I had another short discussion with someone on Reddit, who was claiming that philosophical concepts that are true can be defensible with science. His example, of course, was morality and he was trying to use Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape as his defense.

Sorry, I disagree entirely with Harris. We got into it. As is no surprise, after a dozen or so exchanges, he just ran away. What else is new?

The whole thing started off when he started parroting the “wellbeing” line. I asked him “wellbeing according to who?” He had no answers to that. The problem, of course, is that there is no single definition of what wellbeing is. It depends entirely on who you ask. You are never going to get a consensus on what is meant by the term and without that, the whole thing becomes pointless.

If you ask a fanatical Muslim, their definition of “wellbeing” is going to include requiring everyone to be a Muslim. If you ask a fundamentalist Christian, they’re going to assert that you have to be a Christian. Their brand of Christian. Those two people are never going to agree. If you ask a murderer, their idea of “wellbeing” is going to include their ability to murder people. If you ask a racist, they are only going to apply wellbeing to certain groups of people. If you ask a hardcore feminist, they’re only going to want wellbeing for a certain gender. You are never going to get all of these people to come to the table with the same opinion.

Because that’s what it all is. It’s all opinion. I’ve talked about this plenty when it comes to Matt Dillahunty, but it’s commonplace. What these people really mean, when they say “wellbeing is objective” is that they’re only listening to people who share their views. They don’t care about anyone else. They are only looking for confirmation and that is anything but objective.

The problem here is that they’re trying to get from an “ought” to an “is” and that never works. It also means that science can never support their claims because science doesn’t work in “ought”, only in “is”. Something is either true or not true and the only way to make that determination is to provide evidence to support it. Science never really proves anything is true, it only fails to falsify it, which makes it even more of a mess.

That’s the issue with people who are looking for an objective moral landscape. They don’t understand just how much of a mess their ideological outlook actually is.

This went around and around a couple of times. He’d make an assertion, I’d point out that it was just an assertion and he’d get mad. He’d claim that it was self-evidently true and I pointed out that it was anything but. He spent all of his time in an echo chamber, just like the religious do, and the second that he steps out of it, he just assumes that everyone is just like he is and he’s wrong. Now, out in the real world, you have to be able to back it up with more than just your say-so. Go ahead.

Sadly, they never, ever can. This happens a lot. I have to point out that a lot of things that philosophy fanboys say is mere assertion. It works in their echo chambers, but out in the real world, not so much. The second they run into someone who doesn’t take it on blind faith like they do, it all falls apart. Then they just head for the hills because they can’t justify it to someone outside of their club.

That ought to say a lot of unflattering things about their beliefs, but they simply can’t accept it. It’s why most conversations are just aborted. They can’t ask themselves the hard questions. What else is new?