Thank you It's A an Honor to be here I've Never Actually Even Been To oxford before let Alone [spoken] Here and Needless to Say it's a great Honor To Be on the Stage with my friend and Colleague and Actually One of my intellectual Heroes Richard Dawkins So as Many of you know, We have spent the [last] several Years Publicly [Criticizing] Religion and? I can tell you that what you you hear Back when you do that are all the Reasons why? Most People Think that's a terrible [Thing] to do and The Reasons are not So Numerous it Turns out There's not a Hundred Ways or Reasons to rise to the defense of God There Really are only Three Either you Argue that a specific Religion is true or You Argue Religion Is Useful in General or you argue that atheism Is Intolerant Or in Bad Taste Or Corrosive of something that's Important in Human life and It's interesting that People Rarely Argue for the truth of Religion even Fundamentalist I find A fundamentalist Almost Never Come Forward With Evidence for Miracles or The Confirmation of Biblical Prophecy Some do but for the most part [that's] not even Their Primary Concern Rather it's the Usefulness of Religion Especially as a a framework in Which to think about Morality That People Are Willing To Advocate for and the Commensurate danger of Atheism. That Atheism is Somehow Corrosive of Morality. Now the first Thing to Notice Is that as an Argument for Belief in God that Is not only A Bad [Argument] that's Actually A Non Sequitur I mean Religion Could be Useful but Completely empty of Content It Could [Function] like a Placebo And Beliefs Really you can't you Can't believe something or shouldn't be [able] to believe something Merely Based on its Utility Beliefs Are not Like Clothing you can't Adopt Them on the Basis of Comfort Or Utility But People of Faith Really To a man are Worried that Unless We have A universal moral Framework Unless We have A sense that? Words Like Good and Evil and Right and Wrong Actually mean Something Then Humanity will Lose its Way and I actually Share that Fear And i Should point out that not all atheists do but i i do and i i i want to tell you When this this Concern, was first seared Onto my brain I was at A? Meeting at the Salk Institute I believe it might have Been One That Richard, was at as, well [and] I gave a talk about Morality and I and I argued as I will here tonight that Morality Must Relate at some Level to Questions of [Human] and Animal Well-Being and The moment, We Admit This? We can See That Certain moral Codes are in Fact Worse Than Others? and i cited As an Example the Misogyny and Sadism of The Taliban As an Example of an Orientation that was Obviously, less good Than Others and at The end Another Invited Speaker Approached Me and Said How Could you Ever Say From The Point of view of science That Forcing Women to wear [Burqas] is wrong I Said Well Because the moment You admit right and Wrong has something to do With With Human Well-Being then it's Obvious that that Forcing Half The Population to live in Cloth Bags and beating them or killing them when They Try, to get out Is not A? Good way of Maximizing it and She Said, Well That's Just your Opinion? And i said okay, well Let's Make it Easier Let's Say, We found a culture that, was Removing the eyeballs of Children? Every Third Child Say What Would you that Would you then agree that we'd Found a culture that was not Perfectly Maximizing Human [Well-Being]? And she said What Would depend on why? They, were doing it and so after my Eyebrows returned from the back of my head [I] Said okay, Let's Say, They're Doing it for Religious Reasons Let's Say, They have a scripture Which Says Every Third Should Walk in Darkness Or some Such [Nonsense] and she said, well then you could never Say that they, were Wrong Now you Should know that [I] was Speaking to A woman who was? Quite [A] Sophisticated Student of Philosophy [in] Science in fact she She has since Been Appointed to the president's Council on bioethics In The United States She's One of 13 People Advising President obama on all of the ethical Implications of medicine and Progress in Related Science and Technology and She Had Just [delivered] a, perfectly Lucid Lecture on the moral Implications of Advances in Neuroscience and She was Especially Concerned that We might be Subjecting? Captured Terrorists To Fmri Based Lie Detection Technology and She thought she thought this, would be A Truly unconscionable Violation of Their Their Cognitive Liberty So on The One Hand Her her Moral Scruples Were Really Finely Calibrated to to recoil from the slightest Perceived Misstep in our war on Terror and Yet She was Totally Detached? From The very Real Suffering of Millions of Women in Afghanistan at this moment so I view This double Standard as a problem and Strangely This is the Erosion of basic Common sense and Moral Goodness That Religious People Tend to be worried About Now [I] hope it's obvious to all of you and will be even More obvious at the end of this Hour that that Religion isn't The answer to this Problem but It's inconvenient that the people who Tend to agree With me About the Necessity of A concept of moral truth are by and large Religious Demagogues and not our Fellow secularists and Certainly not our Atheists so now how do we Find Ourselves Into This in the Situation how Do We how is it that that Religious Dogma Tests and Many Many [Scientifically] Oriented Secularists Agree About The Limits of Science Well it's thought that There There are two Quantities in This World There Are facts on the one Hand and There are values on the other And it's imagined that These Two are Discrete Entities that that Can't be Understood in Monastic Terms and It's imagined that science Can't Say Anything About value Science can't tell Us The Answers to the most important Questions in Human life how Should, We Raise our Children [What] Constitutes a [good] life in Principle Science Can't touch These Things Of Course Everyone Agrees that science Can Help Us get what We Value and Once We [agree] that We value something that science is A very Useful tool? But it Can it can't tell us what we Ought to Value? And so it's Thought from the point of view of [science] That when, We look at the Universe We just See one Event Following Another, we just See? A Concatenation of Causes and There's no Corner of the Universe That That Announces Certain Events as good, or Bad, Or right or wrong We Make Those Judgments but in doing that We Seem to be Broadcasting our Preferences? [Onto] a Reality that is Intrinsically Value free and Where do our Preferences Come from Where do our Notions of right and Wrong and Good and Evil come from Well They Clearly are The product of A fish impulses and Social Emotions That Have Been Drummed Into Us by evolution and then they get Modulated by culture so you Take something like Sexual Jealousy for Instance, We come from a long line of? Primate Ancestors that were Probably Quite Covetous of One Another [despite] [The] fact That Everyone was covered with hair? And this Gets This This possessiveness Gets Modulated By Culture and so, We have something like the Institution of marriage Say? and Therefore From The Point of view of science When you look at a statement like it's Wrong to cheat on your Spouse It Seems like that statement, doesn't Really Track Reality in Any Deep Sense There's not that this is Just How Apes like Us learn to, worry when, We when we Acquire [language]? It's just Conventionally wrong Can't be Really Wrong [from] the point of view of science This Is Just an Improvisation We're doing on the back of Biology Now This is where Religious People Begin to get a little Queasy and and I think They Should But They See, no alternative [by] and large but to insert the god of Abraham Into The Clockwork As an Invisible Arbiter of Moral Truth So it so it's Wrong to cheat on your Spouse because yahweh Deems that it is so Which is Rather, odd Because in other Modes yahweh Is Fond of Genocide and Slavery and Human Sacrifice? Now I'm going to Argue that this Split between facts and values Is an Illusion and My Claim Is that that values are a Certain kind of fact There are facts About the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures There Are facts About the kinds of Experiences it's Possible to have in This Universe Now in Claiming That Value is Reduced to the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures I'm Introducing two concepts Consciousness and Well-Being Let's Start With Consciousness Is This - my eye Is not at all an Arbitrary Starting Point Imagine A universe Without The Possibility of Consciousness Imagine Universe Just Filled