Thoughts on Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape

In 2010, Sam Harris published a book titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. The general premise of the book is that morality is something objective that we can determine based on scientific fact. The book has been generally negatively received by ethical philosophers, but well received by figures associated with "the New Atheism" such as Richard Dawkins.

First of all, I agree with Sam Harris that morality is not relative. If you read any of his book, it should be the first chapter in which he debunks relativism and establishes a level of realism in ethics. Harris rejects the is-ought distinction and the naturalistic fallacy, and maintains that science can tell us about what establishes well-being. Well being is the foundation for his ethical theory, or perhaps more properly stated, the goal. Harris contends that a science of morality can investigate what causes better human well being, and that those discoveries should influence our moral opinions. In other words, the fact that we want to have a better life is taken for granted here, which I do not have a problem with, but I do take issue with his utilitarian like method of finding out what well being is. Even the most skeptical scientist admits that science is imperfect, which is inevitable due to the nature of the inductive logic by which it operates, so one is always left with the problem of knowing whether or not one truly knows the best way to live. Harris gets around this by proposing that there is a "Moral Landscape" which represents "peaks and valleys", with the higher peaks being the best ways to live, and the valleys representing the worst. This is a rather contentious solution to the problem, but those with deontological ethical views will see a serious issue here. I imagine Utilitarians would have less of a problem.

His discussion on the notion of free will is intersting. I agree with Harris that the modern scientific picture of the world and mind leave little room for the notion of free will. Harris tries to defend the idea that moral responsibility is compatible with this deterministic view, but I do not think he succedes very well. Michael Gazzaniga does a much better job defending the idea of moral responsibility given the deterministic account of the mind in chapters 6, 7, and 8 of The Ethical Brain, as well as in his book Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Interestingly enough, in the notes section of the book Harris refers to his arguments from The Ethical Brain. For the record, Gazzaniga maintains that moral responsibility is something found between people in a social context, not between brains. For Gazzaniga, freedom and responsibility are moral concepts, not physical or metaphysical ones. Harris maintains that he is not advocating a fatalist view, which is the hardest of hard deterministic views; fatalism maintains that reality is the way it is out of necessity, that it could not be other than it is. Harris still seems to represent a rather "hard determinist" view, which I think is a bit excessive. After all, the purpose of our evolved brains is to be able to make choices. Are these choices free from the causal change of the universe, or completely independent from one's life experiences, genetic predispositions and such? Of course not. Yet we are capable of making choices out of many, many, possibilities. It's not exactly clear what "free will" really means, either. Is free the same as random? We wouldn't want our choices to be random and impulsive. Generally, when someone's thoughts are random and incoherent, or impulsive and uncontrolled, they are thought to be mentally ill. In this regard we should be thankful that our brains are not "free", if "free" means random. In any case, if that is what free will is supposed to mean, then it is clearly false. If by free will one means not being compelled by another person or situation, then we do have some capacity of freedom. This is the compatibilist view, and although it is often criticized as re-defining the problem, I think it has merit. Aristotle's discussion of voluntary and involuntary actions seems to fit well with this view, which can be found in Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics. 

Due to his rejection of free will, Harris also rejects the concept of retributive or "revenge" justice. This is the notion of  an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in our times, perhaps "a 5 year sentence for a breaking and entering" and so forth. While he does NOT go so far as to say we should not imprison anyone, he does maintain that if a cure for certain antisocial behaviors is ever found, that these should be used instead of ordinary punishment. Perhaps so, and in theory I have no problems with this, but I am skeptical that such a thing could ever occur. It's hard to imagine that there will be a pill to cure rapists, pedophiles, or serial murderers, but if there were, I see no problems in using such a thing, provided that the offender is made to recompensate society for their troubles, perhaps through community service, and are kept tabs on by a parole officer and are made to see a therapist. When dealing with criminals, we must remember that the purpose of justice, regardless whether you take a rehabilitational or retributive stance, is to keep that person from re-offending.

