Sam Harris: Well-being the Only Intelligible Basis for Morality.

Once we see that a concern for well-being (defined as deeply and as inclusively as possible) is the only intelligible basis for morality and values, we will see that there must be a science of morality, whether or not we ever succeed in developing it: because the well-being of conscious creatures depends upon how the universe is, altogether. Given that changes in the physical universe and in our experience of it can be understood, science should increasingly enable us to answer specific moral questions...

...Science cannot tell us why, scientifically, we should value health. But once we admit that health is the proper concern of medicine, we can then study and promote it through science.

Medicine can resolve specific questions about human health—and it can do this even while the very definition of “health” continues to change. Indeed, the science of medicine can make marvelous progress without knowing how much its own progress will alter our conception of health in the future.
 

I think our concern for well-being is even less in need of justification than our concern for health is—as health is merely one of its many facets. And once we begin thinking seriously about human well-being, we will find that science can resolve specific questions about morality and human values, even while our conception of “well-being” evolves.

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