Free Will: Excellent discussion (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 15, 2015, 18:43 (3569 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George: I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this link on the is-ought debate:
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> https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-being-right-about-right-and-wrong
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> I like his arguments that homicide and violence are public health issues, 
> and that witch-burning was not immoral but simply mistaken.-Excellent piece. I don't care which link it is in. it doesn't prove or disprove free will but it does speak to moral thought and individual rights:-"When I talk about a moral arc of progress, I mean an improvement in the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings. I emphasize the individual for four reasons: (1) Natural selection operates on individual organisms, not groups (see Steven Pinker's dismantling of group selection arguments here.). (2) It is the individual who is the primary moral agent—not the group, tribe, race, gender, state, nation, empire, society, or any other collective—because it is the individual who survives and flourishes, or who suffers and dies. It is individual sentient beings who perceive, emote, respond, love, feel, and suffer—not populations, races, genders, groups, or nations. (3) Historically, immoral abuses have been most rampant, and body counts have run the highest, when the individual is sacrificed for the good of the group. It happens when people are judged by the color of their skin—or by their X/Y chromosomes, or by whom they prefer to sleep with, or by what accent they speak with, or by which political or religious group they belong to, or by any other trait our species has chosen to differentiate among members—instead of by the content of their individual character. (4) The rights revolutions of the past two centuries have focused almost entirely on the freedom and autonomy of individuals, not collectives—on the rights of persons, not groups. Individuals vote, not races or genders. Individuals want to be treated equally, not races. Rights protect individuals, not groups; in fact, most rights (such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights) protect individuals from being discriminated against as members of a group, such as by race, creed, color, gender, or—soon—sexual orientation and gender preference."