His views of "well being" being the goal of morality are not unlike the view of Aristotle, who proposed the goal of ethics is "eudamonia", or the good life. However, Aristotle's solution simply involved observing how two extremes lead to problems, and taking the middle path. This is a far more practical approach than the utilitarian like approach of Sam Harris. Harris's views are not very different from those of Michael Shermer's in his book The Science of Good and Evil, but I think that Shermer is a better writer and makes a better case. Nor can Harris's views tell us whether or not we should consider animals in our views, and all become vegetarians. Nor can he tell us whether or not we are justified in killing one person to save many, or if doing something dishonest for the greater well being of mankind is justified.  In the end, contrary to Dawkins's claims on the back cover, I hardly think that moral philosophers will "find their world exhilaratingly turned upside down," but there are far worse books you could read.

Recommended Reading: The Ethical Brain and Who's In Charge? by Michael Gazzaniga, The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and The Right and the Good by W.D. Ross

Considering Objections to Skepticism

As both a lover of rational discourse and psychology, I've been recently interested in how our cognitive biases make us come to wrong conclusions, or conclusions that are not justified logically, as well as how people create and reinforce beliefs (needless to say, Michael Shermer is prominent in my upcoming reading list.) I've had some conversations recently with some friends who share quite different views than I do on the subjects of evolution and astrology (I accept evolution, reject astrology). I've noticed some objections to the skeptical way of thinking about things that are worth considering.


1) You've just got to have faith!

Why? What's so special about faith? Just because a worldview gives you comfort does not mean it is true. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so forth, all give billions of followers worldwide comfort and happiness, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and an (mistaken) understanding of the world and our place in it. If faith itself is just a virtue, then there's no need to hold prejudices against those of other religions. Nor is there a need to see them as damned and going to hell, if you admit in the first place that it's just a matter of faith and not really supported by any evidence.

Another spin on this is the objection that skepticism is just too dull, that life is something best viewed with "color", or that skeptics are too pessimistic and we just need to have more hope. Again, does holding a belief because it is aesthetically pleasing or because it gives us hope make it true? No. Some philosophers like William James might argue that it is a justified belief in a pragmatic sense, but it still doesn't make it true of reality. If you are a consistent truth seeker, you should apply skepticism across the board, and not accept something just because it makes you happy.


2) Science is a belief too!

Not quite, science is a way of inquiry about the natural world. However, the findings of science are beliefs. The issue is not over whether or not something is a belief, but whether or not it is a justified belief in the first place -- does it (insert whatever you wish for the "it" here) make sense, or are there good reasons to think it?  Secondly, the issue is over whether or not the justified belief is TRUE, in which we can happily say we know something.

Now, there are a couple of general ways to come to a belief which are rational. The first is deductive logic, which I discuss in a previous blog post. This is, broadly speaking, a method by which you move from some general principles to a specific conclusion.

From where then do these general principles which serve as the premises come? The method by which we move from specific premises to a general principle is called inductive logic. There are many methods of induction, but there is the simple type of induction which works by enumeration, such as the sun rose every day thus far, and therefore will rise tomorrow. This type of reasoning is rather prone to error, and is the subject of much skepticism by philosophers. The "problem of induction" concerns this form of inductive reasoning.

Other types of induction include causal reasoning, which is best exemplified in John Stuart Mill's methods of induction. There is also statistical and probable reasoning, exemplified by the mathematics of statistics, including both the Frequentist and Bayesian methods.

