Watch the TED Talk by Sam Harris entitled Science Can Answer Moral Questions
Write an essay addressing the following questions.
- Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association are all values that we as Americans hold dear. Yet, we sometimes encounter ethical quandaries when individuals or groups who seek to proliferate ideas that the majority would consider nefarious demand statuses of recognition and privilege normally reserved for more widely-accepted perspectives. Consider the article on the implications of 501(c)(3) tax status awards for racist, white-nationalist propaganda organizations titled Four white nationalist groups given nonprofit status, permission to raise nearly $8M in tax-deductible donations. Consider the arguments on both sides of this public debate. On one hand, argument that all Americans (and organizations) should be afforded equal rights, notwithstanding different points of view (remember Evelyn Beatrice Hall: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”). On the other hand, you have the arguments that government tax incentives should not be subsidizing hate groups, and that the groups in question are unworthy of non-profit status because they operate in a deceptive manner (with misleadingly benign names) and are not really “educating” as the spirit of the law intended. What say you on this issue? Did the IRS err in these cases? To what rights are such groups entitled? What statuses would you—or would you not—confer upon such groups?
- Suppose that someone who reads your answers to the first part of this assignment accuses you of bias. Another reader states that your answer is “just your opinion,” and that there is nothing that makes your opinion more valid than anyone else’s. Defend your position. How would you counter such charges? What makes your answer morethan just opinion?
Instructions:
A minimum contains 2,000 words of content (double spaced). Word count does not include headings, cover pages, references, or question text (if you choose to include it in your paper); I am looking for 2,000 words of substance. Your paper should be in APA format including a properly formatted cover page (abstracts are optional) and a reference page with at least three (3) NEW references.
TED Talk Transcript by Sam Harris Science can answer moral questions | Sam Harris – YouTube
Questions of good and evil, right, and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can — and should — be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.
Hello there I’m Chris Anderson in head of Ted this is a special archive presentation of TED Talks daily back from 2010 it features the philosopher and author Sam Harris after the talk if you’d like to dive a little deeper into his ideas subscribe to our new show the Ted interview this week I sit down with Sam to discuss in further detail his argument that science and reason can give answers to moral questions and to explore the many many
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versus that emerge from that claim please join me for the Ted interview wherever you listen
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I’m going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values now it’s generally understood that that questions of morality questions of Good and Evil and right and wrong are questions about which science officially has no opinion it’s thought that science can help us get what we value but it can never tell us what we ought to value and consequently most people I think most people probably here think that science will never answer the most important question
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human life questions like what is worth living for what is worth dying for what constitutes a good life
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so I’m going to argue that this is an illusion that the separation between science and human values is an illusion and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history
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now it’s often said that science cannot give us a foundation for Morality and human values because science deals with facts and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres it’s often thought that that there’s no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be
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but I think this is quite clearly untrue but values are a certain kind of fact they are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures why is it that we don’t have ethical obligations toward rocks why don’t we feel compassion for rocks so because we don’t think rocks can suffer and if we’re more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects as indeed we are it’s because we think they’re exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering now that
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crucial thing to notice here is that this is a factual claim this is something we could be right or wrong about if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects okay and there is no notion no version of human morality and human values that I’ve ever come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and
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possible changes we even if you get your values from religion even if you think that good and evil ultimately relate to conditions after death either to an eternity of happiness with God or an eternity of suffering in hell you are still concerned about Consciousness and it’s changes and to say that such changes can persist after death is itself a factual claim which of course may or may not be true
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now to speak about the conditions of well-being and this life for human beings we know that there’s a Continuum of such facts we know that it’s possible to live in a failed state where everything that can go wrong does go wrong where mothers cannot feed their children we’re strangers cannot find the basis for peaceful collaboration where people are murdered indiscriminately and we know that it’s possible to move along this Continuum towards something quite a bit more idyllic I was to a place where
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a conference like this is even conceivable and we know we know that there are right and wrong answers to how to move in the space it would adding cholera to the water be a good idea
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oh probably not it would it be a good idea for everyone to believe in the evil eye so that when bad things happen to them they immediately blame their neighbors
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probably not that there are truths to be known about how human communities flourish whether or not we understand these truths and morality relates to these truths so in talking about values we are talking about facts
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and now of course our situation the world can be understood at many levels of there’s the from the level of the genome on up to the level of economic systems and political Arrangements but if we’re going to talk about human well-being we are of necessity talking about the human brain because we know that our experience of the world and of ourselves within it is realized in the brain whatever happens after death even if the suicide bomber does get 72 virgins in the afterlife in this life his personality
