The Moral Landscape

What is the best “moral” decision that you can make in any given situation? Many aspects of your physical being work in unison to be able to use your cognitive processes to even come to a conscious decision. There have been many instances, especially recently, where scientific research is being conducted wherein people think about not just morality and what it means to them but also what is occurring inside the various regions of the brain.

Sam Harris, the author of this book, tries to argue that we as humans should try to use science in a way to help us come to better moral decisions that increase the well-being of all humans. Like the studies I was referring to, Mr. Harris wants those scientific studies to be used in such a way as to try to help us make better, quicker, more efficient, and most importantly, the most beneficial decisions to improve or maintain our well-being. Although I do not agree will all the arguments that Mr. Harris presents, I do believe that reading this book is a worthwhile endeavor. Mr. Harris argues that there are objective moral values that can be and possibly are established into society through science. A relativist, he begins to break down the moral decisions and the bodily functions that occur, for conscious creatures from the molecular level, and introduces the reader to the general research that is being conducted in various cognitive areas. He makes no qualms as to how he is opposed to religious thought, and if you are offended, I suggest you move ahead from this section. He presents several instances where brain scans and diagrams show what parts of the brain are being used when someone is having a religious experience or felt the presence of their religious deity. He also presents an extensive section to the studies that have been done on people with diagnosed schizophrenia. The studies that are discussed brought new information to me on how cognitive diseases and patients of those diseases are studied and tre