently, that students are being beaten. And he apparently thinks that, um, you know, if we would make a study on well-being, we would find out that, um, you know, it doesn’t improve well-being if you beat students as a teacher. So we shouldn’t do it. And for him, that’s a moral, you know, then that’s a moral truth that would help us not beat students. But he totally ignores the actual reasons why people beat students in school. Well, they beat students in school, and they have been beating—beaten’s—you know, children in education for hundreds and thousands of years precisely because they think someone who doesn’t study well is morally bad, and this gives you the right—or not even the right—even the duty to beat them in order to transform them from bad people into good people in a moral sense, rather than focusing on them—on transforming them from a bad student to a good student in an amoral sense. So it’s precisely because of morality that students are beaten and have been beaten throughout human history in education, and that beating was considered a great means of education. Why? Because of morality, because bad students were considered not relatively bad in learning but as bad people, and thereby they need to be beaten, and we need a kind of a moral punishment rather than an edu—of, you know, educational means. So it’s precisely because in modern education—at least partly—education switched from a moral to an amoral mode that it increases well-being. So the increase of of well-being is—contrary to what Harris said—not an improvement of mor—of morality, but it’s a moral deflation. We deflate morality; we demoralize education, and thereby we improve well-being. Right? So it’s it’s flabbergasting that that Harris doesn’t see this, right? Because it seems to me so obvious that the example proves the exact opposite of what he is trying to show.
So I’ll go to some conversation between Sam Harris and other people. It comes to a question that people ask Sam Harris: Why should humans flourish? Because there is a video—a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig, who is a debater, apologist, and philosopher. Now, Dr. Harris says, “But we can imagine creatures being in the worst possible misery, and it’s obviously better for creatures to be flourishing. The well-being of conscious creatures is good.” Well, of course it is. That’s not the question. We agree that all things being equal, flourishing of conscious creatures is good. The question is rather: If atheism were true, what would make the flourishing of conscious creatures objectively good? Conscious creatures might like to flourish, but there’s no reason on atheism to think that it would really be objectively good. And Craig is basically saying Harris is—yeah, as you said—misusing the term “good” and “bad.” And Craig said that he agreed we should flourish, but there is no reason for atheists—which Sam Harris is an atheist—to believe flourishing is objectively good for human beings. And so he believes—but God can help. So what do you think about this clip?
Well, this question is directly related to the first question. Yes, again, flourishing that actually exists and makes sense is always relative; specific flourishing; absolute flourishing again, I think, does not exist. And if it would exist, it couldn’t be expressed. And if it would exist and could be expressed, it wouldn’t be desirable, because every other flourishing that we actually experience then would be trivial and insignificant. So it would actually destroy most of the flourishing that we actually experience. So but of course flourishing—concrete, relative, actual flourishing—is something that, you know, we always naturally prefer over not flourishing. We prefer having a flourishing conversation right now over not having a flourishing conversation. We prefer having a, whatever, a healthy body over having a sick body. We prefer having a flourishing business over a non-flourishing business. Right? That it would be absurd if that wouldn’t be the case. Whatever we do, we want to do in such a way that it works well and that it brings about well-being and brings about flourishing rather than the other way around. Right? Otherwise we would be psychopaths or sociopaths. Now, again, so the the point is that we can establish a relative flourishing, and maybe even scientifically establish it—whatever—as I said, like in medicine and so forth. However, as we—to give you a right example right now—with COVID-19. Yes, right? In—if in order for human health to flourish, science tells us it is good to, you know, have all these kinds of measures like social distancing, wearing the face mask, and so forth. And this leads to all kinds of things which prevent economic flourishing. So flourishing in one area is not commensurable; it’s not necessarily, you know, negatively correlated; it’s not correlated at all, neither negatively nor positively, to flourishing in other respects. Right? The world is very complex. There are a thousand things that are going