With Rocks, okay There's There's Nothing that it's like to be in This Universe okay the lights are not on in This Universe There's Clearly no happiness or Suffering I Would Argue that the concept of Right and Wrong good and Evil simply doesn't Apply? For Changes in The Universe to Matter they have to Matter at least Potentially to some Conscious System now What about, well [being] that [It] Seems like the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures could be a Controversial Anchor for Morality but I don't think it Should, ok here's the only Assumption you need to Make Imagine A universe Where Every Conscious Creature Suffers as much as it Possibly Can for as long as it Can I Call This The worst Possible Misery for Everyone The worst Possible Misery for [Everyone] Is Bad If the Word Bad Is going to mean Anything Surely it Applies to the worst Possible Misery for [Everyone] Now if You think the worst possible Misery for [Everyone] isn't Bad Or that it might Have a silver lining Or There Might be Something Worse [I] Don't [know] what you're Talking About And what Is more I'm Reasonably Sure You don't know what you're Talking about either? The Moment You Admit This the moment you admit that the worst possible Misery for Everyone is the worst Outcome Okay, then you have to admit that every other possible Experience is Better Than The worst Possible Misery for [Everyone] so a continuum Opens Up and Because the Experience of Conscious Creatures Is going to depend in some way on the laws of [Nature] There Are Going to be right and Wrong Ways to move across this Continuum It will be Possible to think you're Avoiding the worst possible Misery for Everyone and To be Wrong About that and to fail to avoid it this Is in some sense A navigation Problem So here is my argument for for Locating Moral Truth in the Context of Science Questions Are Right and Wrong and Good and Evil depend upon Minds They Depend upon the Possibility of Experience Minds are Natural Phenomena They Depend upon the laws of Nature in some Way Morality and Human values Therefore Can Be Understood Potentially in The Context of Science Because in Talking About These Things, We Really are Talking About all of the facts? That Relate to the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures in Our case, we're Talking About Genetics and Neurobiology and Psychology and Sociology and Economics Now I view This Space of all possible Experience as a kind of moral Landscape where the Peaks Correspond to The heights of Well-Being and The Valleys Correspond to the lowest depths of Suffering and One Thing that to drop out of this Analogy Is The Possibility of There Being Multiple Peaks and Maybe There are Many Different But Morally equivalent Ways for for in our Case Human beings to thrive but [Clearly] There Are Many more Ways not [to] thrive There'll be Many more ways [to] not be on a Peak And i think it's rather obvious that There are Many more Ways to Suffer Unnecessarily in This World than to be Sublimely happy Now the Taliban Are Still my [favourite] example of A group of People who are struggling Mightily To Build a society that is Obviously, less Good Than Others on Offer Average Lifespan for Women in Afghanistan IS 44 Years okay, They Have a literacy Rate of 12% They Have almost the highest Fertility Rate in The World and Almost the highest infant and Maternal Mortality in the World this is one of the best Places on Earth to Watch Women and Infants die They, also have A Gdp that's lower than the World Average in the Year 1820 So it Seems to me Patently Obvious That The optimal Response to this Situation Which is to say the most moral Response Is Not to Throw Battery Acid in The Faces of little Girls for the Crime of Learning to Read Now I think This is Common sense to Everyone in this Room and Common sense it Should be to Everyone in The Civilized World except you if you happen to be A Bioethicists Working on The President's Council at the Moment but This is also of Necessity a claim About Biology and Psychology and Sociology and Economics It is not? Unscientific to Say But the Taliban Are Wrong About Morality in fact We have to Say This the moment We Admit We Know Anything at all about Human Well-Being? Now some People with a, little Philosophical Training May Begin to Wonder well Who's to Say That if A father wants to Burn his Daughter's Face Off a battery Acid He's Wrong in Any objective sense Who's to Say We Should Value the well-Being of Little Girls? Who's to Say that the father doesn't have an Alternate but Also legitimate Conception of Well-Being now Moral Skeptics of This kind Invariably Cite? David Humes Famous Distinction between Is and Aunt you the Notion [is] you can't get a Nought from an is which is to Say that Science Can Only Give Us A Descriptive account of the way the world Is and There's no way to move from that account to an account of how the World Ought to be Now I happen to think this is a trick of Language The This Notion of [Ought] This is the fall Is very much in to Vidcon steen's Notion of Philosophy as a Battle Against The Bewitchment of our Intelligence by Means of Language and People are Mightily the [Witched] by words like Ought and Should and Moral Duty [To] Ask Whether, we Ought to Avoid? The worst Possible Misery for [Everyone] on My view is nonsensical If if We Ought to do Anything if We Should do Anything if We have a moral [Duty] to do Anything in This Universe It's to avoid the worst possible Misery for Everyone Okay, There's no Notion of Art That reaches Deeper Than The Imperative of Avoiding the worst Possible Misery for [Everyone] It's not it doesn't Make sense to Say well [I] would have avoided the worst possible Misery for Everyone but I actually had other Priorities okay, There's no Space [for] Those other Priorities to occupy Or so i argue Now Many People Imagine on humes Account that science is Bound to be Merely Descriptive and Therefore One Person's values Can Only Trump Another Person's values by by Seeking Consensus There's, no you all you have are Differing Opinions [and] There in all such Opinions Are in Principle on par but [This] isn't true There are Many Ways for my values to Be Wrong but They Can be Wrong With Respect to Deeper values that i hold or? Would hold if I were Only a Deeper Person they? Can be Objectively Bad Guides To Finding Happiness in This World that I can value Things That will Reliably Make me Miserable or Make Those I love Miserable So so things can be right Or wrong independent of a person's current values now some of you might, worry that I haven't defined? Well-Being with Sufficient Precision how Can how Can this Loose concept be The Ground out of Which We talk About moral Truth, well Consider by analogy the Notion of [Physical] health? Physical Health Is very difficult to Define and and it and it's its Definition Seems to always be Contextually True that We now Physical health is you Can Expect to live to [be] 85 90 Without Alzheimer's A hundred Years Ago you could Expect to live to the ripe Old age of 40 Or 50 it Changes and it Could Change To A great, degree in The Future the What does health mean so it has something to do With not Always vomiting It's something to do With not being in Excruciating Pain This Is These are very Loose Criteria For Health and Yet This Does not Make the concept of Health Vacuous at all it Certainly doesn't Make it Merely The Product of Culture Or Merely The product of personal whim and Notice That no one Ever Attacks the Philosophical underpinnings of Medicine With Questions Like what who are you to Say that [not] Always vomiting is healthy What if You meet someone who wants to vomit? What do you need someone who wants to vomit until he dies how Would you Argue that he's not as, Healthy as, you are okay yes The very Notion of health Contains Certain values this does not Make Medicine Unscientific [and] [I] would Argue that in Talking About Morality, we are Actually Talking about Psychological Health and The Health of Societies The Truth of this This fact Value Issue Actually reaches Deeper Than that because science has Always Been in The values Business We simply Cannot Speak About facts? Without Embracing Certain Values it's not it's not that you can't get A Naught from it is you can't get an Is Without Embracing Certain Odds You Can Consider The simplest Statement of Scientific fact Water is Two Parts Hydrogen one Part oxygen? This This Seems to be as Value-Free and utterance as Human beings Ever Make Okay but what do We do when [someone] doubts the truth of This Proposition what if What if Someone Comes Forward and Says well? I'm sorry but that's not how I