Scientists and morality

David: If you say that the natural part of us is going to be aggressive and selfish and bad, in some way, then you're either left… you've got to say, well, where does the good part come from? And it seems to me in religion we say, well it comes from God, and then if you're not religious, you say, well it comes from rationality. So it seems to me that rationality steps in for the atheist where God used to be.

FdW: That’s what happened during the Renaissance, the philosophers did that. They said, well religion, let's move that to the side and we philosophers, we will propose rationality as an explanation of human morality. More recently there have been proposals, like Sam Harris and people like that, that science is going to solve the moral issue: science is going to tell us what is moral and immoral.

Ard: And what do you think about those kinds of proposals, because they sound attractive… science…

FdW: I would never trust scientists to tell me what is moral or immoral, because they're a bit like philosophers: they're sort of narrow in how they look at things. And if you look narrow enough, like, for example, take the utilitarian view, which is very popular amongst philosophers – that you do the greatest good for the greatest number of people – if you follow that rule, for example, I could give a very good scientific explanation why slavery would be beneficial: slavery is actually, rationally, a very good system. What's wrong with slavery? We could have that argument and I might win it. You know, I might say slavery is good, even though we now recognise that…

David: Well, the utilitarian would say, look, if we have to enslave a few people to benefit a larger number of people, then that's the greatest good for the greatest number of people, which is in fact the argument that was made.