on at the same time. Right? Your body is alive; your bank account, you know, is—you’re part taking part in the economy; you’re taking part, you know, in intellectual life; maybe having a family life. So um, life is extremely complex, and the different—the the myriad different ways of flourishing are not integrated in such a way that they, you know, mutually improve flourishing. And again, this is neither possible nor even desirable. So it doesn’t make sense to assume that there is something like an absolute flourishing, but we have to cope. And that’s what science does—to cope with the problems of the complexity of life which make it difficult to—which always—how to say—make it necessary to, you know, make decisions. We, you know, we at this time, in this case, we give priority to flourishing of health rather than to the flourishing of the economy, and this is just one one big example, but on a much much smaller scale, we have to make—we’re making these decisions like every day, when in the morning when we get up. Right? We decide to go to the school so that we can flourish as a student rather than, you know, whatever, sleeping another hour because we’re tired, which would be allow our body to relax more and allow to flourish in that way. So basically every single second we we have to make decisions that increase flourishing in one way but decrease flourishing in in in another way, and that’s just the that’s just the reality. And again, if you look at it scientifically, science science will tell you that it is like this, and that there is no such thing as an absolute flourishing. I mean, Harris still—which has been, of course, totally been how to say—um—disproven—still believes in this utilitarian calculus, right, which was brought forward by Bentham and other philosophers in the early 19th century. He’s so much Anglo-American, by the way. Right? There’s also a big problem, and he has this epistemic optimism—so positivistic. Right? He has he has a he has a very kind of naive form of positivism that is even more naive than Bentham by thinking—and again, like people have criticized him for this—I read a little bit about it—that he still believes basically in this utilitarian calculus, which is not scientific.
Yeah. So I also briefly mentioned Jordan Peterson, which is a psychologist—and some people say he is a philosopher—and author, and they debate a lot about religion and morality. And Jordan Peterson, in a clip, saying Sam Harris’s thinking is fundamentally religious. Yes, you can be a non-believer, but the funny thing about that is, too, you can’t be a non-believer in your action, you see? Because Harris’s metaphysics is fundamentally Christian. So he acts out a Christian metaphysics, but he says, “Well, I don’t believe it.” It’s like, “Well, yeah, you do, because you’re acting it out. You just say you don’t believe it.” What do you mean? What do you mean he’s acting—acting it out—like what, for example? Well, he doesn’t rob banks; doesn’t kill people; doesn’t rape; doesn’t murder; you know, even he doesn’t know or admit, but his thought and action has been influenced by Enlightenment, Asian thinkers whose thought are still somewhat religious, and he’s American, and all Western people just like that. So but I think in his book he wrote a lot of things about religion. So what is your general view on Harris’s writing on religion, and what do you think about Jordan Peterson’s criticisms?
I think Jordan Peterson is right—yes—that Harris’s affirmation of universal, absolute moral truth is a secular form of religious thinking. And I think I explained that earlier, right? To think in these—in terms of an absolute goodness—is basically a religious mode of thinking, and he just secularizes it, which is a typical modern phenomenon. Right? So he’s basically doing what others would call his like civil religion. He’s bringing religion to a secular level where where like these divine duties become just like, you know, humanist duties or something like this. Um, so I think Peterson is is right about this. Now, interestingly, as I said, this totally contradicts Harris’s own critique of religion, right? Because Harris sees himself—and is rightly regarded—as one of the most important critics of religion. So as I said earlier, I think Harris should understand this, and as a consequence—other than what Peterson implies—and some of his religious critics imply—that he should instead, you know, you know, fess up.
To the fact, confess that he's actually religious and be more positive towards religion. But I would, you know, draw the opposite conclusion and tell him, you know, “Look what you’re actually doing, talking about these moral truths. This is in total contradiction to what you say number one about the scientific approach to well-being, and even more importantly, it’s in total contradiction to your critique of religion.” So I think he should, just as he engages in a very effective critique of religion, he should similarly engage in an effective critique of morality.