choose to think about Water What if Someone Says I'm a biblical chemist and I read in Genesis 1 that god Created Water Before he Created light Which in fact it Says in Genesis 1 so therefore There were no Stars To Fuse Hydrogen and Helium Me Into Heavier [Elements] like oxygen So There Would have been no oxygen to put in the Water so god either Made Either There's no Oxygen in Water God Made special oxygen And I don't believe you do that because that Would be Biblically an Elegant What what Could We Possibly do was Such a Person? Okay all We can do Is Appeal to Scientific values? And if A person doesn't Share Those values the Conversation is over Okay, we we must Appeal to the value of Understanding the World the Value of Evidence in this case? Some Hundreds of Years of Evidence in Chemistry The Value of Logical Consistency Much of what We believe About the World is Predicated on the Validity of our Beliefs about the Structure of Water? If Someone doesn't Value Evidence What evidence are you going to Provide That Proves They Should value it If Someone doesn't value Logic what logical Argument Could you, invoke to prove that they Should Value Logic And i think This Split between facts and values Should Just Look Bizarre on its Face Because what are We Really Saying when We say that science Can't be Applied? To the most important Questions in Human Life, we're Saying that that When, we Really Relinquish our Biases When, We Make Every effort to get Behind our Wishful Thinking and Self-Deception? When We Rely Most Clearly on Honest Observation and and Sound Reasoning When intellectual Honesty Is at its Peak Well Then That has no Application Whatsoever to the most important Questions in Human Life that's Precisely the mood you cannot be in To answer the Most important Questions in Human Life so i'd argue to you that that Thinking of Moral Truth in The Context of Science and indeed a science of Morality Should [Only] Pose a problem for you if you think a science of Morality must be Absolutely Self-Justifying in A way that no branch of Science Can be Okay, so science a morality based on a concern for Well-Being Would Be on the Same Footing as? Science of Medicine Based On a concern for health or indeed Any other science That has to assume Certain Axiomatic Options There Are Many Questions You Could [ask] that are Actually good Questions One Would be How Would This Work in Practice Maybe that we can, We often Have values? Genuine Values That Can Be in Competition With One [Another] can be Trade-Offs between values how Do We balance One Person's Well-Being against the Well-Being of the Group? how, do We evaluate the Consequences of our Actions when the consequences Seem to go on Forever so you Take for Instance that This recent Tragedy in [Japan] Is This A good [thing] or a Bad Thing Well it Certainly Seems Bad but? [What] if This Causes Us to Handle Nuclear Materials so much more Conscientiously than We ever Would have in the future that Winds up Saving Millions of Lives? okay, They are all good Questions But I would Argue These are not A retort to The Argument I've given You, okay it Could be difficult or impossible to answer some of These Questions But in Every Area of science in Every Area Where we Acknowledge that truth Claims are Valid There Are an Infinite Number of Questions That Are indeed difficult [or] impossible to answer this does not Nullify Truth Claims This Is my Favorite example of the moment Is how Many Birds are in Flight, over the surface of the Earth Okay, We don't know, we can't know? We will never know and in fact it just Changed [ok] There's There's no Scientific effort that Could Deliver Those Data We know that There's a simple answer it's Just an Integer This Could, Well [Be] True of Certain Questions About Morality This Would not Nullify the the Reality [of] Moral Truth so in Closing I just want to remind you of? Why Religion Can't be the answer to the Question of Moral Truth? Well First There's Just The simple fact that all of our Scriptures Were written by People Who by virtue of Their Placement in History Had less Access [to] Scientific Knowledge and what is now basic Common sense Than Any Person in This Room in Fact There's not a Person in this Room Who has ever met a Person Whose Worldview Is as Narrow as the Worldview of Abraham or Moses or Jesus or muhammad this is the? These People Knew Nothing next to Nothing That is Now of the facts that are Now relevant to Us in the 21st Century? They Knew Nothing About the the Origins of Life the Relationship between mind and Brain They Didn't know that Mental Illness was even A category of Human Suffering they Knew Nothing About dna or viruses Or Computation Or Electricity None of This Is in Scripture They Had no Idea why People got sick and died Unless Unless you saw someone Stabbed with a spear [you] [Had], no idea why They Died and In Moral Terms with it with A few [Notable] Exceptions most of These People were no Wiser Than than your average Afghan Warlord Today They Had absolute the Most Had Absolutely no Notion that Slavery Was Problematic that it was There was something Morally Unsavory About Owning People and Treating them like farm Equipment? Jesus and his apostles Couldn't See That Slavery, was Worth Condemning in Closing I just want to suggest to you that Just as, We don't have? Christian Physics Though the Christians Invented Physics and We don't Have Muslim Algebra Though the Muslims Invented Algebra We at some Point will not Have Christian and Muslim Morality Okay, the truth has to Float free of These Provincial Ideas But what Remains for Us to Discover are all the facts [that] Relate To Genuine Questions of Human [Wellbeing] and And the goal Clearly is to build a global Civilization based on Shared [values] Now it Seems to me the only tool, we need to do that Is Honest and Open Inquiry and If Faith is ever Right about Anything in This Space It's just right by Accident Thank you very much I Want to Begin by plugging a book Those of you who've Read, sam's Previous Books the end of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation Will know How Beautifully he writes and I just want to Begin by Illustrating it from the New Book I just want to Read a couple of Paragraphs the current Head of the, nih that's Francis Collins Recommends that We at the national Institutes of Health in America Recommends that, We believe the Following Propositions [1] Jesus Christ a carpenter By trade was Born of A Virgin? Ritually murdered as a Scapegoat for the collective Sins, of his Species and Then Resurrected From Death After an Interval of [3] Days [2] He Promptly Ascended Bodily to heaven Where for two millennia he has Eavesdropped upon and on Occasion even answered the Simultaneous Prayers of Billions of Beleaguered Human beings 3 not Content to Maintain this Numinous Arrangement Indefinitely This Invisible Carpenter will One day Return to earth to Judge Humanity for its sexual Indiscretions and [Sceptical] doubts at which Time [he] will Grant Immortality To Anyone Who has had the good Fortune to be Convinced on mothers Knee that This Baffling litany of Miracles Is the most important Series of Truths? Ever Revealed About the Cosmos for Every other Member of our Species Past and Present From Cleopatra to Einstein No Matter what his Or her Terrestrial Accomplishments will be consigned to A far less Desirable fate best Left unspecified 5 in The Meantime God Jesus May or May not intervene in Our World as he Pleases Curing the Occasional End-Stage Cancer or not Answering an Especially Earnest Prayer for Guidance or not Consoling The Bereaved Or not Through his Perfectly Wise and Loving Agency Just how Many Scientific laws Would be Violated by this scheme one Is tempted to Say all of them in Yet Judging from the way that Journals like Nature Have treated [Collins] One Can Only Conclude That There is Nothing in The Scientific Worldview Or in the Intellectual Rigor and Self-Criticism that gave rise to it That casts These Convictions in an unfavorable light Well There's A lot like that [in] The Book Which I hope is enough to recommend it but sorry, Began by Talking About Utility of Belief and People who Say That Religion Is Useful has it has a Utility Because it Somehow gives Us a moral a moral Compass and you Kotick Religious People who Say That and of [Course] They, do But I think what Disturbs me More and I wonder Whether you agree is Those Non-Religious People Who Say something like of Course you and I don't need Religion, We don't need Religion but The Riffraff out There do I mean that [Is] A best Condescending yeah it's it's Profoundly Condescending and and Also Quite Cynical