They Are Both Right

Is our divisiveness invading our philosophy?

I recently came across a video where Sam Harris and Alex O'Connor speak about everyone’s favorite topic… objective morality. There will be a link to the video at the bottom of this article. What follows isn’t a recap so much as an attempt to synthesize their positions and show why, in an important sense…

They are both correct… kinda. But, only if we see morality as a stage in human development rather than a final framework.

Sam’s description of the moral landscape remains one of the clearest ways to think about these questions. Sam uses the hot burner example wherein one can place their hand on a hot burner and objectively conclude this is NOT a desirable experience, and if there’s any push-back there then the burner isn’t sufficiently hot enough.

Alex points out that we don’t need ought(s) or should(s) to know that we don’t want to put our hand on a hot stove. Our preferences from direct experience can navigate the world without ought or should. Morality can thus be reduced to expressions of preference and emotion.

Let’s look at the moral landscape a little closer, or rather zoom out a little. Sam’s moral landscape works best when the terrain is simple. The “bedrock” of the landscape (the lowest, most universal layer) contains experiences we can all agree are objectively worse. Yet as we move up through the complexity of the landscape (think of it as a Z-axis of cultural, historical, and psychological context), the clarity of moral judgment becomes increasingly subjective and ephemeral.

Here’s a thought experiment: If you took someone like modern day Sam with a well-adjusted moral compass and transport him back in time to the days of peak slavery and then made him king. Would all slave owners be immediately jailed? Would another war break out? How useful is Sam’s moral conviction there? And, how morally significant are Sam’s decisions? How sure can Sam be that he’s making ‘good’ decisions given the impossibility of modeling the full causal fallout? Well, it’s useful in-so far that he has a direction, and that’s where it would mostly end. Sam would quickly find that his subjects are unmoved by his moral philosophies and righteousness that he espouses regarding slavery that are so obvious today.

It’s here that I find myself aligning with Alex in a way, though from a different angle. Morality, as we usually think of it, appears to be an ontological stage (a structure that emerges at a particular level of consciousness rather than a fundamental feature of reality) — useful, yes, but limited. It functions a bit like fear: a survival-era adaptation that helps coordinate large groups of frightened, reactive beings. As individuals and cultures become more conscious, both fear and morality lose some of their utility. Not because they were wrong, but because they were provisional.

As we enlighten ourselves, our society, our culture, morality becomes less and less useful. In the scenario above where Sam is back in time as king, he would want to enroll his subjects into his idea(s), and he wouldn’t succeed through moral argument alone.

What does enrollment in this context look like? A good heuristic is: “What does it look like to love your children into being capable, compassionate adults?”

Does punishment work?

Does righteousness work?

Does strictness work?

How about curiosity, and compassion, and sharing the impact and outcomes? What if your ontology, that is to say who you were being moment to moment, was one of love such that the space that unfolds is immediately recognizable by your subject, child, friend, or neighbor as ‘preferred’? It’s the parent (or friend, or neighbor) whose presence radiates such clarity and care that the space around them feels like an invitation to grow. Their influence comes not from moral force but from ontological force — from who they are being moment to moment.

That, to me, is the next step beyond the moral landscape.
Morality as a developmental stage; love as an ontological orientation.

One might argue that this orientation is a moral guide in-of itself. It remains to be seen. Do you see love as a moral guide? I’m not sure that I do. Who I get to be each moment can be generated with intentionality, and we lose access to the purest form of Being when thinking about what that ‘should’ look like.

I invite you to try on this idea. A paradigm in which all members of your communities approach each moment of their life with love. Love expressed in the ‘justice’ of their neighbors, expressed in the political norms, expressed in the design of their buildings, machines, and even their AI.

Please go watch Sam’s and Alex’s video if you haven’t already.

Finally, forgive the click-bait subtitle, though it makes a point. Our culture (and especially our politics) has grown so steeped in righteousness that even subtle, gradient ideas are forced into binary boxes. Maybe the first step toward dissolving all that is simply noticing it.