Dalai Lama and Sam Harris?

[PaulSacramento]

http://m.io9.com/5942616/dalai-lama-tel ... r-adequate

Dalai Lama tells his Facebook friends that religion “is no longer adequate”

This past Monday, people who have the Dalai Lama as a Facebook friend found this little gem in their newsfeed.

All the world's major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.


The Dalai Lama's advice sounds startling familiar — one that echos the sentiment put forth by outspoken atheist Sam Harris who argues that science can answer moral questions. The Dalai Lama is no stranger to scientific discourse, and has developed a great fascination with neuroscience in particular. It's very possible, therefore, that his thinking has aligned with Harris.

In a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, Harris had this to say about science and how it should be used to inform our moral and ethical sensibilities:

The moment we admit that questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, are actually questions about human and animal well-being, we see that science can, in principle, answer such questions. Human experience depends on everything that can influence states of the human brain, ranging from changes in our genome to changes in the global economy. The relevant details of genetics, neurobiology, psychology, sociology, economics etc. are fantastically complicated, but these are domains of facts, and they fall squarely within the purview of science.

We should reserve the notion of "morality" for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse. Some people use the term "morality" differently, of course, but I think we have a scientific responsibility to focus the conversation so as to make it most useful. We define terms like "medicine," "causation," "law" and "theory" very much to the detriment of homeopathy, astrology, voodoo, Christian Science and other branches of human ignorance, and there is no question that we enjoy the same freedom when speaking about concepts like "right" and "wrong," and "good" and "evil." Once we acknowledge that "morality" relates to questions of human and animal well-being, then there is no reason to doubt that a prescriptive (rather than merely descriptive) science of morality is possible. After all, there are principles of biology, psychology, sociology and economics that will allow us to flourish in this world, and it is clearly possible for us not to flourish due to ignorance of these principles.

It's important to remember that Tibetan Buddhists, while rejecting belief in God and the soul, still cling to various metaphysical beliefs, including karma, infinite rebirths, and reincarnation. But interestingly, the Dalai Lama once had this to say on the subject:


My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

Other Buddhists, however, such as Stephen Batchelor, argue that Buddhism should be stripped of all its metaphysical baggage and simplified down to its basic philosophical and existential tenets — a suggestion that has given rise to secular Buddhism.

[PaulSacramento]

Lots to discuss, but one thing that popped out to me was this view that Sam Harris tries to pass off so that his premise of "evolved morals" is acceptable:

The moment we admit that questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, are actually questions about human and animal well-being, we see that science can, in principle, answer such questions.

The issue is, of course, that morals - right and wrong- can't simply be about "well being".

[Byblos]

Lots to discuss, but one thing that popped out to me was this view that Sam Harris tries to pass off so that his premise of "evolved morals" is acceptable:

The moment we admit that questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, are actually questions about human and animal well-being, we see that science can, in principle, answer such questions.

The issue is, of course, that morals - right and wrong- can't simply be about "well being".

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion since he specifically states it IS about the well-being, albeit of both humans as well as animals, not just humans (as if theistic morality's tenets only allowed for morality for human beings and not animals ).

The question I have for Mr. Harris is why stop at animals and humans? Where is the scientific sense of morality as relating to ANY type of living beings including bacteria and plants? Heck why even stop there since ANY chemical combination has the potential to be a precursor for life, any kind of life, not just carbon based. Perhaps we ought to extend the scientific sense of morality to any type of chemicals. The logical conclusion of that is of course that all scientific experimentation must halt at once since it would be violating the very tenets of said scientific morality. Once again, Mr. Harris shoots himself in the foot but then again, the bullet he uses has as much a moral right to enter his foot as he does objecting to it.

[PaulSacramento]

Lots to discuss, but one thing that popped out to me was this view that Sam Harris tries to pass off so that his premise of "evolved morals" is acceptable:

The moment we admit that questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, are actually questions about human and animal well-being, we see that science can, in principle, answer such questions.

The issue is, of course, that morals - right and wrong- can't simply be about "well being".

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion since he specifically states it IS about the well-being, albeit of both humans as well as animals, not just humans (as if theistic morality's tenets only allowed for morality for human beings and not animals ).

