Tag Morality

Entries 29 Total

Can we ever be right about right and wrong?

Oct 26, ’08 1:22 PM

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.

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The grotesqueness of inequality

Aug 22, ’08 8:14 AM

I was reluct­ant to post this at first because it sug­gests the Demo­crats will save the day. They won’t. How­ever, it’s nice to know this sort of thing gets talked about occa­sion­ally in the halls of power of the United States of Amer­ica. Of course it’s not a prob­lem isol­ated to the U.S. either.

Via one­good­move.

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Human-Crow Symbiosis

May 17, ’08 11:54 AM

It’s a tru­ism like no other that the large major­ity of us value life, and as an exten­sion of this — being a meas­ure of life—biod­iversity.

That human beings, there­fore, are to blame for a massive and ongo­ing decrease in biod­iversity is the most incrim­in­at­ing piece of evid­ence to reveal just how badly out of sync human insti­tu­tions are with their val­ues, and, of course, how out of sync they are with life itself.

The Gaia hypo­thesis indic­ates that one way or another humans will stop being the cause of this decrease in biod­iversity. Whether that means the end of our civil­isa­tion or its adapt­a­tion remains to be seen.

One dis­turb­ing prac­tice of humans, at least since we turned to agri­cul­ture, has been to seek our and des­troy other spe­cies that com­pete with us for food and ter­rit­ory. The fol­low­ing video of Joshua Klein at TED touches on this topic in an inspir­ing way.

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A truly courageous soldier would not stay in Iraq or Afghanistan

May 9, ’08 7:22 AM

Protest­ing The Protesters

17-05-2008 Update: And they do exist. Here’s the latest: Mat­this Chiroux

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Plagiarism and intellectual loot

Jun 11, ’06 9:58 PM

The mar­ket­place of ideas, like any mar­ket­place, is fit only for looting.

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They murder while we accidently kill

Feb 13, ’06 10:31 PM

I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve run into right-wingers who seem to have an unwaver­ing belief that the crimes of their foes are be loudly pro­claimed and harshly pun­ished while their own crimes are to be wholly jus­ti­fied in the pur­suit of their ideo­logy. The ends jus­ti­fies the means apparently.

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Documentary: chemical weapons used on people in Iraq

Nov 9, ’05 10:35 PM

A new doc­u­ment­ary details the the use of white phos­phorus against Iraqi people dur­ing the U.S. assault on Fal­lu­jah in Novem­ber last year.

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This soldier is a hero

Oct 17, ’05 10:52 PM

“Sup­port our troops” is the man­tra of the day. It’s code for “shutup and sup­port the war.” Many sol­diers may be played for pawns but some are my biggest her­oes, and the new­est hap­pens to be a expat Kiwi.

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Marineland: past its use-by date

Jun 27, ’00 12:20 AM

One of human­it­ies more ana­chron­istic activ­it­ies of the day is the con­tinu­ation of keep­ing ceta­cea (dol­phins and whales) in con­crete pools in order to train them, an activ­ity which became fash­ion­able back in the 1940s. In essence it is no dif­fer­ent from the old attempts to sat­isfy human curi­os­ity by means of per­form­ing anim­als in miser­able trav­el­ling cir­cuses or show­men with their piti­ful dan­cing bear acts.

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