# Sam Harris is a pseudoscientist, and anyone who follows him is deceived! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 22, 2016, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555 "2016-07-22T03:30:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/21 "2016-07-22T11:40:02Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Whoever Sam Harris is, … He’s that one guy, you know? No, not that one, the other one. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/22 "2016-07-22T12:45:54Z")
Ok, now I understand the first syllable of the OPs name, though I’m still not real clear on the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/23 "2016-07-22T13:05:01Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Thinking the term ‘scientism’ is valid makes _you_ a pseudophilosopher, **foolsguinea**. Scientism is a perfectly valid term for the tendency of overstating the reach of science. Science applies to objective facts: whenever there are such facts, one may use the scientific method (if such a thing exists) to continually approximate them to an ever finer degree. But science has its limitations, for instance, in the moral domain: as Hume taught us, what is does not tell us what ought to be; but only the former can be uncovered scientifically. There are no value judgments in science—that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. But value judgments are necessary for life in any kind of coherent society. Extending science beyond its domain of validity essentially amounts to a perversion of science, albeit an unfortunately common one. And yes, Harris with his ‘Moral Landscape’ is quite certainly guilty of this conflation (for a good exposition, see for instance [Massimo Pigliucci’s take on the matter](http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.de/2010/04/about-sam-harris-claim-that-science-can.html)). Realizing this is not anti-scientific, by the way (after all, science is what I get paid to do, so I’d be fouling up my own nest here). In fact, it’s quite to the contrary: in order to do meaningful science, we need to not muddy the water by entangling it with judgments about the world, be they ethical, aesthetical, or what have you—we need to be clear about the difference between facts and values in order to make real scientific progress. Thus, what’s hurt by the current widespread trend towards scientism is, ultimately, science itself—it gets overextended, overstretched, and ultimately so diluted as to loose all meaning. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/24 "2016-07-22T13:29:55Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Close. The guy who kidnapped and murdered Marcia. The thanks of a grateful nation… I thought that was Danny Trejo. > [@Critical1](#): > > Oh I get it, the OP is a Ben Afflec fan and is trying to make him look better after his encounter with Sam Harris on the Tonight Show. Or maybe he’s really just devoted to Taylor Swift and he’s mad they used to date. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/25 "2016-07-22T13:54:04Z")
Not knowing much about this, and given that the OP has presented nothing of substance to back up his/her claim, the reader is left with a conundrum: Whom to agree with more: Someone with a PhD in Neuroscience, with a long list of published material or an anonymous poster on a Message Board. This is a tough one… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/26 "2016-07-22T16:11:10Z")
Well, not even “brain surgeon” means much, anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/27 "2016-07-22T16:21:23Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Whom to agree with more: Someone with a PhD in Neuroscience, with a long list of published material […] :dubious: Whatever one thinks of Sam Harris, this is kind of a weak argument, given that the vast majority of Harris’s publications are not in the scientific field where he earned his PhD but rather on general philosophical/cultural topics like religion and ethics. Having a PhD in cognitive neuroscience doesn’t make one an expert on the general philosophical, ethical, cultural or historical aspects of human thought. Possessing advanced degrees doesn’t stop lots of people from publicly spewing ill-informed bullshit on a varied range of subjects (e.g., Deepak Chopra, Jonathan Wells, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/28 "2016-07-22T17:00:46Z")
I enjoy listenng to Sam Harris’ podcast and I tend to agree with most of his views. He sometimes gets sidetracked by squabbles with his vocal opponents, but I can find that entertaining. I don’t think he spouts pseudo-science, he seems to be pretty careful when making claims. I do think he is a little off track on his islamism diatribes as I do think it’s a product of both political and religious influence and Sam tends to believe it all ties back to religious beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/29 "2016-07-22T17:34:15Z")
Are there actually tangible, non-science beliefs he states to be true regardless of evidence that you disagree with or should I put away the pitchfork? ---
