Sam Harris and the Is–Ought Gap

I curated this post because "why do people disagree and how can we come to agreement" feels like one of the most important questions of the whole rationality project. In my experience, when two smart people keep disagreeing while having a hard time understanding how the other could fail to understand something so obvious, it's because they are operating under different frameworks without realizing it. Having analyzed examples of this helps understand and recognize it, and then hopefully learn to avoid it.

This is a great post, and I think does a good job of capturing why the two sides tend to talk past each other. A is baffled by why B claims to be able to reduce free-floating symbols to other symbols; B is baffled by why A claims to be using free-floating symbols.

They're also both probably right when it comes to "defending standard usage", and are just defending/highlighting different aspects of folk moral communication.

People often use "should" language to try to communicate facts; and if they were more self-aware about the truth-conditions of that language, they would be better able to communicate and achieve their goals. Harris thinks this is important.

People also often use "should" language to try to directly modify each others' motivations. (E.g., trying to express themselves in ways they think will apply social pressure or tug at someone's heartstrings.) Harris' critics think this is important, and worry that uncritically accepting Harris' project could conceal this phenomenon without making it go away.

(Well, I think the latter is less mysterian than the typical anti-Harris ethics argument, and Harris would probably be more sympathetic to the above framing than to the typical "ought is just its own thing, end of story" argument.)

I essentially agree with you that science can't bridge the is-ought gap (see caveats) but it's a good deal more complicated than the arguments you give here allow for (they are a good intro but I felt it's worth pointing out the complexities).

1. When someone claims to have bridged the is-ought gap they aren't usually claiming to have analytically identified (i.e. identified as a matter of definition) ought with some is statements. That' s a crazily high bar and modern philosophers (and Sam Harris was trained as a philosopher) tend to feel true analytic identities are rare but are not the only kind of necessary truths. For instance, the fact that "water is H20" is widely regarded as a necessary truth that isn't analytic (do a search if you want an explanation) and there are any number of other philosophical arguments that are seen as establishing necessary truths which don't amount to the definitional relationship you demand.

I think the standard Harris is using is much weaker even than that.

2. You insist that to be an ought it must be motivating for the subject. This is a matter of some debate. Some moral realists would endorse this while others would insist that it need only motivate certain kinds of agents who aren't too screwed up in some way. But, I tend to agree with your conclusion just suggest it be qualified by saying we presuming the standard sense of moral realism here.

3. One has to be really careful with what you mean by 'science' here. One way people have snuck around the is-ought gap before is using terms like cruel which are kinda 'is' facts that back in an ought (to be cruel requires that you immorally inflict suffering etc..).

4. It's not that Harris is purely embedded in some kind of dialectical tradition. He was trained as an analytic philosopher and they invented the is-ought gap and are no strangers to the former mode of argumentation. IT's more that Carrol is a physicist and doesn't know the terminology that would let him pin Harris down in terms he would understand and keep him from squirming off the point.

However, I'm pretty sure (based on my interaction with Harris emailing him over what sounded like a similarly wrongheaded view in the philosophy of mind) that Harris would admit that he hasn't bridged Hume's is-ought gap as philosophers understand it but instead explain that he means to address the general public's sense that science has no moral insight to offer.

In that sense I think he is right. Most people don't realize how much science can inform our moral discussions...he's just being hyperbolic to sell it.

This post not only made me understand the relevant positions better, but the two different perspectives on thinking about motivation have remained with me in general. (I often find the Harris one more useful, which is interesting by itself since he had been sold to me as "the guy who doesn't really understand philosophy".)

This post [LW · GW] seems relevant. (Indeed, it seems to dissolve the question entirely, and a full decade in advance.)

Two points:

First, can you clarify what you mean by rational persuasion, if you are distinguishing it from logical proof? Do you mean that we can skip arguing for some premises because we can rely on our intuition to identify them as already shared? Or do you mean that we need not aim for deductive certainty--a lower confidence level is acceptable? Or something else?

Second, I appreciate this post because what Harris's disagreements with others so often need is exactly dissolution. And you've accurately described Harris's project: He is trying to persuade an ideal listener of moral claims (e.g., it's good to help people live happy and fulfilling lives), rather than trying to prove the truth of these claims from non-moral axioms.

Some elaboration on what Harris is doing, in my view:

• Construct a hellish state of affairs (e.g., everyone suffering for all eternity to no redeeming purpose), call on the interlocutor to admit that such a situation is bad.
• Construct a second state of affairs that is not so hellish (e.g., everyone happy and virtuous).
• Call on the interlocutor to admit that the first situation is bad, and that the second situation is better.
• Conclude that the interlocutor has admitted the truth of moral claims, even though Harris himself never explicitly said anything moral.

But by adding notions like "to no redeeming purpose" and "virtuous," Harris is smuggling oughts into the universes he describes. (He has to do this in order to block the interlocutor from saying "I don't admit the first situation is bad because the suffering could be for a good reason, and the second situation might not be good because maybe everyone is happy in a trivial sense because they've just wireheaded.)