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is rather unfortunate personality is the product of his brain
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okay and so the contributions of culture of culture changes us as indeed it does it changes Us by changing our brains and so therefore the whatever cultural variation there is and how human beings flourish can at least in principle be understood in the context of a maturing science of the Mind Neuroscience psychology Etc
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so what I’m arguing is that value is reduced to fax to facts about the conscious experience of conscious beings
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and we can therefore visualize a space of possible changes in the experience of these beans and I think of this as a kind of moral landscape with Peaks and valleys that correspond to differences in the well-being of conscious creatures both personal and Collective
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and one thing to notice is that perhaps there are states of human well-being that we rarely access that few people access and these await our Discovery perhaps some of these States can be appropriately called mystical or spiritual perhaps are other states that we can’t access because of how our minds are structured but other Minds possibly could access them
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now let me be clear about what I’m not saying I’m not saying that science is guaranteed to map the space that will we will have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question I don’t think for instance that you will one day consult a supercomputer to learn whether you should have a second child or whether we should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or whether you can deduct the full cost of Ted as a business expense but if questions affect human well-being
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then they do have answers whether or not we can find them and just admitting this just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish will change the way we talk about morality and we’ll change our expectations of human cooperation in the future
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for instance there are 21 states in our country where corporal punishment in the classroom is legal where it is legal for a teacher to beat a child with a wooden board part of a raising large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin and hundreds of thousands of children incidentally are subjected to this every year the locations of these enlightened districts I think will fail to surprise you
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we’re not talking about Connecticut and the rationale for this behavior is explicitly religious the creator of the universe himself has told us not to spare the rod less we spoil the child this is in Proverbs 13 and 20 and I believe 23
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but we can ask the obvious question okay is is it a good idea generally speaking to subject children to pain and violence and public humiliation as a way of encouraging healthy emotional development and good behavior
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okay is there any doubt
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that this question has an answer and that it matters
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now many of you might worry that the notion of well-being is truly undefined and seemingly perpetually open to be re construed and so then how therefore can there be a an objective notion of well-being well consider by analogy the concept of physical health the concept of physical health is undefined as we just heard from Michael Specter it we it has changed over the years when this statue was carved that the average life expectancy was probably 30 it’s now around 80 in the developed world
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there may come a time when we metal with our genomes in such a way that that not being able to run a marathon at age two hundred will be considered a profound disability people will send you donations when you’re in that condition notice that the fact that the concept of health is open genuinely open for revision does not make it vacuous okay the the distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is about as clear and
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chose any we make in science
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now another thing to notice is there may be many Peaks on the moral landscape there may be equivalent ways to thrive they may be equivalent ways to organize a human society so as to maximize human flourishing now why wouldn’t this undermine a an objective morality well think of how we talk about food
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I would never be tempted to argue to you that there must be one right food to eat that’s clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food but there’s nevertheless a clear distinction between food and poison
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the fact that there are many right answers to the question what is food does not make the desert does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition
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now many people worry that that a universal morality would require moral precepts that that admit of no exceptions so for instance if it’s really wrong to lie it must always be wrong to lie and if you can find an exception well then there’s no such thing as moral truth
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why would we think this consider by analogy the game chest now if you’re going to play good chess a principle like don’t lose your queen is very good to follow but it clearly admits of exceptions I mean there are moments where losing your queen is a brilliant thing to do there moments where is the only good thing you can do
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and yet the chess is a domain of perfect objectivity the fact that there are exceptions here does not does not change that at all
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now this brings us to the sorts of moves that people are apt to make in the moral sphere
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okay consider the great problem of women’s bodies what to do about them well this is one thing you can do about them you can cover them up now it is the position generally speaking of our intellectual community that what we might not like this we might think of this as wrong in Boston or Palo Alto
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who are we to say that the proud Denison’s of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags
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who are we to say even at their wrong to beat them with length of Steel cable or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way
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who are we not to say this who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this