and unimaginative it's as Though Those Purposes Can't Be Served Any other Way and will Never be Served Any other way it's Just it's it's It closes The Horizons of Human Collaboration and Creativity in A way that it just Seems Truly Bizarre so yeah, it's it's an it's an it's not A well-Thought-out Position on the Part of our Fellow secular Is That you in A way you Make life Easy for Yourself by Concentrating on the Truly Appalling things like the Taliban and Well I remember A few Years Ago I think in This very Room listening to the psychologist [Nicholas] [Humphrey] Giving A Beautiful Lecture Called What Shall, We tell the Children and he Spoke about a girl? Who Archaeological Evidence Shows was Sacrificed I [thinkt] the sun-God in Peru? [I] think A few Centuries Ago and he Quoted Anthropologists who Speculated that This girl was no doubt Looking Forward To Being Sacrificed The Great, Honor it was to her to be to be Sacrificed and and [Humphrey], was Quoting [the] Same kind of Moral relativists as you've Been Quoting and he then got? Spectacularly and Movingly Angry How Dare These Anthropologists Say Such such Things how Dare We Listening to Documentaries on our Televisions About things Get A sort of warm Glowy Feeling about this girl Fulfilling her Ambitions Because of her Religious Beliefs do you happen to know that the History of Human Sacrifice Is Truly Amazing [to] Contemplate There [is] [a] Book Entitled Human Sacrifice by Last Name Davies [I] actually cited in My [Afterward] [-] A letter to a christian Nation Which is on my Website but It's it's Astonishing that that Almost Any Culture you could Name Had A tradition of Human Sacrifice and I actually don't doubt that People went Willingly and Eagerly [-] to Their deaths Because if You Have the Requisite beliefs it Makes sense it was it was believed that you Could You Could Engage this One-Way Dialogue With the Ancestors but Just Going to meet them [You] could Cure The King of his venereal Disease and and save all the People you love from from the wrath of God by by Being Sacrificed Now of Course other People were Sacrificed Involuntarily as, well but One of the Embarrassing Things About Christianity Is it actually it Stands Astride - This Truly Contemptible History Not as Any Kind of Departure from it [abbaye] the Christianity Is not a religion That Rejects Human Sacrifice it's a religion That Celebrates A single Human Sacrifice as Though it were Fully Effective and People tend to alive This this kind of Bizarre Commitment But to the Point of making Things Easy for Myself [you're] not the first Inevitably Instantly to Point that out [that] I've Made Things Easier for Myself but it's Actually Unless you Have an Argument against the these Clear Cases It Seems to me you don't have an Argument at all for moral Relative A sign for your for your Landscape but that the Peaks Can Kind of stand out from this Baseline that Presumably Everybody will agree [to] yeah but you do come Up against and you Mention them of Course Both in your Talk and in Book The Sort of Standard Problems With Utilitarianism [Mean] i take it you Would describe your Philosophy as a a kind of Scientific Utilitarianism yeah it's it's a kind of Or more Broadly Speaking Consequentialism but the Reason why I don't Eat Early answer to that Name Is that Everyone Thinks they know that There's a there's Just A an Obvious Stalemate between Consequentialism and its Rivals and that that Makes sense and I think it's it's Many of the Concepts and Many of the Distinctions in Moral Philosophy Have Prevented Us from from Actually Thinking About Moral Truth in the Company in the Context of Science so I'm Presenting a new Argument and There Many Many Aspects of my argument that are that don't track Consequentialism One of the Problems With Consequentialism Is that People don't [think] very Imaginatively About What counts as a consequence so you have that the classic trolley Problem That Many of you Probably Heard of this is your bic what is now in in Moral Philosophy and in Neuro Scientific Research on Morality you have a train Coming Down the track and It's going to hit and Kill Five workmen who? Don't See it Coming but you stand at a switch and you Can Throw Throw the switch and The train will Take another Track and There it will Only Kill one Workman and So People are asked you know Should you Flip that switch Now when Asked this 95 Percent of People Say Oh Absolutely you have to Flip that switch you save A net [four] lives you'd be a moral Monster not to to Do that but you Can Pose the problem Another way you now stand on A footbridge Overlooking The Trolley Track Trolleys Coming Down the Track and There's a Suitably large Person at your side who you can push Into The Path of the Oncoming Trolley Killing him, [Obviously] but Saving A net for lives and Now posed under This Guise [95] Percent of People Say you'd be a Monster to push that fat man Onto the Track [Now] I happen to think This is somewhat IlL-Posed Because I think We all Have an intuitive physics and we? Burn a fair amount of Fuel Wondering Whether the fat man is Really going to stop the trolley [but] Even if you even if you finesse it and Make it Clear that that he will They Seem Different These Situations Now From the the usual Consequentialist Point of view People Say what it's the same you just Have Body count this is Actually this is the Same Scenario but Maybe it Is in fact not the same if it is just Fundamentally Different to push a Person up close and personal to his Death Then To Flip a switch if That Difference Can Never be Reformed Then They're Not in fact the Same if You're going to Wake [up] with Nightmares for the rest of your life because you push Someone But Feel Like [A] Hero Because you, Flip the switch Those Are the Consequences That have to be Built Into our Analysis and [They're] There Many Ways in Which Which traditional the traditional Discussion of These Issues Breaks Down so that's Another Version of that one is the is the Hospital Where There's One Patient who Needs a Kidney Transplant [Another] Patient Needs A heart Transplant Another patient Needs a lung Transplant Now the Patient Needs a liver Transplant and There are no organs Available but Then The Doctors Notice That There's Somebody in The Waiting room who has Perfectly Healthy, one of all These things So you Can kill one to save to Say Ford it's it's the Same Point that the positive Act of Killing Somebody [Is] One That Nobody Warms to and Just but Just [Imagine] if We all lived in Society where at any Moment You Could be Sitting in your Doctor's Office Thinking you're getting a Checkup and you could be Grabbed and Vivisected for the Sake of other This is We Would be live in Constant Terror? so these are the kinds of Consequences You have to think of and and but again my argument is if Something Matters It has to Matter it has to be Amenable to A Discussion of the Conscious Experience of Conscious Creatures and and so I use well-being as a kind of Catch-all For That Matter in If it doesn't Matter it doesn't Matter if There if There are Differences If There are Trade-Offs in Which We all Recognize this is a Different World but it's sort of [Just] as good as World A? Is sort of Just as good as World be but Different, well then it doesn't Matter if There's one Slice of pie Here and If I get it or richard Gets it one the other Can't get It there is a zero-sum Opposition Here But How Different is a World in Which he Gets it versus The one I get it Well [it's] different to one of Us but Globally Speaking it's not so different These are These are These are Issues in Which [we] [Have] to ask Whether Differences Matter or not in Some Kind of Global sense now This doesn't Necessarily Give us Guidance in Every Traditional Moral Conundrum but My Argument Is [that] the most Important moral Decisions Are Ones in Which it's not Zero-sum that the most important moral Decisions are The Ones Where all boats will start to rise With the same tide, We Just Ask Yourself How [good] Could Human Life be how Could, We build a global Civilization in Which the Maximum Number of People Truly flourish? Solving That Problem Is not going [to] entail Working A Billion People to Death as Slaves for [all] of our Enjoyment and Those are the kinds of examples that are given We're so Deeply social our happiness is is so Obviously Predicated on the Creativity and Flourishing of Others We're not atomized selves Where our Selfishness can be Maintained in Opposition to all Others Are [our] the only way to be Wisely Selfish in This World is to Care? About Others and When you look at the kind of things Saying People want Like