The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

This book contains a few worthwhile observations on morality, drowning in a sea of verbosity. It was a struggle to wade through it, but I'll try to summarize what I got out of it.

Harris's main point, as I understand it, is that the purpose of morality is to maximize what he calls “the well-being of conscious creatures”. Thus, any specific morality or moral rule can be judged on what contribution it makes to general well-being.

I think this is a good way of thinking about morality in principle; but it's more difficult than he seems to think to make any practical use of it. Problems:

1. As he says, in extreme cases we can distinguish between states of very low and very high well-being; but in normal cases well-being can't be measured or even defined very well.

2. Even if we could define and measure well-being, it would be difficult to figure out what contribution a particular moral rule makes to well-being, except by careful experiments that we're unable to make.

3. It's not clear whose well-being we should be concerned about. “Conscious creatures” include animals, fish, insects, and alien creatures on distant planets. If we need to take all these into account, the well-being of humans becomes relatively insignificant. However, I think most people are concerned mainly about the well-being of humans similar to or related to themselves, with a somewhat lesser concern for other humans, and a still lesser concern for some of the other animals on this planet. Insects? Er, no.

If we had two countries identical in every way, except that one country followed morality A and the other followed morality B; and if the people of country A were obviously happier than the people of country B; then perhaps we could conclude that morality A is superior to morality B. However, in practice countries differ in many ways (not just in morality), and in practice no country has a single uniform morality: morality varies from person to person.

It may still be moderately useful to ask about a particular moral rule, “In what way do you think this rule contributes to general well-being?”

Harris makes the good observation that “Morality could be a lot like chess: there are surely principles that generally apply, but they might admit of important exceptions. If you want to play good chess, a principle like ‘Don't lose your Queen' is almost always worth following. But it admits of exceptions: sometimes sacrificing your Queen is a brilliant thing to do; occasionally, it is the only thing you can do.”

I can give an example: in general, I believe that honesty is the best policy. However, if someone shows you a baby and asks fondly, “Isn't he beautiful?”, then honesty is probably not the best policy.

Harris goes on at some length about religion and religious morality, and in fact devotes a chapter to it. This is all a waste of time from my point of view, as I already agree with him on the subject. As I don't believe in gods, any morality supposedly derived from gods was in fact invented by fallible humans, and should be evaluated on its merits, if any: how much does it contribute to general well-being?

He goes on at further length about other matters that seem irrelevant to me, such as whether we have free will or not (he thinks not). I really don't care what he thinks about free will. I seem to have free will and I get through life on the assumption that I have it; if it's a fiction, it seems to me a useful fiction, and I see no advantage to be gained by discarding it. (I suppose religious people could say that God is a useful fiction; but I don't think most of them would say that.)

He reckons that religious people take morality from religion, while most non-religious people seem to think one morality is as good as another. I don't fall into either of these categories (and neither does he). I can't prove my morality to be better than anyone else's; but I nevertheless believe it to be better, as a matter of personal opinion. That's why I have that morality and not some other.

He doesn't say much about specific moral questions, but I noticed in passing that he seems to think adultery is a major sin comparable to murder. Although I agree that in general it's not a Good Thing, I think his reaction to it is exaggerated.