Now, what I really like about his work is his critique of religion. I disagree with him on some instances there as well, but that’s uh, we can leave that on the side; that’s not so important personally. After, you know, working many years uh in academic philosophy, and we’re often asked, you know, “What, what is philosophy good for?” And then we have to come up with all kinds, make up all kinds of things—ah, it’s good for, you know, critical thinking, logical thinking; it’s good for job prospects and so forth. But uh, if I would have to answer the question truly or honestly, I came to the conclusion that really the social function of philosophy historically, empirically, over hundreds and thousands of years, both in the eastern and western contexts, is that it critiques religion. And I think that’s a very useful function. Just as Harris is very important, that we have people like Harris nowadays in America, so that America doesn’t turn into—which it is always at the brink of—into a fundamentalist religious, you know, religiously fundamentalist society; that it remains secular, that it remains to an extent rational, that it remains calm rather than overly excited in a fundamentalist way. Uh, therefore, we need philosophy. And this, if you go back to Socrates, he was already uh, you know, putting religion in its place in early essence. And we have, I think that throughout history we have this very important effect of philosophy, that it prevents religion from getting too powerful, from getting too crazy. So I don’t think the function of philosophy is to abolish religion or to, you know, replace it with something else, but to critique it and to provide a very important counterweight to religion. And so I think this, this, this critique of religion is both psychologically and also socially uh very useful. It’s really a very important function of philosophy that it, that it, that it prevents society from, you know, developing religious fundamentalism, which as we know—and it can be also a civil religious fundamentalism—this can also be ideological fundamentalisms, like whatever in China, the cultural revolution or things like this, right? Um, that that philosophy can be—not always has been, but has shown—that it can be a counterweight to these kind of developments. And that’s what I like about Harris, because America is, as I said earlier, always on the brink of religious fundamentalism. I think, in the United States, it is very much in need of critiques of religion. And nowadays, on a worldwide scale, like in Europe and so forth, I think Harris is absolutely right: we need philosophical critiques of Islam; it’s absolutely necessary, right? And and society is too tolerant with regard to religion. Again, I’m not in favor of abolishing religion, but too tolerant in the sense, “Oh, we shouldn’t criticize religion.” Of course we should criticize and critique religion; that’s a main function of philosophy. And I fully agree with Harris that he says, “If philosophy and if the public discourse gives up this function, if we’re no longer allowed to critique religion because we might offend people, then we’re really in a in a dangerous situation.” So I very much um commend this aspect of his work.
I’m not a moral relativist in the sense that I don’t think we should prioritize speaking in moral terms to begin with. Okay, right. Sometimes we cannot avoid to think and speak morality; it’s illusionary and maybe not even desirable to, again, eliminate moral language altogether. But I’m not, I’m not in favor of moral relativism; I’m in favor of scientific relativism; that is, making truth claims uh with relative to specific conditions, to, you know, to specific concrete circumstances. Nothing is absolutely good; something is good for something in a certain context. Every truth is a um is a limited truth. Right. The problem with religion is not that its beliefs are wrong; the uh problem with religion is that its beliefs are so intensely held, that they’re made so absolute, so dogmatic, and thereby be held in a fanatic way, right? And that’s the opposite of science, because all uh scientific truth is—we learned this from proper, you know—it’s always falsifiable; it’s always there’s always a certain skepticism uh involved in the establishment of scientific truths; it’s only valid until proven wrong by another theory, right? And Harris uses one very good phrase; he speaks with regard to religion of a marriage between um confidence and ignorance, right? People are overconfident in the religious mode, and at the same time they’re super ignorant. And in science we have the opposite: people actually know stuff; they’re not ignorant, but they’re not overly confident, right? Because they, if you, you know, you just wait for the other scientist, the next scientist uh to modify your claim or even to disprove it. So he also talks about this actually at several occasions in his book, *The Moral Landscape*, how, how scientists are always uh not overconfident and pretty—the—so I think that that’s exactly um, again, the difference between science on the one hand uh and religion and morality on the other hand. This marriage, this unholy marriage between confidence and ignorance, is not only a problem of religion; it’s equally a problem of morality, right? So that’s uh, that that’s uh really uh how it, how it is distinguished from from the scientific approach to truth. So I’m not against truth, but a truth that is always—I mean, we are—I’m speaking as as an academic—we’re always speaking in the mode of, you know, truth; we always make the distinctions between “This is the case” and “This is not the case,” but we do so under recognition of the limits of these kind of statements. And morality and religion tries to make unlimited truth claims, and that’s exactly the problem. So I’m not a moral relativist, because as I said earlier, I don’t even think that it is desirable to speak and think and act in moral terms. But I am, from coming from an academic um uh very much in favor of the academic practice of recognizing the limitations of making any truth claim.
