Science and Moral Realism
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is "out there" in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape). Journalist Robert Wright has similarly argued that natural selection moves sentient species closer to moral truth as time goes on.
Writer Sam Harris has also argued that ethics could be objectively grounded in an understanding of neuroscience.
Read more about this topic: Moral Realism
Famous quotes containing the words science and, science, moral and/or realism:
“We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms.... Only in superstition is there hope. If you want to become a friend of civilization, then become an enemy of the truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
““Obedience” and “law”Mthat is what one hears in all moral sentiments. But “caprice” and “freedom” might yet be the last sound that morality makes in the end.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)