The New Science of Morality (in Video)

Ear­li­er this year, Sam Har­ris argued at TED that we’re on the verge of a sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion. We’ll see the day when sci­ence (par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­science) can rig­or­ous­ly address moral ques­tions, pro­vid­ing definitive/universal answers to ques­tions of right and wrong. The pur­suit of a “moral sci­ence” is noth­ing new. Enlight­en­ment thinkers began this project long ago. But Har­ris has dust­ed it off, mod­ern­ized it a bit, and cre­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy along the way. Just last week, he took part in a con­fer­ence pre­sent­ed by Edge.org: The New Sci­ence of Moral­i­ty. Over the next month, Edge will be mak­ing avail­able 10 hours of video from the two-day con­fer­ence, rolling it out in a seri­al­ized fash­ion. It all kicks off with a talk by Jonathan Haidt, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, known for his book The Hap­pi­ness Hypoth­e­sis: Find­ing Mod­ern Truth in Ancient Wis­dom. You can start watch­ing here…