system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Sam Harris's program to give ethics an axiomatic foundation is, according to his particular formulation, logically incoherent.

This one is quite simple, and I'm sure that the details can be worked out through discussion. Harris asks us to assume that wellbeing is to be axiomatically regarded as the foundation for our ethical system, that is, the domain of inquiry that includes working out what the aim of an ethical system ought to be.

But this is logically incoherent: every field that concerns itself with a particular domain of inquiry cannot adopt what would be *conclusions* within that domain of inquiry as axioms. For example, in the field of engineering, you can assume that it's good for an engineer to have low cholestorol but not that he ought to build a particular bridge of a particular thickness with a particular material.

On the other hand, within the domain of medicine, it is fine to assume that building such a bridge is the aim but *not* that the engineer should have low cholestorol, because whether or not having low cholestorol is a good thing is a conclusion within the science of medicine.

In the same way, to identify that *wellbeing* is the ethical goal we should strive for is not appropriate as an *axiom* for ethics, as determining what ethical goal we should strive for can only be a *conclusion* for ethics, as that is one of the points on which ethics is designed to seek a conclusion.

Thoughts?
gpt
I can't comment on the microscopic details of Harris's meta-ethics, but it seems to me like you've got it wrong slightly. The importance of well-being in Harris's account is not axiomatic, but rather definitional. Harris is not saying, "Surely everyone can see that well-being is the road to the Good," but rather that the Good can only possibly be understood as well-being, i.e. that what we mean when we say "good" is actually "promotes well-being".