Sam Harris - The Great Debate: Can Science Tell us Right From Wrong? (1)

The Great Debate

On November 6th, 2010 a panel of renowned scientists, philosophers, and public intellectuals gathered to discuss what impact evolutionary theory and advances in neuroscience might have on traditional concepts of morality. If human morality is an evolutionary adaptation and if neuroscientists can identify specific brain circuitry governing moral judgment, can scientists determine what is, in fact, right and wrong? The panelists were psychologist Steven Pinker, author Sam Harris, philosopher Patricia Churchland, physicist Lawrence Krauss, philosopher Simon Blackburn, bioethicist Peter Singer and The Science Network's Roger Bingham.

Recorded live at the Arizona State University Gammage auditorium.

"The Great Debate" was sponsored by the ASU Origins Project in collaboration with the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law Center for Law, Science and Innovation; the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge; and The Science Network.

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Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values," "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." "The End of Faith" won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. Harris has a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA and a degree in philosophy from Stanford University. He is a co-founder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• secular values
• Project Reason
• philosophy
• ASU
• sam harris
• the moral landscape
• Letter to a Christian Nation
• The End of Faith
• science
• humanism
• moral
• values
• debate
• neuroscience
• neuroscientist
• morality
• atheism
• new atheism
• rule of law

[TheOldBeef]

Right and wrong are just bullshit words that mean whatever you define them to mean. That is what science can tell us about what is right and wrong. The end.

[ClumsyRoot]

Sam starts at 4:13.

[badblueman]

@FryderykFChopin He actually makes perfect sense. What is wrong, like murder, is common sense (i.e. what I think is wrong).

If you disagree (if you're a fascist) I'm not going to talk to you.

Don't listen to the opposition, have faith! This is called religion...and the religion is strong with this padawan.

[MenOfLetters]

@FryderykFChopin The scientific method is predicated upon testing data that can be replicated and verified. Philosophy is not about lab experiments. To compare the two disciplines betrays stupidity of a high order. And to sell books that promise to establish how science can determine ethics when Harris means by "science" every academic subject including philosophy is a racket. Philosophy is not an empirical discipline. Chemistry is.

[FryderykFChopin]

'Sam Harris later admits that by a scientific morality he means even philosophy and economics. Sorry, that's not science.'

By the way, economics and philosophy are social sciences. Harris has explicitly stated that he means 'science' in the broadest sense of the term of "secular rationality and honest truth claims based on honest observation and honest, clear reasoning"

[FryderykFChopin]

@MenOfLetters and if you had actually read my comment properly, you would know that I said nothing of the sort. The Nazis themselves thought that it was 'common sense' to kill as many jews as they could find. What makes your particular idea of 'common sense' more true or better than the 'common sense of the nazis'?

[MenOfLetters]

@FryderykFChopin If you think Nazism is common sense you are a fascist not worth talking to.

[FryderykFChopin]

@MenOfLetters 'common sense'. What do you mean by common sense? The 'common sense' of Nazi Germany? It seems that you're talking nonsense.

[MenOfLetters]

Sam Harris later admits that by a scientific morality he means even philosophy and economics. Sorry, that's not science. Not even close. You don't need science to know that murder is wrong. You need common sense. He's talking nonsense here. The worst kind of self-promotion and greed.

[shabido1]

@twilitprince I'm just saying, even scientists are human, and the reason so many other ppl cringed at this idea, is because of the 'possibility' of infringement over our moral rights. I've been atheist my entire life and am one of the ones who would make certain religion/organizations forbidden, or at least strictly ruled, but morals are not scientific/objective. They simply can't be since we come up with them. No murder is not objective, it is emotional.