The Moral Landscape: An Ugly Marriage of Confidence and Ignorance

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.

The End of Everyone Else's Faith, Part I: Sam Harris and a Religion

Given the present silence that seems to have descended over Boggo Road Gaol, I shall shift topic to inaugurate what will be a four part analysis regarding the work of Sam Harris. After wading through his turgid but shallow The Moral Landscape (2010) I had all but decided not to deal with Harris’ difficult prose again. In the end though, I managed to read parts of The End of Faith (2004) and also the 66 pages of Free Will (2012). In this initial post I will be examining a matter from End of Faith.


Before proceeding it is necessary to make a point about critically discussing what Harris has written. Previously I noted the difficult prose which mars any meaningful contribution the texts may seek to make. As PZ Myers puts it, “one of the problems with grappling with the objectionable ideas Harris has thrown out is that they’re fuzzily presented and laced with caveats to hide behind” [1]. Given the amount of time Harris spends telling people that they (or others) are misrepresenting his views one wonders just how able he is to communicate a point [see: 2]. Not oblivious to that fact Harris even says, "I can’t shake the feeling that if I just wrote or spoke more clearly, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen" [2]. Indeed.


Such open awareness of his propensity for poor communication gives me cause to speculate. I suspect that accusations of misrepresentation may well be a built in retort which Harris deploys whenever he’s seen to be making statements that are of factually dubious or unsavoury character. Instances of such shall be considered when discussing Moral Landscape and Free Will in subsequent posts.


Additionally, when misunderstanding is claimed, something in the way of a genuine clarification should be forthcoming. Not something Harris does in the majority of cases. He appears instead to claim that the reader is mistaken and then proceed without anything resembling a more precise articulation. Again, that leads me to question whether his opaque deliveries, equivocation, and lack of clarity are deliberate.


So we have a problem when engaging with Harris’ work. One can avoid these though when focusing on basic points. Rather than addressing an aspect of End of Faith that could lead to claims of misrepresentation I shall herein focus on a contention so simple that even Sam Harris can communicate it clearly: that Buddhism is not a religion. My argument here is that Buddhism is a religion. In the following post I will argue in greater detail that it also serves as the basis of Harris’ own religiosity.


In a debate concerning the benefits or lack thereof from belief in God held earlier this year in Canberra, Lawrence Krauss said the following:


"Clearly, not every religious belief can be rational. It is generally true, from my experience in addressing audiences of people of faith, that that fact is accepted. But what is always accepted is that the other peoples' faiths are irrational and the peoples' own faith is rational." [3]


Such is the case with Harris. Despite having written a book titled The End of Faith and frequently criticising “religion”, Harris nevertheless possesses his own brand of religiosity against which he measures all others, asserting his own to be empirical and valid. To be absolutely clear: I am certainly not referring to ‘atheism’ as a religion, nor do I mean to suggest that science can be read as such; I mean to say Harris has beliefs derived from Buddhism that are not founded on evidence, and thus are faith-based beliefs linked to a recognised religion.


Of course, Harris’ counter is that Buddhism is not a religion. In the notes to End of Faith (another recurrent feature of Harris’ work is that significant points are buried in the endnotes rather than included in the main text), he writes:


“Attentive readers will have noticed that I have been very hard on religious faith – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Hinduism – and have not said much that is derogatory of Buddhism. This is not an accident. While Buddhism has also been a source of ignorance and occasional violence, it is not a religion of faith, or a religion at all, in the Western sense.” (End of Faith, p.283)


Unhelpfully, Harris doesn’t establish what religion “in a Western sense” actually constitutes. Nowhere are we shown a difference between Western and (presumably) Eastern ‘religion’ nor why this should actually matter. I suspect a basic principle of distinction is being used by Harris, something along the lines of: ‘all these other examples have deities, Buddhism does not therefore it is not a religion’; or, ‘all these possess a supernatural dimension, (my) Buddhism does not therefore it is not religion’. In regards to the latter principle, AC Grayling has stated that Theravada Buddhism is not a religion but a philosophy because it has no supernatural "beings" [4]. Implied therein is the concession that not all Buddhism merits exclusion from the label ‘religion’. However, Harris remains general and sees all Buddhism as exempt.


Whether Buddhism is sufficiently akin to the Abrahamic traditions or Hinduism (it is in fact a derivative of it) is not the point. I could easily get into the range of academic definitions of ‘religion’ but instead will remain in the popular Harris-friendly sphere of discourse. Let’s consult the vernacular atheist’s bible – Wikipedia – for a definition: “Religion is a collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral value” [5]. Notice also that supernaturalism is not required by this definition. Indeed, if we are to call Raelianism or Scientology religions then we need a definition that does not require the supernatural. After describing Buddhists as the physicists of spirituality, Harris proceeds to state:


“Though there is much in Buddhism that I do not pretend to understand – as well as much that seems deeply implausible – it would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge its preeminence [sic] as a system of spiritual instruction.” (End of Faith, p.284).


