'We Find Genocides Boring': Sam Harris on Moral Illusions

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/11/10/Sam_Harris_Can_Science_Determine_Human_Values

Author Sam Harris explains that despite humanity's general desire to be good, we frequently fall prey to "moral illusions." As an example, he points to the developed world's neglect of strife in regions like Darfur. "We find genocides boring," he says.

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In this highly anticipated, explosive new book, the author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation calls for an end to religion's monopoly on morality and human values. In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values to dismantle the most common justification for religious faith -- that a moral system cannot be based on science.

The End of Faith ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In its aftermath, Harris discovered that most people, from secular scientists to religious fundamentalists, agree on one point: Science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Even among religious fundamentalists, the defense one most often hears for belief in God is not that there is compelling evidence that God exists, but that faith in Him provides the only guidance for living a good life. Controversies about human values are controversies about which science has officially had no opinion. Until now.

Morality, Harris argues, is actually an undeveloped branch of neuroscience, and answers to questions of human value can be visualized on a "moral landscape" -- a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks and valleys correspond to human states of greater or lesser wellbeing. Different ways of thinking and behaving -- different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government, etc. -- translate into movements across this landscape. Such changes can be analyzed objectively on many levels, ranging from biochemistry to economics, but they have their crucial realization as experiences in the human brain.

Bringing a fresh, secular perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, Harris shows that we know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, cultural relativism is simply false -- and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our "culture wars," Sam Harris delivers a game-changing argument about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation. - Berkeley Arts and Letters

Sam Harris is an American non-fiction author, and CEO of Project Reason. He received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, and is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University. He has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions, along with a variety of contemplative disciplines, for twenty years. He is a proponent of scientific skepticism and is the author of The End of Faith (2004), which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), a rejoinder to criticism of his first book, and The Moral Landscape (2010).

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[theforestero]

What did shakespeare say..i have no mortal fears ..for i have no mortal dreams...

[Requiemxtoxinnocence]

This is a problem, when one man's death is called a tragedy and a million is a statistic in our eyes. it is hard to even comprehend the amount of suffering that has befallen this world and yet people go on with their daily business. It seems like we are a self centered species, not one that values all as much as we'd like to think.

[GNOSOPHER]

@Kurtlane You're kidding, right? Are you insulted because you took Sam's accusation of the collective to a very personal level. Sam is making a generalization here. I recommend you watch the video a few more times and think about it. I also notice that those who are more highly educated and are "life long learners" tend to get it better.

[GNOSOPHER]

Excellent point, Sam. There are many "illusions" that are psychological in nature. Another example of one similar to this video is when someone is being mugged they are much more likely to receive help from a good Samaritan when there are fewer people around. It turns out that more people around make those who witness the mugging assume that someone else will help (and no need for them to intervene).

I also have to feel sorry for people who take Sam literally and don't get his message.

[Kurtlane]

"We find genocides boring"? Speak for yourself, Sam Harris.

"We, we, we" How about you?

[ZEDSTODT]

What a phony & a Provocateur. Hes making too much money off of an extremely gullible population and by so doing qualifies as a grifter.

[addmoreice]

@patientthomist

Except you have no evidence it's *not* an infinite regression with a convergent series. We see the big bang, it converges to a moment, no one knows what happened before the plank instant. It could be a convergent infinite series of virtual particle expansions. I don't know, neither do you. But I'm not saying "I don't know" suddenly means "I do know, god dun it" either. you are doing that.

you are literally using the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantum.

[patientthomist]

@addmoreice

This is not Zeno's paradox in any form or a convergent series, since in both of those cases (the way that your relate them anyway) limits are approached with fractions.  Causes and motions are not fractions, dullard. Within the series, for example, one term does not cause or move the next. The only thing you're proving is that you can't fix "stupid". Peace :)

[addmoreice]

@patientthomist

"We can't MOVE THROUGH an unlimited chain to reach an end point (which is our moment in time)."

no matter how many times you repeat something that is incorrect this doesn't suddenly make it true. This is simply incorrect. This is simply a variant of Zeno's paradox, convergent infinite series solves this very nicely. congratulations. you are wrong.

after this it continues on into special pleading.

mistake followed by fallacy followed by fallacy.