Science of course utilizes all of these methods of reasoning! Science is the disciplined practice of developing hypotheses (positive statements or predictions) about the world, devising a way to test them, and hoping to reject the null hypothesis, or hypothesis of no effect. A hypothesis, for instance, could be that the position of the sun relative to constellations has mystical power on us that determines our personalities and life events. The null hypothesis would be that there is no observable effect of the sun's position relative to constellations has an influence over our life. Unless there is sufficient evidence (in statistics, sufficient evidence means that the probability of it occurring due to chance is less than a mere five percent!), there is no reason to accept a hypothesis. That is a bad example of a hypothesis, of course, but I used it since I mentioned astrology at the beginning of this post. A good hypothesis should be easily falsifiable. You can never directly test whether or not there is a mystical, invisible, force behind anything because it is by nature undetectable. However, you can deduce the consequences of that being true -- such as people born under a specific star sign all truly displaying the same personality, and test that. Of course, there is no such convincing evidence so the null hypothesis is what must be accepted if one wishes to be consistently rational. If the consequences of a hypothesis that is hard to directly falsify are inconsequential, then it can be fully dispensed with. I rather like the pragmatic maxim of Charles Sanders Peirce, which is similar to the "ockham's razor" or principle of parsimony: It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows; "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (from How To Make Our Ideas Clear)

While deduction and induction are commonly juxtaposed to each other, even viewed as opposites, I would like to point out that this is not the case. As I said, deductive logic goes from a general to a specific. The general principles that serve as the premises, however, have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is induction. Science uses both. Induction and Deduction are not opposites, they ought to be thought of as inseparable.

The point of all this is to clarify what thinking scientifically is. Those who object that science is just a belief just don't get the point of it -- to develop justified and hopefully true beliefs.

3) You're being narrow minded!

I see this one used a lot, especially from religious folk who claim their views are supported by the evidence. There is a difference between being consistently rational and being narrow minded. Being narrow minded is clinging to a belief because it makes you happy or because you do not wish to change your opinion. Being rational is only changing your opinion when a sufficiently good argument or evidence warrants it, regardless of your feelings towards the new conclusion. Ironcially, those who accuse people of being narrow minded are often the ones being just that.

In a sense, this objection is a combination of the first two. It's proposing that science or rationality are just one way of thinking, and that they are no better or worse than superstition, mysticism, or faith. The implication is that everything is relative, and that one is better off believing something that makes you happy or gives guidance in life rather than having a "party pooper" belief.

I consider myself a seeker of truth, so if consistently applying rational rules to my thinking makes me a  party pooper, a cynic, or narrow minded, then so be it. I prefer this over what I call "intellectual hedonism." I define intellectual hedonism as the tendency to seek out beliefs that give one pleasure. I propose on the contrary that truth is valuable in its own right. To refer to the popular film The Matrix, I would choose to live in the "desert of the real" over the computer simulation.

Science and Spirituality

In my previous post, I discussed the general outline of my world view. I'd like to discuss it further in depth. What made me want to revisit this issue is a certain picture posted on Facebook, pictured below (click to make larger, putting at the original size here causes formatting problems). 

Click Here to See in Full Size

I read through this picture and started to reflect on what this actually means. The general idea proposed here is that one should take comfort in the law of conservation of energy, meaning energy is neither created or destroyed. It gives the impression that one lives on through some sort of afterlife as an energy, scattered throughout the cosmos. As rosy and feel-good as this may sound, I think that it is at root false. As you (hopefully) know, the universe is composed of matter and energy (which are identical, as E=MC²). There is one fundamental class of existence observable by science (I will leave aside metaphysical debates over mind-body dualism and the problem of universals, for one, science has given no reason to think the mind seperate from the brain, and secondly, issues over the nature or existence of universals is irrelevant to this discussion.), and that is matter/energy. They are like lego blocks that compose all of existence. When we die, our bodies decompose, and the thermal energy that is in our body radiates into the environment due to a physical process called entropy, which states that in a closed system, matter or energy will take on a uniform structure. To overcome entropy, there must be energy intake. This is why we need food to live. So obviously, after we die that entropy takes over because our bodies no longer are fighting against it. The "lego blocks" that make up our bodies begin to fall apart. Now, this may seem trivial, but my point is that there is nothing comforting in this because it is not the things that make up your body that matter, but the way those things are put together. Or as Carl Sagan once said, "the beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."(from Cosmos)

