Last Straw

This is Sam Har­ris, author of Let­ter to to a Chris­tian Nation and The End of Faith, speak­ing at Bey­ond Belief.

Har­ris’ thesis is that ques­tions of mor­al­ity are per­fectly within the realm of sci­entific enquiry and, that because human well-being is real­ised at the level of the brain, an emer­ging and matur­ing brain sci­ence will have a lot to say about right and wrong.

While I have an easy time under­stand­ing the idea that mor­al­ity is part of evol­u­tion­ary inher­it­ance I’ve always felt a little uneasy about how one recon­ciles value for diversity with a thesis that seems to sug­gest an homo­gen­isa­tion of cul­tural norms, but Har­ris goes some way to alle­vi­at­ing these con­cerns in this talk.