**Author:** ![DerekMichaels00](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f14d63/32.png) [@DerekMichaels00](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DerekMichaels00)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/30 "2016-07-22T18:19:21Z")
Sam Harris is great! Just like Bill Maher, actual is a REAL liberal, ie doesn’t give Islam a free pass. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/31 "2016-07-22T18:22:08Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Scientism is a perfectly valid term for the tendency of overstating the reach of science. Science applies to objective facts: whenever there are such facts, one may use the scientific method (if such a thing exists) to continually approximate them to an ever finer degree. > > But science has its limitations, for instance, in the moral domain: as Hume taught us, what is does not tell us what ought to be; but only the former can be uncovered scientifically. There are no value judgments in science—that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. But value judgments are necessary for life in any kind of coherent society. > > Extending science beyond its domain of validity essentially amounts to a perversion of science, albeit an unfortunately common one. And yes, Harris with his ‘Moral Landscape’ is quite certainly guilty of this conflation (for a good exposition, see for instance [Massimo Pigliucci’s take on the matter](http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.de/2010/04/about-sam-harris-claim-that-science-can.html)). > > Realizing this is not anti-scientific, by the way (after all, science is what I get paid to do, so I’d be fouling up my own nest here). In fact, it’s quite to the contrary: in order to do meaningful science, we need to not muddy the water by entangling it with judgments about the world, be they ethical, aesthetical, or what have you—we need to be clear about the difference between facts and values in order to make real scientific progress. Thus, what’s hurt by the current widespread trend towards scientism is, ultimately, science itself—it gets overextended, overstretched, and ultimately so diluted as to loose all meaning. I agree with all of this to a point. Science can’t outright give us morality, but it _can_ look a certain way and gesture determinedly. If we have a basic moral framework established, science can tell us the best way to accomplish those ends; on the flip side, science can tell us what the end result of certain actions is likely to be, which allows us to determine the _effective_ (as opposed to the _ostensible_) morality of those who propose those actions. As a simple example, abstinence-only sex ed doesn’t reduce teen pregnancy. Therefore, those who propose it (nay, _insist upon it_) aren’t really interested in reducing teen pregnancy, regardless of what they claim to support. Furthermore, we must be very careful when someone claims something isn’t amenable to testing, because they likely know that testing will severely damage its credibility. People who promote SCAM (Supplementary, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine) do this sometimes, with claims that their regimes help in a psychological sense which obviates the need for seeing whether they work. Of course, psychology is a science, and can be approached scientifically, so therefore their effectiveness can be studied. Similarly, claims of life after death are falsified to the extent anything can be falsified by our knowledge of how consciousness works; you have to change the definition into things like “living on in our memories” or similar unless you’re really determined to ignore the whole field of neurology. Everything you said is quite reasonable. I just doubt it’s what most people mean when they use the term ‘scientism’. (Which is a common trait with some dishonest groups: Define your terms two ways, a safe way and an exciting way, and when you’re challenged on the exciting definition, move back to the safe one: You’re in favor of “Securing Our Borders”, which can mean either patrolling the borders to make sure drug cartels don’t have a free reign (safe definition) or getting those damned brown people out so they don’t compete with low-income white people for work (exciting definition); anyone who tries to call you on using that term is obviously delusional because you _only_ mean the safe definition, and would _never_ support the exciting one (where anyone outside your group can hear)… ) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/32 "2016-07-22T18:32:49Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Everything you said is quite reasonable. I just doubt it’s what most people mean when they use the term ‘scientism’. However, it’s how the term “scientism” is being used in this thread. **foolsguinea** ’s description of scientific determinism or necessitarianism as “fatalism in scientism’s clothes” is not unreasonable, and it’s not anti-science. I don’t think anyone here is using “scientism” improperly as merely a simplistic dismissal of science itself or of science-influenced philosophies such as materialism and rationalism. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/33 "2016-07-22T18:36:46Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > :dubious: Whatever one thinks of Sam Harris, this is kind of a weak argument, given that the vast majority of Harris’s publications are not in the scientific field where he earned his PhD but rather on general philosophical/cultural topics like religion and ethics. > > Having a PhD in cognitive neuroscience doesn’t make one an expert on the general philosophical, ethical, cultural or historical aspects of human thought. Possessing advanced degrees doesn’t stop lots of people from publicly spewing ill-informed bullshit on a varied range of subjects (e.g., Deepak Chopra, Jonathan Wells, etc.). The OP explicitly calls out “psychological sciences” which if not identical to, is quite close to what Harris has his PhD in. Beside, it’s not a question of whether Harris is objectively a great reference, but wether he is better one than the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/34 "2016-07-22T19:05:35Z")
