Meaning what? At what point in what line?

It's been a while since I thought about this subject...

Perhaps there isn't any reason to assume that axioms are required at some point. Many people say they are and that was the context I remember this debate taking place in.

If morality is a system for ensuring the "health" of society, then axioms don't seem to be required.

You should have watched the video first. This totally misses the point, and several other posts make a similar point so I only choose this one because it is the most carefully worded.

What he, in effect, has said is that given a set of reasonable values and reasonable goals, we could potentially utilize neuroscience in order to better understand how to realize those goals. The goals would include how to maximize a social outcome, which action will leave us better satisfied? It is very simple, and not very metaphysical.

Internet makes communication more open.
Poor Hermetics...

zetetic is right. Harris makes a specific argument. He is not really taking a deep philosophical or metaphysical stance in all of it. He asks (among other things) whether moral judgements really should be entirely a matter of individual conscience, for example whether serial killer Ted Bundy's opinion should be given equal weight to the opinion of the Dalai Lama.

It is an appeal to reason, as in 'let's be reasonable'. The examples he gives of unreason, apart from Ted Bundy, are - a slide of women wearing the Burkha (read: Islamic unreason); a slide of states in the USA where corporal punishment is practised - nearly all in the 'bible belt' and on the basis of Biblical commendation of corporal punishment (read: Christian unreason).

His main argument is that wholesome, or happy, or healthy states of wellbeing are not that hard to identify, you can be pragmatic about it. He even mentions states of mystical awareness in association with a slide of the Buddha image.

There is a conference going on in Sydney this week called Happiness and its Causes. Harris' presentation would fit seamlessly in. But Prothero's point is very important. There are many vexed questions in ethics and morality about which there will be a wide divergence of views even amongst so-called experts, and no ultimately 'objective' criteria by they can be arbitrated. When it comes down to those questions, this 'can't we all just be sensible' attitude will probably be about as much use as a parachute in a submarine.:bigsmile:

Personally speaking, I would have to agree with Kennethamy. A feature of the debate hinges on the notion of answer, but the question remains, how exactly does 'science' answer questions of normative value? I agree that science can inform such judgements, but could anyone help explain how exactly they answer such judgements? Again, there is a strong categorical error occuring throughout much of the discourse. We are already assuming that, for example, human well-being, or in a broader sense, the well-being of self-aware organisms are of value, but that isn't an empirical fact or statement, nor can it be a statement of science understood in its more comprehensible disguise.

Perhaps you just mean that we are sometimes required to make assumptions we have not argued for. And that may very well be true. But that is no reason to think that such assumptions cannot be argued for. We can assume P "just for the sake of argument". But that is like a promissory note. It will, one day, have to be redeemed. Announcing, "I assume" does not give you a free pass.