Soup von zariwna

The question of what is 'moral' or 'immoral' is a question that can be answered empirically, just like all other meaningful questions. The biggest confusion about morality seems to lie in two areas - the definition of 'morality' and the basis by which one can judge the morality of a given activity. As far as the definition goes, I think the answer is perfectly intuitive; that which causes suffering is bad, and that which increases well-being is good. Sam Harris - author of The End of Faith and The Moral Landscape - likes to use a thought experiment he calls the "worst possible suffering for everyone." In this world, everybody suffers as much as their brains are capable of from the moment they are born to the moment they die. If such a world cannot be called "bad," then "bad" cannot possibly have any meaning. What meaning could the words "bad" and "good" have if we cannot say that the "worst possible misery for everyone" is "bad?"

This leads nicely into the second question - what is basis for morality? Based on the previous paragraph, it should be clear that morality is essentially based in humanity's shared neurological features. Most of us agree about what causes us to suffer most of the time. Even when we do not agree about the causes, we still all can understand what it means to suffer. The same goes for well-being. Given that we all experience suffering and well-being in the same or very similar manners, then it is possible to draw certain absolute conclusions about the nature of suffering and well-being, and thus draw absolute conclusions about morality. At the end of the day, suffering and well-being are neurological phenomena.

Consider, for instance, the Taliban. Even if many people in Afghanistan would not agree, I think we can say with confidence that the Taliban invokes much more suffering than it alleviates, and destroys much more well-being than it creates. Those who disagree with that statement tend to either 1) reject the idea that morality is linked to well-being and suffering (that is, they disagree with the definition) or 2) believe that the well-being is created and the suffering destroyed in the *afterlife.* The first idea, the rejection of the definition, is hopefully ruled out by the previous "worst possible misery" thought experiment. The second idea is rejected empirically once we recognize that there is no evidence for a God in the first place.

The interesting point here is that we are able to say with certainty that the Taliban infringes on a set of irrevocable and undebatable shared values, and is thus immoral; and they are not just immoral based on our own, individual 'relative' morality, but rather based on an absolute scale.

The most common objection to this line of reasoning is that we cannot determine the answers to moral questions so easily most of the time. To this, I concede. However, it is important to note the difference between not having an answer in *practice* and not having an answer in *principle.* Many people recognize that we do not have answers to these questions in practice, and therefore conclude that there are no answers in principle. I think this is a mistake. Take, for instance, the question "how many birds are currently in flight, and what is their combined weight?" There can be no doubt that there is an absolutely correct answer to this question at any given time, and there can also be no doubt that answering this question is impossible with any significant degree of accuracy. The best we could possibly do is estimate. However, nobody can doubt that this question *has* an absolute answer, even if we can never know what it is. There is an answer in principle, even if there isn't an answer in practice. So it is with moral questions.