In other words, Harris has not bridged the gap because he has begun on the "ought" side.

Rhetorically, Harris might omit the bits about purpose or virtue, and the interlocutor might still admit that the first state is bad and the second better, because the interlocutor has cooperatively embedded these additional moral premises.

In this case, to bridge the gap Harris counts on the listener supplying the first "ought."

Now, this "ought" symbol could appear in the ideal formal theory in one of only two ways: Either the "ought" symbol is an undefined symbol appearing among the axioms, or the "ought" symbol is subsequently defined in terms of the more-primitive "is" symbols used to express the axioms.

Ok I am also moral naturalist and I hold the same view as Harris does (at least I think I do). And I have to say that the easiest way to resolve your dichotomy this is to say that the "Ought" is embeded in axiom. But even then I feel it as a very strange thing to say. Let me explain.

Imagine I have two apples and eat one apple. How many apples do I have now? Now I can use mathematical logic to resolve the question. But mathematical logic is insufficient to establish truth value of my claim of having two apples initially nor is it able to establish the truth value of the fact if I indeed have eaten the apple or if laws of the universe were not broken and a new apple thermodynamagically appeared in my hand out of thin air. So what I want to say is that you cannot logic something into existence. Logic can only tell you the truth values under certain assumptions. But you need to find out truth values of those assumptions out there in the universe.

Imagine having a choice making agent capable of learning. Let's say AlphaZero chess program. This is a computer program that is fed the rules of chess and then it is capable of playing chess to refine its understanding of the game to become very strong chess player.

The program awaits inputs in form of chess moves from an opponent. It then processes the moves, evaluates multiple options and then decides on an action in form of chess move that is most likely to satisfy its values - which is to win or at least draw the game of chess.

Now one can ask the question of why the program plays chess and why it does not do something else such as working toward world peace or other goal people deem worthy. I think the answer is obvious - the program was created so that it plays chess (and go and shogi). It does not even value aesthetics of the chess board or many other things superficially related to chess. To ask a question of why a chess program plays chess and not something else is meaningless in this sense. It was created to play chess. It cannot do differently given its programming. This is your moral axiom. AlphaZero values winning in chess.

But you cannot find the answer on what AlphaZero values from some logical structure with some theoretical axioms. The crucial premise in naturalistic morality is that all thinking agents including moral agents have to have physical substance that you can examine. You cannot change moral agents values without coresponding change in the brain and vice versa. So you can make moral statements from IS sentences all the way down. For example.

IS statement 1: AlphaZero is a chess program that was programmed so that it values winning in chess.

IS statement 2: Therefore it ought to make move X and not move Y when playing an opponent because move Y is objectively a worse chess move compared to X.

Again you may object that this is circular reasoning and I am assuming ought right in the statement 1. But it would be like saying that I am assuming to have two apples. Sure, I am assuming that. And what is the problem exactly? Is it not how we apply logic in our daily experience? Having two apples is a fact about the universe. Perfectly correct IS statement. AlphaZero wanting to win a game of chess is perfectly correct IS statement about AlphaZero - the program running in computer memory somewhere in Google building. And wanting to eat is a correct IS statement about me now typing this text.

The whole thing hangs on footnote #4, and you don't seem to understand what realists actually believe. Of course they would dispute it, and not just "some" but most philosophers.

Good post. I think Carroll's PoV is correct and Sam's is probably correct. Thinking about it, I would have phrased that one very differently, but I think there'd be zero difference on substance.

Edit: Having caught myself referencing this to explain Harris position, I amend my post to say that the way you put is actually exactly right, and the way I would have put it would at best have been a mildly confused version of the same thing.

To me "ought" is unpacked as "I have assigned a certain moral weight or utility to various possible worlds that appear to depend on an agent's actions, and I prefer the world with the higher utility". Not sure if this matches any specific moral philosophy or whatever.

This makes sense, but what you call "dialectical moral argumentation" seems to me like it can just be considered as what you call "logical moral argumentation" but with the "ought" premises left implicit, you know? From this point of view, you could say that they're two different ways of framing the same argument. Basically, dialectical moral argumentation is the hypothetical syllogism to logical moral argumentation's repeated modus ponens. Because if you want to prove C, where C is "You should take action X", starting from A, where A is "You want to accomplish Y", then logical moral argumentation makes the premise A explicit, and so supplied with the facts A => B and B=> C, can first make B and then make C (although obviously that's not the only way to do it but let's just go with this); whereas dialectical moral argumentation doesn't actually have the premise A to hand and so instead can only apply hypothetical syllogism to get A => C, and then has to hand this to the other party who then has A and can make C with it.

So, like, this is a good way of making sense of Sam Harris, as you say, but I'm not sure this new point of view actually adds anything new. It sounds like a fairly trivial rephrasing, and to me at least seems like a less clear one, hiding some of the premises.