So can you tell me about amorality, because it seems you have an alternative to this compensation, the thing in morality that is not very famous in the world right now? And some people even think immorality is bad, as I see—I think I saw *Hamilton*, and they accused one of the characters, but is a model, and you know, it’s interesting; it seems like they think it’s a bad thing to be.
Yes, yes. But in their using of that word, perhaps it’s a wrong use of that word. So can you explain about amorality?
Well, again, uh you have to distinguish amoral from being immoral, right? And of course I’m only advocating amorality. I gave you already an example, namely the in the education system, right? So I think the well-being in education and generally education benefits from uh, you know, not overly moralizing—uh, for instance, the distinction between good and bad students, or not moralizing the process of learning, not not treating students in according to a moralist um, you know, framework. So this is what I mean with amoral, amorality; and that is not only the case in education; I think it’s basically, you any social sphere you name it, there are lots of benefits from minimizing at least moral frameworks. So of course I’m not saying that morality as such is evil or is morally bad; um I’m just saying morality often, as I said earlier, something that often does not increase well-being, isn’t doesn’t optimize functioning in that sense; it is not good, but it’s not good in a moral sense of the word “good,” right? But at the same time, of course we have to recognize and understand that morality, in the sense of moral language, moralizing things, it’s also extremely powerful, right? If you use a lot of moral language, right? We just had the American election as a good example, right? And politicians mutually demonize one another; they depict themselves in moral terms, so the other side is is immoral. I mean, there was so much moral language in the American election, right? And it’s very often used in politics because it’s such a powerful tool. On the one hand, this again proves, I think shows the validity of my point: I think politics becomes much less toxic uh and becomes much more productive the less it is kind of morally charged, right? Some people say we’re at the brink of a civil war in the United States, and that has directly to do with the heavy moralization of politics on both sides. Um, so there, there you see how powerful morality is, both regarding individuals and in a smaller context, but also in a larger uh social context, for instance, as we now saw of politics. That’s why it’s so attractive; ultimately, that’s why why Harris uses moral language, because it makes his book much more attractive; it makes his thesis much more powerful; it makes him, if it may, it makes his profile so successful. He wouldn’t be a media star if his book wouldn’t be called *The Moral Landscape*; if he wouldn’t always speak in moral terms, right? So that’s the power of morality; that’s why we are so unwilling to give it up; that’s why amoral, amorality has a very bad name, because it doesn’t speak to people’s instincts; it doesn’t speak to people’s emotions; it doesn’t, you know, get people caught uh, so that’s, that’s of course the, that is a is a consequence of what I’m saying—that actually speaking in terms of amorality, because of the power of thinking and speaking uh and acting in moral terms, makes amorality not very attractive. So we can jump to the next question, I think.
In your book, you said law—you’re in favor of law; you think law can help us—but how can we improve the law if we, you know, quote-unquote, “don’t have morality,” and why can’t we improve morality and ethics just like improving law? What is the difference between law, ethic, and morality?
