Sam Harris’s books are wonderfully written, weaving together Eastern and Western modes of thought. Looking down the comments list, I think far too many people have just read the first link and judged from there. Don’t extrapolate from small amounts of evidence when there’s much more evidence to consider.
I have read all of Harris’s works, and find them incredibly useful and informative. I now follow his blog, and I assure you that he covers all of the problems discussed below. He argues that all moral decisions are decisions about the best possible future state of affairs.
As has been discussed on other posts, most human hardware (brains, that is) are similar. He argues that human flourishing is what we should really value, if we actually understand what we value. He doesn’t say that morality concerns the kinds of rules we find in physics, but that it is far more normative.
He supposes a person who doesn’t share our values, but this time takes the normative values of logic. If a person is a genesis-creationist-chemist, who believes that water isn’t H20 because it would be biblically inelegant for God to make special hydrogen before making the sun, then we can’t disprove them by appeal to logic. What logical argument, he asks, will you use to persuade someone to value logic? We can’t use these normative laws to tell people what to believe if they don’t share our values. Harris then takes our value of human flourishing. He attempts to show how almost all people value this, and how a science of morality therefore shouldn’t be as controversial as, for instance, a science of physical health—nobody is attacking the philosophical underpinnings of physical health by asking “What if a person wants to throw up all of the time and then die?”. And nobody also says “Health changes over time, and we can’t have a science surrounding such a vague idea”. Just because people used to only live to 25 and now live to 70 doesn’t mean we can’t be scientific about health. He argues that we can have a science of such normative values with a perfectly well grounded philosophy, just as science can be built around other normative things, like logic.
That may not be the best presentation of his argument… It’s not my personal choice, and I’m not him. He writes clearly, but he’s one of the best speakers I’ve ever come across. Perhaps listen to his full-length talks on Morality, Free Will and Religion/Dogmatism. I think he’s really much better than the comments are giving him credit for.
Sam Harris’s books are wonderfully written, weaving together Eastern and Western modes of thought. Looking down the comments list, I think far too many people have just read the first link and judged from there. Don’t extrapolate from small amounts of evidence when there’s much more evidence to consider.
I have read all of Harris’s works, and find them incredibly useful and informative. I now follow his blog, and I assure you that he covers all of the problems discussed below. He argues that all moral decisions are decisions about the best possible future state of affairs.
As has been discussed on other posts, most human hardware (brains, that is) are similar. He argues that human flourishing is what we should really value, if we actually understand what we value. He doesn’t say that morality concerns the kinds of rules we find in physics, but that it is far more normative.
He supposes a person who doesn’t share our values, but this time takes the normative values of logic. If a person is a genesis-creationist-chemist, who believes that water isn’t H20 because it would be biblically inelegant for God to make special hydrogen before making the sun, then we can’t disprove them by appeal to logic. What logical argument, he asks, will you use to persuade someone to value logic? We can’t use these normative laws to tell people what to believe if they don’t share our values. Harris then takes our value of human flourishing. He attempts to show how almost all people value this, and how a science of morality therefore shouldn’t be as controversial as, for instance, a science of physical health—nobody is attacking the philosophical underpinnings of physical health by asking “What if a person wants to throw up all of the time and then die?”. And nobody also says “Health changes over time, and we can’t have a science surrounding such a vague idea”. Just because people used to only live to 25 and now live to 70 doesn’t mean we can’t be scientific about health. He argues that we can have a science of such normative values with a perfectly well grounded philosophy, just as science can be built around other normative things, like logic.
That may not be the best presentation of his argument… It’s not my personal choice, and I’m not him. He writes clearly, but he’s one of the best speakers I’ve ever come across. Perhaps listen to his full-length talks on Morality, Free Will and Religion/Dogmatism. I think he’s really much better than the comments are giving him credit for.
To hear his view on Free Will: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g&feature=player_embedded