Sam Harris on Facts and Values on TED.com

Comments

[Maryann Spikes]

Dawkins on Sam Harris' website: "I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me."

Does Richard Dawkins now believe there is objective moral truth?

Does he now believe in a 'real' good?

Maryann Spikes
San Francisco Apologetics Examiner

[Ethical Ape]

Nigel, I'd love to know your thoughts on Harris's position; do you agree with his argument that all systems of morality are essentially parasitic(at some level) on a notion of well-being?

I'm convinced by Harris's thought experiment (here: http://www.project-reason.org/newsfeed/item/moral_confusion_in_the_name_of_science3/ ) that leads him to conclude 'consciousness is the only intelligible domain of value'. If we could isolate some property of morality that was disconnected from any concern about the experience of concious beings, then the property would be meaningless. What do you think?

[Ethical Ape]

Maryann, you misread Harris and consequently Dawkins as well. Harris isn't arguing for moral truth that stands outside of human experience.

[Katarina Peovic Vukovic]

Sam Harris concluded: "My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may one day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind." As we learned from Thomas Kuhn even the changes in positive science can be understood as political. Not to mention social science...

[Maryann Spikes]

Nigel...in his talk he claims science can give us "objective moral truth". In a sense, this is true (google my name and Moral Truth Litmus). However--In order to call any standard “objective moral truth,” (without committing the fallacy of reification) science must be able to point to the real, fulfilled ought which that allegedly true standard describes. Science must show us the being who is and does what we should all be and do—that for which we all hunger. Sam denies such a being exists.