> [@YogSothoth](#): > > Are there actually tangible, non-science beliefs he states to be true regardless of evidence that you disagree with or should I put away the pitchfork? Well sure, Harris can be fairly described as straying over the boundary from “pro-science” to “scientism” sometimes. Here’s an [analysis](http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/sam-harris-and-scientism/?_r=0) of Harris’s flawed rebuttal of criticisms of his “moral landscape” thesis, relying on an off-target analogy between “well-being” and health: > [@](#): > > > [@Sam Harris](#): > > > > Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of the universe (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science (in principle, if not in practice). > > > > […] there are three, distinct challenges put forward thus far: > > > > 1. There is no scientific basis to say that we should value well-being, our own or anyone else’s. (The Value Problem) > > > > 2. Hence, if someone does not care about well-being, or cares only about his own and not about the well-being of others, there is no way to argue that he is wrong from the point of view of science. (The Persuasion Problem) > > > > 3. Even if we did agree to grant “well-being” primacy in any discussion of morality, it is difficult or impossible to define it with rigor. It is, therefore, impossible to measure well-being scientifically. Thus, there can be no science of morality. (The Measurement Problem) […] > > > > Let’s swap “morality” for “medicine” and “well-being” for “health” and see how things look: […] > > > > While the analogy may not be perfect, I maintain that it is good enough to obviate these three criticisms. Is there a Value Problem, with respect to health? Is it unscientific to value health and seek to maximize it within the context of medicine? No. Clearly there are scientific truths to be known about health—and we can fail to know them, to our great detriment. This is a fact. And yet, it is possible for people to deny this fact, or to have perverse and even self-destructive ideas about how to live. Needless to say, it can be fruitless to argue with such people. Does this mean we have a Persuasion Problem with respect to medicine? No. Christian Scientists, homeopaths, voodoo priests, and the legions of the confused don’t get to vote on the principles of medicine. > > Except that Christian Scientists, homeopaths and voodoo priests do not actually exemplify problems 1, 2 and 3 in Harris’s medicine analogy. They _do_ claim to value health, both for themselves and others, and indeed they generally claim to be driving at roughly the same goals as the doctors at Georgetown University Hospital: The extension of life, the normal functioning of bodily systems, the cessation of pain, and so on. And the reason that they are generally excluded from serious debates about medical science is not because they refuse to agree about what that science ought to be driving at; it’s because they do agree about what it should be driving at, and their preferred approaches can be empirically demonstrated not to work. The problem with many of Harris’s claims is not that it’s **theoretically and intrinsically impossible** to determine moral issues scientifically (always assuming that we carefully restrict our definition of “moral issues” to material and rationally comprehensible phenomena). The problem is that he uses vague language and sloppy reasoning to make it seem that moral issues are **self-evidently** determined scientifically, and that there are no possible valid critiques of that approach. That sort of leapfrogging the difficult bits is a classic characteristic of scientism. To take one specific example, here’s a remark from Harris’s [essay](https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/response-to-critics-of-the-moral-landscape) quoted in the above analysis: > [@](#): > > Again, consider the concept of health: should we maximize global health? To my ear, this is a strange question. It invites a timorous reply like, “Provided we want everyone to be healthy, yes.” And introducing this note of contingency seems to nudge us from the charmed circle of scientific truth. But why must we frame the matter this way? A world in which global health is maximized would be an objective reality, quite distinct from a world in which we all die early and in agony. Here, Harris is using a rhetorical **binary** distinction, between “a world in which global health is maximized” and “a world in which we all die early and in agony”, to camouflage a situation that is actually much more complex. Even physical health, which he’s using as a (somewhat rickety) analogy for more general “well-being”, is not a simple either-or choice between “health globally maximized overall” and “early painful deaths for everybody”. So his claim of the hypothetical optimal outcome as an “objective reality” dependent on “genuine truth claims” depends on the reader not looking too closely at the very complicated concept of “maximizing” health or well-being. That’s scientism talk, along the same lines as (although much less egregious than) creationist talking points of the form _“If there wasn’t anything before the Big Bang, then how could it explode?”_. It makes a superficially plausible point as long as you don’t really stop to think about the ordinary-language implications of the terms being used, and whether they really apply in the same way to this particular statement. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/35 "2016-07-22T20:19:25Z")
> [@DerekMichaels00](#): > > Sam Harris is great! Just like Bill Maher, actual is a REAL liberal, ie doesn’t give Islam a free pass. If _you_ like him, he obviously has been giving Jewish nationalism all the free passes. In fact, _you’re_ such a knee-jerk Israel triumphalist when it comes to Israel/Palestine that you liking someone’s politics is reason to worry about that person’s judgment. > **[Israel/Palestinians: Your Take](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=787953)** > > Why is this thread in elections? Simple: because its a big electoral issue, hence why all the serious candidates went to AIPAC (Bernie is not serious, IMO, hence his absence, as well as pandering to the far-left). Additionally, Israel is extremely... ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/36 "2016-07-22T20:27:31Z")
