Exploring the moral landscape with Sam Harris

This morning I finished reading Sam Harris' newest book, "The Moral Landscape." After blogging favorably about the first two chapters, I continued to enjoy Harris' neuroscientific, yet eminently readable, take on how human wellbeing can be expanded via facts rather than faith.

Events in the world, and the brain, affect how we experience life. If we study the relationship between those events and our experiences, we stand a good chance of being able to climb higher on the "moral landscape" (individually and collectively). Harris says:

Throughout this book I make reference to a hypothetical space that I call "the moral landscape" -- a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks correspond to the heights of potential well-being and whose valleys represent the deepest possible suffering.

Different ways of thinking and behaving -- different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government, etc. -- will translate into movements across this landscape and, therefore, into different degrees of human flourishing.

Flourishing. That's an appealing term for what life is all about.

There can be many ways to flourish, just as there are many foods to eat. Yet Harris points out that healthy food and poison are different. It won't be easy, but his hypothesis is that bit by bit humankind will be able to understand what leads to flourishing and what doesn't -- no faith-based religious "Thou shalt..." required.

Per my habit, as I read "The Moral Landscape" I stuck slips of paper into pages that struck me as containing a particularly interesting bit of writing (which is one reason I'm resisting going to an e-reader).

Here's some examples of Harris' provocative thinking (some are direct quotes; some are paraphrases):

(1) He asks what the world would be like if we stopped worrying about "right" and "wrong," or "good" and "evil," and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others. In my opinion, as his, we'd have a better world.

(2) Being uncertain about what the consequences of our thoughts and actions will be doesn't mean there's some other basis for human values, such as religious dogma, worth worrying about.

(3) Brain scanners show that believing a mathematical equation and believing an ethical proposition produce the same changes in neurophysiolology, so it's difficult to make a distinction between scientific dispassion and judgments of value.

(4) Some people say that believing in religion, higher powers, an afterlife, soul, and such always will be with us. Yet at one time a belief in magic, witches, demons and such was rampant in the developed world. Won't reason make further progress?

(5) On almost every measure of societal health, the least religious countries are better off than the most religious. This shows that religion isn't the most important guarantor of societal health, and that unbelief doesn't lead to the downfall of civilization.

(6) Religious believers go around in circles: Adherents generally believe that they possess knowledge of sacred truths, and every faith provides a framework for interpreting experience so as to lend further support to its doctrine.

(7) If we have (or are) an immortal soul, why is our consciousness so obviously altered by brain damage? This is like saying the soul of a diabetic produces abundant insulin. Sure, you can say anything. But where's the evidence?

(8) Atheists have a lot of confidence in their fellow humans. They assume people have enough intelligence and maturity to respond to rational argument, satire, and ridicule on the subject of religion, just as they respond to such discursive pressures on other subjects.

(9) The vast majority of our life experiences never get recalled, and the time we spend remembering the past is brief. So the quality of most of our lives can be assessed only in terms of what fleeting character it has as it occurs -- which includes recalling the past.

(10) There is no more important source of value than the well-being of conscious creatures. If someone claimed to find such a source somewhere, it would be of no possible interest to anyone, by definition. (Ooh, good thinking, Sam Harris.)

(11) "Science" is a specialized branch of a larger effort to form true beliefs about events in the world. It is a fact that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This is a "scientific" fact, being part of our best effort to form a rational account of empirical reality.

(12) No framework of knowledge can withstand utter skepticism, for none is perfectly self-justifying. It is impossible to stand entirely outside of a framework. So someone can spout stuff like "What if the worst possible misery for everyone is actually good?" or "What if all true statements are actually false?" But we don't have to take that person seriously.

(13) Conscious actions arise on the basis of neural events of which we are not conscious. Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes.

(14) The moment one grants there is a difference between the Bad Life and the Good Life that lawfully relates to states of the human brain, to human behavior, and to states of the world, one has admitted that there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Comments

[Richard Stuart]

Hi Brian,

I'm a long time reader of your fine blog. This is my first comment however.

I'm 61 years old and went through many of the same transitions that you have and in the end I have also found myself perched on the door of your Churchless Church just kind of resting in the Mystery.