Love and Friendship and Community I mean These are These are Intrinsically social and and Nonzero-sum Concerns Another Objection that You must meet all the Time I'm Guessing. Is that the brave New World Objection I mean what if You could spray the whole World with A happiness Drug Which Which Made us Feel good all the Time and Never Uneasy Never Never unhappy But then We would Never? According to the Savage in Brave New World We Would Never Appreciate Hamlet we'd never Appreciate Romeo and Juliet [Some] People Would Say that We Would Lose an Enormous amount? While Nevertheless Suffering Would Increase by Possibly your Criteria yeah, well I think This is the Question of how. Much. We want our Conscious States and? Emotional Life to Actually Track the Reality of our Circumstance in The World and I [think] We certainly wanted to track to track Reality Rather Closely Now The Question is Whether? We want it to Perfectly Track That Seems to be I think open To debate but Clearly if You're if Everyone's Taking the [happiness] Drug This isn't in some Basic sense Materially Unsustainable and if You're if You're Just Knocked out on the Couch in Bliss you Know and your Children Are Starving or you have no Career Anymore [There] [are] Obvious Consequences To Well usse loves it that's a good - It wouldn't Have - oh, no no? No but so so the Question is it has to track to some degree You have and so then you kind of dial it Back From From The Oblivion of the Perfect Drug and you ask Yourself well Just how Happy do you, want to be able to be so let's say, We have A, hell so that We develop a pill? that is the Perfect Antidote to grief Say so somebody dies and you are inconsolable you let's Say your child, dies How when, do you, want to take that Pill i mean do you want to take that Pill What what that What Would it Mean to Take the Pill the moment your Child dies? okay, so you know that your your Daughter has Drowned in The Bathtub You Are Come upon The Scene your life is ruined but then you realize you've got Some of These Pills in The drawer so you Pop the Pill and you, don't care [now] That that in Some sense is it's Conceivable that's Possible Now it Actually Could be Coming that kind of development the Question Is What what are you Forsaking I mean the way what does it Mean To love Someone? and To be Completely A Nerd to that Their death in The very Moment [of] Their death I mean this is so much of what We value in our lives IS an actual? Sensitivity to Reality Now Would you never want to take that Pill [Iii] don't know it's possible that Somebody Could Just not be Grieving so terribly After The Death of Someone Close to them that you Would want to Take a little bit of the Pill I mean you Would want? to Take an Antidepressant as We as, we do now That Seems to me to [be] Perfectly sane but There's This There's This gray Area Where the Question has to Gets Interesting and Perhaps We'll Never Feel that, We have the clear-Cut right answer but it's Clearly not the Pill that leaves you just Immune to any Changes in The World That that are Actually Relevant To your Relationships With Those you Care about and your Understanding [of] what's going on in the Universe You're Facing the classic Problems that moral Philosophers Have Faced for a Long Time and you Well Are Well aware of Them and you've Discussed Some of Them Today Some of Them in the Book There's the trolley Problem the problem of how you value Human happiness? Against that of other Species Which Is in your Book but Which you? Don't which you haven't Referred to tonight that's another difficult problem Problems of Sacrificing some People for the happiness of Others or all These are difficult [Problems] Which have Faced Moral Philosophers For A very Long Time But you Appear to be Bringing to Those Problems a new Thought Which Is that science as Opposed to Just Philosophic Thinking Reasoning Could Help Now Moral Philosophy is the Application of Scientific logical Reasoning to moral Problems but you are Actually again you Didn't Mention it so much in your Talk but in the Book Bringing your Neurobiological Expertise to bear Which is A sort of a new way of doing it Can you tell me A bit About that [because] I'm not quite Clear how Doing Neurophysiology Kind of Adds to Insight Into These Moral Problems, well I Actually Think That The Frontier between Science and Philosophy Actually Doesn't Exist I think I think when, we we don't have when it When a question Is not? Eaten Alive When, We don't Have an Experiment, we Can perform when We don't? Know How to get Data Then We tend to be Talking [to] talk of Philosophy but The moment Philosophy Is Kind of the Womb of? The Sciences and in fact it was Physics at one Point, was Called Natural Philosophy? The Moment Something Becomes Experimentally tractable then, we These sciences but Off from from Philosophy and I think Every Science has Philosophy built Into it so the board that There There is no Partition in my mind but The Relevance of Neuroscience Is Born of the fact That everything, We experience Everything, we Care about every? Every Instance of Something Mattering to Us Is at Bottom a state of our Brain it's so it you couldn't go One Better than Just asking Somebody what Makes you happy [you] Can Actually Measure Their Brain Waves or something then what, we? Does this Goes to the Question of you know Whether, We will ever Have Mind-Reading machines and I think? We do Have Mind-Reading machines They're Incredibly primitive now but With Fmri you Can Make Judgments About What someone is Thinking? Potentially in Real Time and in For Instance a graduate Student in The Lab I came from it where I did my Work at ucla Analyzed my Data on Belief I did A Study of a Belief and Disbelief and We Just put People in the Scanner and had them Read Statements that? We're Clearly True or clearly False or clearly? Uncertain and We just we just Compare We Just Look for the the Difference in The Brain between? Between Truth and Falsity and and we Compare Them to both to Uncertainty as, well and So i published a couple of Papers on Belief Based on that but then someone [Else] Came back With a Different Analysis that was A Called A machine Learning Analysis Where They actually looked to See [if] They Could just Based based on the raw Data Determine Whether a Person believed something or not in Any given trial so you know in Question Number 75 Did This Person believed it to be true or False and They Could, Detect that with 95 Percent Accuracy [and] There Have Been Many other Experiments That Can tell Where it's Been Demonstrated what, we can See? Whether you are Thinking of a Person or a place ETc Now That Could Become Arbitrarily Precise in The Future and It Is Certainly A Possible Prospect that You Could be Have your Brain scanned and You Could find out Stuff About Yourself [that] Is not Obvious upon Introspection but Is Nevertheless True of your Subjectivity and Is is formative of your Subjectivity so and [They're] Actually you don't even Need Brain Scanning Technology to Discover This? We know that if if You are Shown that a Pattern of Kind of racist Judgment Can be Detected in? Virtually Every One and Certainly Virtually Everyone who thinks They, don't have A racist Bone [in] Their Body and if You Show people white People Pictures of White and Black Faces They're going to much more Readily Associate negative Terms To black Faces Than White Faces and This is something that that [There] There Psychophysical Paradigms That Make it just impossible to correct for this and you are Just Embarrassingly slower to associate positive Terms to another Race and Everyone Comes out of These Experiments Mortified but it's it's Just in fact True of you now you could you, could Take [that] Further and Have your Brain scanned and Find out you know how much you love your wife you Know You Could be Shown Pictures of your wife and Think About your why, then you, could, you, could think, [About] your last wife and And and some Rather more to find Comparisons Could, be Done There that you Wouldn't want to Talk About perhaps so this Is? Insofar As and again There Could be some Limit We would Run up against with the Technology it Could Just be so as a physical fact that that We will only be able to Discriminate? [Our] will only be able to Correlate our subjective States With our? Neurophysiology Only so Closely But I think Mind-Reading Machines Are A real Possibility in The Future Some People Would find This Prospect very Frightening very Alarming Yeah i mean I think, one of the most spectacular? Examples is the evidence That Decisions Are Taken in Our Nervous System before we Consciously know it so when