Sam Harris Series | Episode 3: The Moral Landscape and Importance of Honesty

Regan Arntz-Gray, who’s been hosting a Sam Harris podcast discussion group for the past 6 years, is hosting a 4-month Interintellect Salon series on his body of work.

Episode 3: The Moral Landscape and Importance of Honesty

Can you really get an ought from an is? Sam argues yes, there are facts about the human brain that will constrain what it means to live a good life and what it means to do good, and that at some level of abstraction, moral values must be derived based on consequences (sufficiently broadly construed). We’ll discuss his arguments against unconstrained cultural relativism, whether a focus on consequentialism is the best way of actually achieving good consequences, and how we could arrive at what he considers to be a suboptimal equilibrium with respect to how much we lie (he thinks we do it way too much). We’ll discuss arguments made in “The Moral Landscape” and “Lying” but pre-reading is not required.

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In this salon series, we’ll traverse through the thought-provoking and diverse work of Sam Harris. We’ll examine the central claims made in his books as well as through his body of work as a public intellectual. This series will include four salons, each focused on one major topic or group of issues to which Sam has contributed atheism and critiques of Islam, morality and cultural relativism, free will and spirituality without faith, and the transformative power of discourse.

For each topic, we’ll discuss Sam’s central claims, any questions they stimulate, and where they might require updating or recontextualizing for 2024. We’ll cover content discussed in several of his books, including The End of Faith, Free Will, Waking Up, The Moral Landscape, and Lying, so some pre-reading is helpful but not at all necessary.

In each salon session, expect thought-provoking discussions, speculative inquiries, and a deep dive into Harris’s intellectual legacy. Bring your questions and curiosity as we embark on these constructive discussions, and I expect we’ll all come away with some new insights on these important topics!

This event will be recorded.