The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

This book proposes that science can address moral absolutes. If right and good relate to human and animal wll-being, then there are answers. The title is an analogy to a texture that has peaks for well-being and depths for suffering. Mental experience and values can be measured. Facts of the world can be assembled into knowledge. There can then be rational argument that results in the highest amount of well-being. This is an interesting discussion also presented in video lectures. There are five chapters which also include belief, religion and the future of happiness. There is heavy emphasis on topics related to brain science and structures and neuroimaging. The author likens the method to medicine or economics yet, while these are considered sciences, they are subject to significant errors, so there is also a need to understand how to improve the practice of the principles. The reader may also wonder if the brain will be the best processor for these types of decisions. The Monty Hall problem is discussed as a demonstration of the wisdom of switching, but this seems to be neutralized if contestants are split half on one side and half on the other so both would be better off switching.

Before reading this book, I just wanted to quickly note my skepticism at the outset. Yes, I'm a Christian so disagreement on several fronts seem a foregone conclusion. Beyond this, I sense an association of some sort between this author and RIchard Dawkins in that (in interviews) both exhibit a marked disdain for religious beliefs and dismiss "faith" as nothing more than a remnant of a by-gone era where dieties were simply a quick way to placate man's instictive, arrogant need to explain and categorize the world around him. This is best achieved by lumping phenomenae beyond man's ability to explain into a kind of meta-category of future challenges which are obviously the product of more powerful beings whose purpose is to tutor we as heirs-apparent to Zeus, God or whomever according to a "plan". Trouble is, the notion is pretty silly....so obviously silly (and readily available as a prop for any writer seeking a vulnerable target for ridicule) that I'm finding it hard to believe that virtually every single society on Earth which has ever existed prior to the Western European Renaisance has created religion to answer questions science wasn't there to answer. And I simply find it impossible to let people like Dawkins and now this fellow, Sam Harris, suggest Christianity spread and was adopted as widely as it was because organized atheism wasn't ever there to pose a threat to it. Dawkins missed it in his work - the power faith acutally, really exhibits doesn't fit (indeed it contradicts) many of his theories and it's summarily dismissed as the same thing as childhood beliefs like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. I suspect Harris will be saying something similar....I'll read in hope. And if not, expect a dissection of "The Moral Landscape" to join the opposition's ridicule of faith, albeit the product of a broader scope of research with particular attention to history and psychology.

This book is a bold jump into the field of science-based ethics. The idea that science can address morals and values is an interesting one, and deserves investigation. Harris demonstrates his wonderful geekiness with an index and notes section almost equivalent in size to the rest of the book, but perhaps to make up for a lack of thoroughness in philosophical reason. I really enjoyed the book and really--he is presenting an idea very much on its infancy, so kudos for that. The preliminary arguments are intriguing and presented in a way that are easily digestible even for non-philosophers and non-theologians, but like others have pointed out, his undergraduate studies in philosophy are not sufficient to stand up against the rigors of the PhD opponents with which he has gone toe-to-toe, nor would I expect them to.