The Moral Landscape
How Science Can Determine Human Values
by Sam Harris · first published 2010
52% recommend36% neutral12% critical
Why HN recommends it
Argues that morality can be approached scientifically, grounded in human well-being, rather than gut instinct or religion; suits secular readers wanting a reasoned framework for ethics, like medicine.
Common criticism: Critics say it fails to bridge the is-ought gap and its moral claims lack support
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
What is the best “moral” decision that you can make in any given situation? Many aspects of your physical being work in unison to be able to use your cognitive processes to even come to a conscious decision. There have been many instances, especially recently, where scientific research is being conducted wherein people think about not just morality and what it means to them but also what is occurring inside the various regions of the brain. Sam Harris, the author of this book, tries to argue that we as humans should try to use science in a way to help us come to better moral decisions tha
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> As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, > what makes an act good? You might be interested in reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris for an in-depth start at an answer to that question. It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence…
on “VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks” ↗"The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by Sam Harris is a new release which falls into the category of philosophy, remarks on human behavior, and is bound to reference Bertrand Russell. Harris, who…
on “Ask HN: Good books?” ↗You should read Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" if you haven't already. He writes convincingly (for me anyway) that moral discussions need not be arbitrary or driven by "gut instinct." Instead he proposes…
on “Iceland May Ban Online Porn” ↗…Killing people, depriving them of freedom, etc. all strain humans' happiness and survivability. If you are interested in exploring this in greater detail, I highly recommend giving Sam Harris' book, _The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values_, a read: http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Valu...
on “For NSA chief, terrorist threat drives passion to "collect it all" observers say” ↗…seriously; or at least acknowledge that they are not outside the bounds of science, or of scientific thinking. Sam Harris discusses in particular how morality is not beyond the realm of science in "The Moral Landscape," which is a great book.
on “The Value of Science (1955) [pdf]” ↗…I'm not sure, I don't know what you are calling 'my argument'. Maybe if you filled in the dots here a bit; I don't know what you mean. (You know nothing about me. I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape. I say that because going by what you're saying about my 'view'/argument, you've put me in the opposite camp to that.) Ultimately, It's fascinating what that word's doing. (I'm not sure exactly) Sandwiched…
on “YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content” ↗…not cows, pigs, sheep, fish etc. There's nothing reasonable about that. It's all-too-human to think only white people matter, when you're white, or that only humans matter, when you're human. Like The Moral Landscape says, the origin of most moral/religious/ethical feelings, customs etc is that they produce better outcomes, a better world, for people, than their contrary. And whether they actually do that, can be…
on “YouTube's tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content” ↗Very good points, and the subject of Sam Harris' recent book, "The Moral Landscape", which gets into that idea in some detail. This Q&A provides a good overview of the arguments: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-moral-landscape-...
on “Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' ” ↗"The Moral Landscape" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/143917122X/) by Sam Harris The book discusses how science can be used to deal with questions on morality.
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗…hypothesis is that people want to maximize happiness/well-being and hoarding money and possessions is a suboptimal way of doing that. On a slightly related note, Sam Harris has written an excellent book 'The Moral Landscape' where he argues that science and scientists __should__ be judgmental towards morals and life choices.
on “The real use of money is to buy freedom” ↗If you haven't already read them, Sam Harris' Free Will and Moral Landscape are totally worth reading. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451683405 http://www.amazon.com/dp/143917122X
on “Ask HN: What kind of philosophy do you read?” ↗The Moral Landscape - Sam Harris River Out of Eden - Richard Dawkins The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
on “Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?” ↗Sam Harris has a great book called "The Moral Landscape" on this very subject, of toxic social values and how morality relates to the purging of such values. There's also a Tedtalk he gives, which essentially explores this idea.
on “The world's most toxic value system (2001)” ↗…to me. p.s. Defining 'good' has been a problem for philosophy, see e.g. discussion of Moore's naturalistic fallacy[0]---a problem in trying to define good in terms of something else. Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape has been the most useful book for me on understanding ethics and what good means. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/naturalistic-fallacy Not sure if that's the best link for the topic, but it's a…
on “Terminating Service for 8Chan” ↗There is no reason we cannot treat ethics like we do medicine, where prevailing wisdom is arrived at by a methodical and judicious process that is standardized. Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape" is an excellent start for building intuition on how to do this. (https://samharris.org/books/the-moral-landscape/)
on “There’s No Such Thing As ‘Ethical A.I.’?” ↗