When We Decide To do something? Little do We know [that] several Seconds Earlier we've Already Decided? Which is Another Example of Where science Can Actually get, Inside our Minds Better than We can so to speak and That Actually Torpedoes the whole Notion of free will [I]? I think you actually don't need a notion of Free will in order to have A Notion of Moral Truth and This Is something that Is very Counterintuitive to People but We know Free will Is a non-Starter? Philosophically and Scientifically Many People Struggle Not to admit this [but] However Our mental life is caused it is caused Either by Prior Causes, Or by some Randomness Intruding But That Whether it's Purely, Deterministic or there's Determinants Causes Combined With some Randomness Neither Offer A Space For [Freewill] to Operate I mean Just Imagine if all of your Experience Were Caused by someone at a computer Just Just Determining what you Feel and do and Say and want That's Clearly Not A Circumstance of Free will now Imagine if That Person Just Was Determining and All that but but but 10% of the Time Through some dice Or? Introduce some Other Mode of Randomness Into the Process that doesn't Open Up a space for free will and We know Just [as] a matter of Scientific fact that Everything you're Consciously Intending to do and Wanting To do and Think and Judging to be good or bad Is Preceded by Neural Events of Which You're not Conscious And of which you are not the Author you are A, we Walk Through life Feeling that We're the Conscious Author of our thoughts but you? [Don't] think that you can't Think a thought before you think it So it's so here's an Experiment in Free will to think of Think of A famous Person So do you have a Famous Person in mind well Why Didn't you Think of Another Famous Person you Can't account for if You thought of Ricky gervais? You Can't account for why, you Didn't Think of Eddie izzard and That Goes for every other Move you might Make it that's Starkly Voluntary you are is Things Simply Spring, Into Consciousness Now The Reason why This is not Morally important Is what we condemn in other People is is Not the fact That They Really are the Ground Cause of Their Actions what We condemn are our? Intentions to do Harm and Intentions Are Still Part of the Causal Framework I mean i only reach for this Water Because i I intend to reach for it I want I want to Drink it It's not like [I] can Just sit back and Wait and See what happens the only way to get to the water is to intend to Drink it and so what we condemn in an Evil murderer Is not the fact that he Truly and Really and Metaphysically is the source of his Action I mean all These Evil murderers Have either Bad Genes Or Bad Parents Or Bad Lives or Bad Ideas Or some Combination Thereof and They're not the Author of Any of Those Things but We still Need to Lock Them up when You go when You go to Death Row and you interview the? Sociopath and You ask him what is what are you going to? Do when you get out and he Says I'm [Just] going to Keep Raping and Killing People That Makes you Should Make it pretty Clear that you want to Come in There But We would Keep Earthquakes and hurricanes in Prison if We Could? And We would Never Think they're Evil Earthquakes or Evil? Hurricanes and That's and so There's Some things [Would] Change About our Notion of Retribution Say but the Idea that We would have to lock Up? Killers Is Not, one, of Them I think some People will Feel Quite? Queasy About that I think it's extremely Interesting and no doubt Questions will Arise [I] just got One Final Point to Make [I] get a much less Queasy pal ittle bit Queasy About Completely Junking the is or Distinction in the Following sense People Think That Because I wrote a book called the selfish gene I'm Advocating Selfishness and So my stop Reply to that is [of] Course the Ears Ought Distinction and I presume you Would subscribe to that in The sense [that] We do not wish to Say That because something Is Quote Natural or something Is out There in Nature That Therefore That Makes it good and Obviously You're Not Advocating that but that is Sometimes What People Mean by the is or Distinction your Meaning something much more Subtle? But I just want to throw that in that that I don't wish to throw that the Adult Distinction out in That sense Well the idea that that? Natural Could Somehow Equate to good Natural [Equation] [okay], We all want to go Around [in] [Their] Clothes on [that] [kind] of right Obviously [There's] There Are Many Propensity ['S]. We have that are? We've evolved to have which, we are Busily Trying to get Rid of Or Overcome and we're Wise to and that's There's A there's Some Point in the Book I delineate Three Different projects Which I don't think [we] Should Confuse The First Project is to understand How, We came to be the way we [are] and This Is very much your Project of Just evolutionary Science We have [an] account of? How, We came to be? Primates who [who] Have Morally Salient Emotions like Disgust Say? and that's that's a story for evolutionary Biology and Psychology But There's a there's Another Project Which is we can? Figure out how, We can Experience The Greatest Well-Being Based on How Conscious States [Arise] in The Brain and How They're Impacted by The World and That's A very Different Project that Breaks that [Fly'S] free of the Perch that has Been Built for Us by evolution I mean that's that's Where, we Can Talk About? How to Raise Compassionate Children Despite The fact That and then how We would Could Change the genome to be more Compassionate if Such A [thing] is Possible The Question of Whether all of that is Possible Is very Different from from the Question of how We got [Here] and? The Third Project Is just Is [Just] to Convince People to Drop all of The moral Commitments That That Lead to unnecessary Human Misery and that's A that's a political and It's a project of Persuasion and that is also distinct and They often get Conflated I Think We Should um Open [it] uP for? Questions So I was wondering how the moral Landscape Feeds back on science in One way it Feeds back on science Is it Makes Intelligible in The Claim That Certain Truths About The Universe May, be best Left Unknown, Maybe it's Quite possible There Is Intrinsically Damaging Knowledge given what, we are Saying [Maybe] a Certain Knowledge that Human beings It Would be Rational Not to Have this Knowledge if We could Foresee the [Consequences] of Having it and I think We all Understand this and agree To it Intuitively we're not Committed to Just the Maximum Dissemination of Information and we're not Busily Teaching Everyone How to synthesize Smallpox You know it's not, We want to Make Just Make Sure Everyone has These facts in Hand [and] what's rational not to to? Want to spread That Around and I think We Could find Ourselves in an Area of science Where? The Downside [of] Knowing Certain facts Or Certainly Knowing how to Act on Certain facts Technologically Speaking If Foreseeable You These Things are Almost Never Foreseeable If Foreseeable Or in Hindsight, We Would Say it Would be Better if We Didn't? Pursue That There's something that dan Dennett has spoken About a little bit That's intelligible to me now you're going to get the people who, Say, no, no, no No, No I just want to know everything and my Well-Being is Predicated on Knowing everything [and] I'm just not going to be Happy if We don't know everything that I think Is Very Likely not an Honest Claim And if You start Looking at me [you] Just have to Keep raising the Stakes of the Downside for that Person to Back Off That Claim I think you, don't want to know everything if it's going to mean the World Is going to be Plunged Into? Internecine Horror For A Century [so] i hope that dealt with the Spirit of your Question first Of all i agree With your Framework and I admire the way you Attempted To Build it up however [I] think in order to move Forward in Order to Make it practical [you] need to become the Classical Problem of Subjectivity Which Is that you know One Person's Experience Is Their Experience and how do you then Make Judgments About that english to the people I was wondering what your Opinion was on what Science Can Say About that With things like? Functional Mris Revealing more About Ourselves [do] you Think That Holds an Area for Progress and being able to Make a framework like The one You've Outlined Practical for Moral Judgments in The Real World Yeah, well This is the this Concern? Really Visits Us everywhere in The Sciences of mind this you how is it [that] you Can Study Human Subjectivity and Make objective Claims About First-Person Facts There's A Lot of