How Science Can Determine Human Values - The Moral Landscape

Sam Harris has a very no-nonsense way of writing. When he has a point to make, he does so with very little repetition, while still making sure it is easily comprehensible. Also, this book has expanded my vocabulary as he uses very powerful, yet uncommon, words rather frequently.

As far as the meat of the book is concerned, Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, puts forth his basis for morality and the reasons to support it. His opinion can be summed up, in his own words, as "Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds--and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe."

TL;DR What you can expect in this book:

-An intellectually engaging text sure to refine (if not redefine) your conception of morals.
-Heavy use of citations. (Sam Harris cites many, many sources through the course of the text, making up about a third of the book in total. This is NOT simply a citation but Harris filling in details and even tackling similarly-related tangents. Do not think of these as "wasted" space; they are, in fact, a bonus. Having read this on a kindle, going back and forth between these citations and the main text again and again was not difficult; however, if reading the paperback version I could see how this could greatly slow down the pace at which you read this book. The citations themselves range from just one line, to pages in and of themselves).
-A knowledgeable and intelligent author, keen to respond to noteworthy criticisms of his work.
-A good chunk of one of Harris' other works: Free Will. (An even shorter book than this).

What you won't find in this book:

-Beating around the bush, as it were; Sam Harris goes for the jugular right away. (The entire text is about 300 pages I believe. As I read this on the kindle, be wary of the accuracy of this number, as well as factor in the amount of material the citations take up.)
-A moral philosophy you've heard before (It is, as I understand it, rather novel in its approach. I am confident that, even if you don't agree with it, it will be well worth the read in its capacity to challenge what you already know and stimulate further thought and discussion.)

Harris's basic premise is that a universal morality can and should be constructed based on the science of what we know contributes to the well being of others. This seems to be an argument for compassion as the central tenet for how we conduct ourselves. In spite of Harris' disdain for religion, religion has been central to the enterprise of getting normal humans to behave more compassionately.

The problem with constructing moral values is that many people of good will (as well as people of downright evil will) do not all agree on values. Conservatives naturally feel that we would all enhance our well being more by venturing less and conserving tradition. Liberals see life differently. Can science save us by telling us the "truth" about how to achieve well being? I am skeptical. We know that diet and exercise contribute to well being. Should we criminalize sedentary behavior? Should drinking a quart of Coke be a misdemeanor? I know this isn't what Sam Harris had in mind but it's what comes to my mind after reading his book.

I love many ideas in this book. I'd rather talk about the Gross National Happiness than the Gross Domestic Product as the basis for policy making. I believe that compassion is the most important quality of public leadership. But I can't follow Sam Harris into his thicket.

Sam Harris can be searing and compassionate at the same time, and I have to admit that The End of Faith shook me from a comfortable, hopeful agnosticism. So, I eagerly awaited The Moral Landscape. I've read quite a lot about altruism in the meantime, and the foundations of "moral" behavior. I hoped to shift my thinking again into a higher gear. While I wasn't disappointed in The Moral Landscape, and agreed with most of its arguments, I was not as moved as I had hoped to be.

The chapter on religion is low hanging fruit for Harris, and at other times I suspected I was watching him set up and knock down a series of straw dogs. Maybe it is because I mostly agree with his perspective. His core argument is that there is a scientific basis for morality, that there are clear shades of rightness and wrongness which can inform and improve human behavior, and that science has a lot to contribute to the defining of moral ground. There is not a separate "scientific realm" and "religious/moral realm," as many (probably most) would argue. I'm convinced Harris is right. Cultural relativists bend over backward to avoid upsetting others when they could be -- should be -- more critical and proactive. These points were driven home nicely.

He rebuts several scholars who - like Harris himself - have shared their work succinctly on TED.com. In particular Daniel Kahneman, who distinguishes between two measures of well being: (1) present experience and (2) memories (Harris points out that memories are experienced in the present) and Jonathan Haidt, who claims moral conservatives have broader sets of values than liberals (Harris says those categories are misleading). Hey I liked those guys! He is often not reserved in his criticism of others. Neurologist and scholar Robert Burton takes a whack (Burton thinks religion is built into our psyche), and Francis Collins, Obama's director of the National Institutes of Health, is simply shredded for his shockingly naive (and published) religious beliefs. Granted, deserved.

Much of this comes down to a rail against religious apologists and against well intentioned people who like to look the other way to avoid conflict. But after all the dogs were down, his argument stopped short of being very practical. To point - if the moral landscape has multiple peaks, and people pull toward *different peaks, might we not end up in a trough anyway? Policies like mutual deterrence, which can stave off violence in the short run, don't fit neatly into this model. And the measurement of well-being itself is so problematic that it may have to remain strictly hypothetical. For example, should *total well being, or *average well being be the objective goal? And are we concerned for humans only? And should everyone's well being be weighted equally or rather by age or (shudder) by station?

These issues don't escape Harris - he works them. But he seems to conclude too often that "we may never be able to answer this question with absolute precision. It seems quite clear, however, that questions like this have answers." Agreed. And while there are a few obvious conclusions to be drawn, I closed the book wanting more. I look forward to more. We really need more. I hope he writes another.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris

The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values. 70

I value the human capacity for induction to create knowledge. As Hume put it there is no causality; only "constant concomitance". There is no absolute fact, only opinion and attitudes and emotions and uncertain knowledge. This is a basic limitation of the scientific method and its greatest strength. And it applies equally to the world of values and morality. As Sam Harris so fluently exposes in this solid book, values cannot be separated from facts, and both are the happy products of science.

As the Greek rhetoricians used to say, " The only measure of mankind is mankind itself." We are the standard for the facts of science and of morality, and so understanding and advancing psychology should be a primary goal of all societies. Harris, instead of asking the Socratic question about what is the good life, asks about human well-being. There is not much difference, but science has given us much more food for thought than Aristotle ever had, and especially in the scientific field of psychology, there is much new understanding that impinges on our insights into the morality of human well-being. Harris provides a thoroughgoing synopsis of this new knowledge and it is the fundament for his thesis that a science of morality is not only possible but urgently needed to improve the general lot of mankind. He makes a convincing case. In fact, as an experimental psychologist, I agree with him completely throughout this book. Never have I read as lucid an account of the many twists and turns in people's rejection of a scientific approach to morality, and while his arguments are not always thoroughly convincing they are clear and analytic and unblurred by dogma. What can one ask more of a scientist? Nowhere does he make his case more clearly than his attack on the fundamentalist and religionist Francis Collins, who has a vision and religious conversion experience when he encounters a mystical frozen waterfall divided into a triune deity. The superstition of religion is a clear antagonist of science, and this conflict cannot be restrained without basic inconsistencies of reasoning.
Here is our situation: if the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous;455
For instance, the moral stigma that still surrounds disorders of mood and cognition seems largely the result of viewing the mind as distinct from the brain.1853
The fact that religious belief is both a cultural universal and appears to be tethered to the genome has led scientists like Burton to conclude that there is simply no getting rid of faith-based thinking.2154
Historically, a preoccupation with witchcraft has been a cultural universal. And yet belief in magic is now in disrepute almost everywhere in the developed world.2165
What is surprising, from a scientific point of view, is that 42 percent of Americans believe that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of the world, and another 21 percent believe that while life may have evolved, its evolution has been guided by the hand of God (only 26 percent believe in evolution through natural selection).2502

I am not suggesting that we are guaranteed to resolve every moral controversy through science. Differences of opinion will remain--but opinions will be increasingly constrained by facts.82
To say that the behavior of Muslim jihadists has nothing to do with their religious beliefs is like saying that honor killings have nothing to do with what their perpetrators believe about women, sexuality, and male honor.2630

If there are objective truths to be known about human well-being--if kindness, for instance, is generally more conducive to happiness than cruelty is--then science should one day be able to make very precise claims about which of our behaviors and uses of attention are morally good, which are neutral, and which are worth abandoning. While it is too early180
It is possible to be wrong and to not know it (we call this "ignorance").2961
It is possible to be wrong and to know it, but to be reluctant to incur the social cost of admitting this publicly (we call this "hypocrisy").2961

And it may also be possible to be wrong, to dimly glimpse this fact, but to allow the fear of being wrong to increase one's commitment to one's erroneous beliefs (we call this "self-deception"). It seems clear that these frames of mind do an unusual amount of work in the service of religion.2962

