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