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The Moral Landscape

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Sam Harris

The author, a neuroscientist, rejects the commonly-accepted notion that science has nothing to say about morality. He argues that the aim of all moral laws is to increase the well-being of conscious creatures, but that most moral codes do so very inefficiently. He thus rejects the idea that all cultures are equally good at ensuring the well-being of their members. Compulsory veiling or the tradition of vendetta in Albania are poor systems of belief which decrease general happiness. The practice of corporal punishment is one which is less clear, and which is open to scientific investigation.

Religion however extends the concept of “well-being” to include the well-being of god and/or well-being in a life after death. Suffering in this world is balanced against the prospect of an eternity in heaven. A side-theme of the book is a critique of religions. Harris has no aptitude for the sublime or esoteric. He ignores the label ‘religion’ and treats it as a belief system on a level with beliefs about ordinary objects in the world we inhabit. It irritates him immensely that there are rational people who are prepared to profess faith in all kinds of nonsense once it is wrapped in the package of their religion. Their critical sensors give diplomatic immunity to statements stamped with ‘relgious belief’ on them.

The prose style of the book is easily accessible yet draws on high-powered concepts. The author has ambitions of his ideas making a direct impact. This optimistic and uncondescending tone is generally missing from popular science books. Even Dawkins’ books read like propaganda in comparison. Harris writes in places like a philosopher from the Age of Reason. Here he discuss the possibility of a source of morality which is disconnected from considerations of well-being:

As I have said however, I cannot conceive of what such a source of value could be: for if someone claimed to have found it somewhere, it could have no possible interest to anyone, by definition.

Another difficulty in trying to gauge well-being is rooted in what Harris terms the distinction between the experiencing self and the remembering self. You can go on holidays to Rome and have a stressful time in the sweaty heat, or to Hawaii, where you relax on the beach. The experiencing self finds the holiday in Hawaii much more pleasant. But a year later the holiday in Rome is recalled as being immensely pleasurable.
This anecdotal illustration can be analysed by statistics and neuroscience, and conclusions reached about the nature of well-being.

It’s a provocative read. More a clearing of the air than a foundation for a new ethics.

… the underlying claim is that while science is the best authority on the workings of the physical universe, religion is the best authority on meaning, values, morality, and the good life. I hope to persuade you that this is not only untrue, it could not possibly be true.

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Castorp by Paweł Huelle

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Paweł Huelle

Pawel Huelle

Young Hans Castorp moves to Danzig in the eastern provinces of the German Empire to study shipbuilding. The novels follows his travel to the city and his first few days at a leisurely pace. The prose style itself aand whole sensibility of the tale is nineteenth century. Only the frequent allusions to the unstable political situation betray the modern authorship – plus a brothel scene too.

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Castorp is comfortable in his skin as a young scion of a wealthy family. He spends a whole day searching for somewhere to buy his beloved Maria Mancini cigars, he has brought a supply of several bottles of good Burgundy with him from Hamburg, and he posts his shirts six hundred miles home to be laundered and ironed because he does not trust the landlady’s skills. On the tram he is discombobulated by the conductor’s rudeness and lack of respect.

His life is thrown out of kilter by an infatuation with a woman he sees at a beach resort. In a state of mental turmoil he visits a doctor who specializes in psychological problems and confesses his tale.

It’s a very gentle narrative which indulges much space to Castorp’s subtle moods and whims. The reader will perhaps feel a sense of loss for the dignity and gentleness of the era.

In keeping with its 19th century sensibility, the novel omits the serving classes as real characters. In one scene Castorp sees from a distance a young soldier being disciplined by his superior. But otherwise the harsher side of life is omitted in the story. There is – so far as I can see – no subtle hint that an aristocratic culture of militarism will be to blame for dragging the world into a war, or that class divisions will boil over into civil unrest.

The final pages cast a brief glance to Danzig’s fate in the coming decades. The narrator, in one of his typical interpositions, says:

I would like to see you, you eternal naive idealist, on this same street today, where hundreds of cars are rushing by from Gdansk to Wrzeszcz and from Wrzeszcz to Gdansk, and in the trams you hear nothing but Wanda Pilecka’s sibilant speech, and if anyne still speaks in your language here, they are students from the same polytechnic taking exams in German.

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Cork Short Story festival

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Good things happening at the Cork Short Story festival 19th – 23rd September. See you all there.

