In a brief moment of clarity, Harris observes, “the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities” before noting, “This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance” (ML, p.161). When I first reached this line my initial impression was that herein lay a prescient description of The Moral Landscape and perhaps Sam Harris as well. Despite being a relative newcomer to science (only starting his neuroscience PhD. in his late thirties after no prior experience, it seems, in any field of science), and showing more than a small degree of disdain for philosophy given he has a BA in that discipline (which would only engender a very general level of knowledge as previously indicated), Harris believes that he has overcome Hume’s famous dictum that one cannot get an ought from an is, and shown professional scientists who thought they had nothing to say about morality that they are wrong. Why then, am I not lauding him as a brilliant mind who has revolutionised studies of morality? Irrespective of what he believes to be the case, Harris never does either of these things in Moral Landscape.
I had intended to include aspects of the reviews I read and also go into full detail. The demands of brevity again exert themselves and I must restrict myself in the scope of this analysis. For that reason I will focus on two major issues, both of which are fairly objective and avoid the recurrent issue of Harris’ elusive contentions. The first will be his definition of ‘science’, the second his use of ‘well-being’ as the central aspect of his system of morality.
What I quoted above is far from the only instance where Harris provides a comment which duly describes his own work. At one point Harris notes that anyone is “free to define ‘science’ any way they want” (ML, p.61). Surely though this is an outright falsehood. While Harris claims there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, there certainly are right and wrong definitions. An essential preface to talking about Moral Landscape or Harris’ assertions that ‘science can tell us about morality’ in general is that, in a strict sense, when he says science he doesn’t mean science. Or more specifically, he means a lot more than the hard sciences (physics, biology, chemistry) that are usually indicated or alluded to when ‘science’ is deployed. Harris is open about this (in his notes but not the main text). Therein he writes:
“For the purposes of this discussion, I do not intend to make a hard distinction between ‘science’ and other intellectual contexts in which we discuss ‘facts’ – e.g. history ... I think ‘science’ therefore, should be considered a specialized branch of a larger effort to form true beliefs about events in the world.” (ML, p.249)
Notably, half of the declaration advocates ‘science’ being read broadly yet the final sentence returns to a point of distinction. This is likely so that Harris can achieve his ends (which require the expansive view) and deflect claims he fails to provide science with sufficient identity. Taken in connection to this definition one can read Harris’ efforts as being about factual discourse and morality, not science and morality. Regarding the potential challenge to his assertion about science determining morality posed by restrictive definitions, Harris writes:
“Some people maintain this view [there are no right/wrong answers about morality] by defining ‘science’ in exceedingly narrow terms, as though it were synonymous with mathematical modelling or immediate access to experimental data. However, this is to mistake science for a few of its tools. Science simply represents our best effort to understand what is going on in the universe, and the boundary between it and rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn.” (ML, p.45)
Yes, science does represent our best effort to understand the world (and beyond that, the universe). But it is the best because of the tools which it uses. For Harris then, anything that is the ‘best effort’ is ‘science’. Speaking with greater specificity and accuracy, one might say that while science is quite distinct, scientific approaches do appear in other fields. For example, methodological naturalism is central to hard sciences such as physics and also history in that no one factors supernatural causes into their explanation of events. Likewise, evidence is the ultimate arbiter of one’s conclusions in such fields which is why these may be considered, alongside the traditional sciences, as parts of factual discourse.
What is ultimately wrong with Harris’ inclusivity? Basically this ignores the past two centuries and takes the meaning of ‘science’ back to Coleridge’s day when it referred to any systematic knowledge. Science is no longer just science but a collection of any discipline which aims to produce factual knowledge. These may be called scientific but to label them science is either misrepresentative or in need of further qualification. Most importantly, it diminishes the force of his statement. In an exchange with Peter Singer [1], Harris also accepted the inclusion of philosophy into the list of what could, by his intentions, be called science. Once that concession is made, saying ‘science can tell us about morality’ becomes interchangeable with saying, ‘philosophy can tell us about morality’. What has philosophy been doing since the time of the Ancient Greeks? Among other things it has been trying to tell us about morality, the good life, right and wrong, etc. Instantaneously Harris’ novelty dissipates.
