The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
New York Times bestselling author Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith.
In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at an increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our “culture wars,” Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.
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Community Reviews
Introduction The Moral Landscape
3,5/10
This is 55 minute on the audiobook! Wow, this intro should have been 15 minutes long. 20+ if you include all the real examples about bad moral values.
Sam Harris is intellectually very honest and does have great ideas. He is one of the most interesting philosophers to follow in 2021 and is right nearly all the time when it pertains to facts and basic moral ideas. I’m largely talking about his podcast and interviews where he is spectacular in making his verbal points. In writing he frankly was never that great yet I’m giving this audiobook a chance.
This chapter, let’s be honest it’s a full chapter, basically consists of 2 arguments. Firstly for his claims to make any sense the reader has to accept that there is something called a good life vs. a bad life. The issue is that Sam seems to wade in this puddle for a long time. Same with all his other claims. Just make this point and MOVE ON. His writing style is so dry and humorless that he can’t repeat the same point several times over without it becoming awfully boring.
Second point he makes here, which the book is about, is that scientists need to develop moral rules for society at large. Right as I read it I had mainly 1 question: “They are humans, won’t they abuse it as any other religion and political ideology ever created?” Yet he keeps repeating his main claim in different ways instead of answering the main questions. Of course it’s an intro chapter, but it’s 55 minutes long. You either answer the main critical question or move on. Instead he rambles about these 2 main points that are impossible to misunderstand so there is no need to expand them this much.
It does remind me of his free will book that has the same issue. Just low-tier rambling never explaining anything. Which is weird as his verbal speech is some of the most clear you can find and writing usually leads to a higher caliber of argument and logic. It’s the opposite for this Jew.
Chapter 1 Moral Truth
4,5/10
I presented his idea already. A 2 part argument about moral universal values existing and scientists needing to dig into this topic and apply it. This chapter is about mainly the first part of a potential universal good way to live vs. a bad way to live. Sam complains that he was called out when presenting at a scientific conference about how forced hijabs/burkas and such make life worse for Muslim women. Which researchers disagreed with as they claimed morality has nothing to do with facts and science.
This chapter is a dud, but at least it’s something and not as pointless as the introduction.
Chapter 2 Good and Evil
4/10
Sam goes into how we help people we care about before strangers. This is all very basic philosophy taken from basic evolutionary psychology principles. Yet here you have a long chapter instead of being a short and direct evolutionary psychology chapter clearly explaining kin selection and ingroup with simple experiments and examples from even other species. He refuses to go into the most simple scientific explanations and instead stays on this simplified philosophy lane using various examples he has seen in media and various news stories. Which makes this pretty pointless. It’s how a child explains his thinking.
I noticed my audiobook is broken and lacks the final pages of the chapter. But either way it’s quite clear I won't really enjoy the book so I’ll stop it here using this excuse.
Chapter 3 Belief
0/10
Chapter 4 Religion
0/10
Chapter 5 The Future of Happiness
0/10
My final opinion on the book
It’s just stuff you already know if you read books and articles about moral philosophy topics. If you have read evolutionary psychology you already understand much of this. The issue is that there is no reason to pick this book over thousands of texts on a higher and more interesting level. This book is very dry.
His main idea about science being the way to a moral philosophy of a future worldwide society is an interesting idea by itself. I’m not really against it as such. But it is quite confusing that he chose to speak about small examples and various anecdotes illustrating his ideas instead of explaining how this would even work. He complains about visiting academic conferences and talking about the evilness of Muslim traditions and people there telling him to keep it out of science. That’s his big personal problem. Of course this is unrelated to any normal life and his ideas too are just vague philosophy.
Right now his idea is more realized than ever as researchers, especially in his own country, are finally not morally neutral. Huge scientific institutions now have moral rules about how to do research as a scientist. You cannot do studies that are “increasing scientific racism” and you must do studies that fight it. So you can’t publish research on race and IQ or other controversial topics that go against the progressive ideology. Even getting the data for it is hard as you have to sign a statement saying you won’t use any race data for such comparison research. This is not what Sam really asked for. But he asked researchers to allow moral ideas and moral philosophy into their fields. Now he has to explain how to get us from this type of bad moral philosophy to his objective style of thinking. Personally I don’t see an easy way here. I actually think it all made his own goal harder. Like communism being great on paper, but being hell on Earth once you try to implement it. Which is the main critique. How do you know that your fairly objective thinking is found in academia at large?
When a book is this boring I really don’t plan to read it. And neither should you. It’s also not even great arguments as he is missing the main critique one would have towards his claims. Instead he goes back to the same example of some random researcher telling him that universal morality is not a thing and that Islam is fine. Once you ask the same researcher about Christianity I’m sure she would be quite active in criticizing it. Same if you ask her about free speech or conservative values. I’m sure Sam could have gotten the opposite answer out of these people if his examples pertained to such ideas. And they are first in line to attack the ideas even on their websites and in public statements.
