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The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
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Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 6 hours and 48 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Audible.com Release Date: October 5, 2010
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
ASIN: B0045XWQ32
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Sam Harris specious arguments against Catholicism should be obvious to anyone well-versed in Catholic theology. All the issues he mentions are greatly opposed by the Church and have always been so. You do not judge a religion by those that fail to practice it. Those that do not believe in God could very well be moral, but have no real logical reason to adhere to any moral code. This book does not change the fundamental argument.
Sam Harris, you are not a philosopher, so stop calling yourself one. You have no advanced degree in academic philosophy. You are merely a petty ideologue, talking head, and writer of popular books on subjects of which you have proven yourself unable to speak credibly, not a philosopher. The crux of your "Moral Landscape" is, in fact, a highly derivative retread of the same tired schtick uttered by 19th century positivists, in adherence to a set of philosophical premises that have never held under close scrutiny, and which has suffered withering critique at the hands of such noted and influential academic philosophers as G.E. Moore, among others. Real philosophers don't simply ignore the work of their predecessors, especially when doing so entails a complete failure to interact credibly with the strongest arguments against one's central thesis. The only thing you've succeeded in proving, Mr. Harris, is that a PhD in neuroscience qualifies one to speak as an authority in the field of philosophy about as much as a B.A. in hotel and restaurant management.
The conceptual incommensurability and ostensibly interminable debates over moral issues is a primary concern for author and neuroscientist Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Our Values. Harris finds the principal fault to lie in the erroneous conclusion by secular liberals that such interminability and indeterminateness in the moral sphere are objective facets of the world that therefore does not admit of objective judgments. That is to say, Harris rejects the notion that terms like `good' and `bad' are simply the linguistic veils covering subjective (and arbitrary) personal preferences (desires) and that since preferences cannot be said to be true or false, morality as such does not exist--there is no finis ultimus or summum bonum. While factual statements may be stated concerning the content of judgments, it is concluded by such liberals that facts cannot weigh in on the value of that content. According to Harris, the ostensibly intractable disputes over moral judgments of right and wrong have led people to relativist conclusions--to think that no answers in practice means no answers in principle. Such thinking is, notes Harris, a "great source of moral confusion" (3). This conclusion is furthermore the result of a fallacious distinction between facts and values. It is not that we have no common conceptions of the good or that we do not have universally shared values (we do, Harris asserts), but rather it is because of an artificial and destructive distinction between facts and values that leaves us in a "disastrous situation" whereby otherwise intelligent people are labeled intolerant should they choose to pronounce on the immorality of a particular culture, tradition, or behavior. As a consequence of such a distinction science has generally been considered to be absolutely and necessarily divorced from the realm of values, which is understood to fall instead under the domain of religion. Scientific opinion has therefore been excluded from this domain and for many of its practitioners this seems logical, as they understand their work to be addressing descriptions of the world and not valuations of it. To illustrate his point in the opening chapter of his book Harris gives the example of an Albanian custom of vendetta involving sanctioned retaliatory killing whereby a murder victim's family can kill any male relative of the perpetrator. Harris asks the question of whether or not such a tradition is wrong, evil, or inferior to our own structures of justice. He then poses the further question: "How could we ever say, as a matter of scientific fact, that one way of life is better, or more moral, than another?" (1). The common perception is that how people live their lives and, consequently, what they consider moral or immoral, is conditioned culturally. Cultural relativism has thus combined with emotivism preventing any judgments at all on the morals of other traditions and cultures--most of all scientific judgments. Harris notes that "Secular liberals...tend to imagine that no objective answers to moral questions exist....Multiculturalism, moral relativism, political correctness, tolerance even of intolerance--these are the familiar consequences of separating facts and values on the left."(5). Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that morals come out of a "whirlwind" and liberals, having no objective standards, end up surrendering to conservative values with both hands. The permitting of such things as religiously motivated mutilation of body parts, suppression of women's rights, etc. are allowed to continue in the name of civility and tolerance but always with the philosophical presupposition of relativism. According to Harris, this is "what happens when educated liberals think there is no universal foundation for human values"(46). Harris, quite contrarily, rejects the relativism of his liberal colleagues and posits that there are true answers to moral questions--and that science can guide us to such answers.That science can and should render judgments on such matters is the purpose of Harris' book. According to Harris, values are really just facts that pertain to human well-being and all that we know and can know about human well-being can be subjected to scientific scrutiny and encompassed by scientific knowledge. Questions that people normally associate with `value' like meaning, morality, and life's larger purposes "are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures" (1). Indeed, Harris asserts that "facts...exhaust what we can reasonably mean by terms like `good' and `evil'"(4). Furthermore, since Harris' expertise is in neuroscience, he suggests that human well-being relates preeminently both to behaviors (generated by the mind) and their consequent effects on others (as experienced in the mind). The mind, however, falls under physical descriptions of the brain that consists in empirical facts. Well-being, then, falls under the purview of science. The explanatory force of facts, therefore, for Harris, go all the way down to the neuronal level and reverberate into the moral sphere. Rejecting both metaphysical sources of values (which Harris associates primarily with religious conceptions) and emotivist/relativist conclusions regarding values (which Harris associates with evolutionary accounts and secular liberal accounts), Harris states that his purpose is to persuade readers that both approaches are wrong. Instead, Harris posits that science offers an alternative approach that avoids the pitfalls of the two others and helps "cut a third path through this wilderness"(46).What a promising enterprise--but it is one which Harris fails to execute all the way through. The subtitle of Harris' book, as noted above, "how science can determine human values" should drop the "how" because the assertion never really progresses to anything more than that. That's not even to say that Harris is incorrect in his assertion; he just doesn't put in the work to show how the descriptive accounts move to prescriptive accounts (how we actually can move from an "is" description of events/data to the "ought" in a moral obligatory injunction). In the end he asserts that his argument "is an argument made on first principles. As such it doesn't rest on any specific empirical results" (189). Unless we share Harris' presuppositions, then, we are bound to fail to understand and agree with his point--and that is a large part of his point. That is, for those who don't share his self-evident starting point that science is the 'only' source for moral determinations and prescriptions, we have already erred; in fact, it seems likely that there might be something chemically askew in our brains for not beginning with the first principles that he does. I'm no neuroscientist and he is, but there just seems to be something circular about that argument.In the end, Harris relies very much on common sense notions and "intuition." As one philosopher has put it, "something has gone wrong with our arguments when we make appeals to intuitions." This is a slap in the face of the reader of an author who is supposedly writing as a scientist to show why and how science can be a foundation for morality. Rather than do this Harris starts from the presupposition that science (in the language of universal rational thought) is the foundation of morality. In other words, there is no argument. You either accept his premise or you don't. If you accept the rules of the game he is playing, then the moral moves Harris suggests will "work"; if you don't, they won't. But the game Harris is playing isn't new. It dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries (really, much further) and leads us inevitably to the same morally insurmountable disputes of today. Harris adds nothing but a rehashed exposition of tried and failed moral foundations littered with neuroscientific jargon.A Matter of Evolution? As far as evolutionary accounts go (i.e. the evolutionary development of morals), such an account (descriptive of how morals came to be) cannot be and often is not conducive to the morals we 'should' now accept (this is Harris' argument, not mine) at our current stage of evolution. Harris takes a pretty strong stand on this point as a strategy to fend off biological and sociological relativism. In the very outset he asserts that those who lack faith in a metaphysical source for good and evil "tend to think that notions of `good' and `evil' must be the products of evolutionary pressure and cultural invention" and Harris asserts that those people are wrong in thinking this (Harris, 2). If the descriptive account of how morals came to be are not enough to formulate "oughts" and, in many cases, actually need to be changed from how something "is," all that is left are the brain states of happy-go-luck people. Fortunately (or not), that brings the reader back to Harris' expertise: neuroscience. However, as he points out a number of times, the science itself is in its infancy. Nevertheless, Harris is optimistic