Harris+Cheat+Sheet

= **Here are some of the points Sam Harris makes in Science can answer moral questions** =


 * The separation between science and human values is an illusion


 * It's false that there's no description of the way the world is (science) that can tell us how the world ought to be (morality?).


 * Values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.


 * Human morality/values are reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes (right and wrong is about how we affect or don't affect others)


 * There are many levels of well being (from poor to good)


 * There are right and wrong answers to encourage/create good and bad states of being (i.e. there are ways/policies/actions to feed more people or cause more hunger)


 * There are right and wrong answers to how humans flourish


 * Moral Landscape: many peaks/ways to flourish and many valleys/ways to not flourish (the implication here is that we can judge "peaks and valleys")


 * There are many ways to eat a healthy diet just as there are many ways to flourish-if we can talk about health universally, than we can talk about morality/human flourishing in terms of right/wrong-healthy/unhealthy. This implies that if we can talk about healthy food and unhealthy food (all food), then we can talk about something like culture (all cultures in the same way!!


 * The world of science and facts can tell us if approaches/behaviors are beneficial or not to (both health and) something like flourishing.


 * We can judge the facts (and by implication condem or praise the quality of morality of other cultures, people, etc.)


 * Some moral views (peoples/cultures,practices) should not be taken seriously based on the “facts” of human flourishing or lack of flourishing.


 * Religions also claim that morality is not relative but base claims on “divine revelation” (Harris would probably say these rules are really made up by humans) and not based on “facts” of human well being.


 * We may not always get the right answer but morality is not relative-some answers are better than others and science (in the sense of evidence based factual claims) is a way (the best way?) to determine our answers.