It actually sounded like a pretty cogent and functional thesis when I first read it. Unfortunately closer inspection starts to illustrate that fallacious assumptions and misrepresentations are the only thing holding up Harris’ argument. Let me briefly take you through a few.

Naturalistic Fallacy

TML while devoting a couple pages worth of derision, fails to overcome the “naturalistic fallacy”. David Hume and G.E. Moore, two reasonably good philosophers, illustrated how it was a fallacy to misconstrue the way things are with the way things ought to be (is/ought distinction). Let me explain (let me explain!): if well-being is considered good, then really you’re just saying they’re the same thing. Sooo, what you’re saying is well-being is well-being, or better yet, good is good. The key question that arises from this synonymity is: why should we value the well-being of conscious creatures for a reason other than it enhances the well-being of conscious creatures. The key point here is that the claim is not a scientific one. Harris has responded (in the video) by suggesting rationality would answer these questions – the problem is rationality is left intentionally undefined, and also means that we don’t need TML to resolve moral questions.

Harris’ Scientific Truthiness

Now in addition to the fact that Harris’ central argument is not empirically-derived, his scientific creds take a real blow as a consequence of trying to sneak some vague truthiness by his readers. Briefly, I’ll note them below.

A major issue is “well-being” as a scientific concept. Its not properly defined in TML because Harris knows the subjective, dynamic and ultimately elusive components that constitute it. Nevertheless he seeks to use “health” as an analogous case of how science has prevailed over the dark forces of ambiguity. He claims that while we don’t know what “health” is, we manage to use science to regularly actualise it through medicine and the like. However medicine doesn’t seek to achieve “health” – its a prescription for a very specific diagnosis or aim (infection, dehydration, serotonin levels etc). Nice try pal.

This definitional issue leads to a broader and more unrealistic claim inherent in the thesis: that well-being (ie value) has a metric. That is that your well-being should be reducible to some sort of mathematical (where the corresponding attributes correlate with a prescribed number) value. Now, whatever, lets say I grant that. But how then do we determine the value of each attribute. TO THE EXTENT THAT IT PROMOTES THE WELL-BEING OF CONSCIOUS CREATURES Harris would protest. But as we can see, that’s undefined, and as such, will remain out of any practical reach.

Neuroscience is hailed as the elixir to our moral woes by determining those bangin’ good states and bummer down zones. Harris loosely draws on cognitive neuroscience and its use of technologies such as fMRI (flows blood to certain regions of the brain in real time) to illustrate when and how these states come about. Curiously, he also claims that it is not too far from becoming a reliable lie-detector which should be used in courts – less curious when you realise he’s going to re-hash it into another 30 page book called Lying. Anyway, anyone with a rudimentary understanding of contemporary neuroscience would know that these claims are so far off. The claims that blood to a certain region of the brain could be extrapolated to “well-being” or someone lying is intellectually-absurd.

Harris’ Brave New World

Yeah I know – it’s annoying when people throw insults that something is Orwellian simply to de-legitimise it. But in Harris’ case, his divisive use of language, ethnic superiority and regular historical revisionism suggests that his Moral Landscape is one we’d not like to live in. Take for instance his claim that we should place fMRI lie detectors into not only court rooms, but all public places where he deems truth a necessity. I don’t want to overstate his claim, so here are his words:

…[Harris envisages] a time when every courtroom or boardroom will have the requisite technology discreetly concealed behind its wood panelling. Thereafter, civilized men and women might share a common presumption: that wherever important conversations are held, the truthfulness of all participants will be monitored…Just as we’ve come to expect that certain public spaces will be free of nudity, sex, loud swearing, and cigarette smoke – and now think nothing of the behavioural constraints imposed upon us whenever we leave the privacy of our homes – we may come to expect that certain places and occasions will require scrupulous truth-telling.

It’s not too much of a leap to consider the grave breaches of cognitive liberties this might result in. You are guilty not simply for what you do, but what you think (all on fairly wonky technology). [4]

Everything & Nothing

In essence, TML makes a broad theory with very little explanatory or functional power. Harris goes to great length to have his theory tested on its principled argument. While I think we’ve dismantled most of that already, it’s worth noting that a dysfunctional moral theory serves us no real purpose. If you can’t use TML to resolve questions around abortion, euthanasia, the trolley scenario, the types of education in school, welfare and so on, then we may as well engage in a dialogical and non-principled conversation on the things that we can agree. The point being that we don’t need The Moral Landscape because it merely contributes self-justifying accounts for your existing beliefs. Harris doesn’t draw a large readership in spite of the simplicity of his arguments, it’s the reason for it.

[1] While there are many possibilities, it appears as if Harris is drawing on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist moral philosophy here which places consciousness at the center.

[2] Blatantly utilitarian, the most obvious advocate being Jeremy Bentham.

[3] He needs to give a heads up to the main man Aristotle (eudaimonia) for The Good and Bad Life, but to my recollection he doesn’t.

[4] Martell has written about some potential consequences with respect to evidence and rights of defendants.

Martell, D. (2009). Neuroscience and the Law: Practical Differences and Philosophical Constraints. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 27(2), 123