An entry into Sam Harris's Moral Landscape Challenge. The essay argues that if Harris is right that morals can be established scientifically (and if Steven Pinker's empirical evidence for the moral correctness of the Golden Rule is a good example of how this can be done) then much of what Sam Harris has said about what it's okay to do to Muslims is, by this empirically-established Golden Rule standard, morally wrong.

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(Article changed on January 16, 2014 at 00:05)

(Article changed on January 15, 2014 at 15:45)

For the week of February 2-9, Sam Harris will be accepting entries to what he has called The Moral Landscape Challenge.  The challenge is to write, in under 1,000 words, the most convincing refutation of the central thesis of that book--that science can tell us what is morally right and wrong, and that cultures can be morally ranked accordingly. The winner of that challenge will receive $2,000. And if the winner convinces Harris to change his mind, the prize will be $20,000 instead.

Sam Harris is a fascinating figure, not so much because he exists and says the things he says, but because so many powerful and accomplished figures in academia and intellectual circles admire him and want him to be a regularly-present voice in discussions on philosophy, psychology and policy. To argue with Sam Harris, then, is to argue with a worldview that runs deep in 21^st century American intellectual culture.

Many would say it is futile to argue with anyone who gives off strong evidence of being fully under the influence of self-justificatory processes--even to the point of narcissistic aggression. And there is some reason to suspect that Sam Harris is deeply disinclined to admit error or retract ill-considered statements. This is an uncharitable filter for understanding another human being, however. Everyone justifies themselves, and yet all are capable of moving beyond self-justification and discerning the grains of truth in the sometimes hysterical attacks of their critics.

It is also possible that Harris has never in fact said anything that is wrong enough to warrant retraction. Indeed, the question of how to determine whether any action or statement is morally right or wrong is at the heart of the Moral Landscape Challenge.

And besides, even if cognitive dissonance has led Harris to invest irreversibly in his most ill-considered statements because they have been so public and consequential, others who are in the orbit of contemporary American intellectual culture may not be so invested. It is that culture I hope to speak to with my essay, which I intend to enter into Harris's competition on February 2. Unlike almost everything else I write, I've managed to keep it under 1,000 words. Here it is:

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Harris's central thesis is (1) "questions of morality and values must have right and wrong answers that fall within the purview of science" and (2) "some people and cultures will be right... and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life." Violating the rules of the competition, and thus forgoing the $2,000 challenge, I will begin by assuming these claims are correct. I will focus instead on the easier $20,000 challenge: to persuade Harris to recant this thesis.

Next I will violate the directive not to address Harris's "peripheral" arguments or his claims made in other writings. These include claims that it is not "decent" for individual Muslims to build community centers too close to a historical site of terrorism led by other individual Muslims, that 'we' should profile Muslims, that the War on Terror should be considered instead a War with Islam, and that it is either legitimate or regrettably unavoidable for those prosecuting the War on Islam to employ torture--and to generally renounce scruples. Harris also claims that the U.S. would face a moral quandary if an "Islamist regime" ever obtained long-range nuclear weaponry: a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the country living under that regime would be an "unthinkable crime", but, regrettably, it may be "the only thing likely to ensure our survival."

I infer from these claims that Harris believes that the violence and atrocities committed by Muslims signal something irreparably wrong with all of Muslim civilization, whereas even greater violence and atrocities committed by non-Muslim Americans (including elected ones like Dick Cheney) are not nearly as tainting of American civilization. Harris is also willing to morally consider, on a utilitarian or survivalist basis, military actions by the U.S. that will regrettably lead to mass torture and murder of vast numbers of noncombatant Muslims. I doubt, however, that he would ponder long before condemning without reservation military actions by Muslim nations that would lead to the torture or murder of a single noncombatant Judeo-Christian American. Harris's moral attitude towards Muslims may thus be summed up as, "It is okay--even imperative--to do to Muslims what we would not have them do to us".

Now I need only demonstrate, with cogent reference to empirical evidence (facts), the incorrectness of this moral attitude towards Muslims (values). Such a demonstration would pit Harris's commitment to his central thesis against his commitment to this attitude. Then, to the extent Harris identifies more with the latter (and I suspect he does), he would have some reason to discredit his own Moral Landscape thesis to reduce dissonance.

That is, if Harris rejects the notion of moral laws that can be objectively and universally established, then he could consider himself as entitled to his Islam-hating orientation and related endorsements of atrocity as honor-killers and wife-stoners are entitled to theirs. Though Harris may resist this relativistic view now, plausibly "scientific" evidence that his values are wrong may inspire skepticism that scientific evidence can ever speak non-tendentiously to the question of what values are wrong.

It is indeed daunting to identify a non-tendentious objective standard for judging right and wrong. I will therefore appeal to Harris's affection for psychologist Steven Pinker, whose positive review of The Moral Landscape is proudly excerpted on its back cover. One of Pinker's more provocative theoretical innovations is to ground the normative appeal of the "Golden Rule"--do to others you would have them do to you--in the empirical evidence of psychological science rather than in the pronouncements of religious authorities.

Pinker, in Better Angels of Our Nature , notes that the empirically well-established Flynn Effect--a longitudinal finding that the intelligence required to attain an "average" score on IQ tests has increased over time--is driven primarily by advances in abstract intelligence (rather than in, say, writing ability). Pinker sees this fact as explaining, to some extent, worldwide declines in violence--an obvious moral good. Pinker argues that the rise in abstract intelligence may have contributed to increased peace by increasing our tendency to follow the abstract moral algebra of the Golden Rule (as opposed to more particularist moral pronouncements like "Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman", "Thou shalt not eat shellfish", etc.).

The Golden Rule's algebra appears simple: If you oppose having Z X Y, then Y should not X Z either (with Z being "others", Y being "you", and X being actions like "kill, oppress, torture, colonize, steal land from, bulldoze homes of, discriminate against on the basis of creed or culture, and drop nukes on"). Following the rule is actually quite difficult, though, because heuristics, self-justification processes and rank hypocrisy play such an outsized role in human psychology. Still, according to Pinker, cultures attaining more advanced abstract intelligence can guide themselves more reliably with this rule across various domains. Pinker also argues that the lower IQ scores of past generations (suggesting a "retarded" average a century ago) can be explained primarily in terms of moral retardation.

The examples Pinker gives of moral retardation in previous generations are instructive. He highlights chauvinistic actions and pronouncements by widely-admired Western historical figures: e.g. FDR interning ethnic Japanese in camps during World War II, and Winston Churchill's colonial conquests and reference to Indians (from India) as a "beastly people with a beastly religion." Harris's statements on Islam and Muslims smell strongly of the same failure that FDR and Churchill had in applying their otherwise impressive intelligence to important moral domains.

Thus, if Harris is committed to consistency, he has two choices. He can morally renounce certain Golden Rule-violating statements he made about what it is okay to do to Muslims. Or he can distance himself from Pinker's perhaps uniquely respectable exemplar of science grounding human values.

Let me confess now that I don't really want to convert Harris to relativism--the $20,000 be damned. Rather, because his influence is so great in intellectual and academic circles, I hope Harris will eventually align his moral intelligence with the demonstrated potential of his analytical intelligence. Insh'Allah.

Authors Bio:

Ian Hansen is an Associate Professor of psychology and the 2017 president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.