So many of the objections to Sam Harris's proposal that science can
have answers to moral questions remind me of the line from
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where representatives of the
Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other
Thinking Persons demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and
uncertainty. (http://hitch14.tripod.com/chapter_25.htm) What
philosophers (and the religious) often resist is not scientific
advancement, but encroachment. (Scientists, by and large, either
object based on their training or because they don't want the
responsibility inherent in moral statements.)

Philosophy may suffer from the same "reality problem" (my term) that
Massimo Pigliucci asserts mathematics, that its statements may be
"objectively true" without constituting "empirical facts."

The problem with this isn't that philosophy can't make statements
about the real world because of its place relative to this divide, but
the assertion of its privilege to bridge the gap in one direction
while denying science the ability to do it in reverse. This strikes me
as very similar to the common refrain of the religious that science
can't make statements about the truth or falsehood of religious
assertions while making statements about the truth or falsehood of
scientific statements. Of course, we should all be very, very used to
religion allowing itself special privileges; that its close cousin
philosophy might do the same is unsurprising.

All that aside, one has to wonder if some of scientists' reluctance to
admit moral influence comes from its history and the unfortunate
results of some practitioners' (and proto-practitioners') hubris, not
to mention the misuse of science by some as justification for terrible
injustices. The rise of science didn't (and still hasn't, sadly) mean
the end of hate, irrationality, injustice or want, though you can
hardly fault enthusiasts' extrapolation from the increase in knowledge
to a bright and shining future. Nor can you really fault skeptics' and
deniers' (and those are very different groups) extrapolation in the
other direction. Both are very human acts, if unrealistic.

As is this reaction to Harris's contention that there might be
scientific answers to moral questions.

I find the assertion that science (or empirical fact) can't answer
moral questions just as ludicrous as an assertion that science can
answer all moral questions (which I don't see Harris making). That
there will be insoluble problems and that there will be conditional
answers should be taken for granted, as their absence would be
unprecedented; that it could either have widespread or little
applicability are certainly possibilities to be entertained.

Pigliucci's question of whether Harris would accept a scientific
answer in favor of corporal punishment (or female subjugation) is moot
and a mirror of his misrepresentation of Harris's contention that
moral relativism is the default position of many a Western
intellectual. On the first, Harris's acceptance or denial of such a
result would not impact its scientific basis at all, nor would anyone
else's; if the United Nations tomorrow adopted a resolution stating
that the sun revolves around the earth wouldn't make it so, and one
man's rejection of an answer produced by a method he endorses says
nothing about that method. And it says nothing about the applicability
of the method; it merely accuses the proponent of being a potential
hypocrite.

On the second, we have to realize that there is a significant
difference between personal reactions and intellectual stances. To
condemn human sacrifice as inherently immoral in an anthropology
thesis would probably be a pretty good way to postpone your doctorate
indefinitely, whether or not your adviser was personally repulsed by
such activities, unless you followed the dictates of academia and
removed that line; to assert that the universe was created in six days
six-thousand-and-change years ago ought to be a good way to fail any
cosmology test in existence. The main difference between the two is
that the second is a "scientific" question, while the first is
"moral".

Finally, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) fear that society will
mindlessly follow whatever science or its proponents dictate is
possibly one of the most unjustified things I've ever seen. It's
similar to the "rational actor" fiction that has made so many theories
of human thoughts and actions so laughably incorrect. We act
rationally right up to the point where the forces that produce
irrational behavior become stronger than the reason-promoting ones.
That much of our actions are rational or irrational but not survival
limiting is merely a reflection of the evolutionary fitness of these
actions for enough people that our species can survive, and we should
not lose sight of the fact that those same behaviors could spell our
doom if conditions change and they become deleterious. As they may
very well already be.