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Originally Posted by Itse
Here's some explanations of how lazy Harris really is when putting together an argument:
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This is a very strange way of characterizing it, and a pretty unnecessary video given that he spends a lot of time making a point that could be made in a couple of paragraphs.
Harris is, at core, a consequentialist. Like just about every other consequentialist since Bentham, he's planted a flag in his "base" value, which he says is the reduction of human suffering and the increase of "human wellbeing", which is a vague notion that seems to be mostly the opposite of reducing suffering but he also acknowledges that values that we strive for that are distinct from suffering and pleasure are important to us (leading a productive, meaningful life). This suffers from all of the problems that all consequentialist moral theories suffer from, while simultaneously attempting to use a trick of language to import incommensurable values into its "base" value (in other words,
Nagel was right). Utilitarianism has plenty of nails in its coffin as a valid and consistent moral theory, and so Harris's does too.
But frankly, there's no real way around that problem. At some point, a moral theory that claims to be "true" is not going to have meaning except by reference to some bedrock that's self-justifying. If you believe in objective morality, your flag's going somewhere. The only other alternative is moral skepticism. Harris doesn't shy away from the fact that he's done so - his response is effectively, "if the word 'bad' is going to mean anything in terms of human values, then 'the greatest possible suffering for everyone' has to fall within it" - once you have agreement on that, you can work from there. And from that point, he's correct that the way to know how to decrease human suffering and increase "wellbeing" (no matter what you may think that means) must be derived from facts about the universe. What else could it be derived from?
So I don't think it's correct to call the reasoning lazy or careless. It's simply flawed. He also has to bite the bullet and feed the utility monster, as I believe he's acknowledged in the past. These are just things you have to live with if you're going to espouse a consequentialist moral theory. The better criticism from my perspective is, "well, what's new here that called for you to write a book about it? This is all pretty much a rehash of old ideas with a fresh coat of paint." This is a problem that Harris runs into elsewhere - his book "Free Will" is more or less entirely correct as far as it goes, but also totally unnecessary and trite, without dealing with any of the more interesting questions in that area.
In the case of The Moral Landscape, the titular analogy is really the useful contribution to moral consequentialism, effectively positing that despite there being an objective value, it's not necessarily useful to ask what the absolute best way to achieve that value is. There are multiple value "peaks" that are effectively indistinguishable from one another, and really the goal is to move uphill, which can get you stuck on a local "peak" without realizing that there's Everest a mile away. It's an interesting and insightful analogy... that didn't need a book. An essay would have done the trick.