The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

by Harris, Sam

Published: January 1, 2010

Read: January 1, 2019

★★★★★

Goodreads

Review

A concise book providing solid fundamentals for believing in a scientific morality. Most of the book is spent rejecting the notion that science can't answer moral questions and all ways of human existence are equally valid. At times, the book can take a very heavy tone to opposing views which may cause readers holding those views to be left unconvinced. However, despite being a philosophy book, the readings are compelling and clear with many tangible examples. The premises are clearly stated and well supported. The later chapters touch many interesting topics from good and evil to free will and belief.

Notes

Chp 1

Can science say one life is better than another? Some say no. I say yes. Wellbeing entirely depends on events in world and states if human brain. So there are scientific truths about it and some events and states can be said to better than others. Questions may be hard to answer, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. All response aren’t equal. No answer in practice is different than no practice in principle.

Can’t just agree to disagree with important questions. Values talks about facts about human brain and how events in the world impact humans. Morality is underdeveloped branch of science.

Two sides that say science is silent on human values. Conservists say truth from God with dogmatic virtue. Secular liberals suspect no idea of morality is absolute, moral relativism. Even nature magazine says religion and science don’t contradict as religion talks about value meaning and the good life.

Moral landscape of real and potential worlds with peaks and valleys of human flourishing and suffering. Multiple peaks and ways to move. Not one right food, but still healthy and poison foods. We don’t say there are no facts about it. Some say moral principles must have no exception. So one counter argument make it false. In chess, don’t lose your queen is a good principle in most cases. We can compare principle and see which ones are worth abandoning.

The way parents parent has real impacts on human brains. Differing opinions doesn’t oblige us to respect all us views forever.

Chp 2 facts and values

Hume argued no description of the world, facts , can tell us how we ought to behave, morality. Be Moore argued about naturalist fallacy goodness couldn’t be map to any property of human experience because is that property is good. Open question argument.

Not for human well-being though. But, firewall between morality and science and considered dogmatic for scientists to say they influence how we should live our lives.

Divide false because

1. whatever can be known about wellbeing must map onto facts about brains and their interaction with world
2. Objective knowledge has values built into it like consistency and parsimony and evidence
3. Mind mechanism for understanding values and facts same thing

Wellbeing seems too general. But, vague like health. Standard health of seemingly devoid of disease, but that can change as science changes. Dead and alive is a stark difference as is good and bad wellbeing. This isn’t just pleasure as we can imagine biological engineering reassigning what we find pleasure able.  Beyond just Darwinian goals and genes and heading to the sperm bank.

Chp 3 importance of belief

What must brain do to believe propositions? We form beliefs about facts and values. Both say right and wrong not just about how we  think and behave but how we should think and behave. To believe means another person similarly placed should also come to same conclusion.

Fundamental propositions:

1. some people have better lives than others
2. And those differences relate in some lawful and non arbitrary way to states of the brain and world.

Bad life: widow in civil war. Daughter raped and beheaded by your son goaded by soldiers drunk. You have never taken a hot shower or learned to read. Even the best people you know just had respites, your short life has been one emergency.

Good life: married to most loving intelligent and charmistic. Carter’s that are financially Nd personally rewarding. You win billion dollars to help children in developing world. Good genes and health means you and your family live long lives.

Counters:

what does love and happiness mean if not a preference of good over bad. If you don’t see a difference and it doesn’t matter, then what else could someone prefer. Wouldn’t freedom and opportunity be easier whatever you do in good life. Can you just choose one at random and call it happiness.

What if bad life is actually better cuz afterlife. Well that would just change equation not invalidate it with right and wrong answers. Sure some have differing opinions, but in any domain of knowledge we must say some opinions don’t count.

If we found a new people, we wouldn’t believe they lived an optimal life of health. And if they

Did child sacrifice that would be immune to crictism just like our morality. But that would say they live as happy and fulfilling lives as any society. Some think all long standings human practices must be evolutionary useful. Slavery, heavy metal, killing of elder, agriculture taboo etc doesnt suggest its adaptive just that it doesn’t collapse society. Memes of ideas can just be a disease. People can live undermining. Physical health with shorter life,  up why can’t they do the same for their psychological wellbeing. Why can’t governments be demonstrately harmful.

Values are beliefs about human wellbeing. There will always be people who don’t want wellbeing just like they won’t understand facts. There. An be unintended  consequences. But we just need to figure out how to more reliably more towards good.

Chp 4 religion

Religion dogmatic. Bad in facts and morality. 2006 conference of intellectuals couldn’t decide if science had any conflict with religion. Hitler and Stalin are secularism ran a mock. Can’t take people’s hope. Most humans need to believe in god, but they don’t. Don’t start war of ideas,

Us doesn’t fear death, but losing funding for speaking out.