Having dealt with the problem of Harris’ definition of science I will now look at a term Harris fails to define: well-being. Harris claims that ‘well-being’ is the measure of what is good and to what degree it is good. Problematically, he has no clear definition:
“Many readers might wonder how can we base our values on something as difficult to define as ‘well-being’? It seems to me, that the concept of well-being is like the concept of physical health: it resists precise definition, and yet it is indispensible.” (ML, p.24)
Actually the concept is only indispensible in the event that one claims well-being should be the measure of what is good. A major issue arises if one considers that there is no way to scientifically quantify such an amorphous entity. He has been called out on this point before. On the topic of well-being Harris criticizes Sean Carroll’s argument against him in typically assertive yet digressionary style:
“The physicist Sean Carroll has written a fair amount against me on this point (again, without having read my book), and he is in the habit of saying things like, “I don’t know what a unit of well-being is,” as though he were regretfully delivering the killing blow to my thesis. I would venture that Carroll doesn’t know what a unit of depression is either—and units of joy, disgust, boredom, irony, envy, or any other mental state worth studying won’t be forthcoming.” [2]
The difference is that Carroll has not written a book wherein the concept depression etc. is central to his case. In other words, what Harris says does not relieve the burden upon his shoulders to actually define well-being. When Harris lists three “distinct challenges” all of them relate to well-being [2], showing how truly central it is to his case. We will focus here on the last one:
“Even if we did agree to grant “well-being” primacy in any discussion of morality, it is difficult or impossible to define it with rigor. It is, therefore, impossible to measure well-being scientifically. Thus, there can be no science of morality. (The Measurement Problem)” [2]
Exactly as he does in the book itself, Harris’ response is to claim well-being as directly analogous to health. He rephrases each of the challenges replacing “well-being” with health and supposes that this will dispute the validity of the originals. Though pithily acknowledging the imperfection of his analogy Harris nevertheless states, “I maintain that it is good enough to obviate these three criticisms.” Let’s pause to deconstruct that sentence: “I maintain” indicates the point is entirely subjective; “good enough” adds another level of subjectivity; then we finish by having to assume, on Harris own account, that the point is solid. What need one do in order to demonstrate that Harris is wrong? Disagree. When discourse remains on a subjective level we are not dealing with rational argumentation but with mere opinion. If one doesn’t care what Harris maintains and sees the analogy as not “good enough” then the criticism is no longer obviated. It is still in play and able to be called upon whenever one does not accept Harris’ opinion.
He concludes without even returning to well-being, as though the case for valuing health were the topic in question. These continue as he discusses the first two criticisms with regards to health without ever reaching “measurement problem”. His finale gets us back to the essential (for Harris) analogy with health:
“Unless you understand that human health is a domain of genuine truth claims—however difficult “health” may be to define—it is impossible to think clearly about disease. I believe the same can be said about morality.” [2]
Again we are left with a subjective point – “I believe”. All Harris seems to do is make that assertion and to expect us to accept that all the arguments for health can be easily and directly applied to well-being. Health invokes different points of concern than well-being. Whereas the former, in anything but a metaphorical sense, applies to individuals, the latter can operate easily on many levels. As such we may cogently ask whose well-being is at stake. A major flaw is that Harris never quite seems to establish what priorities should be given in cases where there are conflicting interests (between individuals or between societies and individuals).
