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:
“Curiosity engenders both science and scandal.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Each man’s private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess ...”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Art is beauty, and every exposition of art, whether it be music, painting, or the drama, should be subservient to that one great end. As long as nature is a means to the attainment of beauty, so-called realism is necessary and permissable [sic], but it must be realism enhanced by idealism and uplifted by the spirit of an inner life or purpose.”
—Julia Marlowe (1866–1950)