Confusion Around This Issue of Subjectivity versus Objectivity and Because We use These words in in Two Distinct Ways in an epistemological way Which describes how, We? Think of Reason About the World and in an ontological way in Terms of what There Just Is to be Reasoned about and Clearly, We Can Reason and Speak and Think of Objectively About? Subjective facts and We do this all the Time in Psychology and Neuroscience, we Can Talk about Depression We Can Talk about what it's like to be you? We Can Talk about Whether you feel the Pain and your right Knee or your Left Knee These are These are subjective Fact These are First-Person facts and Yet you don't have to be Self deceived Or illogical or merely Led by Wishful Thinking to talk I mean These are not Merely These are in These are in The Purview of science Now It's always A Tricky Experimental Question Just How much you Can Take Somebody's Word for Their Experience and They were not incorrigible Judges of our Experience, We, We can be wrong, we can be Self to see if We Can? We can you can put me in an Experiment Where I think I'm? Choosing [Something] Based on my Previous History of Liking you know Red Versus blue Say but I have Been Primed Unconsciously by the Experimenters to choose What I chose and I have Absolutely no subjective subjective Insight Into It and yet it is Actually We Can Prove the Cause of my my behavior so People can be Wrong About Their Their Subjectivity and I think, We can be Wrong? About Just not Not Just the Unconscious Sources of it but, We Can Actually be Wrong about its Character We can just Be Bad Witnesses to what it's like to be Us in the Content so in the Context of Consciousness and and Consciousness Therefore [it's] Trainable, We can, we Can learn to Make? Discriminations that Are More refined it's A jet but. If it's a problem for Morality it is a problem [for] every Scientific study of Every State of Consciousness or Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience you mentioned Consequentialism Do you think that's A sufficient Basis for Morality [I] do if you if you [Revised] it the way I have attempted to I Think Consequences Are What Matters and When You bring Forward A traditional Retort To Consequentialism Like Deontology, or like A const at agora comparative that only Makes sense as a moral Framework if in fact its Consequences Are Good if You you have, Consequences That are Obviously Horrible it Would no longer count as a rule for Morality and so [to] with a rauzein Analysis of Justice Say, no if you're going to go with rawls and Say that the justice it's not Well-Being that We care About it's Justice or Fairness Say well? Give me [a] World that Is that maximizes Justice but Which leads to the Needless Misery of Millions [I] mean it's a perfectly Just World the Perfectly Fair World Immiseration [Z--] who if you if You turn the dial of Fairness Just a little bit Wouldn't Suffer in That Way? Well then you want to turn that dial it only it only counts it as a moral precept because We recognize I think Rightly That Fairness and Justice are? Hugely Beneficial to Us and We all Probably [-] all tend to Profit from a system in Which Which Fairness and Justice Rank very High in Our List of moral Concerns But I think the Cash Value is always the Consequences in [Terms] of what I'm Calling Well-Being and Again Well-Being is like health it Can, Keep absorbing the next Thing, We Care About if you come Forward and Say? no, no You don't Understand There's This other Thing that's so important that you are Neglecting to to Consider Its importance is Always Going to going to Show Up in Terms of positive Changes in The Conscious States of Any Conscious Creature That Could Experience That Thing yep This Last Hour has Been A lot of fun to listen to because We've Been Engaging in What Seems like A very Thoughtful? Fruitful intelligent Exercise in Secular Moral Reasoning Which Is an important thing to do but I think why We all Came here is because you Seem to be Claiming to do something much much more Interesting Than [that] Namely That You Could Appeal to science to Say something That's Objectively True about Morality Rather Than Simply Use science as a way to feed us facts Into the normal secular moral Reasoning that we'd all like [to] think We could Engage in Yet when You put Down the Philosophical Cornerstone of your case you Seem to Appeal to Common sense sort of Low-Hanging Fruit? Wouldn't Everybody Say it's Objectively Wrong? Or it's Really bad as you put it when when you sort of Qualify your Statement? Wouldn't You Say it's Bad to Throw Acid on someone's face we'd all Say it's Bad but that's not the Philosophically Interesting Case That You were Proposing to Make so it Seems like you, May be Caught between Either Making A? Common-Sense Argument on The One Hand Or an Inability to Define Your Position in A strong sense on the other Hand how are you making That Really Interesting Claim that We can turn to science to tell us what's Objectively Morally True Without? Simply Referring to the Low-Hanging Fruit of Throwing Acid on People's Faces and so on yeah a good Question well The Moment You grant that We're Talking about well being That we're Right to Talk about, well being, We can't Conceive of? Something Else To Talk About in This Space Then All [of] the facts That Determine Well-Being become The facts of science Because Because Well-Being is Emerging out of? the Laws of Nature in Some Way our Conscious States are Constrained Quite Clearly by the laws of Nature Whatever They turn out to be if They entail Ectoplasm Rising off The Brain of Death and Going to the Christian Hell We're Still Talking about the way the universe Is and sun and that Would have to fall Into Into The Purview of Some Completed Science Now Obviously There's no Reason To believe in Any of that so you could ask a question like Just how Important is Compassion Say I mean what what is Compassion Is it what Is [what] [Is] the Genetic basis for Compassion Is There A? What are the Practices and uses of Attention and Institutions that that Allow Compassion to thrive Or or Diminish It and If There's a trade-off I mean it Just how important is Compassion and How if We have a tension between Compassion and Bureaucratic Efficiency Say what is the right Balance There now again These are [all] The Details The Level of Brains and The Level of lived Experience Are Incredibly Complicated if You get to Conditions Where It's just not at all clear which way to go, you're getting to Conditions Where Figuring out which way to go Is in Detail Would be Incredibly Complicated Much more Complicated in Economics and Economics is Still Struggling to be a science But I mean Nobody so clearly, We don't understand Economic systems with any? Real Success at this Point We Can Keep being Blindsided by how They behave but Nobody doubts that There are right and Wrong Ways To Respond to A global Banking Catastrophe Say and I Think To to to Carve out a space of truth of real treat a space Where We recognize There are Truth ClAiMs to be Made About good and Evil or? Truth Claims to be Made About Economics all We have to acknowledge are the Easy Cases [i] mean that's why? I appeal to the easy Cases Because it's like it's you know With Economics we they're? Economists Can Disagree About How to Respond to A Global Economic Crisis It's the Science as Such and the Complexity of the System under Analysis is such that We May never be Confident? About The right answer but, We know There are Wrong answers If in A client if Someone got on cnn and Said Well I'Ve got the solution Let's Just Destroy all material Wealth? Let's Just have A Huge Potlatch Where we just Burn Buildings and ruin everything? That's and then We'll have to build it again and that's a Brilliant Idea is going to put Everyone to Work [ok], that's Pretty Clearly the wrong answer now so we know so we know there are Better We know There are right and Wrong [answers] We know There are Ways to fail Where your beliefs can be Erroneous and That's that's I'm Arguing This? If it's true for for something like Economics it's, also true for Morality If the Assume That Religion is the only source of Morality and as A Solution to that and you'll be Agree There's Problems with that and as a solution to [that] if We offer signs as the counter source Of truth Are We not sort of Just Advocating Supplementing One [Canon] of Truth at One Level by another as Opposed to which as Professor Dawkins Said Wouldn't The Better Solution be to [you] [get] a scientific Process of Reasoning as A better Means of Achieving it Morality than at Science as a source of Morality [so] don't you [think] the