
Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?
Sam Harris argues that science, not religion, should settle questions of morality, and he makes the case at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre alongside Richard Dawkins on April 12th, 2011. Harris lays out the argument from his book The Moral Landscape: that moral claims are really claims about the well-being of conscious creatures, and that well-being is a fact about brains and societies that science can measure and compare, the same way it measures physical health. Dawkins, long committed to applying reason wherever it can be applied, pushes on where this leaves relativism, religious authority, and the standard objection that you cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. The two talk through specific test cases, comparing societies and practices by their effects on human flourishing rather than by tradition or scripture, and take questions from the audience. There is no footage or reenactment here, just two people at a lectern working through an argument, but the argument itself, that a science of morality is possible at all, is the entire draw.