Science can answer moral questions | Sam Harris
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- Опубліковано 21 бер 2010
- www.ted.com Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10
Many know what Sam Harris knows. Few can explain it as clearly and concisely as he can. What a brilliant speaker.
''I almost burst into tears when describing the practice of honor killing. I knew that I was going to talk about fathers who murder their daughters for the crime of being raped, and I knew exactly what I was going to say about them. But I hadn’t known that my own daughter would take her first steps the morning of my lecture. When delivering my lines exactly as I had rehearsed, I suddenly awoke to the reality of what I was talking about.''
Damn, Ben Stiller really is a man of multiple talents
The good days when Ted used to be brave enough to bring controversial subjects
Sam Harris: "We can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human wellbeing than we can respect and tolerate differences in the notion of how disease spreads."
Thank you.
Does UA-cam have a superlike button?
I had compassion for rocks (and other objects) as a kid, and my brother used to kick them and call them ugly to make me cry ...
I admire how calm and eloquent he is in whatever situation.
11:21
Basically Sam is saying well-being should be our guiding doctrine of morality. And there might be multiple answers to how we can maximize/increase well-being in different states (the moral landscape) but, there are some answers that are worse than others, and we can map that out by considering the impacts on well-being/human suffering.
It's good that we remove the idea that we remove the taboo of comparing religious ideas against each other and against secular ideas. There can be no progress of society without frank and open discussion.
rarely seen a standing ovation on a TED talk lol
"Whenever we re talking about facts there are certain opinions that must be excluded."
"String theory doesn't resonate with me" hehehe
Science can be used for deductive reasoning. It can be used to derive the best (if there is a best) possible action given a set of values. That being said, he never actually displayed how science can yield those values. It can't. It gives us an "is", not an "ought". He makes a fatal error in assuming that one "ought" to desire these more "desirable" moral spaces, or that we "ought" to care for the suffering of others, etc... He assumes certain values to judge what "human flourishing" even is, AND that it is preferable (albeit we may grant that that is a sort of self evident idea). He is using values derived not from science to suggest that science can provide these values. These values are an inductive reasoning. Science relies on philosophy, so even the idea that science can provide values relies on values on how to conduct this science.
Once again, faith in humanity almost 100% restored after watching the video, followed by agonising disappointment when reading through the comments.
Let that detonate in your mind for a moment.
“String theory doesn’t resonate with me”
"“There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair.” Albert Einstein. From the book ... The Final Inequality, by L. J. Ludovici."Morals at any given moment have always been as good, or as bad, as our imaginations credit them, for the morals (from the Latin, mores: customs) means simply customs, and they keep changing all the time in all the corners of the world."