I appreciate Sam Harris's work and unlike some of the other popular atheists, Sam has a PhD in NeuroScience and is well aware of Consciousness Studies and "the hard problem" of mind/brain interaction.

I am a PhD Psychologist (over 30 years) and also have a professional take on the mind/brain interaction. I understand that I open myself to the charges of being a , heaven forbid, dualist but I would like to remark to Number 7 from Sam;

(7) If we have (or are) an immortal soul, why is our consciousness so obviously altered by brain damage? This is like saying the soul of a diabetic produces abundant insulin. Sure, you can say anything. But where's the evidence?

There is another equally plausible hypothesis regarding mind/brain interaction that was entertained by the eminent American psychologist William James as well as many others in the field and that is the transmission theory. A N Whitehead, the great 20th century mathematician and philosopher, built a top to bottom epistemology that includes consciousness as a fundamental aspect of reality in the universe, embedded within the universe from the Big Bang. The brain is now being studied on a quantum level in tiny particles called microtubules that make up the billions of neurons firing in creative, unstable patterns throughout the brain. When quantum theory is applied to microtubules (see Stuart Hammeroff MD and physicists Roger Penrose) consciousness MAY be studied as a quantum event subject to the many strange laws of quantum physics e.g nonlocality and various time/space anomalies. The point I'm trying to make is that we are still far away from locking up the problem of consciousness and the nature of qualia, the intimate individual experiences of consciousness (the redness of red, the taste of champagne) than presented in this quote. Although Quantum Models are 105 years old, many researchers remain locked in a Newtonian Cause and Effect Mindset thus conceptualizing a model that is rapidly becoming inadequate for such Problems of Consciousness.

[david lane]

nice comment by Richard Stuart!

[Blogger Brian]

Richard, I agree with david: nice comment!

The Penrose/Hammeroff theory of consciousness is speculative. Maybe it's true, but it doesn't resonate with me. And if consciousness is linked up with the microtubules, this still means that it is a physical phenomenon, needing a brain to manifest.

Yet you're right: nonlocality and other mysterious aspects of quantum physics could point to some sort of universal consciousness in the cosmos (or "as" the cosmos).

In a few days I'll probably put forward another perspective of Susan Blackmore's -- that we're basically deluded about our consciousness, and this creates all the questions we ponder that can't really be answered, since they're founded on a delusion.

[tucson]

If the non-locality aspect of quantum physics could POINT to "some sort of universal consciousness" what consciousness would that aspect be a part of? Another universal consciousness? There is no way to conceptualize it or write it down. Some scientist may say, "Aha!" but then would be in a bind forever contradicting himself trying to explain it. As I am going to do now...

I will never see "myself" because it is "myself" that is looking. If I see myself, it is something other than myself that is being seen, a reflection, a concept. What I am is the process of seeing and living. All I am is seeing, doing, feeling, but 'I' cannot be found. There is 'I' but not as any sort of thing that can be isolated from this perceiving of life. We see it written here and there: "I am that but I am not". To me, there is no 'that', rather just 'this'. 'That' can be conceived as a 'thing' which may be misleading. 'This' is It when 'this' is not conceived as an object, otherwise 'this' could be misleading as well. Spontaneous immediacy may be a better way of putting 'It'.

I am aware that I am typing on this machine and that I call this typing entity "tucson". But where does tucson really exist except as an object in mind, except as a reflection of what really is. "Really is" cannot be objectively known. Where do YOU exist except as an object in mind? Can you really find you? What is it that is seeing you? You? Are there two 'you's'?

How could God show up at the rally as a thing to be known or seen? Yet "God" was entirely there, utterly obvious and present as seeing, hearing and feeling the rally, AS the rally.

This is a feeble attempt to explain something I can't explain, but I keep trying.

[Blogger Brian]

tucson, your "feeble attempt to explain" above actually is pretty darn consistent with modern neuroscience, so you're not as enfeebled as it might seem.

I'll probably write a blog post about this subject -- what is consciousness? -- in a couple of days. Assuming I don't commit suicide while watching the election returns tomorrow night.