(Btw thank you for the comment below with the interview quotes; that really seems to demonstrate that yes, your explanation really is what Harris means, not the ridiculous thing it sounds like he's saying!)

and then rely on my internal motivational drives to find those facts compelling.

Doesn't this assume that our internal motivational drives, our core values, are sufficiently aligned that our "oughts" also align? This strikes me as an unreasonable assumption.

I haven't finished reading the comments here, so it's possible my mind will be changed.

I actually see the difference between these two arguments (represented by Sam Harris and Hume) as being a buckets [LW · GW] issue. Sam Harris puts "ought" in the same bucket as "is." In most cases, the thing that causes harm or joy is relatively obvious, so there is no problem with having "ought" and "is" in the same bucket. The problem with having things in the same bucket in general is that we tend to forget that the bucket exists, and think the two concepts are always inherently linked. I think Sam Harris' view is a valid one, especially on an intuitive and emotional level. However, I think there is still an important distinction to made here and that arguing between these two points of view is still valid.

What principles guide the "oughts?" Let's look at abortion. People on one side say that ending life is obviously causing suffering by depriving a living thing of the rest of its life. People on the other side don't disagree with that principle, but they disagree that a fetus counts as a living thing, so when they look at a "suffering equation," the mother's feelings are taken into account, but the fetus' aren't. Both sides think their own "ought" logically follows from the observable "is." If we don't recognize that there is a bucket issue happening, then we continue to argue past each other without understanding the actual sticking point. In the context of objective morality or development of AI, the question of what principles guide the "oughts" is of utmost importance. We can't answer the question by ignoring that it is a question.

This seems rather disappointing on Sam Harris's part, given that he indeed had training in philosophy (he has a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford, according to Wikipedia). If this post describes Harris's position correctly (I haven't read the source material), it seems to boil down to Harris saying that science can tell you what your instrumental goals/values should be, given your terminal goals/values, but it shouldn't be hard to see (or steelman) that when someone says "science can't bridge Hume’s is–ought gap" they're saying that science can't tell you what your terminal goals/values should be. It seems like either Harris couldn't figure out the relatively simple nature of the disagreement/misunderstanding, or that he could figure it out but deliberately chooses not to clarify/acknowledge it in order to keep marketing that he knows how "science can bridge Hume’s is–ought gap".

In epistemic structural realism the bridge is all we have. One end of the bridge feels more 'is' like and one end feels more 'ought' like. Both are subject to extensionalism in trying to figure out what's 'really there'. I find this stance much much less confusing than the more standard indirect realism that typically underlies the is-ought distinction.

There's also the general pattern, see if by inverting the nature of the representation (turn the edges into vertices and vice versa) a false dichotomy disappears.

I think I can express Sam's point using logical argumentation.

1) Your internal motivational structure is aimed at X.

2) Y is a pre-requisite for X.

3) You ought to do Y in order to achieve X. (This is the only sense in which "ought" means anything).

First time post! I signed up just to say this. If there's a problem with the formulation I just described, I'd love to know what that is. I've been confused for years about why this seems so difficult for some, or why Sam can't put it in these terms.

I also feel like this conundrum is pretty easily solved, but I have a different take on it; one which analyses both situations you've presented identically, although it ultimately reduces to 'there is an is-ought problem'.

The primary thrust of my view on this is: All 'ought' statements are convolutions of objective and subjective components. The objective components can be dealt with purely scientifically and the subjective components can be variously criticised. There is no need to deal with them together.

The minimal subjective component of an ought statement is simply a goal, or utility metric, upon which to measure your ought statement. The syllogism thus becomes: If the policy scores highest on the utility metric, and if one ascribes to that utility function, implement that policy. Clause the first is completely objective and addressable by science to the fullest extent. Whether or not the utility function is ascribed to is also completely objective. But it is completely subjective as to which utility function one chooses. The conclusion then follows directly.

The objective components can be addressed objectively, through science and evidence. We can only hope that the subjective component (the choice of utility function) is well constrained by human biology (and there is objective evidence that it is), but we cannot justify any particular choice.

If we apply this to the logical approach described above the chosen utility metric/function is just an axiom, and the rest follows objectively and logically. If we apply this to the dialectical approach then we have not removed the axiom, rather only moved it.

When you argue with me about how creamy the icecream is, and how great the chocolate chips are, you are appealing to *my* axiomatic utility metric. So even from the dialectical point of you've still not solved the is-ought problem, you've just pushed the responsibility of connecting the is to the ought onto the victim of your rhetoric.

Essentially this dialectical approach is performing the two easy bits of the computation: Objectively determine if your victim maximises X, objectively determine how to maximise X, then proscribe the action to your victim. But at no point has the ought been bridged, just an existing arbitrarily chosen and non-scientifically justified ought exploited.

Subsequent to your prescription, having done so rightly, the victim, rather than yourself, says *"Oh yes, I ought do that"*, and while you might never need implement anything unscientific to get to this resolution, there is no doubt that your victim didn't bridge that gap with science or logic.