enough to suppose that human morality is simpler than, say, meteorology. I don't think anyone would disagree (now at least), that weather patterns can be explained in terms of physical phenomena, but that does not allow us predict with certitude and the degree of certainty decreases as the time span increases. I suspect neurophysiology and the brain states of billions of people might prove problematic both in description and in prescription. Of course, Harris is quick to concede this point...to a point. Harris repeatedly notes that "mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a great source of moral confusion." This is actually a good point, but it is one Harris only allows for his own point of view and his own "first principles." That is, Harris is a little hypocritical when it comes to religion and this standard: that religion cannot produce answers in practice--to meet his standards, is, in fact, warrant for believing that their are no answers in principle when approached from a religious perspective. If this is true, which could be argued, Harris makes no attempt to do so. Harris' point is that just because he (or science) does not have the answers to specific moral questions (I kept waiting for one to appear with the application of his philosophical thesis concerning science determining human values), does not mean such answers are not out there. Harris leaves us with no argument, but only a promissory note that, well, we have to take on "faith."But there surely are answers out there. Harris is right about this and on this point I think people would in fact agree with him. What is interesting is that Harris repeatedly alludes to those who don't think there are "true" answers to moral questions (in fact, I heard him say this to Jon Stewart in an interview). I've met 'very' few of such people and my list of friends encompasses both atheists and those professing religious beliefs. Harris says, "But few people seem to recognize the dangers posed by thinking that there are no true answers to moral questions." To use Harris' own argument, just because moral disagreement exist, however, does not mean people think that all truth is subjective.A Distinction that Remains? Harris never resolves the is/ought problem other than asserting that there is no problem because only science can lead to knowledge and since knowledge pertains to facts which correspond to data as perceived by the senses, science must be able to tell us what we should do. This isn't new. It's not original or even sophisticated--and it's not even certain David Hume (who famously pondered the is/ought distinction) himself thought an ought could not be derived from an is, but rather that people do it all the time without taking the necessary steps in between to ensure the reasonableness of the conclusions drawn. Overall, Harris' book struck me as sort of a synthesis of Thomas Hobbes (sort of a "state of nature" that we should opt out of lest "every man be against every man" as well as the "instrumental" or relative value of persons), Baruch Spinoza (Hobbes' "commodious living" is not enough but rather humans should thrive as Spinoza said"), and Immanuel Kant (there are objective moral truths that transcend culture--with the reminder that Kant's philosophy was really based on consequences--something, by the way, that is fairly obvious) with a heavy dose of neuroscientific jargon. I have no doubt that Harris is good in his field, an expert even, and hopefully he will be able to contribute and even contribute in ways that will be valuable to our moral dilemmas. However, a BA in philosophy and a Ph.D. in neuroscience does not make one a philosopher. The philosophical elements of this book are no more advanced than the term paper of 1st year freshmen in Philosophy 101 could produce and the overarching criticisms of religion were much better articulated by Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche, et al. who did without the emotionally driven oversimplifications (his understanding of transubstantiation), selective history (1000 years of child rape by the Church--Harris certainly has not evolved beyond painting caricatures and stereotypes of the Church), and mischaracterizations of people who hold religious beliefs (much like Dawkins and Hitchens, Harris sets up a definition of faith so as by definition anyone claiming it are ignorant even in the face of evidence). In any case, criticisms of and even the utter failures by one's perceived opponent do not prove one's own argument--even by Harris' standards (indeed, it is a tenet of this book that such is the case). Unfortunately, the delusional quality Harris ascribes to religiosity and intractable debate over morals is precisely what constitutes the bulk of Harris' argument. For Harris, to think scientifically precludes religious belief; in fact, it demands such exclusion. For Harris (as for the other so-called "New Atheists"), the presupposition of science is atheism and as well its logical conclusion. Harris is hopeful we will see this or, at some point, be given the drugs that can help us see this.Finally, the entire book is premised on the fact that human well-being corresponds to physical states of the brain (i.e. facts) and thus a science of morality is possible and needed--and all this centers around the term 'well-being' and human "flourishing." This is certainly nothing new and, not surprisingly, most theology and religions (as Harris admits) have come to the same