Science can answer moral questions | Sam Harris

"Sin is that which prevents us from believing. Not logic. For this reason, if you tell an unbeliever to live for six months according to the ethics of the Gospel, and he does it, he will become a believer without even realizing it."


"'God does not exist' is usually said by people who are lewd and unethical. There has not been found nor will there be found an ethical, continent, virtuous, etc. man who will rather easily say: 'God does not exist!'"


"Atheists do not exist. Only idolaters exist, who take down Christ from His throne and in His place they enthrone their own idols. We say: “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. They say: “Glory to the great ___”. You pick and choose which one you prefer."


☦Elder Epiphanios Theodoropoulos☦

2023 almost over😢

sanga was fuckin her

He is a good man. That is clear. However, there is a small chance, like .0001%, that he might be a serial killer. I wonder if he goes home to his closet and takes a box of photos of murder victims....Guess I will never know.

Yikes. 🙈

That was 23 minutes of vacuous, presuppositional, circular reasoning.

I deeply admire Sam Harris and find this argument eloquent, engaging, compelling and yet, missing something central. It is leaning heavily on "YOU JUST KNOW" while rejecting any possibility of devine guidance. To put this in context I am agnostic if anything. I am not holding a religious position on the matter. Just pointing out that when I think deeply about where my moral compass comes from, I come up short - weighted average of human opinions may be? Sure when Sam illustrates his point with an emotionally charged real life situation, I do have an opinion. I also have an emotion. But where did I get that opinion? I think it very much matters where I got it. If we don't know where it comes from how can we assume we are as a group moving in a good direction? If it's weighted average for all of us, are we not then just guided by chaous (may be vetted by evolution but still). P.S. I do not buy that science is answering this question for us. Science can estimate a degree of human or animal suffering, but it does not explain why it's wrong to cause it.

Well then it comes to question if these morals come from God. And which God? I have addressed this complex topic in a few videos now. It does make subjective sense that morality and a grand wizard watching coincide. But it isn't proof I would try to argue with the atheist (I'm an unspecified theist). Because I would lose. But if morality is evolved then we should be getting better and not the same. We were evolved when the Third Reich emerged and we are now with Putin destroying Ukraine. So the atheist argument doesn't work either. I would say that animals kill on instinct but humans do it for fun. The big question is why. Cheers, DCF

Harris is just wrong about life expectancy in antiquity. His view is flawed due to the inclusion of infant mortality. People in general didn't live to only 30.

Throughout history, religion shows no evidence of ever having answered our moral questions. It makes the claim for itself, but in the context of a sadly hypocritical species, religion is one of the most egregious examples of open shameless hypocrisy in the human condition. Everyone is fully aware of the violent genocidal history of religion, unchanged to the present day, to address merely one aspect of the evil it has always done. If religion today turned 180 degrees from what it really is, and actually became what it claims, no amount of good works could never make up for the harm it has caused and the millstone it has been to humanity.

The clarity and precision the way he takes a thing and makes you see it so clearly so few can do it as well as Sam

Honor killing drew my tears. And people do feel about rocks(diamonds)... and their suffering... Love everything and only use hate towards concepts. ☮
I love Sam. He Rocks!!!

Congrats to a sophisticated atheist.

The blind leading the blind.

Such a brilliant speech to hear and rehear over the years. Sam Harris really is brilliant, and hits points people would be lucky to reach themselves and understand with clarity.

It truly is a shame that no matter how many of the speeches are heard by society, the underlining conditions that make people fanatics is ultimately based on poverty in a class system, not lack of reasonable debate or philosophy in schools.

If the most brilliant people at the top of the ladder are too infatuated with the status quo and making money to undo their biases and take a reputation risk by exposing class and money as the clearly evident enemy of humanitarianism, what makes anyone think the people at the bottom will be capable?

It is amazing that I can learn nothing from this smart guy. Just like looking at a beautiful picture but of no value lol😂

This video actually proves science can't and never will solve moral problems.

this is very specific but... if youre here because of tok i see you and feel your pain

If only Sam Harris could be the President of the United States in his spare time.

Sam Harris has apparently never heard of Hume's Guillotine. He is trying to get an is from an ought, and if he were philosophically literate, he'd understand that such is a task of futility, but alas, here we are.

This didn't age well. Or at least Sam's judgment didn't. He shouldn't be allowed in charge or anything, ever.

🤦

Material flourishment ≠ moral. In fact morality often requires material sacrifice

Within his framework, the moral goal of the wellbeing of humans and animals is surely a product of human cultural evolution. Why would what’s happening in our brains give rise to any scientific claim? He’s just leapt the gulf from scientific observation to moral claim with no visible bridge. In his framework, why would our care for human and animal be anything more than a cultural direction? Why would observing this trend bring anyone to the conclusion that our morality should go in any particular direction?
I’m stunned this talk got a standing ovation with the massive presupposition he’s made.