Chp 6 moral truth

Some say No room for moral judgements. Morality myth. No truth condition. Can’t make statements about values. Only moral opinion.

Science can in principle help us know what we should do and what and what others should do and want. Wellbeing depends on how universe is and science can help us better answer question. Solve racism or malaria? Practical difficulties, but no obstacles in principal. Science is best effort to understand universe, not jus mathematical models and data.

Objective and subjective mean different things. How we know? Or what there is to know? Being objective means being logical. Can be objective about subjective ideas like happiness. It can have objective cause. Can correlate subjective experience with objective causes.

Just because we can’t know doesn’t mean we can’t make true or false statements. We can’t know birthday wishes. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen and they weren’t all in Latin about Chinese improvements in solar panels. Truth doesn’t mean concenscious.

Opposition: why does consciousness matter and is valued? Why can’t we just torture everyone? Consciousness is domain of value. What else could be valued beyond conscious experience.

Wellbeing is all we can intelligently value. Follow gods law of its own sake some say.no religious people just want a good life and want heaven. Follow out of concern for negative consequences. What if there was a more powerful god who didn’t like Christianity, diversity of living in moral landscape is respected by science. What about people’s moral view being different only caring about killing everyone? Does consensus matter? Why do all views count equally.

Catholic Church excommunicates abortion doctors and female priests but not genocide by third Reich and priests raping children. Can we think perhaps it’s properties are misaligned and it’s not an authority. Church systemically allowed rape of children.

What about all people who don’t want to live longer? Medicine. “Can’t convince someone to believe they should value moral wellbeing” same thing for facts like evolution. Science can’t say health is valuable, but can tell us how health can be approached. Is science itself unscientific? What logic could demonstrate importance of logic? We don’t hold science up to such challenges.

Ought vs is. Hume idea. Ought. Must care about conscious beings. Ought means everyone will be better off how could you care about anything else. Universal morality can still imagine everyone living in their worst possible life. Change that leaves everyone worse must be bad if it’s to have any meaning. We don’t have to care about others, but they universe are different and about facts about universe. Not necessarily zero sum. Complex yet understandable. Some definitions are useless. KKK have nothing to say Bout particle physics why do they about wellbeing.

If anyone is free to value anything, we are giving up a lot of wellbeing for people around the world all the time . Some cultures suck at maximizing human well being.

What if culture blinds every third child because of religion. “Well then we could never say they were wrong.” Codes even moral relativists believ it is universal. Saying burkas in Islam is wrong is seen as dogmatic and philosophical naive. Right and wrong are subjects of a specific time and place. Clearly intellectual reperations. This is not a defense of western ideas, but just ideas would be universal. When more people kill, it becomes culture. Learned confusion.

Moral Science

This isn’t in prose and not utopian. Science has so much prejudice of sexist and racist say that the entire field must give feminist and cultural ideas their due. Was hilter right with Jewish physics? Let’s do physics for people who failed calculus? You have to be very learnt to be that wrong.

Just because morality is good adaption don’t mean it’s purpose now is not reproduction. Doubtful gene for throwing pointy end first, and doubtful it must be painstakingly taught to each generation. Universal.

3 different projects,

1. Explain why many people mistaken follow paths in name of morality
2. Think more about Paths to follow in name of morality
3. Can convince the misguided to live better lives

common and seen as idea of science. 3 is essential and 2 is my focus. Zoology comes into play some times with jealously. 1 looks at this. Morality used as vechile for dogmatism and racism and sexism.

Chp7 good and evil

Cooperation essential. Deception, theft, violence takes so much energy. Science can inform our cooperation. Moral virtue attractive can be seen as peacock feather that is expensive to maintain but attractive.

Our irises are white showing the direction of our gaze. This probably means others knowing where our attention lies was adaptive and in a cooperative environment. Monkeys just look at at head movements babies follow eyes.

Even Adam smith knew we cared about others but had limits.

Pinky finger or death of hundreds of millions you don’t know or see.

Moral hierarchy.

Dobo islanders believed in sorcery and intimacy with victim makes spells more powerful. Did they love each other as much?some would say in principle he’s, but no they are like us.

Moral realism and consequential. Without experience, values are vacuous. Even god worship is to supposed consciousness. Martyr die for consequences. Dogmatic god devoid of analysis of effect on wellbeing sucks :(.

