Google Engineering Director Damon Horowitz tackles the idea of using numbers and science to make ethical decisions and comes up with a delightfully different answer than Sam Harris did in The Moral Landscape. Watching Horowitz’ TED talk, I’m energized and hopeful, which is a far different reaction than the one I had when reading Harris’ book.
Showing posts with label The Moral Landscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Moral Landscape. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sam Harris & the incredible, shrinking idea
I’m going to do something I rarely do. I’m going to recommend that you NOT buy a book. That’s because there is no there there, no beef on the bun of Sam Harris’ already bestselling The Moral Landscape.
Harris throws 191 pages of text and 84 pages of footnotes and references at a handful of thin ideas. He leaves so many pesky questions unanswered and glosses over so much that you don’t have to read the book to get his point. Watch Harris’ TED talk or read the Q and A or Harris’ defense of his ideas on his website and save the $26.99 for another book.
Here are Harris’ ideas in a nutshell:
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Sam Harris and the truck-sized hole in the book
Flaming arrows are heading Sam Harris’ way because of his new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. The problem, says my old blogging friend Josh Rosenau, is the truck-sized hole in the middle of Harris’ argument. Times reviewer Kwame Anthony Appiah adds:
(H)ow do we know that the morally right act is, as Harris posits, the one that does the most to increase well-being, defined in terms of our conscious states of mind? Has science really revealed that? If it hasn’t, then the premise of Harris’s all-we-need-is-science argument must have nonscientific origins.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
A new Moral Landscape from Sam Harris
Sam Harris’ new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, is out today. I’m anxious to read it, but Harris’ tendency to squeeze the complexity out of life may render his musings unpalatable.
Witness these thoughts from a recent Huffington Post commentary:
This rupture in our thinking has different consequences at each end of the political spectrum: Religious conservatives tend to believe that there are right answers to questions of meaning and morality, but only because the God of Abraham deems it so. They concede that ordinary facts can be discovered through rational inquiry, but they think that values must come from a voice in a whirlwind. Scriptural literalism, intolerance of diversity, mistrust of science, disregard for the real causes of human and animal suffering — too often, this is how the division between facts and values expresses itself on the religious right.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Once again Sam Harris tries to explain his new book
Sam Harris’ pre-release publicity tour for his new book The Moral Landscape continues, as he once again tries to explain his point. This new Q & A on his website provides a good overview. I find his discussion of the term “moral landscape” to be the most heartening because it includes the notion that there is more than one way for humans to be moral. Perhaps the idea of multiple peaks of morality can help leaven the horrors that have often been committed in the name of One True Morality.
(The Moral Landscape) is the phrase I use to describe the space of all possible experience—where the peaks correspond to the heights of well-being and valleys represent the worst possible suffering. We are all someplace on this landscape, faced with the prospect of moving up or down. Given that our experience is fully constrained by the laws of the universe, there must be scientific answers to the question of how best to move upwards, toward greater happiness.
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