This is the Utilitarian approach to morality.
It is loosely defined as aggregating the outcomes of actions to produce the most pleasure and least pain for people.
A famous counter to that line of thinking is H. J. McCloskey’s sheriff example.
That counter focuses on the fact that it would seemingly be moral for the state to kill an innocent person with the intention of preventing deadly riots.
It is not difficult to imagine that framing and executing someone who did not commit a crime is immoral. So it could be sound argument against the line of thinking Mr. Harris proposes here

You still need to believe that suffering is bad and shall be reduced. Sure this should be obvious, but it's not a mere simple fact. It's a belief that you could infer from your own experience and empathy.

This should be taught in schools indeed as a prime example of 'sophistry'.

There's absolutely no philosophical nor logical contribution in the talk, only racist and imperialistic remarks (the only thing the speaker has shown skill at in almost all of his speeches)

How can science answer moral questions? By measuring neurological brain signals of humans in accordance to their 'wellness'? Seriously? This kind of argument gets a person to deliver a message in a TED conference?

What is wellness? Pleasure? Good Feeling?

So based on the experimentation on 'positive' or 'good signals' from the human brain we should deduce what is morality?

This speaker, as well as many modernists, are just trying to butcher common sense by appealing to pathetic shallow comments providing absolutely no rational behind their claims

And who is the 'moral expertise' from his perspective, the physicist?! This talk is a joke, a silly one.

Imagine getting lectured on morality by Sam Harris. Corpses of children indeed.

👍👍👍👍👍

derek sivers brought me here comment!!!

So, he's arguing that science can provide objective moral grounds. In what? In the well-being of humanity, apparently. Well, if it is important to ensure the flourishing of humanity, then...

Abortion is perhaps the most heinous crime imaginable, as it is killing a human being with great potential.
On the flip side, killing off the elderly is good once they can't provide for themselves, as they're not benefitting society.
Women should have as many children as possible; it doesn't matter much who the father is.
People with violent tendencies should be executed before they commit a crime.
Etc.

Explain to me how these things would not ensure the flourishing of humanity in a scientific sense far better than the moral conceptions of today?

So basically a culture that has developed a science of well-being should consider itself entitled to force their scientifically-tested values on other cultures? Not just entitled, but even morally obliged to do so?

See Jeremy Bentham’s felicific calculus.

Sam Harris does not prove the claim he sets out to prove. He merely shows that, once we have already agreed on a moral framework (e.g., compassion towards all living beings, or maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, etc.), science can be gainfully used to help us realize it (by showing, for example, that it creates less suffering if we remove cholera from the water). It remains true that the physical sciences cannot help us arrive at those moral frameworks.

now do trans women arent women, and pretending they are just to appease the liberals and their delusions.

ted like this do not exist anymore, it has become a hub for islamic propaganda

Facts

There are few public speakers that I will click on faster than when I see the name Sam Harris in the title. He has been one of my all time favorite speakers for so long. He's just so damn good at it. He speaks very intelligently, but not pompously. He doesn't speak down to the audience. He is easy to follow, even when the material is complex. Sam Harris also throws the perfect amount of humor in his speeches, but doesn't overdo it. In my opinion, he is the embodiment of what I consider the perfect speaker.

Thanks

I love Sam and his discussions but he makes conclusions about after death that shouldn’t be made as it’s an unknown and consciousness itself is yet to be understood. There very well could be a continuation of existence after death considering that we are the energy of the universe

No need for one man to say what is morally correct. The world as a whole is already in a natural algorithm to seek for a higher well being. To have one idea of what is morally correct is self-defeating. If everyone agreed to have the same idea - eventually you would only have one peak on that graph which means we would lose our reference. We would not know if we are at a global maxima, or local max. Kinda like a communist of morality; it's bound to fail.

Sam Harris recently proved how unobjective he is.

The bible even tells you to stone your unruly child to death. Deuteronomy 21:18-21

The evidence from science and mathematics is that you can be a person of deep personal Faith but not what anyone would call 'religious'. I have followed the Guidelines of Problacism for many years and consequently I have been given everything I could possibly ever need or want. I also don't suffer from any anxieties, fears or depression. Problacism does not require any prayer, churches, iconoclasm or worship. All it requires is that you lose all your ego and indiscriminately help everyone who is 'sent' to you without any expectation of recognition or reward. Trust in the Universe and be Relentless.

The biggest flaw in this, is that it doesn’t solve the problem of subjectivity around well being or provide a solution to our flawed perspective of well being.

We need an objective set of morals that are far beyond what we believe, otherwise we don’t have which to hold one another accountable.

We need an answer to the consequences beyond just our lifetime of living a life in this ignorant way of thinking. So who ultimately holds the universe accountable.

We cannot assume the position of God as the moral arbiters of the world.

M

D-0¥

you claim to be moral and you pay for enslave and kill animals for taste pleassure.