Do you want other people to be happy? If you had a choice between making the world either happier or more miserable, which would you choose? Which choice would be the moral one?
These are questions that Dr. Sam Harris, a best-selling author and neuroscientist, has been discussing for many years now. His most prominent book on the subject, The Moral Landscape, was even a New York Times bestseller. Unfortunately, this book contained a number of elementary philosophical mistakes that Dr. Harris continues to misunderstand or ignore.
So, if you want to maximize the well-being of others in an intellectually coherent manner, read on!
The most important mistake of The Moral Landscape is what Harris, in a response to critiques of his book, calls “The Value Problem.”
Here’s how Harris summarizes the critique: