Sam Harris Quotes About Values

Quotes about: Values

• If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

  Sam Harris

  Logical Arguments, Should, Evidence

• Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Our World, Self

• Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.

  Sam Harris

  Mind, Suffering, Facts

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.195, Simon and Schuster

• Science has long been in the value business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best efforts to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument.

  Sam Harris

  Reality, Objectivity, Best Effort

  "The Moral Landscape". Book by Sam Harris, 2010.

• I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, People, Doubt

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. October 11, 2010.

• Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

  Sam Harris

  Facts, Conscious, Well Being

  "Sam Harris: Can Science Determine Human Values?". library.fora.tv. November 10, 2010.

• Perhaps one day we will do “everything that we can to protect our people and the timeless values that we stand for.” But today, we won’t even honestly describe the motivations of our enemies. And in the act of lying to ourselves, we continue to pay lip service to the very delusions that empower them.

  Sam Harris

  Motivation, Lying, People

• The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Use, Landscape

• There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

  Sam Harris

  Fall, Views, People

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.195, Simon and Schuster

• Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.”? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Oxygen, Logical Arguments

• If one doesn't value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

  Sam Harris

  Logical Arguments, Should, Prove

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