Similarly, anyone truly interested in morality--in the principles of behavior that allow people to flourish--should be open to new evidence and new arguments that bear upon questions of happiness and suffering.412
There may be nothing more important than human cooperation. Whenever more pressing concerns seem to arise--like the threat of a deadly pandemic, an asteroid impact, or some other global catastrophe--human cooperation is the only remedy (if a remedy exists). Cooperation is the stuff of which meaningful human lives and viable societies are made. Consequently, few topics will be more relevant to a maturing science of human well-being.920
Students of philosophy will notice that this commits me to some form of moral realism (viz. moral claims can really be true or false) and some form of consequentialism (viz. the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures).1036
Tomasello has found that even twelve-month old children will follow a person's gaze, while chimpanzees tend to be interested only in head movements. He suggests that our unique sensitivity to gaze direction facilitated human cooperation and language development.959
It is not by accident that our most widely accepted moral phrase is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you ..." because our most essential intellectual competence is understanding others; whether through communication or modeling others' minds and awareness, later elaborated into the study of psychology. Edit
Moral view A is truer than moral view B, if A entails a more accurate understanding of the connections between human thoughts/intentions/behavior and human well-being.1081
The one crucial exception, however, is that psychopaths are often unable to recognize expressions of fear and sadness in others, And this may be the difference that makes all the difference.1660
Blair points out, parenting strategies that increase empathy tend to successfully mitigate antisocial behavior in healthy children;1668
Territorial violence might have even been necessary for the development of altruism. The economist Samuel Bowles has argued that lethal, "out-group" hostility and "in-group" altruism are two sides of the same coin.1701
Sometimes our knowledge of psychology conflicts with itself, as in our undertstanding of revenge and compassion, and a resolution needs to be worked out:" the tragic experience of his late father-in-law, who had the opportunity to kill the man who murdered his family during the Holocaust but opted instead to turn him over to the police. After spending only a year in jail, the killer was released, and Diamond's father-in-law spent the last sixty years of his life "tormented by regret and guilt." While there is much to be said against the vendetta culture of the New Guinea Highlands, it is clear that the practice of taking vengeance answers to a common psychological need".1860
In fact, mathematical belief (e.g., "2 + 6 + 8 = 16") showed a similar pattern of activity to ethical belief (e.g., "It is good to let your children know that you love them"), and these were perhaps the most dissimilar sets of stimuli used in our experiment. This suggests that the physiology of belief may be the same regardless of a proposition's content. It also suggests that the division between facts and values does not make much sense in terms of underlying brain function. 2032
And we can traverse the boundary between facts and values in other ways. As we are about to see, the norms of reasoning seem to apply equally to beliefs about facts and to beliefs about values. In both spheres, evidence of inconsistency and bias is always unflattering. Similarities of this kind suggest that there is a deep analogy, if not identity, between the two domains.2043
Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds--and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, of course, fully constrained by the laws of Nature (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.3259

dissecting the need to have morals based in religion versus the behavior having come about as a natural and science based matter of course. Compelling, eye-opening, and courageous foray into areas few have traveled.

I spent a pleasant afternoon yesterday with "The Moral Landscape," by Sam Harris, which develops a useful explanation of the role of Science in analyzing Morality - and especially in illuminating the possibility of deriving moral/ethical principles without requiring that they be based on ancient traditions. Harris seems to have considerable expertise in analysis of brain function, which helps him explain physical confirmation of principles of behavior for humans and other "conscious" beings.
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I have long believed that morality can be described "objectively," but that such a description depends on context and is most useful in the broadest possible context of time, space, and population. But such an approach becomes quite abstract - although easy enough to understand, perhaps, by a physicist or chemist who is comfortable with quantum theory or by a mathematician who knows how to prove that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter cannot be expressed as a quotient of integers.
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I have encouraged my grandchildren, when solving "word problems" in elementary school arithmetic, to draw a picture (on paper, or at least mentally) of what the words are describing. The same methodology might be necessary for persons who are NOT "nuclear scientists" to understand morality, by creating an image of the abstraction. (Would we dare call such a methodology "idol worship"? Is it OK, so long as we stick to a single image?)
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If so, perhaps "God" is a useful concept on which to pin abstract concepts of morality. "Ancient traditions" teach us that humans are at the peak of the hierarchy of conscious beings, so "God" might need to have all the best attributes of humans, plus a few more that help "him" perform feats such as answering the prayers of a few billion people at the same time, even when individual prayers seem mutually incompatible.

The notion that morals cannot be determined by facts, proposed centuries ago by philosophical luminaries such as David Hume and E. G. Moore, is greatly challenged in Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape. Harris believes that what constitutes something being ethically "good" or "bad" can be shown through a harmonious combination of scientific evidence and simple rationality. His book thus follows a rhetoric of defining common psychological phenomena such as "belief" and "well-being" coupled with many examples of how subjective perception of these phenomena leads to objectively immoral decisions. Being a neuroscientist and well-known critic of religion, Harris speaks of morality as a frontier of science not up for religious or philosophical debate. He provides such great insight into the field of ethics that makes it a mandatory read for any current or aspiring scientist. However, the average reader is warned: Harris frequently slams religion and if you already have an unfavorable opinion on science, you will probably find this book difficult to agree with.

With growing knowledge of the genetic and molecular basis of human behavior, Harris believes that by studying the states of the brain in relation to events in the world, a universal moral compass can be created to follow by all. Differences in gene expression among human beings highly accounts for the differences in our moral intuition and social perception - or at least our natural inclinations of these. However, just as the expression of certain genes can create biological predispositions unwanted by many individuals (tendency for psychopathy, fatal disease, etc.), Harris posits that it is likewise possible to have an undesirable, harmful moral intuition. Thus, morality cannot be treated as a purely subjective topic - there must be undeniable truths in morality.

Harris effectively expresses "truths" and not "truth," specifically, because of what he calls the moral landscape, or the area in which there are multiple high and low points of viewing morality so that a great life can be fulfilled. What every individual wants to achieve in life and what kind of impact they want to leave is undeniably subjective; however, there will always be a right and wrong way to achieve their goal. He demonstrates rational differences between opinions of morality through many examples of torture, rape and suffering, often all in the name of religion. The zealots responsible believe these actions are for the well-being of mankind and produce the greatest happiness possible as promised by their religion; however, Harris cautions blind following of moral reasoning. Poor men and women who are castrated, exiled, who view their children being raped and murdered against their own will surely do not live with the same prosperity and happiness as lives that ensure longevity, wealth and intrinsic personal satisfaction. A sense of morality that leads to the former scenario cannot be the right choice or happier life - it just goes against everyway we think rationally.

Perhaps Harris' largest flaw is his advocation of such rationality. Myself an aspiring neuroscientist in college, I've learned that science just should not be based off of the major differences in intrinsic reasoning found among everyone - science is meant to be a focused, honest approach to the mysteries of life. Human rationality itself is a much debated topic. Throwing that uncertainty into the supposed truth of science is very contradictory. However, Harris points out that it is nigh impossible to neglect all reason and rationality in science. His reasoning for that comes through the "moral landscape": since subjective rationality can reflect individuals' personalities, we should acknowledge it to understand the unique ways individuals can achieve a moral life. If an individual cannot listen to their own feelings at least to some degree, then how can they have an honest, happy life?

Despite it being the biggest flaw in The Moral Landscape to me, I find he handles it quite well because he makes his arguments very agreeable. When he discusses "being right or wrong," he asks if we should be morally able to synthesize and publish a recipe for smallpox to the public. Due to the fact there will always be extremists who want human society to fall, I agree and feel most would agree that that would be immoral to do because many innocent individuals would die from a few individuals' management of a lethal disease. It's just irony that Harris uses rationality to suggest the usefulness of rationality. Future scientific research could show the use of rationality to be absolutely inappropriate in our search for truth, so Harris' opinion can only be tested with time.