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I’m not talking about voluntary wearing a veil and women should be able to wear whatever they want as far as I’m concerned but what does voluntary mean in a community where when a girl gets raped her father’s first impulse rather often is to murder her out of Shame
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just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute
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your daughter gets raped and what you want to do is kill her
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what are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing
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now to say this is not to say that we have got the perfect solution in our own Society
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for instance this is what it’s like to go to a newsstand almost anywhere in the Civilized world
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now granted for many men it may require a degree in philosophy to see something wrong with these images but if we are in a reflective mood we can ask
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is this the perfect expression of psychological balance with respect to variables like Youth and beauty and women’s bodies is this the optimal environment in which to raise our children
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probably not okay so so so perhaps are some plays on the spectrum between these two extremes that represents a place of better balance Perhaps Perhaps are many such places it again given other changes in human culture there may be many Peaks on the moral landscape but the thing to notice is that there will be many more ways not to be on a peek
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now the irony from my perspective is that the only people who seem to generally agree with me and who think that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions are religious demagogues of one form or another and of course they think they have right answers more questions because they got these answers from a voice in a whirlwind cannot because they made an intelligent analysis of the causes and condition of human and animal well-being in fact the the endurance of religion as a as a lens through which most people view moral
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students has separated most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering this is why we spend our time talking about things like gay marriage and not about genocide or nuclear proliferation or poverty or any other hugely consequential issue but the the demagogues are right about one thing we need a universal conception of human values
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now what stands in the way of this well one thing to notice is that we we do something different when talking about morality especially secular academic scientist types when talking about morality we value differences of opinion in a way that we don’t in any other area of our lives so for instance the Dalai Lama gets up every morning meditating on compassion and he thinks that helping other human beings as an integral component of human happiness on the other hand we have someone like Ted Bundy Ted Bundy was very fond of abducting and raping and torturing and killing
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when young women okay so we appear to have a genuine difference of opinion about how to profitably use ones time most western intellectuals look at this situation and say well there’s nothing for the Dalai Lama to be really right about really write about or for Ted Bundy to be really wrong about that admits of a real argument that the potentially Falls within the purview of science okay that we do he likes chocolate he likes vanilla
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Ella there’s there’s no there’s nothing that one should be able to say to the other that should persuade the other now notice that we don’t do this in science on the left you have Edward Witten he’s a string theorist if you ask the smartest physicist around who’s the smartest physicist around in my experience half of them will say Ed Witten the other half will tell you they don’t like the question
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so what would happen if I showed up at a physics conference and said string theory is bogus you know it’s doesn’t resonate with me it’s not how I choose to view the universe the smallest scale I’m not a fan well
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well nothing would happen because I’m not a physicist I don’t understand String Theory I’m the Ted Bundy of string theory I wouldn’t want to belong to any String Theory club that would have me as a member but this is just the point okay whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded that is what it is to have a domain of expertise that is what it is for knowledge to count how have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing
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moral expertise or moral Talent OR moral genius even how have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count
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how do we convince ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering it does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering
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know how is how is their ignorance how is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human well-being
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so so this I think is what the world needs now it needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing and morality relates to that domain of facts
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it is possible for individuals and even for whole cultures to care about the wrong things which is to say it’s possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering
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just admitting this will transform our discourse about morality okay we live in a world in which the boundaries between nations mean less and less and they will one day mean nothing
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we live in a world filled with destructive technology and this technology cannot be uninvented it will always be easier to break things than to fix them okay seems to me therefore patently obvious that we can no more
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respect and tolerate vast differences in Notions of human well-being than when we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the Notions about how disease spreads or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes we simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life
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and to do that we have to admit that these questions have answers
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thank you very much
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thank you