The way these things are put together are information structures. Remember that the brain is composed of neurons and glial cells, with the primary unit of information processing being the neuron. A neuron has an input and output function. The inputs of a neuron are called dendrites, and the outputs are called axons. Neurons are webbed together, with axons and dendrites nearly touching (and held together by glial cells) at places called synapses, across which neurotransmitters and ionized electrolytes flow, carrying an electrical charge across the synapses. Many of these neurotransmitters function to modulate electrical activity. (For more specific information, I highly recommend The Synaptic Self by Joseph Le Doux). This is to say that the brain has a specific structure, and these neurons group into regions that carry out specific tasks throughout the brain. The synaptic connections are determined by genetic and epigenetic factors, and are altered through life experience. This determines who you are. Now, the brain's job is to process information from the world that it takes in through sensory perception and make decisions for survival. Knowing this, cognitive psychologists map cognitive function according to a theory called "The Computational Theory of Mind". The task of cognitive psychology is to model the basic cognitive machinery of every human being. Cognitive Neuroscience seeks to understand how the brain carries out this cognitive computation of information.

Keeping in mind the fact that your mind is the information processing of the brain, which is determined by your synaptic structures, and the fact that your brain is an organ which must fight entropy to stay alive and function, once you are dead, entropy takes over. The synaptic structures in your brain begin to decay. So yes, the energy and matter that you are made of does recycle. But who you are is annihilated. There is no more cognition, no more sensory perception going on. The downside to this is that there is no joyous afterlife. The upside is there's no hell to fear, either. You may ask about the soul, which there is no scientific reason to believe in, but nevertheless that is not the subject of the picture I am discussing.

My aim here is not to be a cynic or a pessimist. My goal is to show that one should be careful in how he or she interprets science. To drive home my point further, consider following scenario: Imagine that you are a child who has just completed the coolest object made out of lego bricks. Your brother or sister then comes along and smashes it to pieces, and you naturally become very upset. Then your sibling tells you, "don't worry, the legos that made your creation are still here, they're just less orderly!" Would that bring you any comfort? Of course not. The structure of your creation is now gone, even though the materials are still there. So it is with death, too.

Carl Sagan wrote in the splendid book on critical thinking, The Demon Haunted World, that “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

It is important to distinguish between two sorts of spirituality. The first is the mysticism variety, full of new age healing crystals, astrology, meditation (though meditation can be beneficial outside of a mystical context), and lots of talk on "quantum" and "consciousness". This sort of spirituality is typified by people like Depaak Chopra. This post is already lengthy enough, so I won't take the time to dismantle that here, but I recommend the aforementioned book by Carl Sagan, and War of the Worldview: Science vs Spirituality by Depaak Chopra & Leonard Mlodinow. The other sort of spirituality is an outlook on life. Science can be fun. There is a great joy one can feel upon learning facts about the world, or discovering something previously unknown. Science is also a social practice that can't be practiced meaningfully alone, hence the term "scientific community." One can encounter much joy out of making friends in the scientific community. One can also appreciate, as Carl Sagan said, the heroic acts of great men and women. At the same time, I think it is important not to overstate the beauty of nature. There are far more many ways to be dead than alive, and nature seems to be filled mostly with ways to be dead. Nature is morally neutral. It's not going to stop having natural disasters because it's not nice.

In conclusion, it is important to not overstate the majesty of nature, or interpret something in science to mean more than it is. Reality is morally neutral, unconscious, and does not care about you. Remember that these "spiritual feelings" that Carl Sagan speaks of are subjective experiences, not some real aspect of the world. As I said before, there are more ways to be dead than alive. I would like to end on a positive note, since this all sounds rather pessimistic. There are billions of neurons in your brain, that can be arranged in trillions upon trillions of different ways. No one will ever have the same arrangement as you, and no one will ever share the exact same life experiences. You are unique. There will never be another one of you. The probability of you having the personality that you do is unfathomable. Take joy in your improbable self*, and use those neurons to think well!

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits." — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus


*Though, as it turns out, there is no single function of the brain known to correspond to a "self", but rather, the "self" is the awareness of an autiobiography, in short. Nevertheless, it's a harmless and useful illusion even if it has no "metaphysical" correlate.