Again, I can give you like a few examples. One from my own, own life experience is also discussed briefly in the *Moral*—full book—divorce law. When I was a teenager or so, there was a show on German television about divorce cases, because at that time the law was still um, that, you know, you won a divorce, you go to court, and then the judge has to find out who is guilty. And guilty was the one, for instance, who cheated on the other, right? Who had an extramarital affair or something, and then the person who cheated uh would uh, you know, lose all the money or maybe lose the child and something like this, and the other person who was not guilty uh they would get all the money and maybe the child care and stuff. And so that was how the legal um, how the law operated basically with moral reasoning. And that law, I think is very good, was abolished. So then they came to the conclusion, “Oh, this whole kind of moral reasoning doesn’t really, you know, isn’t really good; actually women are quite often disadvantaged because um, you know, the moral code at that time was often looking at women who had, whatever, an extramarital affair; that was very evil, very bad, right?” So this was really not good for women uh and many other reasons where where they saw it’s much better we exclude all the moral reasoning, because it’s very difficult to say, okay, maybe you know the the one person had an extramarital affair, but does it really make her guilty, right? Am I so—man, marriage is so much more complex, right? And so I think that was very good that they said, “Okay, we don’t use this distinction, ‘guilty, not guilty,’ at all anymore; we just look at the assets and we divide them somehow fairly.” And the same thing with the child care questions, right? So there you see how law improved and became, in a legal sense, in a legal sense—not in a moral sense—in a legal sense more just by amoralizing the legal process. Okay, right. So what does the law do now? I go back to the sociologist Nicholas Lewis: what is the function of law? And I think he’s right in defining this function: the law is stabilizing expectations in society. Very simple example is—now the second example is traffic, traffic law, right? How can we—like here in Macau, we have nearly 700,000 people, very small, extremely small place, lots of people have cars or scooters—how can traffic flow? It’s, it’s, it’s a miracle that this is possible, right? Why is it possible? Because we stabilize expectations through traffic law. Everyone expects everyone to stop at the red light, and people actually do that. Everyone expects everyone here in Macau to drive on the left side, and people do that. Everyone, you know, is expected to do the to obey the traffic laws, which uh the large larger majority of the people do, right? So expectations are stabilized; we have stable expectations of how others behave on the road, and therefore the traffic can can flow. Now, why do people drive on the left side, not on the right side? Because it’s right—the right side to drive on—in a completely amoral sense. We do not say driving on the left side of the road is right in a moral sense; that’s why you need to drive on the on the left side of the road. So that’s exactly how law can do what it is supposed to do, namely stabilize expectations by not burdening the distinction it makes between right and not right, legal and illegal, with unnecessary moral or even religious um burdening. I give you another example about for this drinking, right? Of course it’s illegal to drink and drive, right? Because if you drink and drive you’re much more likely uh to cause an accident; you’re endangering your own life and the life of others. But uh in previous times, right? It was considered, you know, or in other societies, drinking is considered immoral, or it is even considered a religious sin, like in some religions, like in Islam or so, right? So um there is no need, again, what I’m trying to say, to demonize drinking and to demonize people who drink, right? We can just say it’s not okay to drink when you drive, and if you drink and drive and you might get a fine, you might even, if you cause like an accident, you might even be thrown into jail, but it does not mean that you’re there for either a sinner or a bad person; it does not therefore mean, for instance, uh that um your wife doesn’t love you anymore because you’re such a bad person because you got caught drink-driving. Maybe your wife is not happy about this, but it’s still it’s something that we then through law consider in a legal context. Of course it’s bad; I’m not saying this is precisely—still very bad—in a legal sense, but it’s not bad in a moral and in a religious sense, and we don’t need it to be bad in a moral or in a religious sense. To the contrary, it works much better; it functions much better on so many levels, both the legal level and the personal level and the social level, if we replace the moral or religious condemnation, for instance, of drinking—these absolute condemnation, this personal condemnation—with a regulation of drinking in context where it makes sense to regulate drinking, and therefore, for instance, we can use the law; it works so much better. Yeah, I think it seems science can help improve the law, so I think Sam Harris is right about this, but science can help improve—absolutely, of course. We can ask scientists, you know, and they will tell us, for instance, uh whatever this level of blood alcohol, or maybe you should have no alcohol at all, and so forth and so forth. So yeah, absolutely, yes. Okay, so we have to ask science about it, but not morality; we don’t ask, you know, “Oh, is drinking bad and should it be forbidden in traffic because Muhammad never had a drink, or because whatever god says, ‘No, you shouldn’t uh drink and drive,’ right?”