At any rate I will read Pinker’s book on this instead and hope it’s better. But this moral philosophy stuff turns out to be an awful waste of time most of the time.
3,5/10
This is 55 minute on the audiobook! Wow, this intro should have been 15 minutes long. 20+ if you include all the real examples about bad moral values.
Sam Harris is intellectually very honest and does have great ideas. He is one of the most interesting philosophers to follow in 2021 and is right nearly all the time when it pertains to facts and basic moral ideas. I’m largely talking about his podcast and interviews where he is spectacular in making his verbal points. In writing he frankly was never that great yet I’m giving this audiobook a chance.
This chapter, let’s be honest it’s a full chapter, basically consists of 2 arguments. Firstly for his claims to make any sense the reader has to accept that there is something called a good life vs. a bad life. The issue is that Sam seems to wade in this puddle for a long time. Same with all his other claims. Just make this point and MOVE ON. His writing style is so dry and humorless that he can’t repeat the same point several times over without it becoming awfully boring.
Second point he makes here, which the book is about, is that scientists need to develop moral rules for society at large. Right as I read it I had mainly 1 question: “They are humans, won’t they abuse it as any other religion and political ideology ever created?” Yet he keeps repeating his main claim in different ways instead of answering the main questions. Of course it’s an intro chapter, but it’s 55 minutes long. You either answer the main critical question or move on. Instead he rambles about these 2 main points that are impossible to misunderstand so there is no need to expand them this much.
It does remind me of his free will book that has the same issue. Just low-tier rambling never explaining anything. Which is weird as his verbal speech is some of the most clear you can find and writing usually leads to a higher caliber of argument and logic. It’s the opposite for this Jew.
Chapter 1 Moral Truth
4,5/10
I presented his idea already. A 2 part argument about moral universal values existing and scientists needing to dig into this topic and apply it. This chapter is about mainly the first part of a potential universal good way to live vs. a bad way to live. Sam complains that he was called out when presenting at a scientific conference about how forced hijabs/burkas and such make life worse for Muslim women. Which researchers disagreed with as they claimed morality has nothing to do with facts and science.
This chapter is a dud, but at least it’s something and not as pointless as the introduction.
Chapter 2 Good and Evil
4/10
Sam goes into how we help people we care about before strangers. This is all very basic philosophy taken from basic evolutionary psychology principles. Yet here you have a long chapter instead of being a short and direct evolutionary psychology chapter clearly explaining kin selection and ingroup with simple experiments and examples from even other species. He refuses to go into the most simple scientific explanations and instead stays on this simplified philosophy lane using various examples he has seen in media and various news stories. Which makes this pretty pointless. It’s how a child explains his thinking.
I noticed my audiobook is broken and lacks the final pages of the chapter. But either way it’s quite clear I won't really enjoy the book so I’ll stop it here using this excuse.
Chapter 3 Belief
0/10
Chapter 4 Religion
0/10
Chapter 5 The Future of Happiness
0/10
My final opinion on the book
It’s just stuff you already know if you read books and articles about moral philosophy topics. If you have read evolutionary psychology you already understand much of this. The issue is that there is no reason to pick this book over thousands of texts on a higher and more interesting level. This book is very dry.
His main idea about science being the way to a moral philosophy of a future worldwide society is an interesting idea by itself. I’m not really against it as such. But it is quite confusing that he chose to speak about small examples and various anecdotes illustrating his ideas instead of explaining how this would even work. He complains about visiting academic conferences and talking about the evilness of Muslim traditions and people there telling him to keep it out of science. That’s his big personal problem. Of course this is unrelated to any normal life and his ideas too are just vague philosophy.
Right now his idea is more realized than ever as researchers, especially in his own country, are finally not morally neutral. Huge scientific institutions now have moral rules about how to do research as a scientist. You cannot do studies that are “increasing scientific racism” and you must do studies that fight it. So you can’t publish research on race and IQ or other controversial topics that go against the progressive ideology. Even getting the data for it is hard as you have to sign a statement saying you won’t use any race data for such comparison research. This is not what Sam really asked for. But he asked researchers to allow moral ideas and moral philosophy into their fields. Now he has to explain how to get us from this type of bad moral philosophy to his objective style of thinking. Personally I don’t see an easy way here. I actually think it all made his own goal harder. Like communism being great on paper, but being hell on Earth once you try to implement it. Which is the main critique. How do you know that your fairly objective thinking is found in academia at large?
When a book is this boring I really don’t plan to read it. And neither should you. It’s also not even great arguments as he is missing the main critique one would have towards his claims. Instead he goes back to the same example of some random researcher telling him that universal morality is not a thing and that Islam is fine. Once you ask the same researcher about Christianity I’m sure she would be quite active in criticizing it. Same if you ask her about free speech or conservative values. I’m sure Sam could have gotten the opposite answer out of these people if his examples pertained to such ideas. And they are first in line to attack the ideas even on their websites and in public statements.
At any rate I will read Pinker’s book on this instead and hope it’s better. But this moral philosophy stuff turns out to be an awful waste of time most of the time.
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