Science and morality

Head on over to the SHAFT website to hear a TED lecture by Sam Harris on science and morality.  He basically argues against the is-ought problem and promotes an ‘ethics of human flourishing’ which can be informed by science.  I (Kleiner) posted a very long comment in which I point out the striking similarities between Harris’ view and Aristotelian/Thomistic eudaimonistic natural law ethics.  To be perfectly honest I don’t just point them out, I gloat.

Author: Kleiner

Associate Vice Provost and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University. I teach across the curriculum, but am most interested in continental philosophy, ancient and medieval philosophy as well as Catholic thought, all of which might be summed up as an interest in the ressourcement tradition (returning in order to make progress). I also enjoy spending time thinking about liberal education and its ends.

14 thoughts on “Science and morality”

  1. Always enjoy the gloating Harrison, even when brats like Hunt try to put ya down. Thanks as always for talking by the stairs.

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  3. No need to prop me up, friends. Do I make it seem like my feelings get hurt or something? They don’t. I do get frustrated by the persistence in error when errors have been compassionately corrected. But such as it is. I am fully aware that when I engage SHAFTers I put myself deep into enemy territory. I actually like it there.

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  4. It’s just your one-man crusade. I assume that sometimes it gets tiring. I’m glad you like it, though; SHAFTblog would be boring without you.

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  8. Horsemen are fascinating figures, I wouldn’t mind, but you’ve had your ass handed to you pretty regularly thus far. I don’t know what “shotgun” you were implying about but Harrison came armed, and its clear now under your big dark coat was a spoon, that you clung to still in rigor mortis.

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  9. Well, don’t worry about it B&A, from now on I’m going to leave Kleiner to his rosary beads. But instead of pestering SHAFT, I think his formidable philosophical skills would be better directed solving the seemingly insuperable problem of how to keep condomless priests out of choirboys.

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    1. Thank you for the substantive and thoughtful contribution, Hunt.

      B&A, let’s not incite anything else. I’d prefer to keep our discussions free of this sort of nonsense.

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      1. I would also like to request that we all keep discussion serious and impersonal. People are not their ideas; although it’s easy to be cruel on the internet because you never see a face and never face repercussions, personal attacks lead nowhere and destroy the spirit of openness needed for philosophic discussion.

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