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Within Reason

#61 Sam Harris - Can Science Determine Moral Values?

Within Reason

Alex O'Connor

Religion, Morality, Ethics, Society & Culture, Cosmicskeptic, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy

4.91.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2024

⏱️ 176 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, New York Times best-selling author, host of Making Sense, and creator of Waking Up.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Sam Harris, welcome to Within Reason.

0:01.3

Yeah, great to be here.

0:02.4

Great to finally meet you.

0:03.2

Yeah, yeah, it's been a long time coming.

0:05.2

Yeah, now, a few years ago, or a number of years ago now,

0:09.2

on your now deleted Twitter account, you seemed to profess to be able to prove the existence of

0:16.3

objective morality using a kitchen stove. Do you still think that's the case? Do you

0:21.7

stand by this thread that now doesn't exist anymore? I haven't written down here.

0:25.0

I thought that maybe we could sort of go through it because you've a couple of times now referred back to it and said, hey, I think this still holds up as a way to prove the existence of objective ethics.

0:34.1

Yeah, it's been years or at least a year since I saw that thread so I'm not sure I can

0:40.5

perhaps I can improve on it now in conversation, but yeah, no, I think the argument for objective

0:47.0

morality, we can talk about what objective means in that context, I think is, I'm confident in it yeah I would love to hear your

0:56.6

reasons why not yeah well I found I found the the threat I had to sort of go into

1:00.6

the depth of Reddit to find a copy somewhere that someone had

1:03.4

saved. One of the things that I, I suppose, admire about the moral landscape is that a great

1:08.0

deal of the New Atheist movement has been criticized. And people talk about New atheism

1:11.9

in past tense these days.

1:13.2

I don't know if you agree with that assessment, but one of the things it's criticized for

1:17.6

is that it sort of knocks down this grand structure of religion and fails to erect anything in its place.

1:24.0

The moral landscape was at least an attempt to do that, so that's one thing that I like about it.

1:28.0

I suppose do you agree with that assessment of new atheism?

1:32.0

That it's Passé or that it's... do you agree with that assessment of new atheism?

...

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