The Moral Landscape

I just finished reading The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris and thought I would jot down a few of my thoughts about it.  On the whole, I enjoyed the book, although I do see what non-utilitarian moral philosophers might find objectionable about the text, including this one here.  As I am not a utilitarian, and am not persuaded to become one by this book, I find some agreement with these objections.

However, the book does succeed in making an argument that some rather popular moral philosophies, namely all of the major religions, are wrong.  He goes no further in defending utilitarianism than John Rawls did in A Theory of Justice.  It might seem odd that I bring up this book, which is often seen as completely disagreeing with utilitarianism and indeed all forms of consequentialism.  What I want to point out is where Rawls asserts that all interesting ethical systems are concerned with consequences.

Where Rawls parts company with most forms of consequentialism is in that they are teleological systems, in contrast to his own deontological one.  He believes that this is the relevant distinction between ethical systems.  Teleological systems see the good as independent of the right and the right as a maximization of the good.  All other systems are deontological.

The teleological systems have the defect that they give insufficient space for supererogatory action.  Once the good has been maximized, it will be impossible to do anything that would be above the call of duty, since by definition that would reduce the good, which has already been maximized.

Mr. Harris has skirted the issue by coming up with states of the world that would produce agreement regardless of which system of moral and ethical values you chose.  Avoiding the worst possible outcome for everyone is not controversial.  You don't need to have a teleological system of moral and ethical values to know this.  You don't need to balance one good against another.

Sam Harris correctly points out that many popular disagreements about moral and ethical values are really disagreements about the nature of reality.  When others criticize his work on the basis that a preference for well being is arbitrary, I would agree with him that he is right to suspect that they are not really being serious.  It seems that many of the serious moral and ethical disagreements that we have, such as same sex marriage, do reflect differences of opinion about the nature of reality.

When he argues that ethics must have something to do with well being, I suspect that he is right here.  When he further argues that science has something to say about well being, I would also concur.  But here he is saying not much more than John Rawls when he asserted that all interesting systems of moral and ethical values are interested in consequences, and in that sense can be considered consequentialist.

As I see things, a system of moral and ethical values need not involve an idea about the optimal state of the world.  Here I part company with both Rawls and Harris.  A complete system of moral and ethical values only needs to enable us to evaluate individual behavior.  We will want to have a good system of evaluation, one that encourages people to do things that are beneficial to others and to avoid doing things that are harmful to others.