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.
Comments
Right and wrong is all relative to who is percieving the so called right and wrong actions.
Humans are socially conditioned to beieve in the laws and rules that people have implemented into our society to create some sort of order within the capatilist, communist or whatever political system, when all human life is actually governed by the laws of nature whether we like it or not.
There is no right and wrong, there is no good and bad, and if we where to live in accordance to the natural enviroment instead of constantly fighting it back with this material culture we would see that.