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so some combustible material that I do whether in this audience or people elsewhere in the world hearing some of this may well be doing the screaming with rage thing writers well some of them
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language seems to me it’s really important hear you when you talk about the veil you’re talking about women dressed in cloth bags you know I’ve lived in the Muslim World spoken with a lot of Muslim women and some of them would say something else they’ll say no you know this is a celebration of female specialness it helps build that and it’s an expression it’s a result of the fact that and he’s arguably a sophisticated psychological view that male last is not to be trusted right I mean can you engage in a
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the station with that kind of woman without seeing kind of cultural imperialist yeah I think this is I tried to Broach this in a sentence watching the clock ticking but the question is what is voluntary in a context where men have certain expectations and certain and you’re guaranteed to be treated in a certain way if you don’t value yourself and so if anyone in this room wanted to wear a veil or a very funny hat
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at or tattoo their faces or I mean I think we should be free to voluntarily do whatever we want but we have to be honest about the constraints that these women are placed under and and so I think we shouldn’t be so eager to always take their word for it especially in when it’s 120 degrees out and you’re wearing a full burqa
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a lot of people in a want to believe in this this concept of moral progress but can you reconcile that I think I understood you to say that you could reconcile that with with a world that doesn’t become one dimensional where we will have to think the same paint your picture of what you know rolling the clock 50 years forward a hundred years forward how you would like to think of the world balancing moral progress with richness
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well I think once you admit that we are on path toward understanding our minds at the level of the brain and some important detail then you have to admit that we are going to understand all of the positive and negative qualities of ourselves in much greater detail so we’re going to understand positive social emotion like empathy compassion and we’re gonna understand the factors that encourage it whether there are genetic whether they’re how people talk to one another whether their economic system
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and insofar as we begin to shine light on that we are inevitably going to converge on on that fact space it was so everything is not going to be up for grabs it’s not going to be like you know veiling my daughter from birth is just as good as teaching her to be confident and and well educated in the context of men who do desire women you know so it’s we I mean I don’t think we need an NSF Grant to know that veiling
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prevailing is a bad idea but at a certain point we’re going to be able to scan the brains of everyone involved and actually interrogate them you know I mean do people love their daughters just as much in these in these systems and I think I think they’re right clearly right answers to that and if the results come out that actually they do are you prepared to shift your instinctive current judgment on some of these issues well yeah modulo 1 obvious fact that you can love someone
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in the context of a truly delusional belief system so that you can say like because I knew my gay son was going to go to hell if he if he found a boyfriend I chopped his head off and that was the most compassionate thing I can do if you get all those parts aligned yes I think you could probably feeling the emotion of love but again then we have to talk about well being in a larger context you know and it’s all of us in this together is not one man feeling ecstasy and then blowing himself up on a bus
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some this is a conversation I would actually love to continue for hours we don’t have that yeah they’ve been all the time thank you for having said really nice
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for more TED Talks go to ted.com
Four white nationalist groups given nonprofit status, permission to raise nearly $8M in tax-deductible donations
By LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 22, 2016 AT 1:07 PM
Racism now comes with a write-off.
Four prominent white nationalist groups received the government go-ahead to raise nearly $8 million in tax-deductible donations over the last 10 years.
The New Century Foundation, the National Policy Institute, the Charles Martel Society and the VDare Foundation were all declared valid nonprofits, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
Jared Taylor, head of the New Century group, acknowledged his organization raises money strictly for the benefit of the white race. The 22-year-old group has collected more than $2 million in the last nine years.
“We hold it in trust for the white race,” said Taylor. “We take this seriously. This is not something we do for fun or profit. This is our duty to our people.”
The Yale-educated Taylor said his group has never hidden its agenda and meets all the standards for none-mailprofit status.
Peter Brimelow, head of the Connecticut-based VDare Foundation, saw his group raise close to $4.8 million between 2007-15, according to the AP.
He told the news agency that the election of Donald Trump as president should help extend a three-year stretch of increased donations.
“We have every reason to believe it will,” he told the AP in an email.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Brimelow’s website “regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites.”
Samuel Brunson, a tax professor at Loyola University in Chicago, said the tax break for the quartet of pro-white groups send the wrong message.
The tax status “should make people uncomfortable that the government is subsidizing groups that espouse values that are incompatible with most Americans,” said Brunson.
Michael Dobzinski, spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, said the agency doesn’t comment on individual nonprofits.
The Martel Society is based in Georgia and headed by deep-pocketed publisher William Regnery II.
The group, which raised $568,526 between 2007-14, hailed Trump’s presidential campaign as a “game changer” for whites opposed to multiculturalism and immigration.
And the National Policy Institute, based in Montana, is run by Richard Spencer — the man responsible for popularizing the term “alternative right.”
Spencer, whose group collected $442,482 in contributions between 2007-12, hosted the recent Washington conference where audience members raised their arms in a Nazi salute to Trump’s presidential victory.
“America, at the end of the day, belongs to white men,” Spencer said two weeks ago while speaking at Texas A&M.
“Our bones are in the ground. We own it. At the end of the day America can’t exist without us. We defined it. This country does belong to white people — culturally, politically, socially, everything.”