The question I have for Mr. Harris is why stop at animals and humans? Where is the scientific sense of morality as relating to ANY type of living beings including bacteria and plants? Heck why even stop there since ANY chemical combination has the potential to be a precursor for life, any kind of life, not just carbon based. Perhaps we ought to extend the scientific sense of morality to any type of chemicals. The logical conclusion of that is of course that all scientific experimentation must halt at once since it would be violating the very tenets of said scientific morality. Once again, Mr. Harris shoots himself in the foot but then again, the bullet he uses has as much a moral right to enter his foot as he does objecting to it.

I stated that morals are NOT about well-being and they can't simply be reduced to that, I was disagreeing with Sam's view on morals.
Fact is, many a wrong thing can be good for our well-being.
First you have to define well-being but typically it means anything that makes us feel better or better-off, anything that is well for us, to BE WELL.
So it is about what effects as in a positive manner, effects our emotional and material self.
So, theft, for example, if it leads to increasing my well-being, is Good, so is any sexual activity that makes me feel good.

[bippy123]

Without an objective moral transcendent law giver we can say that murder is good for the over all well being of our species since it lowers the population rate and gives everyone a better quality of life.
See where im going with this?
There goes my respect for the Dalai Lama

[BryanH]

Without an objective moral transcendent law giver we can say that murder is good for the over all well being of our species since it lowers the population rate and gives everyone a better quality of life.

That is already happening. So I guess you have your answer.

There goes my respect for the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama was proven several times to be rather trivial about his own "religion". What did you expect? He is changing his "religion" according to what serves his interest.

[bippy123]

Without an objective moral transcendent law giver we can say that murder is good for the over all well being of our species since it lowers the population rate and gives everyone a better quality of life.

That is already happening. So I guess you have your answer.

There goes my respect for the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama was proven several times to be rather trivial about his own "religion". What did you expect? He is changing his "religion" according to what serves his interest.

Its a shame that he cant make up his mind or even know what exactly he believes.

[McGuirk]

The question I have for Mr. Harris is why stop at animals and humans? Where is the scientific sense of morality as relating to ANY type of living beings including bacteria and plants?

That's a good question - Harris usually addresses it early when he talks or writes about this topic. Check out his Ted talk on Youtube for a brief version, it's one of the first things he mentions. My poor paraphrase is that we think that certain creatures have access to a wider range of potential happiness and suffering. And it turns out this can be shown to be objectively so.

[bippy123]

The question I have for Mr. Harris is why stop at animals and humans? Where is the scientific sense of morality as relating to ANY type of living beings including bacteria and plants?

That's a good question - Harris usually addresses it early when he talks or writes about this topic. Check out his Ted talk on Youtube for a brief version, it's one of the first things he mentions. My poor paraphrase is that we think that certain creatures have access to a wider range of potential happiness and suffering. And it turns out this can be shown to be objectively so.

The problem here is that under an atheistic worldview how do you objectively define happiness. Everyone has their own definition of happiness. This is all purely subjective, and if an organism is happy committing suicide Harris or the lama couldn't tell them that they have no right to be happy committing suicide.
Under an atheistic worldview there is no objective reason to even want to stay alive if that person feels so.

That is why I have always felt that the only honest atheist is a nihilist.
Sam Harris can try to assert why he feels what he feels but he can't assert anything objectively.

[Beanybag]

The question I have for Mr. Harris is why stop at animals and humans? Where is the scientific sense of morality as relating to ANY type of living beings including bacteria and plants?

That's a good question - Harris usually addresses it early when he talks or writes about this topic. Check out his Ted talk on Youtube for a brief version, it's one of the first things he mentions. My poor paraphrase is that we think that certain creatures have access to a wider range of potential happiness and suffering. And it turns out this can be shown to be objectively so.

The problem here is that under an atheistic worldview how do you objectively define happiness. Everyone has their own definition of happiness. This is all purely subjective, and if an organism is happy committing suicide Harris or the lama couldn't tell them that they have no right to be happy committing suicide.
Under an atheistic worldview there is no objective reason to even want to stay alive if that person feels so.

I feel there is an objection to what he said, but this isn't it. You can objectively define thriving for the typical human biologically and psychologically, ignoring outliers, based on non-arbitrary causes , i.e. we prefer not to feel pain for a reason - we evolved to avoid things that cause harm to ourselves and thus prefer to not experiences pain. The objection I have is not that this is subject to personal preference (ultimately it's not, since personal preference will typically derive to biological preference).. the objection is - so what? We haven't established objection prescriptive measures for people to act morally, especially if they are an outlier who doesn't prefer such preferences.