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Stand Magazine out now!

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Stand Magazine is out now with new poems by Geoffrey Hill, and work by Irish poets Geraldine Mitchell and Shirley McClure.

I’ve got a short story in it.

Stand celebrates 60 years this year, making it one of the grand old dames of the British literary scene. It has published works by Samuel Beckett and Angela Carter, early work by Andrew Motion and lots of others.

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Lemistry book review

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I was asked to review
Lemistry a Celebration of the Work of Stanislaw Lem
for the Short Review.

But Tania Hershmann is taking a break from running The Short Review, so I’ll post it here while I look for somewhere to place it.

I first came across Lem in a story of his which was included in Hofstadter and Dennet’s 1981 popular philosophy book, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul. I went on to read His Master’s Voice and Solaris with an attitude of reverence that here was someone with insight into the future of mind in the electronic age. I gave up on his Tales of Pirx the Pilot. It was years before I could appreciate these stories for what they are: entertaining sci-fi adventures. Then over a decade later when I lived in Poland, I mentioned to a Polish colleague that I was an old Lem fan. He shook his head. All this fiction, he averred, was just Lem playing around and earning his crust. His real work was in the many untranslated essays.
Which all goes to back up the editors claim that “there are several Stanislaw Lems” as they put it in their introduction. And appropriately this celebratory anthology contains a wide range of approaches: new translations, fiction, essay, and criticism. It starts off with three Lem stories which have not previously appeared in translation. There follows thirteen pieces of fiction by British and Polish authors, grouped under the provocative heading ‘Reconstructed Originals.” Perhaps this is to suggest that elements of Lem’s consciousness have been transferred, through the medium of his writing, to the minds of these writers. The book concludes with four essays: three by scientists and one by science fiction critic and editor Andy Sawyer.
The three Lem stories have never before appeared in English. The selection captures Lem at his most impish (in the tale of an alien invasion defeated by a drunken villager) and also in a speculative frame, wondering at how to distinguish the virtual from the real. These might not be stories which convincingly demonstrate Lem’s genius, but they will be a rare treat for fans.
The first ‘story’ in the middle section of the book seems to be a review by Lem of a novel by Frank Cottrell Boyce. It’s up to the reader to figure out (OK, I used google) that the book is fictional, and the review is a ‘reconstructed original’. The piece is a fitting tribute to Lem’s own ingenious collection of reviews of fictional books.
5-Sigma Certainty by Trevor Hoyle is a journalist’s account of tracking down Philip K. Dick to get his theories on his Polish rival. The details are so convincing, I thought this might be a real account: there is after all no explicit indication that the middle section of the book is all fiction. Both here and in the first piece, there is a provocative blurring of lines between reality and fiction, just as some other stories blur the lines between virtual and conventional reality, or between organic and digital minds.
Some of the stories here can be enjoyed for their retro sci-fi feel. Others because they play around with some of Lem’s favourite tropes. Apart from the two already mentioned, stories to note include Stanlemian by Wojciech Orlinski, and Terracotta Robot by Adam Marek. There are a few weak ones among them, it has to be said, and maybe too many that are sci-fi based on the state of science in the 60s and not as it is today.
None of the stories meet the challenge Lem set himself in his greatest novels. That is, to be “a literature of ideas, reporting on mankind’s destiny.” And in particular, what shape mind/consciousness will take with the advent of new technologies. Child-care robots are upon us, software which buys and sells on money markets, computers which can drive cars and grade college exams. Neuroprosthetics is in rapid development. Digitally-enhanced human memory is around the corner.
This is not to be taken as a criticism of the selection in this book. But it is worth pointing out that just as the race to the future is accelerating, science fiction no longer takes on a role of prediction and exploration. And Lem took this role very seriously – or at least one of the Lems did.
Andy Sawyer’s excellent essay Stanislaw Lem – Who’s He? tackles this issue among others. It’s the high point of the book, and should be the first piece to turn to. The three essays from working scientists are also fascinating. It was a brave and innovative idea from the editors to include such a section. Hod Lipson’s essay in particular is very thought-provoking.
Lem was always way ahead of us, the blurb states. This collection makes some attempt to catch up.

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New website

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M y new website is ready, I think …. I’m still transferring content from the old website and ironing out any bugs.

It was high time for a change; I’ve had the same website since 2006. Let me know what you think of it – I’m still looking for something to replace that leather background.

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