Focus of science Should be on Advocating and Increased Acceptance of Scientific Reasoning Than as science in Itself as a [canon] of Truth Yeah I don't think you Can, Keep Those two apart Though i mean when we're Advocating Scientific reasoning when we're AdVocating? Having your Convictions Scale With Evidence and and Cogent arguments Then, we are of Necessity? Attacking Religion Or so People like Richard and Myself Argue i mean [This] there is a zero-sum Conflict between Believing Things for Good Reasons and Believing Things for Bad Reasons and so that's That Distinction Is Already Intrusive of People's Sanctities and Insofar as We Make any Kind of Mature Progress in The sciences of mind? We are Just of Necessity Going to be divulging Truths About Human Well-Being That will be Scientifically True and Actionable it's Just it's it's it's Just Just as Just as science Comes Forward and Says at Some Point Listen Smoking is a Cause of Lung Cancer [you] [know] you shouldn't do it if you if you Care About Avoiding Lung Cancer - don't smoke [That's] not an Orwellian Intrusive Guys in White Lab Coats The Morality Police Grabbing you that Is that is Just Information Which is Which is now actionable and The and There are Conditions Where it becomes Coercive i mean We it's it's if You Let your Children Smoke if You're Giving Cigarettes To a three-Year-Old? You are a Bad Parent and the State has an Interest in Preventing you from doing that to your child [and] There Could [be] Analogous Discoveries in Just how, We Can Can Thrive in Them in A moral Domain in The United States [20] [20] of the 50 [States] Have Made it legal Or it's it's Still legal it's Long been Legal To Beat Children in Their schools With it with a you know with A significant wooden Paddle I'm not Just A rap On the knuckles but Actually you know A Strange man Comes Up and and beats your child with A wooden board This is legal in Hundreds of Thousands of Children Every Year are Beaten? Sometimes Bloody By Their Teachers Not with the consent of Their Parents I mean and This is [Zebra] and This all [Needle] say it's all anchored to To Religion and and you know proverbs you know Not to Spare the Rod on Child and From The Point view of psychological Science This Is not good this [Is] not good for Children and and as Certainly We may not know that that Now at the level of Data In A way that's Utterly Compelling Or it can Be Made Utterly Compelling but it's not if We know Anything if We Discover Anything at all about How Children Can Develop Healthily in A cognitive and emotional sense at some Point it's going to be like Smoking Causes Lung Cancer And that will be by Definition intrusive Into People's It won't be Just a matter of Reasoning It'll be a Matter of Science Saying what is good for Us I Once saw a film of a child I think in the new Guinea Highlands that was at The Mother's Breast it Had A Cigarette in His Hand Taking Alternate drags at the Breast the Cigarette Yeah I would like to ask a question of Clarification Between The Relationship between Philosophy and Science you Know Read in your Book it's Clear [that] you haven't Committed what Many Critics have said Is You've Committed Humes Fallacy in A naturalistic Fallacy but given what you've Said the night There's some Ambiguity Impossible Inconsistency and what you're Saying I mean Once given you Said that all science Have all [science] Have Philosophical Presuppositions And in A later Statement you Said that There Really, wasn't a distinction between Philosophy and Science [I] think Those [are] the Same Statement and that's that at. Least to [Mayer] They're the same Statement Being The Foundational Principle of what you're Saying i mean I do agree with you well? [Affects] Well-Being you mean You get that from Philosophical Argument you get That from Reason and Reflection [and] Deliberation you do Not get That from Observation or Experiment But if You, were to get that from [observational] Experiment then you Would be Committing Humans Fallacy You Would Be Deriving Or not from it Is Philosophy Is Intrinsically Normative I mean Could you just sort of Clarify the relationship between Science and Philosophy, [well] it's a Claim About Truth it's a Claim About About What exists Whether or not, We know it now that? Is that is the Frame in Which We do all science and all Philosophy and and it Only becomes science When You Can describe The Experiment that you Would do Is that this is me Actually even Entirely True Because There's A lot of Physics That Seems to go on in the Absence of A Conceivable Experiment for Quite Some Time but physics Gives Us a picture of the world Say This is you know the the Many-Worlds? Thesis of You Know There There [Are] Multiple universes [Saying] that Could Have Copies of Ourselves Living out Different lives [Say], that's a Physical Claim Based on Some Data but you can't We don't have an Experiment that's going to resolve that now or perhaps ever [and] yet it's a picture of Reality that has Scientific Bona Fides it's A description of What Exceeds our our immediate Purview I'm Saying the Same can be Said about the Possibilities of [Experience] The Same it's [Just] There are Conscious Experiences [Available] Based on what Consciousness Is and the laws of Nature and this Captures Everything we Can Conceivably Mean by right and Wrong and Good and Evil as Witnessed by the fact that if you imagine the worst possible Suffering for Everyone that is Clearly the [The] Ground out of Which all Again against Which all negative Moral Judgments can, be be Measured and so I don't i just Don't see The Split I think we've Learned to Split Science and Philosophy [We've] learned to Split facts and values in our Language and I think it's we're Being [mis] Led by? Language I think [We] have this Space of Truth Claims Possible Truth ClAims about Which We Form Beliefs and our Beliefs can [be] Justified to a better or? Worse, degree I just Apologize that We haven't had Time To have More but Thank you very much I think I'm Sure we'd all like to thank sam thank you you
Amazing. You may have just cost me 87 minutes of my life, but I enjoyed it.
I swear the people who criticise Harris have barely listened to his argument, let alone read his book.
I think the reason people remain hostile to this idea is that science is still inadequate in many cases in actually determining the kinds of things Harris is talking about. However, thats not the REAL core of the argument at this point. Harris's argument is FIRST to convince people that these questions are within the realm of scientific inquiry, in principle. I think that he makes that case rather convincingly. Of course there are still difficult moral questions which remain even in the face of this realization, and perhaps people want them answered immediately in order to be convinced that science can even approach the questions.
Can we have more media of this quality uploaded to /r/atheism? I am tired of viewing facebook arguments.
Been watching this, and I have to say... fuck this guy.
Ha, Harris tells the same exact story at his Notre Dame debate, I'm watching too many of these videos.
At one point, Harris had to race in his mind to think of 2 famous British people. "Who do these Brits like? I know! Ricky Gervais! Ummmm I need one more.... Eddie Izzard! Yeah, they'll love that."
I disagree with Sam Harris on his final answer, on the split between science and philosophy. He gave the multiple universe possibility as a scientific example. I don't think this idea is science... it's not science until you come up with a falsifiable hypothesis. You may not be able to falsify it currently, but it must be, at least in principle, falsifiable. The earlier question on how many birds are currently flying is one example of one that is in principle falsifiable, even though we don't have the capability to answer it right now. At that point it's a scientific hypothesis.
I place the multiple universe idea that some physicists have on a purely philosophical level, about at the same level as Aristotle's idea that heavier objects fall faster, or that men have more teeth than women. Such "facts" may make sense, and may have been arrived at through reason and deduction. They may be beautifully elegant ideas, they may offer answers to certain questions... but without actual observation and testing, they're not scientific. Until we get a way to test it, it's not even a hypothesis, it's pure speculation.
For those who don't know, Harris is making a giant claim when he says that the fact/value distinction is an illusion. It directly contradicts David Hume: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction