* The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris - Terrible

(Stopped reading this pile of dung.) – This book gets one star for inspiring me to criticize it.  In summary, the idea is to evaluate ethics with science.  First, to evaluate the data ethical experiments would give us would result in a mound of data so gloppy that one could only hope to find the needle in the haystack that is the truth.  Second, moral experiments are ethically wrong.  You can’t ask people to do something immoral and another group to do something moral to see if what we think is moral is in fact moral.  How ridiculous!  And, third, should we even trust such findings?  That is, we learn about the moral landscape as we gather knowledge in life naturally.  There is no need to have a scientific journal of moral findings.  One mistake in a journal article would call the entire system into account.  We learn about such ethical studies already by experience, age, and in order to receive moral data, we have to trust the source.  This means that there could be no science, meaning the scientific method, in the experiment because in order to trust the results, we have to trust the experimenter, and what reasonable person is going to trust an experimenter that asks people to do something that is immoral!  This idea has the same mentality as Nazi experiments during the Holocaust, as by its very nature it creates human guinea pigs.  Lastly, if we understand the history of evolution, then we already know the answers to all the moral questions.  Without writing a book on the subject, I will just refer you to Richard Dawkins whom addresses the subject of ethics in biology in his book, “The Selfish Gene.”

This book is about the moral landscape.  I believe landscaping – for example mowing lawns but generally not rearranging rocks - is immoral.  I probably need to give a dissertation on that claim, but I won’t.  I will leave it that at bare minimum, he is referring to mowing lawns.  What about me, aren’t I carving a moral landscape as I write this.  Well um, actually, I am carving rocks, not trees.  This is written to a magnetic recording device, not on paper.

Though I have done some landscaping, and sometimes continue to do so, I believe that it is immoral.  It helps pay the bills, and I only do it regrettably if someone gives me something to do it.  Generally, I would prefer to do something else for reward, and some things I do I believe are good with no expectation of reward.

I do not like the author’s suggestion that the truth is open to analysis.  The truth is the truth.  What is good is good.  Either you know what is good, or you don’t.  Otherwise you learn what is good, or you don’t.  Some people don’t know what is good that much I understand.  Some people know what is good and don’t do it.  Some people know the truth and do the wrong thing.  Some people know the truth and cling to it.  Some people know the truth and are moderate about it, sometimes choosing to do good, sometimes choosing to do evil.  Analyze that in an already massive multivariable experiment!

Let’s imagine Sam Harris’ idea in practice.  The experiment will be to evaluate if making species extinct is a good thing or a bad thing, or neutral.  Group A will attempt to make several species extinct.  Group B will try to make new species.  And, as a control, Group C will neither try to make species extinct, nor make new species.  How absurd to think Group C is a control!  What can we expect to find?  If Group A has a great amount of sociopaths in it, then they will report, making species extinct results in the most blessed feeling imaginable, maybe.  It will probably depend on the people involved and the wording of the experiment regarding extinction.  What if the people entering the experiment think that they will only be making species extinct such as the good for nothing tapeworm?  Do we differentiate between tapeworms and butterflies?  Doctors might enter this group to provide us with cures!  If Group B is able make some new species, we are left with an ethical conundrum.  Have they made pathogens, dinosaurs, house pets, and/or maybe food?  The control, Group C’s response might only be relative to the season of the year, where dark or cold seasons of the year often result in depression.  Then, we would have to add an experiment on top of it all to see whether or not it is good to feel good or if it better to feel terrible.  Then, we are probably likely to conclude that it is good to feel good when doing some things, but that it is good to feel bad when doing others.  But, then we might consider intent, and even accidents.  One conundrum leads to another.  The result of the original experiment is that the experimenters talked themselves into a pretzel and probably never found out whether or not it is good to make species extinct.  As for me, if tapeworms become extinct, I won’t fret, and if you make a new species of butterfly that is probably a good thing.  I’m sure some people would disagree with me.  I won’t say, let’s not pretend that we know what is ethical though because some of us don’t.