I think Harris makes too much of a some objective ideal in his eagerness to re-frame the argument into, like you said, a binary distinction. He is not giving enough thought on how such ideals work in the real world with actual people. Its like he’s a robot talking about what’s best for people without any empirical experiences. But I think some of his logic is sound, we don’t actually have a scientific basis for well-being or anything like that. Its just that he made a jump from there to the equally improbable claim that there can be no science of morality. I think there can be because as humans, we’re the creators of morality, we can certainly decide what it is. Say not that there can be no scientific basis of morality, but say rather than perhaps morality is simply one of many goals science can strive to understand. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/37 "2016-07-23T01:10:43Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Two, Harris is still talking about genes for personality traits. This is nonsense. Even in a determinist universe, human personality is not pre-coded in our genes. That bit of pseudoscience was everywhere in the 1990’s, but it’s nonsense, on the level of phrenology, blood type personalities, and astrololgy. \*Culture and religion don’t map to genetics. Persons have life experiences. If that was true then attempts to shape people into the desired personality would actually work. However they don’t; efforts like the [New Soviet Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man) and homosexual conversion “therapy” consistently fail. People have pretty strongly hardwired personalities; otherwise freedom would not exist. We’d have been shaped into the puppets of the powerful millennia ago. Even the _concepts_ of freedom and independence wouldn’t exist, we’d have been shaped to be automatons incapable of having such thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/38 "2016-07-23T01:38:17Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Here, Harris is using a rhetorical **binary** distinction, between “a world in which global health is maximized” and “a world in which we all die early and in agony”, to camouflage a situation that is actually much more complex. I don’t think you’ve understood the argument correctly. He is quite deliberately setting up two strawman positions. But the very fact that we can reliably distinguish between these two states means that we have accepted, at least to some degree, that objectivity and empiricism can apply to moral actions. The argument doesn’t depend on the exact details of how global health is maximized, just that all possible positions here are far closer to each other than they are to universal agony. Someone that denies even the smallest degree of objectivity in moral action is unable to distinguish between global health vs. universal agony, because they cannot even assert that anything has value, or allow objective measures such as years of pain-free existence. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/39 "2016-07-23T03:08:46Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I don’t think you’ve understood the argument correctly. He is quite deliberately setting up two strawman positions. Nope, he’s attempting to rebut critiques of his claims about “well-being” via an analogy with physical health. The shakiness of this analogy is illustrated in your own very next sentence: [QUOTE=Dr. Strangelove] But the very fact that we can reliably distinguish between these two states means that we have accepted, at least to some degree, that objectivity and empiricism can apply to moral actions. [/quote] No, empirically distinguishing between two extreme states of **physical health** , i.e., “global health maximized overall” versus “early painful deaths for everyone”, does not in itself tell us anything about empirically distinguishing between different states of more general **moral well-being**. (It also, as I noted above, sidesteps the important fact that in real life both health and general “well-being” are continua, not binary states.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555/40 "2016-07-23T04:33:35Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No, empirically distinguishing between two extreme states of **physical health** , i.e., “global health maximized overall” versus “early painful deaths for everyone”, does not in itself tell us anything about empirically distinguishing between different states of more general **moral well-being**. The purpose of his analogy–and extreme examples–was to dismantle the three “challenges” he put forward (the Value, Persuasion, and Measurement problems). It takes only a single counterexample to accomplish this, and an extreme one suffices. Actually, I think his example works better than mere analogy. Because health is a component of well-being, demonstrating an empirical component of health means there’s an empirical component to well-being, and hence moral action. Where I think his argument trips is the jump from disproving the challenges to “Therefore, questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science”. He has not demonstrated that _all_ moral questions have answers at all. It may well be that all questions which do have answers have them under the purview of science, but there may be questions without answers. Perhaps Harris would not deny this–I’m not sure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sam-harris-is-a-pseudoscientist-and-anyone-who-follows-him-is-deceived/760555.md?page=3)