Okay, I also have this question: a note that in a video by Jordan Peterson—again, he’s a psychologist—okay, that’s where you get the mythologies of the hero, okay? And then so then there’s generates all sorts of different heroes, because there’s different ways of being successful; then you have a panoply of heroes; then you think, okay, well, now we’ve got all those heroes, that’s a set; we can pull back and say, okay, something about all these heroes is what makes them heroes. So he’s basically suggesting morality is the description of common traits or principles of successful people throughout many years; that morality is not created, but descriptive, something that we describe. So what do you think? Can we just describe morality better?
No, again, I disagree with this. Okay. Yeah, it’s just simply not true. Yes, right? I mean, again, like the moral language—give you a simple example that we’ve witnessed in the American election—how both sides try to morally disqualify one another. That’s what morality is; it’s a form of communication uh and it’s a very effective communication uh that uh, you know, for so social revolutionary reasons as well. But uh, yeah, I I just don’t think that Jordan, that Jordan Peterson’s um definition of morality in that way is helpful or is accurate.
Okay, so this is—I think I look forward to this question a lot—and also I just mentioned in a video, there are many questions you could ask that, that are actually good questions. Uh, one would be, “How would this work in practice?” I mean, we can—we often have values, the genuine values that can be in competition with one another, can be trade-offs between values. How do we balance one person’s well-being against the well-being of the group? Sam Harris said that there is some very hard question to answer, like, “How do you decide one person’s well-being versus five persons’ well-being?” So my question is, in your point of view, how will you answer the truly question, like there was one people on the trail and five people in another uh road, and how do you decide if you have to crush, you know, them to death? Yeah, choose one or five. It’s a very hard question.
I think, you know, I think the question is a very—to put it mildly—a useless question, okay? Um, it’s a typical example of like an analytic philosophical thought experiment, which is has basically nothing to do with real life, right? In real life, I mean, the situation is absurd; no one has ever been in a situation as it is described in the trolley problem. That doesn’t mean that sometimes, unfortunately, we are in situations where we are where we experience a moral dilemma, right? Of course we’re often in a situation where we experience a form of moral dilemma, but moral dilemmas, again, are always concrete, and you always experience them in a under specific conditions, in a specific context that is very complex; you have specific means to make the decision, and practically never universal moral principles are even helpful to make that decision. Most of the time we don’t—what moral principles do—like the, the—that’s what the trolley problem is is supposed to, you know, uh be about ultimately—you find a moral principle which then can apply in order to decide a moral dilemma. As a matter of fact, moral principles are, I would say empirically, never really used to actually decide moral dilemmas; they are used after the fact to justify a decision, right? They’re used after the fact to justify a decision, which is a typical form of moral communication, right? One of the, one reasons why it’s so powerful, but actually, again, in any situation, any concrete situation where you have to make, where you’re in a moral dilemma or in a dilemma as such—mostly it’s not just a moral dilemma—there are so many problems, you know: “Do you have the power? Are you strong enough to uh, you know, to do what you do? Is it likely to succeed? You know, do you have any emotional love relationship to one or other people, right? Um, who else is watching you? Uh, you know, did you have just a few beers and are you kind of drunk at the moment or so?” Every situation is super concrete, and every situation is super complex. And this problem is a very abstract problem that abstracts from all basically all the concrete factors, factors we experience in everyday life, which is why it is entirely useless; is entirely useless to apply to any moral dilemma, precisely because of the fact that it abstracts from all the specific concrete elements that come together and that constitute any real moral dilemma. So again, this trolley problem just shows you—to end on a polemic note—the the complete uselessness of analytic moral philosophy.