Virtue Ethics
‘The Moral Landscape’ – Sam Harris, published in 2010
Albanian’s have a tradition where if a man commits a murder the victim’s family can kill any one of his male relatives in reprisal. If a boy is born into a family where his brother/son was a murderer he has to go into hiding; leaving proper education & adequate health care. Can we argue that Albanians are ‘morally wrong to have structured their society in this way?’ and ‘are their values are inferior to our own?’
Can we argue whether or not, scientifically, one life is better than another?
Argues that human well-being always depends of events in the world and states of the human mind – must be scientific truths behind it
Mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a great source of confusion – e.g. 21 US states still allow corporal punishment in schools (majority in the south)
Morality should be considered an undeveloped branch of science
The scientific communities reluctance to take stand on moral issues makes science appear divorced from the most important questions of human life
We must acknowledge that the intellectual terrain actually exists to achieve a science of human flourishing
Hypothetical space called the ‘moral landscape’ – peaks corresponded to heights of potential well-being & valleys represent the deepest possible suffering
Many people think a universal conception of morality requires us finding moral principles that admit no exception - if it is truly wrong to lie, it must always be wrong to lie. If one can find a single exception, any notion of moral truth must be abandoned. Chess & the queen (sometimes a good thing to lose your queen)
Human knowledge and human values can no longer be kept apart
David Hume – ‘no description of the way the world is (facts) can tell us how we ought to behave (morality). G.E.Moore – any attempt to locate moral truths in the natural world was to commit a ‘naturalistic fallacy’
Albanian’s have a tradition where if a man commits a murder the victim’s family can kill any one of his male relatives in reprisal. If a boy is born into a family where his brother/son was a murderer he has to go into hiding; leaving proper education & adequate health care. Can we argue that Albanians are ‘morally wrong to have structured their society in this way?’ and ‘are their values are inferior to our own?’
Can we argue whether or not, scientifically, one life is better than another?
Argues that human well-being always depends of events in the world and states of the human mind – must be scientific truths behind it
Mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a great source of confusion – e.g. 21 US states still allow corporal punishment in schools (majority in the south)
Morality should be considered an undeveloped branch of science
The scientific communities reluctance to take stand on moral issues makes science appear divorced from the most important questions of human life
We must acknowledge that the intellectual terrain actually exists to achieve a science of human flourishing
Hypothetical space called the ‘moral landscape’ – peaks corresponded to heights of potential well-being & valleys represent the deepest possible suffering
Many people think a universal conception of morality requires us finding moral principles that admit no exception - if it is truly wrong to lie, it must always be wrong to lie. If one can find a single exception, any notion of moral truth must be abandoned. Chess & the queen (sometimes a good thing to lose your queen)
Human knowledge and human values can no longer be kept apart
David Hume – ‘no description of the way the world is (facts) can tell us how we ought to behave (morality). G.E.Moore – any attempt to locate moral truths in the natural world was to commit a ‘naturalistic fallacy’