However, despite the potential flaw, Harris's really convinces you with his greatest point: what constitutes an individual's well-being and happiness can be proven through neuroscience, as we can see the molecular differences in brain states between unhappy people and happy people. For example, with use of fMRI, we can correlate happiness and quality of life with blood-flow in the brain (in his studies, mainly the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe are relevant). If certain reactions to stimuli depicting an event deemed to reduce an individual's quality of life cause higher brain activity associated with lower happiness, then we become closer to finding the truths of morality. It is easier to detect unhappiness, Harris suggests, than happiness, as the moral landscape has peaks in which every individual has his/her own pinnacle of maximizing moral decisions with subjective well-being. This is because every individual is still slightly unique in what makes them happy. Thus, he argues that morality should be a followed set of answers rather than a personal open-ended question, as we can find how the correct moral sense leads to what human beings intrinsically deem as "the best possible lives."

Along with gene expression and activity in certain brain regions, The Moral Landscape enlightens you on how even evolution plays in determining moral values. Harris posits that we are not evolutionarily adapted for our society - we are not selected to become better government officials or shopkeepers. Thus, as we describe and define moral values with science, he suggests that we must recognize that morality will be impartial to personal thought. For example, Harris describes how individuals who see the life of one disadvantaged individual relevant to charitable organizations are much more likely to donate than if they saw how their donation is necessary for the world at whole. This, he suggests, may represent our selected behavior to care for only a few individuals; while we were not selected to care for the entire world, there is no argument against the entire world needing some form of care. Thus, according to Harris, we must disregard our predisposed beliefs and come to moral conclusions with science.

In all, it is a truly inspirational read - a read that has changed my life and has helped me ground the way I think. The text is engaging and very enjoyable - Harris' memorable analogies are not only mind-stimulating but merit his book a delightful re-read. I will always keep this book in mind as I come across moral warfare in the realm of scientific research.

There are a few problems here.

First: Though he states clearly that "Science can 'determine' moal values: the crux of his moral position has no, and required no scientific investigation to attain. When explaining his position Harris often asks "Why is it that we don't feel any moral obligation toward rocks?" and answers "It's because rocks experience nothing, therefor morality exclusively involves consciousness."

He's right of course, but what scientific investigation or specialized observation did he use to conclude that? None. At least three times during the lecture I watched, Harris used the words "Common sense" which is all that is required when talking about a human moral system that is fact based. Most of us agree that the Taliban society is less good than ours, and no scientific observation is required for us to do so.

Second We ought to, (for example), extend the rights of citizenship and suffrage to all people, not because it's farther away from absolute suffering, but because human beings share a radical equality. Nothing in Harris's continuum of suffering denotes justice, only suffering and elevating suffering. Granted he often evokes the need to promote "human flourishing", but that term is vague, under defined, and seems to belie his position that morality pertains exclusively to suffering.

Third: Harris seems to think that the idea of a secular moral philosophy that is objective, universal and fact based is new. It is in fact very very old. Some of our earliest moral precepts were secular from the stoics to the hedonists to the Aristotelian.

Harris, in my opinion, made one valid point; and that is that, in the modern world (as ever) we do need a secular moral philosophy that is objective, universal and fact based. But as I said, we don't need science to get us there, and science (being utterly non prescriptive), can't get us there.

I'm honestly at a loss as to what Harris's point actually is, other than: "Morality shouldn't be in the domain of religion" (which is true). He starts out saying that morality is movement along a gradient away from absolute suffering, but then evokes "human flourishing" and "human well being" which he scarcely defines.

I have been trying to slog through The Moral Landscape for two weeks now. It is a disappointing journey for someone who so admired The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation. I remember sitting on a plane while reading the first and wanting to shout outloud "Yes!" It blew my mind. What courage, I thought. This man has extraordinary courage.

The second book, while much shorter and not as intellectually stimulating, still garnered my respect. This third book is not the book I hoped he would write. I have been waiting years now for this book. I knew he would be going into neuroscience, and once overhearing his conversation at a table in a restaurant in DC, I found myself smiling, excited to find a kindred soul. But I realize that The Moral Landscape is really about Sam Harris' own journey to find a moral landscape. It seems he has compiled everything he has learned in the last few years in his attempt to do so.

Yet it is ultimately not a satisfying journey. It lacks soul. It lacks the brilliance of The End of Faith. It lacks the combination of humanism and neuroscience that I was hoping he would combine into a thesis of why human beings have brains that can't seem to find peace. Brains that always resort to conflict, argument, dissatisfaction and struggle. He never answers that. With all the research available to him, he never seems to get beyond wondering why people believe what they do. We all wonder that. But it is an intellectual exercise for him, and not one that really reaches into the depths of the human condition and the human heart.

I was hoping for more, but that is my own selfish desire, I suppose. Sam Harris is still, for me, a very courageous man and I will read every book he writes.

I find the book very interesting and instructive, but I remain unconvinced about the feasibility (even "in principle") of a science of *normative* morality. Harris' proposal looks like an endorsement of moral utilitarianism with "collective well-being" as the utility function to maximize. One weak point of such proposal is analogous to the challenge faced by the theory of social choice, namely how to go from a set of individual preferences to a well-defined concept of "social preferences" - the problem has been extensively studied and it is known to be full of difficulties (see e.g. the works of the Nobel Prize Amartya Sen).

Harris draws some analogies between morality and health, but I think a better analogy would be to compare morality and language. Both serve a similar purpose in facilitating social interactions and producing functional human groups, but Harris proposal for the foundations of a science of normative morality sounds like saying: "the purpose of language is to communicate efficiently, and we can use the tools of science to determine what rules of language better contribute to that end". That may sound more or less persuasive, but I would still hesitate in attributing a specific truth value to the statement "we must use the Oxford comma". Even if such rule can be proved to be in fact useful for communication, that is not the way language evolves anyway, the scientific study of rules of grammar is better left to the descriptive level. And I think the same goes for morality, science can say a lot about it at a descriptive level (with the aid of anthropology and evolutionary psychology), but a science of normative morality would require to stretch the meaning "science" well beyond what it is commonly accepted by the scientific community.

Harris's book, "The Moral Lanscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values", is a response to the religious community's assertion that moral questions are outside the domain of scientific study. In this book, Harris argues that morality is not within the sole purview of religion, but rather, it is a topic that can be objectively studied and best answered through scientific investigation.

Harris begins with the axiom: humans are conscious creatures that value their own well-being, and states that the concept of value has little meaning apart from its association with conscious creatures. From this starting point, he says that if we value human well-being then there are approaches that will lead us closer to maximizing this goal and approaches that will lead us farther away. Moreover, science can investigate and assist us in deciding on an approach that will close the gap toward this goal, and science can identify approaches that will hinder us from our objective.

Despite a few persuasive points in his book, I had many criticisms.

1) The Subtitle:
The subtitle is "How Science Can Determine Human Values". But this subtitle is ambiguous. Is Harris claiming that science can tell us what values we should hold or pursue, as well as why we should hold or pursue them? Or is he stating that science can determine what values humans, in fact, hold and pursue? Traditionally, the former falls within the purview of philosophy and ethics; the latter is a descriptive study of morality and could fall within the purview of science. However, there is little reason to write a book to answer the second question. The answer seems quite obvious. But by purchasing Harris's book, if your primary hope is to answer the first question, you will be greatly disappointed. He does not address this question.

2) Maximizing Human Well-Being
Harris seems to be arguing that if you have a desired goal, then the moral choice is that which brings you closer to that goal. For example, IF we accept Harris's goal - maximizing human well-being - and we wish to attain that goal, THEN science can tell us how to achieve that goal. But this is a far cry from the claim that science can tell us what is moral. We could equally say that if our goal is to murder our neighbor without getting caught, science could help us answer that question too, at least in principle. None of this reveals the power of science to tell us what is, in fact, moral.

3) Separation Between Facts & Values is Illusory
Harris claims that the chasm separating facts and values is illusory. In his own words: "(1) whatever can be known about maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures - which is, I will argue, the only thing we can reasonably value - must at some point translate into facts about brains and their interaction with the world at large; (2) the very idea of `objective' knowledge... has values built into it, as every effort we make to discuss facts depends upon principles that we must first value (e.g., logical consistency, reliance on evidence, parsimony, etc.); (3) beliefs about facts and beliefs about values seem to arise from similar processes at the level of the brain: it appears that we have a common system for judging truth and falsity in both domains."

Harris makes these three points to argue that science can study values. If he merely wishes to show that science can descriptively study human values, including how we make decisions or why we make certain moral choices, then his claim is unremarkable. But if he wishes to use these points to assert that science can provide prescriptions on how humans ought to behave, then his points do not support this assertion. The fact is, humans can hold values independent of the facts, as is evident by the superstitious and religious beliefs held by the general populace. Thus, there is a real separation between facts and values, and our ability to sustain this chasm seems unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

4) Speaks in Generalities, Not Specifics:
Harris's book discusses morality in broad terms and generalities. He rarely discusses specific moral issues. His claim would've been more convincing if he could demonstrate how science might answer specific moral questions. He doesn't have to provide an answer, but merely show that an answer is possible through science. For example, how would science answer the abortion question? Much of the argument centers on what is considered "life". Perhaps what should be discussed is "conscious life". Certainly, science could address whether a mass of cells is conscious, and thus, capable of suffering. But then, the issue still comes back to why we should care about a mass of conscious cells (assuming science found it was conscious), since it is still not fully conscious the way a full-term baby is. And even if the mass lacked consciousness, one could argue that the mass is still a potential human being with a very high probability of being born healthy -- not to mention the fact that the development process has already begun. Given this information, is abortion morally right or not? How can science answer this question, even in principle?

What if a person, with a certain type of brain disease, is found in a "vegetative" state and science determines that such an individual is not capable of suffering. Furthermore, let's assume the individual has no family, thus, there's no one to mourn the person's situation. Would it be immoral to rape the individual and then suffocate the person to death? Why (or why not)? How can science answer this question, even in principle? And if well-being is the objective, what if such an act provided the rapist with a sense of well-being? Would his actions become moral since no one is suffering and he gains pleasure from the act?

Or imagine that you are an undercover FBI agent investigating the mafia. The mafia suspects that you may be a "cop", so the godfather asks you to kill another person in front of him, who also happens to be a "cop". If you fail to comply, you will be executed on the spot by three other men with guns pointed at your head; your wife will become a widow & your children will be fatherless. But if you shoot the other agent, you will have vindicated yourself in the eyes of the mafia (and save all the time, effort, & money spent by the FBI investigating the mafia) but risk losing your badge and potentially end up in prison for manslaughter or murder. Alternatively, you could elect to shoot your way out and escape, along with the other agent, but there's no guarantee (not even a high probability) that you will be successful. So what is the moral choice in this situation, and more importantly, how can science help you determine which choice to make or whether you should value one goal over another? These types of issues are not addressed by Harris. Moreover, it's difficult to see how science can make this determination, even in principle.

5) Individual vs. Collective
Harris's book focuses on societal well-being. In fact, he often compares the health of a society with physical health. And while the pursuit of societal well-being is fine (in principle), humans are not motivated by such goals in practice (at least not for long). Our concern is our own individual well-being and the well-being of those that might impact our own well-being. This also means that the desire to maximize our own well-being may often conflict with the desires of others (and society as a whole). So what is the morally correct thing to do in such cases? How can science answer this question, even in principle?

If given the choice between living in a societal quagmire where I am a prince among paupers, I may prefer that society over living in a first-world nation where I am an average citizen. I may not be maximizing human well-being overall, but why should I care since my own well-being may be maximized. Perhaps I may favor keeping my fellow humans in the quagmire to maintain my own status and power. In fact, research has shown that we are less satisified if those immediately around us are better off than us, even if we are better off than most of the world population. How can science demonstrate that my choice is morally wrong, even in principle?

6) Consequences:
Harris's book implies that science is superior at answering moral questions than religion and is less likely to incorrectly answer the slavery or genocide question (i.e. is slavery or genocide wrong?). But is this necessarily true? What if science found that societies, as a whole, would've been better if slavery was permitted? Or what if Germany would've been better off, as a whole, if the Jews were exterminated? Would slavery and genocide become morally acceptable positions, supported by science? And if not, then why not? Harris never addresses such issues.

The U.S. is responsible for the near extinction of the native American populations. But one could argue that great progress and overall societal benefit was reaped from their "relocation" and extermination. Genocide allowed more "civilized" people to settle the land and secured prosperity for millions of future Americans. Thus, looking back, was it moral to kill and relocate the native Americans? Of course, one could equally argue that society would've been better off had the natives remained alive and continued their way of life. But such an argument would be speculation; how would we know? That experiment is not available to us (and never will be). Yet we do know that the United States would've been a very different place than it is today if the natives still populated this nation. Science seems no better at guarding us from poor moral decisions -- the same decisions ancient religious societies chose for themselves - such as the choice to engage in slavery or genocide.

7) Lacks Originality:
Harris's thesis is not original. He is not the first person to propose an objective morality outside of an academic setting. Richard Carrier presented a comparable view in his book, "Sense and Goodness without God", in which he argues for the Goal Theory of Morality. Novelist & philosopher, Ayn Rand, espoused a similar view during the mid-20th century.

Yet while I think Harris is a better writer than both Carrier and Rand, I don't think he was as rigorous in his application of reason. Thus, while there are persuasive parts in his book, I was hoping that he would've learned from both of these authors and expanded or improved upon their points. He did not.

8) Analogy:
Unfortunately, Harris' most persuasive argument is an analogy. He compares societal health with physical health. However, analogies are never good argumentative tools by themselves. Analogies can help clarify a point or increase comprehension. Yet analogies are a poor foundation for demonstrating the truth of a proposition.

ASSESSMENT:
I agree with Harris's thesis that morality is not the sole province of religion. I also agree that science may be better at providing us with reasons for pursuing a particular decision or a specific action. The best religion can do is assert that if you do or don't do "X" then it's a sin and you'll burn in Hell, as if fear or mental compulsion is a morally acceptable reason for doing anything at all.

However, while science can descriptively study human morality, I don't agree that it can necessarily provide us with prescriptions (unless we share a common goal). And if there's one thing that's clear from human experience, it is that humans have different goals and different conceptions of what constitutes well-being, even conflicting conceptions. While science may do better than religion at providing prescriptions, it is not the well-paved road that Harris makes it out to be.

'The Moral Landscape' is a wonderful book! It shines light on how science can help us determine how we should live our lives! Harris makes a compelling case that there are many different ways to be happy, but that there are some ways that do not make for positive human flourishing. He says that like the definition of health, the definition of what good changes, but that does not mean we don't have an objective way of evaluating claims of human happiness, the same that we know what constitutes bad health.

Harris, through reasoned arguments, shows us that many of the hinderences of a science of morality are brought about through general ignorance not thinking through the issues at hand.

Sam's book should be read by any thinking person, and especially by those who think morality cannot be derived without religious undertones. Harris' views give new light to old philosophical issues, and I for one am glad for it.

Sam Harris, in The Moral Landscape, is motivated by a major concern. Western secular societies depend on a shared social worldview, which fundamentalists of both Muslim and Christian persuasions attack based on claimed moral certainties. Unless secularism can present an alternate moral vision, then the fundamentalists will reshape secular societies in their sometimes horrific visions. But most secular thinking today holds by moral relativism, which provides NO counterargument to the fundamentalists.
Harris does an excellent job presenting the need for such an alternate moral worldview. He cites horror after horror: murders and attempted murders of filmmakers, writers, and newspapermen by fundamentalists for the sin of practicing freedom of speech. A family starving its 18 month old to death for the sin of not saying amen at meals. The millennial -long Catholic culture of putting children in the hands of sexually frustrated priests - and the millennia-long coverup for the expected results. Etc, etc, etc.
And he also cites the weak response of multiculturism to such horrors. Womens' rights advocates who excuse the hajib, and panelists at morality conferences who cannot bring themselves to condemn female genital mutilation or honor killings (they are "culturally contextualized ...").

But while he makes a strong case for WHY he thinks his book is needed, his effort at actually providing a coherent secular worldview to counter these religiously advocated moral horrors falls flat.What he offers is an argument that:
* All value in the universe comes from conscious beings
* All we should care about are outcomes
* Therefore a consequentialist evaluation of the welfare of conscious beings is the only morality that makes any sense
However, he does not even state his argument as clearly as this, and the only support he provides for this view is a rhetorical question: "what other alternatives could there be?". Meanwhile, he limits all his moral reasoning to humans, and he seems unaware throughout the book that most other animals are almost certainly conscious, therefore his argument is for a full animal rights utilitarianism, a la Peter Singer.
He is also apparently completely unaware of the shelves of moral philosophers who have answered his rhetorical question, with "lots of alternatives". Naming a few:
* Rights based morality (which emphasizes autonomy and empowerment as more important than consequences/outcome)
* Darwinian (also consequentialist, but long term welfare of species, and life as a whole matter far more than individual welfare and transitory experiences)
* Attitudinal (the content of consciousness matters far more than short term experiences of the bodies carrying the consciousness - these vary widely on content, between Virtues ethics [emphasize Love, Honor, or Good Intentions, etc] to a fairly amoral Nietchzian Force of Will)
And there have been many others. Harris has a PhD in philosophy. He has just written a book prescribing a particular consequentialist/utilitarian moral POV. Is it possible that he really is unaware that there are other moral and ethical POVs that philosophers have prescribed? That he is unawre that asserting that the welfare of conscious entities is absolute would make him an absolute animal welfarist? How did he get his degree? This is ignorance of his subject so profound as to constitute philosophical malpractice.
Harris blunders on, failing to make his case in an epic fashion. He declares morality to be a science - under the mistaken view that every field of knowledge MUST be a science. He declared morality to be a subset of the field of neurology - he never explains why. He declares that morality should be left up to self-declared experts in the field to evaluate. He clearly includes himself in this "expert" category despite his near criminal level of ignorance of moral thinking. He cites other mind/neurology thinkers, most prominently Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland as fellow experts. Both Dennett and the Churchlands consider consciousness to be an illusion. Since Harris thinks consciousness is the sole justification and subject for morality - then his named experts by his terms consider the field he names them expert in, to not even exist!
This book fails to meet its goals in every way. Harris fails to provide a rationale for a secular counter morality. His "reasoning" is weak or nonexistent, and his ignorance of his subject is stunning. His criticism of religious moralities is entirely dependent on moral indignation, and merely reflects his cultural bias. This book was needed - secular societies need defence - but Harris falls flat in providing one.

Sam Harris does a wonderful job of blending science, morality, and reason into a modern day classic. He eloquently writes about sensitive topics in a way that minimizes biases and allows many who read this book to comprehend sophisticated concepts.
A background in science and critical thinking may allow readers to maximize its contents, but this is not a critical for enjoyment of this book.

Sam Harris is making the case that there could and should be an entire branch of science devoted to determining human values. He is saying that science can - in principle - discover what we *should* value. This is very different from arguing that science can help us achieve what we already value. That is already obvious, as anyone who has been to the doctor, or benefited from modern agriculture could tell you. Nor is he saying that science can give us insight as to what human beings value, and how their moral reasoning orates. Harris' claim is so bold and ambitious, that if he is right, it will (if a science of values emerges, and is put into practice) transform mankind enormously for the better.

The philosopher Daniel Dennet is fond of saying that Charles Darwin's idea of natural selection is the best idea anyone ever had. I agree with him. However, if Sam Harris is right, then Dennett will have to move Darwin to second place. What idea or set of ideas could be more valuable than a science of value? If there is anything more valuable, it will itself be a subset of the science of values.

Harris' comparison of ethics with the science of human physical health is also very helpful. Many objections to his proposal can be shown to be nonsense when we draw an analogy with medicine. For example, if someone is depressed, we might say that they should take an anti-depressant to make them happier. Critics of a science of human happiness will probably be quick to jump on this and say, well, if drug-induced happiness is what we're after, why don't we all just shoot heroin all day? This kind of objection relies on a far too narrow conception of happiness. By analogy, the same critic would have to argue that we should all be shooting steroids, since a doctor might at some point recommend strength training to a weakened patient.

I liked some of the findings shared by Harris, and the interesting argument that values are not so different from facts. However, I had two issues: 1) I am not so convinced that well-being is indeed the measure we should use for morality. I am not sure if it is my neurosis but I feel they are not so easily conflated. 2) I think he could have spent fewer pages on religion, since he has already written a considerable ammount about it. Those pages could have been used to expand the neuroscientific findings that supports his claims.

HE's more believable than all the myths about morals there are from each culture and religion.
His morals are not explained as relative either.....it is just a scientific look at cause and effect..

Morality has never provided simple straightforward answers to questions of how humans should conduct themselves. Though a litany of theories has nonetheless appeared in past millennium to face this challenge, no undisputed champion has emerged triumphant. And worse, an examination of this overwhelming history doesn't even reveal significant progress on such issues. Even today, questions about the nature of "good and evil" persist along with nebulous answers to the ancient "what's the right thing to do?" question. Mapping human actions, not to mention complex collective human actions, to the rather abstract categories of "morally right" or "morally wrong" seems elusive as ever. Enter Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who often gets subsumed with "the New Atheists" for writing pointed criticisms of the effects of religion on humanity. Though his third book, "The Moral Landscape," largely glosses over the history of morality, he proffers a potential solution to such quandaries, though admitting its preliminary and controversial nature. The book contains many compelling, intriguing and poignant arguments, but ultimately doesn't contain enough hard data to elicit more than a "maybe."

The book's main argument rests on a simple claim: "human well-being entirely depends on events in the world and on states of the human brain. Consequently, there must be scientific truths to be known about it." Boldly stated in this way, the argument approaches tautology. Of course our "well-being" relies on the world and on our brains. What else would it depend on? Stickiness starts to seep upon dissection of the argument's terms. How do we define "human well-being?" And how do we formulate and utilize "states of the human brain?" And how do these "states" map to "well-being?" These questions need answers and demonstration before claiming that a rigorous "science of morality" can truly and realistically exist. Harris does provides some cursory examples that suggest connections between "well-being" and "brain states," such as the rates of oxytocin and vasopressin in children raised in "traditional" homes versus those raised in orphanages. Only further study will show whether such correlations stand up. And yes, a science of morality may emerge from such scenarios, the possibility surely exists, but the data needs to go far beyond what Harris presents. Not only that, morality already presents befuddling complexities and introducing brain states in the mix may further complicate, rather than simplify, moral issues. It's too early to tell. Not to mention possible nightmare, and probably - hopefully - implausible, scenarios such as neuroscience revealing that illusion and irrationality actually contribute to "human well-being." That would definitely provide important data to a "science of morality," but not the kind Harris (or many others) would probably desire. Again, this isn't meant to imply that Harris' overall claims fall flat, only that they seem too embryonic at this time to make sweeping claims about "moral truth" and the brain. Some harder data would have made his argument more penetrating, though, as always, his writing remains engaging and highly readable throughout. The book becomes really interesting when neuroscience becomes the focus, things get really interesting. Harris' delineation of free will may shock some at first reading, namely that "the illusion of free will is itself an illusion." But neuroscience is still a relatively new science, so taking its current results as definitive seems premature. Nonetheless, the evidence that exists already stands to change the very way we think of ourselves as humans and Harris outlines some of these possibilities. Later in the book, Harris again takes on the "non-overlapping magisteria" argument. And he eloquently argues against the notion that science and religion don't conflict. They do seem to conflict more and more as time goes on. The Creationist Museum in Kentucky presents itself as science, whether implicitly or explicitly. It openly and defiantly seeks to challenge scientific claims about geology, paleontology and other sciences. The claims it makes, based largely on religious scripture, starkly conflict with the majority of the scientific community's findings. Harris' arguments have maximum potency in this realm. But many of the points made here were also made in his other books, so the "religion" section seems a little tacked on. Plus, it doesn't really add any weight to his arguments about morality and neuroscience. In the end, Harris seems to soften on some of his claims, citing the complexities behind a psychology of "well-being." And ultimately he states, in the final pages, that "whether morality becomes a proper branch of science is not really the point." Along the way he cites studies on child rearing, in that having children appears to cause a lower level of happiness, but that most people feel they will prove the exception to this claim, stand as both fascinating claims and as problems for a "neural morality." But Harris feels, cautiously it seem, that these counter examples won't stand up. Maybe not. More studies will help.

"The Moral Landscape" contains many brilliant and insightful passages about morality, belief and religion. But in the end it feels more like a collection of tenuously related sections than one cohesive argument, though each section does contain much of interest. And though the main claim of the book remains provocative, intriguing and very possible, the data presented just doesn't seem like enough at this point to make a claim for a "science of morality." Though, again, Harris claims that that's not "really the point." Undoubtedly neuroscience will illuminate human morality. That seems uncontroversial. Rigorously mapping human behavior to positive or negatively associated areas of the brain would present a breakthrough of astounding proportions. But whether this will actually happen at present remains a "maybe." We can only hope it will. And if the point of Harris' book was to introduce the possibility, then it definitely succeeds in that modest endeavor.

This book provides an excellent primer into a field of scientific study that, for various reasons, has been labeled taboo in modern culture, both in and out of academia. Harris' premise is not merely a call for a scientific look at human morality but, more radically (and more importantly) he is asking if science can actually tell us -- empirically -- what we should do and what we should want in regards to human morality itself. Can humanity empirically establish universal goods and universal evils based on how various actions affect our "well being" (Harris' chosen morality gold-standard in this thesis)? If your immediate response is to think, "no way!", then you really need to read this book (I was one of those people).
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Just as an addendum for those who often skip introductions: Anyone who followed some of the pre-press discussions (via Harris' TED presentation, his own press release, and the articles in the HuffPo and the many other criticisms on the Internet spurred by these releases), at the very least, should have become aware of just how primitive and often ill-informed much of the thinking on this topic actually is, even among some of the most elite minds of our century (need I mention Stephen Jay Gould's, NOMA?). Virtually everyone seems to produce a near instant knee jerk response to Harris' premise but few have anything sophisticated to say in support of their own position. Harris hopes to change this level of discourse. This makes the introduction, perhaps, one of the most important parts of the book, having been added by Sam after he wrote the book, all clearly in response to this pre-release debate that erupted.

Harris never successfully defends the implied claim on the cover. At best, he argues that empirical methods can be used to determine which events/phenomena lead to outcomes that PEOPLE REPORT TO BE most good or most bad, which allows for an empirically informed version of ethics. This is entirely uncontroversial. That science could determine what is ACTUALLY good or bad is another story entirely and Harris's verbose attempts to defend it never succeed.

I wish I didn't have to read the whole book to discover this disappointing fact. Perhaps a peer-reviewed paper in a philosophy journal would have sufficed. Or perhaps the paper would not have survived peer review process in any major philosophy journal--that seems entirely possible given that the argument ultimately fails.

I highly recommend "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris. Harris brings his intellectual honesty to new levels when he advises everyone to rely on science and reason to enhance the well-being of all conscious creatures. His book develops the idea of the moral landscape as a conceptual framework and thoroughly justifies a scientific approach to morality. As this science of morality evolves, I look forward to other works that lay out more practical approaches to tackle pressing moral dilemmas.

just finished this fine book. you will need your dictionary handy, or at least i did. admit it, "penumbra, syllogistic, schadenfreude, louche, and apostasy", are not in your daily vocabulary.

sam gets from time to time very technical in the science of brain study, mostly from 'fmri' - functional magnetic resonance imaging and the relationships to sections of the brain with reliable patterns of this imaging. i found myself reading so much of the notes that i put a book marker in the note section to save time.

"moral landscape" gets really juicy in chapter 4, "religion", where he primarily, and justifiably so, rips into francis collins, president obama's pick for director of the 'national institutes of health'... mr. harris devoted time to many religious quotes made by collins - they made my head spin. as i often do, i read out loud when alone, and by the time i would get thru some of collin's quotes i was yelling, they made me so mad. absolute nonsense. they guy is a flake. he "prayed" and came to the conclusion god was ok with george w bush's ban on federal money for stem cell research?!

mr. harris also exemplifies scientific apologists, chris mooney and sheril kirshenbaum, who advocate letting religion into the science lab... head still spinning. the quote i read (from their book) that made me immediately say "that's not true", was this excerpt, 'atheism is not the logical inevitable outcome of scientific reasoning, any more than intelligent design is a necessary corollary of religious faith".

of course, one can thank the 'templeton foundation' and their millions of dollars to propagate this pseudoscience agenda. all that tax free money influencing who gets funding and who doesn't. not unlike religion getting three judges voted out in iowa, or religion rewriting school books in texas, they never stop being anti-intellect. it's scary how tentative scientific fact is surviving this constant barrage by religious zealots in america.

aside from the obvious role science plays in morality, why has religion been given complete reign in the realm of "morality"? religion bases their judgments about right and wrong based on make believe, an invisible world, fairy tales written thousands of years ago. religion is no more a compass of morality than the 98% of believers in our jails.

keep writing sam, we need you, and dawkins and hitchens, et al, more than ever.

Sam Harris makes excellent arguments as to why scientists shouldn't just relinquish moral authority to religion. It's refreshing to see someone argue that science can be used to explain morality and that scientists need to establish a foothold into a science of morality. For too long scientists have been too scared to do research into morality and come up with a system that can help make moral choices. If only some of them would read The Moral Landscape and take it to heart, religion might lose it's undeserved title of the authority on morality. All the arguments are there, plain to see and hard to refute. It certainly made me think more about some of the things I believed regarding morality.

It was an interesting attempt at establishing an atheistic foundation for morality, however, it still proved to ultimately rely on a subjective, relativistic source. He tries to say that science can unveil the inherent moralistic principles of the universe but that there is not one but many, hence the term "Landscape." I did think it was interesting that he made a pretty solid case against post-modernity. But unfortunately, this attempt at an alternative "god" (aka science) did not form a cohesive position.

One of the most interesting points in the book was when in an attempt to dismiss theistic arguments against deterministic evolution, he quotes a scholar on the unpredictability of neuronal ion channels. Though he tried to use it against theism it actually seems to be a fantastic reason to think that those ubiquitous "random" opening and closing channels is the immaterial soul's interaction with the physical brain. Instead, he employs a scientism version of "god of the gaps."

If you're not satisfied with the "no judgments can be made" preaching of modern day liberal moral-relativist thought; but also find the anti-sane judgments of modern day conservative/religious moralizing to be destructive, this book is exactly what you're looking for.

Reading this book challenges centuries of dogmatic thought on the subject. I didn't agree with everything, but I don't believe Mr. Harris is looking for that. He presents a strong, easy to read, thought out, argument for the idea. It's up to us to take the ball and run with it. I've read many of the negative reviews for this book, both on the store and elsewhere, and they are usually so factually inaccurate (EG. Claiming he doesn't touch a topic when there's an entire chapter devoted to the topic) that I've stopped reading them. Mr. Harris does provide a "response to critics" on his website, and he points out several of the better arguments people have made against his work. I highly encourage others to read this book, read the critiques of this book, and as always, think for themselves.

Personally, I loved every minute of this immensely important book.

This book will be remembered going forward as a seminal work in philosophy. Quite simply, Sam Harris has challenged a status quo that has existed for thousands of years, and he has done so effectively. Nobody going forward in philosophy will be able to say they have a complete philosophical education without being familiar with the arguments contained within this text.

This is an absolute must-read for anyone who likes to think. ::

Once again Sam Harris delivers the goods. This book will help you see science as it really should be seen. Yes science can answer the big questions of life. A little tip for reading this book I found very useful was; every time Sam used a citation, I would go instantly to his "notes" section and read the correlating note. It really made the book much more enjoyable for me. I highly recommend The Moral Landscape.

I highly recommend "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris. Harris brings his intellectual honesty to new levels when he advises everyone to rely on science and reason to enhance the well-being of all conscious creatures. His book develops the idea of the moral landscape as a conceptual framework and thoroughly justifies a scientific approach to morality. As this science of morality evolves, I look forward to other works that lay out more practical approaches to tackle pressing moral dilemmas.

It is important that science have a say in morality and frankly it was long overdue. The book would have been much easier to read had it not made not-so-subtle digs at the political right.

Regardless, this book could start a great conversation. Oh, it is more heady and even more difficult to read than his other books.

While Harris' ideas are interesting, working your way though this book is a hard slog, with many of the most interesting points buried in end notes, that take up a major portion of the book. Accordingly you either flip back and forth and lose your train of thought, or skip the notes and miss some of the best parts. I wish this book were better organized.

Harris is a smooth writer and his ideas are stimulating and provocative. He writes this book in a very conversational style that is easy to read. He certainly raises issues that need to be debated and discussed. However, this book will not solve any problems. It is tediously repetitive, shallow and he just when you think he is going to launch into a better reasoned expose of his ideas, he descends into his usual motif of telling you that you have to believe his argument because everyone else is so stupid and unbelieveable. He also attempts to formulate his ideas by placing them in antithesis to religion on one side and secular liberalism on the other. But the problem is that he only ever seems to address the extremes of religion and secular liberalism. He never makes any attempt to understand what motivates or drives religious people and his understanding of what motivates most religious people is not very realistic or representative of the majority. Unfortunately he does not address THE major issue in this whole area of science as the moral arbiter. Despite what he implies, this is absolutely not a new issue or idea. Indeed the one time American science decided to attempt to define the real meaning and value of humanity at a moral level, it came up with eugenics. This was not a backwater, isolated idea. This was a mainstream, commonly accepted concept by American scientists and greatly admired by Adolph Hitler who promptly attempted to put it into practice. Although American society, later, strongly rejected eugenics on a pure moral base, the problem that Sam Harris faces is that he really can't argue against this. From the pure basis of science alone and the ultimate well-being of individuals and the whole species as viewed by science, you just can't argue against eugenics. The argument against comes because reasonable people see that there is a transcendent side to human worth that is not simply defined by what science defines to be the "best" thing for humanity. An individual does not gain his moral worth by comparing him with the ideal Aryan human specimen. Eugenics is, after all, what nature does in the form of evolution. It fits the scientific model of human perfection and well-being perfectly. Yet from a moral perspective it is seen as an odious and reprobate social philosophy.
But, crassly obvious though this issue is as a negative for Harris, he does not even addrsss it. In fact he shows no honest intellectual trend whatsoever to seriously explore any weaknesses and negatives of his viewpoint.
In summary, his book is well written and easy to read, but its intellectual content is trite and trivial.

Sam Harris (born 1967) is a neuroscientist and philosopher, as well as the co-founder and CEO of Project Reason. He has written other books such as The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,Letter to a Christian Nation, and Free Will; somewhat surprisingly, he also has written Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2010 book, “How could we ever say, as a matter of scientific fact, that one way of life is better, or more moral, than another? Whose definition of ‘moral’ would we use?... Controversies about human values are controversies about which science officially has no opinion. I will argue, however, that questions about values---about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose---are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translated into facts that can be scientifically understood: regarding positive and negative social emotions… the neurophysiology of happiness and suffering, etc.… Of course, we will have to confront … people who draw their worldview from religion… while those who lack such faith tend to think that notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ must be the products of evolutionary pressure and cultural invention… My purpose is to persuade you that both sides in this debate are wrong. The goal of this book is to begin a conversation about how moral truth can be understood in the context of science… the argument I make in this book… rests on a very simple premise: human well-being entirely depends on events in the world and on states of the human brain. Consequently, there must be scientific truths to be known about it.” (Pg. 1-2)

He states, “the divide between facts and values is illusory in at least three senses: (1) whatever can be known about maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures… must at some point translate into facts about brains and their interaction with the world at large; (2) the very idea of ‘objective’ knowledge… has values built into it… [and] depends upon principles that we must first value… (3) beliefs about facts and beliefs about values seem to arise from similar processes at the level of the brain: it appears that we have a common system for judging truth and falsity in both domains.” (Pg. 11)

He suggests that we define “good” as “that which supports well-being… Defining goodness in this way does not resolve all questions of value; it merely directs our attention to what values actually are---the set of attitudes, choices, and behaviors that potentially affect our well-being, as well as that of other conscious minds.” (Pg. 12)

He observes, “Here is our situation: if the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people are profoundly confused about the nature of reality, confounded by irrational hopes and fears, and tending to waste precious time and attention---often with tragic results. Is this really a dichotomy about which science can claim to be neutral?” (Pg. 25)

He asserts, “Let us begin with the fact of consciousness: I think we can know, through reason alone, that consciousness is the only intelligible domain of value. What is the alternative? I invite you to try to think of a source of value that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings. .. All other notions of value WILL bear some relationship to the actual or potential experience of conscious beings. So my claim that consciousness is the basis of human values and morality is not an arbitrary starting point.” (Pg. 32)

He acknowledges, “The concept of ‘well-being,’ like the concept of ‘health,’ is truly open for revision and discovery. Just how fulfilled is it possible for us to be, personally and collectively? What are the conditions… that will produce such happiness? We simply do not know.” (Pg. 34)

He argues, “Moral relativism… tends to be self-contradictory. Relativists may say that moral truths exist only relative to a specific cultural framework---but THIS claim about the status of moral truth purports to be true across all possible frameworks… relativism almost always amounts to the claim that we should be tolerant of moral difference because no moral truth can supersede any other. And yet this commitment to tolerance is not put forward as simply one relative preference among others… I think one can reasonably doubt whether any consistent moral relativist has ever existed. Moral relativism is clearly an attempt to pay intellectual reparations for the crimes of Western colonialism, ethnocentrism, and racism.” (Pg. 45)

He summarizes, “To simplify matters enormously: 1. Genetic changes in the brain gave rise to social emotions, moral intuitions, and language… 2. These allowed for increasingly complex cooperative behavior, the keeping of promises, concern about one’s reputation, etc. … 3. Which became the basis for cultural norms, laws, and social institutions whose purpose has been to render this growing system of cooperation durable in the face of countervailing forces.” (Pg. 59)

He notes, “Students of philosophy will notice that this [view] commits me to some form of moral realism (viz. moral claims can really be true or false) and some form of consequentialism (viz. the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures)… Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all questions of value … depend upon the possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequence at the level of experience… all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary, or evil, or blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of conscious creatures (whether actual or potential).” (Pg. 62)

He contends, “All of our behavior can be traced to biological events about which we have no conscious knowledge: this has always suggested that free will is an illusion… The truth seems inescapable: I, as the subject of my experience, cannot know what I will next think or do until a thought or intention arises; and thoughts and intentions are caused by physical events and mental stirrings of which I am not aware. Many scientists and philosophers realized long ago that free will could not be squared with our growing understanding of the physical word.” (Pg. 103)

He continues, “The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will. Thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view---and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable… It means nothing to say that a person would have done otherwise had he chosen to do otherwise, because a person’s ‘choices’ merely appear in his mental stream as though sprung from the void. In this sense, each of us is like a phenomenological glockenspiel played by an unseen hand. From the perspective of your conscious mind, you are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore DO) than you are for the fact that you were born into this world.” (Pg. 104) He summarizes, “The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.” (Pg. 112)

He concludes, “This book was written in the hope that as science develops, we will recognize its application to the most pressing questions of human existence.. Granted, the practical effects of thinking in terms of a moral landscape cannot be our only reason for doing to---we must form our beliefs about reality based on what we think is actually true. But few people seem to recognize the dangers posed by thinking that there are no true answers to moral questions…. Whether or not we ever understand meaning, morality and values in practice, I have attempted to show that there must be something to know about them in principle. And I am convinced that merely admitting this will transform the way we think about human happiness and the public good.” (Pg. 191)

This book is a very substantial contribution to the current debates about morality and ethics, and it will be of great interest to anyone studying such topics.

In one of the most memorable examples in The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris reflects on his own thoughts after his wife told him that another man had openly flirted with her in the gym, even though she had said she was a happily married woman. Sam Harris imagines how men in certain cultures would have reacted to this information. The first thing a man should do if he want to keep his pride is to beat the rivaling male, perhaps kill him too. In some cases it would also have been culturally appropriate to punish the wife for.... well I don't know... sub consciously tempting the man to approach her? In extreme cases it would have been appropriate to also kill the wife, just to emphasise the way in which your property is not to be meddled with!

Sam Harris admits that he initially did feel hostility towards the other male (something which I think men world wide will sympathise with). He felt that his behavior was wrong. However, having been brought up in a western society he did not follow through on these feelings. He realized that killing the other person would not lead to positive outcomes for anybody, and he realized that it was certainly not his wife's fault. In addition, he also thinks that his wife is attractive and can understand that another man finds her attractive too.

The main thesis of Sam Harris book is that just like statements about the world can be right or wrong (for example, it is wrong to say earth is flat), moral statements can also be right or wrong. What makes an act/policy/moral guideline right or wrong? Well according to Harris this is determined by the degree to which it increases/decreased the well being of humans. For those who remember their philosophy, this is in essence a utilitarian argument. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill argued that there are no categorical imperatives (as Kant said). Whether something is good or evil depends on the consequences. Thus it can be good to lie if it prevents sadness in a lot of people. To calculate the effect of a certain act on the well being of the rest of the world is of course more or less impossible. For example, frequent lying can ruin relationships leading to divorce, leading to depressions etc etc...

Harris acknowledges that there is large gray area where it is hard to say if a certain action or moral guideline aids general well being or not. This does not mean however, that anything goes. However, some acts, such as killing another man and your wife because of minor flirtation is really unlikely to lead to greater well being. It is comparable to arguing that the earth I'd merely 6000 years old - not entirely impossible but really really unlikely.

Simply put, some moral guidelines or cultural norms are more conducive towards human well being than others.

Still many people (perhaps mainly academics living comfortable lives), would argue that cultural norms are merely cultural and that we should not criticize other cultures for holding certain values, because values are subjective etc. However, even among cultural relativists there are few people who argue this way when discussing terrible acts. Can people who consider themselves to be cultural relativists abstain from judgement and condemnation when they hear about say Josef Fritzl or the genocide in Rwanda. Would they be indifferent to whether their children were raised in Josef Fritzl's basement, or in a Tutsi family experiencing mutilation from Hutu militia. Are these alternatives merely an interesting cultural alternative? What sane parent would not prefer their child to grow up in a western society with individual rights and a police force that protects their citizens?

Can we not say that the genocide in Rwanda was wrong? Can we not deplore the ethical code of the catholic church when they excommunicate a doctor for performing an abortion on a girl raped by her father and pregnant with twins, while not excommunicating a single Nazi? If we can it follows that we can say something about which norms are good and bad.

As a professional philosopher I found this book to offer some interesting points on neuroscience, but exhibit some serious deficiencies in philosophy. Harris too often begs the question against the naturalistic position he is arguing for, and he fails to adequately account for the well-recognized weaknesses of purely utilitarian ethics. An unsuccessful exercise in popular philosophy.

Despite his vague support for environmentalism, and his tendency to commit the fallacy of composition when discussing human well-being or flourishing as the standard of value and arriving at a sort of utilitarian ethics, most of Harris's latest book is extremely good.

His basic argument that conservative intrinsicism and liberal subjectivism is a false alternative and that moral realism requires only that values be epistemologically objective, not ontologically objective, and that this criterion can be met, is sound and important. The book is full of clear and insightful examples, often humorous and sometimes horrifying (although he does tend to slip into irrelevant "lifeboat scenarios" on occasion).

Unfortunately, he occasionally takes a wrong turn and his ability to reason so clearly and cut through the nonsense permeating both sides of the culture seems to temporarily abandon him, such as the end of the second chapter in which he gives a lot of blatantly self-contradictory behaviorist arguments that free will is an illusion (which clearly undercuts the entire project he's undertaken in the rest of the book). The philosophical implications he draws from the results of neuroscience in chapter three are also badly mixed, in both content and method. But he gets back on track in chapters four and five.

So, overall, The Moral Landscape (or at least parts of it) gets my nomination for best half a book of 2010.

I couldn't finish this book. Sam raises an objection to his position early on, and doesn't resolve it. Yes, he gives many examples of horrible behavior, but he never explains *why* people should not commit horrible acts without a religious foundation. He basically presents a long-winded, roundabout tautology - we shouldn't do bad things because they are bad. I don't understand why this man is so prominent.

I'm really disappointed in Sam Harris this time. I thought his other books were succint and poignant, but this is a foray into oblivion. The book simply blurs the line between science fact and opinion as Harris attempts to do the impossible: come up with a scientific basis for a moral code. Now everyone knows, incliding Harris, that this is impossible, because doing the right thing means "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" not "when in Rome, do what you think the Romans ought to do." Harris once again proves that the bottom line is that atheists in the Occidental world have no real basis for their a moral code except for being immersed in the same religion-based morality as the rest of us, and that science cannot determine anything, it can only observe some empirical phenomena.

argument is not made with his usual fluency. Nonetheless, he continues to provoke the reader to think.

The essence of Harris's thesis is that morality cannot be divorced from science. As soon as this occurs, the results are often bad, even catastrophically bad. A good example would be to accept the morality of the Taliban. Women are not educated, life expectancy is short, infant and mother mortality is high and so on. By any definition, life is ugly, brutish and short. Yet there are some who would have us believe that this depends upon the prism through which you view events. Harris would dismiss this as arrant nonsense. There are objective ways to view the world where we don't have to concede ground to such barbarians.

The best way of summarising Harris's arguments is to highlight a brief passage where he talks of doubts about evolution being the result of an underlying condition ie faith. Science harbours no such doubts. Harris refers to faith as:

"conviction without sufficient reason, hope mistaken for knowledge, bad ideas protected from good ones, good ideas obscured as bad ones, wishful thinking elevated to a principle of salvation, etc."

At times, Harris is extremely eloquent. None more so that when highlighting the attitudes of faith and religion and the harm with which they travel. However, at other times, his argument is ponderous. This is a shame. Harris has so much to offer. The pity is that despite the power of his argument, his natural eloquence sometimes goes missing.

Virtually, in every walk of life science is used to improve people's lives, however misguided at times. Our houses, cars, computers, entertainment, travel etc. are fine tuned to bring us as much comfort and safety as possible at affordable prices, all thanks to science. Our government officials are elected with significant help from statistics (polling) and political science. Voters are often manipulated to cast their vote out of fear, which psychology has identified as one of the most powerful and basic motivators of action. Psychology itself is the study of human thought and behavior with the intent to alleviate mental suffering and promote well being. The latest psychology field in development, which Mr. Harris briefly alluded to, is the study of factors that promote feelings of well being (Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way). Prominent economists such as Paul Krugman brace the cover of reputable newspapers such as the New York Times with ideas on how to avoid disaster and jump start the U.S. economy. The entire Western civilization, particularly the U.S. aggressively pushes democracy, freedom and human rights, the pillars of happiness. Curiously, the form of democracy in the U.S. is not one conducive to enhancing well being among the masses. The American political system is too susceptible to special interest influence with deep pockets, and consequently, many of the laws and government actions result in benefits to a smaller segment of society at the expense of the larger (Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class).

So when Mr. Harris asserts science can determine human values, is he not stating the obvious? His ideas, of course, cut much deeper than everything mentioned so far. Mr. Harris, fresh off of his 2009 Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA argues science can lead the way in defining morality and values everyone should adhere to in order to maximize their feelings of well being. Religion should no longer be permitted to be the authoritative voice on moral matters, particularly when millions die of the indirect results of poverty annually, while the most pressing religious agenda item is gay marriage. Whereas before his Ph.D., he was philosophizing about morality, now he has some scientific basis behind his arguments, albeit in infancy. Armed with the knowledge in these two fields, Mr. Harris scratches the surface of "interaction between events in our brain and events in the world."

Along the way, there is relatively little discussion of the latest studies in the psychology of well being (not until the last few pages); that there seem to be two forms of happiness (Mr. Harris cites others): Hedonic which is short term and fleeting (favorite sports team performing well), and Eudaimonic which is long lasting and more attributed to feelings of well being and long term health (having children, going to medical school). Having children was actually cited by Mr. Harris as reducing happiness of parents until children move out. But this reduction in happiness may be hedonic. At some point, parents will reflect on the choice of having kids, and whether consciously or subconsciously will arrive at a deep level of satisfaction for having produced and nurtured something useful, provided their offspring was not of a Charles Manson flavor.

"The Moral Landscape" is a more academic work by Mr. Harris, and it requires studying, not just reading. There are lots of eloquent discrediting which has become a cliché in Mr. Harris' publications. "The Moral Landscape" can best be summarized as: I believe science can show the way, and here's all the noise that certainly does not contribute to the discussion. In the end, because of the complexity of the human brain and the environment, science may best explain what not to do rather than what is the best course of action. This is where we stand now, but no telling where scientific advances in studies of morality will take us. As always, there are powerful logical arguments in Mr. Harris' work that should compel readers of any walk of life to pause and examine what he has to say.

Sam Harris suggests in this book of 5 chapters how we can, in principle, use science to help us decide what is right and what is wrong. He gives examples such as using brain scans to study how people, or rather their brains, react to moral propositions and even religious ones. Indeed many of these studies have already been performed with fascinating results. I think overall his thesis is worth exploring but ultimately, I think people will still prefer human judgement in the cases of "difficult" moral questions, however flawed, over any scientific or "computable" approach to morality. The end notes, book-length in itself, contain very interesting tidbits not to be missed. Sam Harris is both a thoughtful and excellent writer, even though his youth and enthusiasm shine through his words sometimes. I look forward to more books from him.