What about world makes moral claim true or false? Moral a is truer than moral b if it is more accurate link between human thought and wellbeing. “Moral intuition is common sense and feels like perceptible. Moral realism is mistake we were born to make” Realism makes people think there are facts about moral answers. More consensus around cruelty being wrong then sp3ciavl relativity. Intuition incoherent? Can apply same to math?

Moral paradox

Can’t always determine if event effects areis good or bad. Hard to even do in retrospect. Whose wellbeing should most concern us? Mild headache of 1000 vs broken legs of 2. No one has answers but we must make decisions as a country. Population ethics are hard for people. More people  gives less concern. One child gets biggest donation. 2 gets even less. Identifble victim effect. Clearly error between groups. Must build better structure to combat this.

Total or average wellbeing. Both have problems. Total means reproduce. Single means one and kill unhappy. Must aggregate in some way. Better to save rich person? They could do more good. 8 others vs my child. Parental connections can be better life. Many more ways for system to be biased against you and fairness.

Loss avoidance. Must pay more to take then one would pay. Daughter loses musical ability or daughter didn’t get enhancement to get musical ability, consequences are same but perhaps loss creates worse mental states. How can you judge equivalent outcome? People evaluate experience based on peak and ending experience. People like examination if its prolonged at lowest point of discomfort.

Fairness and hierarchy

Consequence is just one. A theory of justice by Rawls. Veil of ignorance from original position. Is it really a different way. Is justice really separate from wellbeing. Fairness contributes to our wellbeing like mri level. Society don’t suffer, people do.

Two ethical codes is unfair and a nd. Trust is how much you would safeguard others wellbeing. Categorical imperative is about if it was a universal law would it be good. Appeals to fairness

Is being good just too hard?

Difference between amount of effort on breakfast vs helping developing countries. We often fail what we want to do. Also moral. Doing what is most important would give me more pleasure than what I do for pleasure. But beliefs aren’t enough to change me. Not moved.could change our consciousness change our responses and priorities.

How much better should a mother feel after the death of her child. How much better should she want to felel. If there is a cure for grief. Want connection to reality, but can try to follow path that maximizewellbeing.

Bewildered by diversity

Social intuitionist model: people tend to make moral decisions emotional and justify their decisions. People morally dumbfounded and not very open minded.

So perhaps all we can do is study differences. Why is everything people do morally an anchor of morality. Moral concerns can be immoral. People defend their positions with excellent arguments and think the other side must be convibced. When they are not convinced they must be insincere and not morally motivated. Just as you be less than rational while saying your rational, same for morality.

Can liberals eventually call for need of order and I group vs out group?

Moral brain

Brain regions in prefrontal cortex and others. 4 types of action: Self serving that don’t affect others, self serving that negatively affect others, benfical to others with expectation of repriocity, beneficial to others without expectation of repriocity. Cooperation can be rewarding though.

Media prefrontal cortex Region involved emotion reward, belief and disbelief. Without has less social emotions and self control.

Trolley problem. Trolley problem with fat man. Personal and impersonal are different. Without makes you more likely to push. Pushing could make our lives worse and on paper could be same but have different in real world.

Psychopaths

Certain people truly lack capacity to care about others. Child pornographers is billion dollar industry for a reason. 1% of population psychopaths.

Arousal to anticipated reward and thus are concerned less with negative emotions. They don’t realize sadness and fear enough in others. Unlearnable.

Othersmignt have moral genius. Tit for tat and permanent defection are both stable by game theory.

Evil

Even with all the world wars, less in group violence then chimps and early humans.

Illusion of free will.

You seem to be agent. Can't be true with what we know what about humans. Others are often more aware of your states them you. Some ideas can be seen in the brain before you consciousness know you decided. No account of causality has free will. Are you free to change your mind? Choices appear.

Determinism is not fatalism. Choices and thoughts are important. Sit back and see what happens is a choice. Freedom stop important.

Moral responsibility

Free Will is called universal and foundational view for justice system and punishing people for their bad behavior.

We must have done nothing of personal responsibility for morality. Responsibilities depend on mind states and how actions are extension of mind. Brains can be cause of death. But background like tumor or tragic background change it. Conscious planning best reflects or mind. Some are danger. Seems immoral to not recognize how much luck plays into being moral. We aren't authors or own upbringing. Will looking at mind as distinct from brain make us less compassionate? Well the idea is already causing problems with mental health stigma.

We aren't as free as we think we are. Sham morality can be useful.

Chp 3 Belief

Language let's words substitute for experience. Predictive of future outcome. We can it belief.

What is belief?