Without introducing any new phraseology we automatically see confluence: a “system of spiritual instruction” would by the definition be a religion. It warrants noting that the Wikipedia page includes Buddhism. Returning to the suggestion that Buddhism is not a religion in the “Western sense” it also warrants noting that Buddhism is part of the subject matter in Studies in Religion departments at major Western universities. Buddhist representatives also attend inter-faith chaplaincies and dialogues in at least this Western country.


If pushed Harris may say that he is 'spiritual' and not 'religious', a common reprise in this day. Presently though that is a way of being religious to one's own individualised faith rather than an institutional framework. In other words, spatiality and religion are different by degree, not kind. This is especially so given both rest on faith. Spirituality assumes a spiritual dimension without evidence. Once again, Harris offers no verification of the claim that Buddhism is preeminent. It is dishonest in any sense, including intellectually, to cast a system of belief as superior to all others (clearly Harris’ language extends the scope beyond religious systems) without at least providing a case first.


Thus, Harris is rebutted on a rather clear point. Whatever his, or other Buddhist proponents opinions, Buddhism is regarded as a religion and fits a broadly available definition of such that may quite easily enter the kind of public, non-academic discourse in which Harris resides.


In the next post I will further examine how Harris treats Buddhism to show that he has a certain faith-based (i.e. evidential unsubstantiated) conviction which undermines his general anti-religion stance.


[1] http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/08/08/addressing-sam-harris/
[2] http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/wrestling-the-troll
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YKrLab0IWg
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfix_e1QnbM

To quote: "Theravada Buddhism is not a religion, it doesn't have any supernatural beings in it - it's a philosophy". However, there's no clear reason why a philosophy cannot equally become, or in some cases legitimately be called, a religion. Such certainly seems the case with the majority of Buddhism.

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

A Brief Outlook on The Moral Landscape

After watching a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig I decided to examine Harris' The Moral Landscape (2010) to discern whether or not the characterisation of it by Craig was accurate. While I assumed Craig was being his usual distortionist self I was actually wrong in this case. Having made it most of the way through (I find the book rather dense in the 'you never really get anywhere' sense so it's slower going than usual) I certainly believe it merits critical examination. For that reason I will post my examination of it once finished.

By way of lead up I have also been looking at reviews of Moral Landscape. Some of these arrive at similar conclusions to those which I have about the book (mainly negative) and will be addressed as part of the full post. One point I though merited direct attention was a pro-Harris retort from Chris Hallquist [1]. Regarding a comment made by Massimo Pigliucci, Hallquist writes:

"The snark that Harris just doesn’t know any philosophy (“I suggest that Harris would benefit from reading about it” – Massimo Pigliucci) is simply false. Harris did his bachelors in philosophy, and emphasizes in a footnote that he’s read quite a bit of the philosophical literature but just doesn’t think discussing it all would’ve made for a good book."

In the context of scholarship and intellectual debate asserting that you're "read quite a bit" is insufficient. Usually a writer is required to show (that is, evidentially prove) they have a firm grasp on relevant literature. Given Harris' general disdain for philosophy he omits a great deal of said literature that would otherwise be relevant. Even if he wanted to say it was garbage he would still be required to make that case. Therein lays one of the great issues of the book: it is assertive rather than evidentiary. Not very scientific. . .

If we actually look to Pigliucci's review we see that the above quote has been taken out of context. In context, Pigliucci writes:

"So, how do we ground moral reasoning? This is the province of a whole area of inquiry known as metaethics, and I suggest that Harris would benefit from reading about it." [2]

He isn't talking about philosophy in general but a specifically relevant field within it. Harris largely shows only an awareness of the 'big names' of philosophy which would be the expected extent of a bachelors degree in philosophy. Much more would be expected if someone were to be granted status as an authority or relevant voice on a topic. Since Harris speaks of 'moral experts' he clearly possesses the concept of expertise but falls short of justifying his status in that regard. Also, I can't help but wonder how a man with no qualifications beside said BA came to be a PhD candidate in neuroscience.

Further discussion shall need to wait until a future post.

1 http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2011/01/11/whats-wrong-with-sam-harris-the-moral-landscape-review/
2 http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/about-sam-harris-claim-that-science-can.html