Can science have moral authority?
Sam Harris argues in this TED talk that science can be an authority on moral issues. It’s a superb performance, and I think he’s got it approximately right. It seems clear to me that any source of information about the world is also potentially a source of information – taken together with our values – about how we should act, what moral systems we should want to have in place, what dispositions of character we’d like to develop in ourselves and our children, and what laws and government policies we should vote for. I’d think it’s obvious that science can give us information that’s relevant to all these things. If these are the sorts of things that are covered by “moral issues” – and it seems clear enough, at least to me, that they are – then science can give us some guidance on moral issues. To at least some extent, then, it can have moral authority. The reason is simply that, to some extent, science can give us information about what individual conduct, moral systems, laws, and so on