We often separate belief and knowledge, but... We use knowledge for certainity of belief. Belief can be equivalent to memory and semantic memory of words. Hearing sentences is the biggest way we acquire knowledge. Breaks into many components in brain. Can believe things you don't know Ie Starbucks doesn't sell Platinum. You didn't think that before, but you perhaps believed it or would have been likely to believe it

Looking for belief in brain

No belief center, evolution doesn't create complete structures. Harris studied this at UCLA. It was thought you first believe a new statement then disbelieve it. It takes less time to believe. We like the truth like emotionally. Similar pattern of math and ethical belief. Facts and value division didn't make more sense.

Values reduce to facts, philosophical claim. In the lab, From point of view of brain, looks very similar.

Tides of bias

Believing idea for different reasons is different. Many cognitive biases like anchoring. Internet provides more access to knowledge and ignorance. Krueger effect, arrogance in science very minimal. Conservative linked to obvious sources of bias. Liberals more swayed by race. Noneptimistuc motives are always a doubt.

Mistaking our limits

Neurology of belief shoes morality is also based on interaction with evidence. Does conscious reasoning just rationalize decision as the only tool to explain what we did? Reasoning pretty good and valuable. Risk assessment essential for decision. Belief change over human history shows they can change. Reasonable ideas independent of biology. Math.

Belief and reasoning

Induction specific experience to general. Deduction is general to specific. Bias is a systemic error reflecting mind. Reasoning part of small part of things we believe. Evaluating a statement evaluated it's truth with different parts of mind.

Beyond lies

Knowing what people believe does whether they are telling the truth. Perhaps belief and lie detection can happen. If when truth is important, we get it. Only if someone is accurately representing their thoughts (Piper's of Nations states, self deception becomes essential). We already don't go nude or rioting in streets, now we just can't lie. While against self incrimination, it would mean more justice.

Freedom of Belief

People believe things they think are true without knowing its self deception or delusion. Some believe someone can believe things just cuz it feels good, while that might make us more likely. If they just believe someone because of how it makes them feel then they didn't care about evidence to the contrary. Choosing beliefs is not what a rational mind does, but we can view then in different ways.

Girl is lovelist girl in the world to me. Wouldn't argue if someone else thought that about some other girl. Science had been in value game, rational values.

You can't just say for Morality can't just say it's my preference. Believing x is true or y is ethical is saying someone else should believe it w it similar circumstance. Believe it because it is true and rational as it is still of cognition. No facts without values.

Religion

Nonreligious people have fewest children and richer. Us had strong religion. Religion offers general rules, but still sucks with weighing harms and benefits.

Obv, Religion is not core of functioning society.

Religion and evolution

Religion offers monogamy and constrains sexuality. Group selection? Belief is essential. Evolution belief minority in America. Religion fit people s inference machine with emotion. Children seem to presume world with design and intention. Perhaps like language the religion that takes hold is just making onto tendencies.

Is religious beliefs special?

Sam Harris fmri religious beliefs. Very similar activity between believers and not believers when saying true/false. Intimately linked to self presentation and reward.

Does religion matter?

Special humans?

No real conflict between religion and science. A great scientists says after evolution and big bang good created. He gifted soul ad moral law to humans. States of mind and compassion and awe are great human experiences. But making irrational claims. Jesus ideas probably breaks all science laws. Many people claim to be born from Virginia, should we trust prescience ancient copy of a copy of a copy.

Souls makes us value embroyos over animals. Growing literature against new athesists Dawkins and Harris for ignoring how sophisticated believers see. Hate how they try to create a choice between science and religion as people would choose religion.

Future of happiness

Great moral development. People are more likely to help others and the group then at any other time in human history. We will embarrass or descendents. We should convenge on moral judgements.

Hard to see difference between science and philosophy as everything required interpretation. Einstein and bohr disagreed with same evidence about particles. Physicalism is essential to Neuroscience.

Psychology of happiness

Very young. Self reported eating is current standards. People use words with different means. Are there different types of depression? Such questions have answers. Moral landscapes means we just need to move up. Lonilessness and happiness is wrong. Too many options undermines satisfaction. We are bad judges of what affects us, changes don't actually affect us as much as we think. Trivial can destroy us. General life rememberkng happiness self vs moment happiness self. Can be down to disagree. Correlation .5. remembering self remembers the past. If you remember happiness but in the moment you hated it. Then you don't need two selves to explain, just bad memory.

On being right or wrong

Freedom of speech, safety, and privacy. How to balance very difficult. There is a answer though. One of the most reliable ways to diminish someone's impact on society is to start a family. Sam could be wrong if brain states don't depend on their circumstances. Seems obvious though. Currently scientists think there is no intellectual justification for talking about right and wrong. Some cultures and world views made better lives then others, might be hard to know in practice, but not principle.