conclusions regarding the importance of human well-being. Despite his portrayal to the contrary, much of the dignity of the human person stems from doctrines of the Church concerning the inherent value of the person--including the very emphasis on using the term 'person' (on this last point, Harris would disagree as the persons are of relative worth depending on their relative talents, IQs, ability to contribute to society, etc. and in this regard he would fit in with Thomas Hobbes--who, by the way, was a proponent of totalitarianism, which for Hobbes, was the most reliable way to promote the happiness of everyone--read his Leviathan). Well-being is a notoriously difficult term to pin down, however, and it was not until the very last few pages that Harris broached the topic of flourishing and well-being. At that point it was only to say that we do not know much about well-being and that the science of well-being is in its infancy. To be sure, advances and conclusions regarding what constitutes the good life and what is worth pursuing will be scientifically forthcoming. Again, we are left not with "how science can determine our values" but instead with a promissory note that science can determine our values based on well-being, which Harris can't quite define. It is important to remember that Harris' entire book is based on a concept which he cannot precisely define and which he (we) admittedly know little about. The only argument is that we all "really" know what well-being is, even if it can't be defined right now. That might be true, but it is by no means a scientific statement or a payoff on "how science can determine our values." Harris' book is really about how our values can determine the application of science. Where do we get our values? From the looks of it, western liberal ideals of freedom and social justice, which, is convenient for Harris since he already has those ideals. Many other parts of the world must be converted.While science surely has valuable insights into human nature and should be used in guiding practical reasoning, waiting for the utopia Harris envisions would, well, from Harris' point of view, be much like waiting for the return of Christ. Many have set dates and those dates have come and gone and with each failure comes a corresponding rationalization. From this perspective, the moral landscape looks less like valleys and peaks and more like quick sand.
We can fantasize about "maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures" (have you become a Vegan yet?) or we can "maximize human flourishing" (whatever that is ... McMansions?). But this moral landscape is a woolly, unproductive metaphor. He basically seems to have taken the "Climbing Mount Improbable" idea and flung it like so much pizza dough at morality. There isn't an agreeable way to define the peaks, much less calculate, compare, or traverse them. The author consistently points to situations of near-universal agreement "Nazis were wrong", and leaves it to our imaginations to infer that there is an optimum course of action.Harris wants his consequentialism to be propped up by science. But, as he admits, most scientists don't think his project is science. And, as he has referenced Paul Slovic's work - that moral intuition doesn't scale with number - he should understand that our morality isn't suited to the general maximization of well-being for conscious creatures. Instead, Dr. Harris actually called this aspect of our moral intuition a bug, not a feature! How good of him to choose what is and is not moral for us. He rejects the "is" of morality as it exists observationally (i.e. actual science) and replaces it with his preferential "ought" - and that is neither good science nor good philosophy. With degrees in each, he should know better.His whole approach seems philosophical in nature, and yet (as far as I can tell), he has completely skipped serious philosophical participation. Just as creationists and IDers want to skip actual science and the peer review process to "teach the controversy" to gullible high school kids; Harris wants to skip peer-reviewed science and philosophy and sell books to wannabe intellectuals, newly-minted atheists, and hopeful moral realists. Did you catch that?? Atheists, myself included, unanimously say that intelligent design advocates should prove that their endeavor is scientific and should make their progress through peer-reviewed journals. Where is the analagous peer-reviewed literature from Sam Harris?So that's what I don't like, but there are a couple of things I do like. First, his work suggests that the moral realist should "put up or shut up". Sadly, I don't think either outcome will transpire, but it's a nice thought. And secondly, Dr. Harris doesn't seem overly obsessed with religion when it comes to this topic. (Nothing is sadder than the atheist who squanders the rest of his days learning about, arguing against, and spitting towards that which he has gained freedom from. Fly away and be free, for Christ's sake!!) Yes, that was merely a parenthetical remark. :)My suggestion: Go to YouTube and watch two hours of free videos featuring Dr. Harris presenting and defending his ideas for "A New Science of Morality". Armed with this information, and with the salient points of both favorable and unfavorable reviews, you will make an informed decision.(note: I did not subtract a star for the excessive price of the Kindle version)
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