Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape (en bit av)

bakgrund.
bland så kallade intellektuella råder en "rörande enighet" om att kulturrelativism är den enda rimliga ståndpunkten att inta när man pratar om moral. detta leder till slutsatsen att vi t.ex. inte kan kritisera andra kulturers seder. en sådan kritik är nämligen dömd att vara "relativ". kritiken förmedlar således i princip inte någonting mer än ett uttalande i stil med "i MIN kultur tycker vi inte som i DIN kultur", vilket uppenbarligen inte är ett särskilt bra argument.

sam harris. från boken the moral landscape:



Just as there is nothing irrational about valuing human health and seeking to understand it (this is the science of medicine), there is nothing irrational about valuing human well-being more generally and seeking to understand it.
But whether morality becomes a proper branch of science is not really the point. Is economics a true science yet? Judging from the last few years, it wouldn’t seem so. And perhaps a deep understanding of economics will always elude us. But does anyone doubt that there are better and worse ways to structure an economy? Would any educated person consider it a form of bigotry to criticize another society’s response to a banking crisis?
Imagine how terrifying it would be if great numbers of smart people became convinced that all efforts to prevent a global financial catastrophe, being mere products of culture, must be either equally valid or equally nonsensical in principle. And yet this is precisely where most intellectuals stand on the most important questions in human life.

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