Moral Truth
Moral Truth What is Moral truth? In Sam Harris’ book “The Moral Landscape”, he explains his ideas on moral truth. He explains that moral truth is so complex because of personal whim, and cultural influence. He explains his ideas of moral truth through science, objective and subjective, and consensus and consciousness. With these ideas Harris is able to define moral truth to his best ability, because it is such a difficult subject to understand. In the chapter on moral truth, Harris explains moral truth with the use of science.
He states in the book “science can, in Principe, help us understand what we should do, and should want-and, therefore, what other people should do and want in order to live the best lives possible. “In other words, He believes that like science, there are right and wrong answers to moral truth. He then explains that science should help us answer moral questions. His other idea is that science is based on our best guess of what it is and moral truth is the same. Moral truth is also just our best guess of what is right and wrong.
Harris is trying to say that moral truth, like science, can have a framework in which we believe is correct, but can always change. Harris explains in the book that the terms “objective” and “subjective” are very different. Objective means that a person is using to bias when they are making a statement. He uses the example of having a ringing in his ear. This is a subjective statement, however, is objective because he is not lying. From this idea of the ringing in the ear, he explains that this is a way that we can study depression.
We can determine brain states with reference, to person’s subjective thoughts. Finally in the chapter, he explores the ideas of consensus and consciousness. He explains that scientific consensus as scientific controversy that work needs to be done. For example, “moral controversy proves that there can be no such thing as moral truth while moral consensus shows only that human beings often harbor the same biases” this idea is basically saying that often people will think differently than others and this creates bias among people.
Harris explains that truth has nothing to do with moral consensus, because often one person can be right, while a crowd is wrong. Harris then goes on to explain his ideas on consciousness. He explains that people have moral truth because they are conscious creatures. His understanding of a conscious being is that “consciousness is only intelligible domain of value. ” All in all, Harris believes that moral truth is similar to science because it must be backed up by evidence and often consists of educated guesses.
He explains that objective and subjective are very different, however; can often be used in the same ways. Finally, consensus and consciousness outline the basis of moral truth, because without them moral truth would not exist according to Harris. He believes that consensus means that only humans can have the same bias, and consciousness shows that only people with consciousness can have moral truth.
