Science and Human Values

Sam Harris at TED talks about science and human values.

I am going to speak today about the relation between science and human values. Now, it is generally understood that questions of morality, questions about good and evil and right and wrong, are questions about which science officially has no opinion. It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value. And consequently, most people... think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life, questions like: "What is worth living for?", "What is worth dying for?" and "What constitutes a good life?". I am going to argue that this is an illusion - that the separation between science and human values is an illusion and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history.