Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
All content for Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion is the property of Oxford University and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Reconciling Islam and Modern Science: from schizophrenia to harmony (18 Nov 2010)
Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion
1 hour 8 minutes
14 years ago
Reconciling Islam and Modern Science: from schizophrenia to harmony (18 Nov 2010)
Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics, American University of Sharjah, gives a talk for the Ian Ramsay Seminar series on 18th November 2010. Science, or at least Knowledge, has always had a special status in the Islamic culture and civilization. As Abdus Salam often said, some 750 verses of the Qur'an speak about knowledge, scholarship, and the natural world, compared to less than 250 verses directing the Muslim's life and actions. Modern Science, however, imposed new principles (methodological naturalism, in particular) and brought about new theories (biological and human evolution, especially), which the Muslim culture has found difficult to accommodate and integrate into its traditional worldview. In attempting to find 'good' relationships with Modern Science, Muslims of the twentieth century produced a number of propositions, from I'jaz (the scientific 'miraculousness' of the Qur'an) to 'Sacred Science' (where physics and metaphysics, including spirits, are unified), but most if not all of those propositions turn out to be fatally flawed when examined objectively. In this talk, he will briefly review the contemporary relations between Islam and Science, at both the popular and the elite levels. And highlighting the ideas that he develops in his new book (Islam's Quantum Question: reconciling Muslim tradition and modern science), he will offer a proposal that can help move the present prevailing attitudes of Muslims from schizophrenia to coherent harmony.
Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion
Steve Clarke, James Martin Research Fellow, Institute for Science and Ethics, Oxford Martin School, Oxford gives a talk for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. Joshua Greene argues that ordinary moral judgment results from the interaction of two distinct neural subsystems which generate competing moral intuitions. One subsystem generates consequentialist intuitions and the other generates deontological intuitions. Greene suggests that our faculty for generating deontological intuitions developed in response to an evolutionary need to suppress 'up close and personal' harmful acts within communities and when such acts are under consideration deontological intuitions tend to predominate in moral judgment. When 'up close and personal harms' are not under consideration consequentialist intuitions tend to predominate. A key problem with this account is that many deontological strictures (e.g. 'though shalt not lie') are meant to apply beyond the range of the 'up close and personal'. Here, the speaker seeks to defend Greene's account of the evolutionary origins of deontological moral intuition in the face of this problem, showing how it can be supplemented with an account of the ways in which social organisations can expand the scope of deontological moral judgment. The social organisations that are most effective in expanding the scope of deontological moral judgment are religious institutions. The speaker tries to show why this is so, drawing on Durkheim's account of the sacred. The speaker also considers the consequentialist normative arguments that Greene and Peter Singer build on Greene's descriptive account of moral judgment. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