Instead he relies on naive statements about the best or worst case scenarios where either everyone or no one suffers. As Patricia Churchland (a friend of Harris) put it, “Sam Harris is a child when it comes to addressing morality” [3]. Churchland’s is perhaps the most polite way of phrasing the issue: Harris’ treatment is immature and often reminiscent of reading what a child may postulate if given a simple essay task. Here’s an example of his immature sentiments:
“a universe in which all conscious beings suffer the worst possible misery is worse than a universe in which they experience well-being. This is all we need to speak about ‘moral truth’ in the context of science. Once we admit that the extremes of absolute misery and absolute flourishing – whatever these states amount to for each particular being in the end – are different and dependant on facts about the universe, then we have admitted that there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.”(p.59)
Discussions of absolute states such as the above have no actual merit resolving practical states. There is not a simple clean choice between maximum good and maximum bad. Notice also the relativism contained in the centre of that quote. Harris does not obviously consider the very possible situation that maximum flourishing could be seen to entail some degree of misery to satisfy any sadistic beings present. On that note it would render the absolute situation of his invention impossible.
Here’s one final part that needs to be pointed out- the morally insane grizzly. When discussing psychopaths, Harris has this to say:
“Consider the prospect of being locked in a cage with a wild grizzly: why would this be a problem? Well, clearly, wild grizzlies suffer some rather glaring cognitive and emotional deficits. Your new roommate will not be easy to reason with or placate; he is unlikely to recognize that you have interest analogous to his own, or that the two of you might have shared interests; and if he could understand such things, he would probably lack the emotional resources to care. From his point of view you will be a distraction at best, a cowering annoyance, and something tender to probe with his teeth. We might say that a wild bear is, like a psychopath, morally insane.” (ML, p.133)
First of all, depending on the other features of the scenario (i.e. is the cage on a deserted island or are there jailors?) surely the bear will see hypothetical-Harris as a source of food “at best”! This would be for the simple reason that the bear’s major biological imperatives are to survive and to reproduce. Given the absence of a female bear, there’s only thing he will be driven to do: ensure his own survival. Moving further into taking this stream of (poor) thought seriously, one might observe that what we have is a legitimate case of relativism. The bear’s alleged “cognitive and emotional deficits” are only deficits from the human’s point of view. In grizzly terms there is no insanity or deficit. What I mean to convey by saying this is a legitimate case of relativism is that we are clearly looking at an example where comparison is impossible. One can argue that those conditions would only be satisfied by a truly alien culture represented by biologically distinct organisms (in this case, that of the bear but hypothetically an extraterrestrial civilisation). Countering relativism with regards to morality, ethics or other matters is merely a matter of recognising that there are no mutually independent of totally incomparable systems of thought in human culture. In the words of Bernard Williams:
“A fully indivisible culture is at best a rare thing. Cultures, subcultures, fragments of cultures, constantly meet one another and exchange and modify practices and attitudes. Social practices could never come forward with a certificate saying that they belonged to a genuinely different culture, so that they were guaranteed immunity to alien judgements and reactions.” (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p.176)
I suggest Williams’ Ethics (now available as an imprint of Routledge Classics) for those interested in the topic of morality. As for Moral Landscape I have the following to say as a final rejoinder: it is poorly informed, ignoring most of the relevant literature; poorly argued as it starts and finishes with the same assertive stance without any convincing case being put forward between these points; poorly structured, reading more like an extended opinion piece that is top-loaded then quickly loses its bearings (even entering into totally spurious territory where the central claims are laid aside to berate Francis Collins – Chapter 4); and simply a displeasure to read due to Harris’ onerous prose style.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8
[2] http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-critics
[3] https://www.equinoxpub.com/acumen/index.php/TPM/article/viewFile/Churchland/11706
Postscript:
For those interested the phrase ‘moral landscape’ refers to “a hypothetical space ... of real and potential outcomes whose peaks correspond to the heights of potential well-being and whose valleys correspond to the deepest possible suffering” (ML, pp.18-9). However, as Harris concedes towards the end of the book:
“if evil turned out to be as reliable a path to happiness as goodness is, my argument about the moral landscape would still stand ... It would no longer be an especially ‘moral’ landscape; rather it would be a continuum of well-being, upon which saints and sinners would occupy equivalent peaks.” (ML, p.242)
It is, in actual fact, nothing more than a geography of well-being invoked to reify Harris’ assertions.
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