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Post details: If there is a moral landscape, is Sam Harris’s book a map?
11/29/11
If there is a moral landscape, is Sam Harris’s book a map?
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
The title, The Moral Landscape, refers to a hypothetical space between the "heights of potential well-being" and "the deepest possible suffering." Harris advocates a form of utilitarianism (well-being as the goal), but his thinking seems confused. For example, at p. 62 he calls himself a "consequentialist," yet by p. 66, his sympathies lie with "moral realism." The two are incompatible in many circumstances: A consequentialist may say that one is justified in stealing from an unjust employer; a realist would say it was not justified to steal, period. In any event, well-being is, Harris says, "perpetually open to revision" due to new circumstances and findings. So Harris is a relativist after all.
Many atheists write good philosophy; Raymond Tallis and Thomas Nagel come to mind. But Harris, unfortunately, has not thought long, deeply, or broadly enough to be numbered among them.
For more, go here.
Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
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