This is a continuation of yesterday’s commentary. I wandered very far away from the point I set out to make yesterday (gee, how rare) and so today I am going to take another crack at it.

In his TED talk, Harris examines the question of the relationship between science and morality, and I certainly agree with him that they are far, far from being mutually exclusive and that the notion that somehow science cannot answer moral questions is just another bit of superstitious anti-science nonsense like the idea that some areas of knowledge are “sacred” and therefore not to be tread upon by the hobnailed boots of science and reason.

Repeatedly, people try to wall off certain subjects to protect them from reason. The very act of doing so betrays a dark suspicion that one’s beliefs are not literally “true”. We are still a long way from widespread acceptance of the materialist truth of human existence : that there is no special category between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ where something can be real without having to follow the rules of reality, and that all we are is matter and energy, with no special exceptions.

This said, I think Harris does not quite hit the mark. He is making a vitally important point, that we can, will, and must use science to find the best answers to our moral questions, but in doing so he misses a very vital distinction in what science can and cannot do, and it is this distinction that I wish to make today.

It is true that science can, will, and must be used to find the best solutions to moral problems. Take this example :

A father is home alone with his toddler son when the son manages to find and drink something highly poisonous before the father can stop him. Luckily for the kid, his father is a chemical engineer, and in a flash comes up with a concoction made from household chemicals that neutralized the poison and saved the boy’s life.

Clearly, the father used science (his knowledge of chemistry) in the pursuit of a moral goal (saving a child’s life). Very few people would argue that the father should have left science out of his morality and let his child die.

So it is clear that science can, indeed, find answers to moral problems. But the distinction I am making today is that while science can find the answers, it can’t ask the questions.

Not at a fundamental level. The very basis of all morality is the assumption that it matters what happens to human beings, and that is a logically unsupportable assumption. In the light of so-called “pure reason”, there is no basis to prefer people living to people dying, people experiencing pleasure over people experiencing pain, or people experiencing joy over people experiencing despair. As human beings, we care about what happens to humans both because are humans ourselves and because as humans, we have a strong instinct towards altruism and mutual care.

But from the point of view of logic, there is no reason to care what happens to human beings at all. Logic alone could not ask the question of how to save the boy, because it could not provide a reason to act at all. The impetus to action had to come from the emotional core of the father who desperately wanted to save his son.

So what is the role of science in morality? Its role is that of the most powerful servant morality has ever had. Reason is and has always been the servant of emotion. Science is simply the codification of reason into a very powerful system whereby knowledge can be generated, tested, communicated, and most importantly of all, accumulated. The scientific method gives reason a way to add knowledge to an ever-growing model of reality that can then be used to make predictions about the future.

And prediction is the ultimate test for all forms of knowledge. Whether it is predicting the next solar eclipse or knowing what will happen if you mix two chemical together, science is the most potent engine for influencing the universe we know.

And influencing the universe is precisely what morality seeks to do. The goal of morality is always to make the world a more morally acceptable place. Reducing suffering, increasing public safety, protecting people from outside threats… these are all moral problems which have practical, scientific, logical solutions.

Some people do not like that approach. They prefer to think of morality as some sort of special sphere that is not suitable for the pure clean light of reason, and claim that the powerful pragmatism of science is far too crude and thoughtless an instrument for something as special and delicate as morality.

But what these people really fear is that science will force them to change their mind about something. The data won’t match their assumptions and they will be forced to either change their minds or start denying science. They would much prefer that science just stayed out of it so people who never liked math or science in the first place can keep their pet theories.

And what people really don’t like about science interfering in the moral realm is that science might lead to conclusions that don’t feel right. A lot of people are going through the world today with only the basic package of human morality installed, the things we all share. The package that boils down to “be nice and only do nice things”.

And this is a very effective package for the say to day running of a human life. You can be a highly moral person who feels passionately about the welfare of one’s fellow human beings and never have to leave this basic mode of morality.

But true morality is not about doing what feels good. It is about doing what is right regardless of how we feel. It is more important to get the best solutions we possibly can, even ones that do not pass a moral “sniff test”, than to preserve our feeling of being a super nice person.

Well that is all for today folks. I think I hit the mark today. Mu basic point is that Harris is correct that science has a very big role to play in answering moral questions.

It just can’t ask the questions itself.

I will talk to all of you nice people again tomorrow.