"You
can't just say, 'This is the way it is, therefore it ought to be that way.'
You've got to have good reasons," says Michael Shermer, referencing the common
"is-ought fallacy" most famously explained by David Hume. "Well, I claim that we
do have good reasons: Democracies are better than autocracies. Free markets are
better than tyrannical, top-down economic systems. There are certain things we
know work. You can measure it!"
Shermer is the longtime editor of Skeptic
magazine, a visiting professor at Chapman University, and author of the new book
The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Towards Truth, Justice, and
Freedom, in which he argues that humanity has become measurably more moral over
time and that this is a direct outgrowth of the rise of Enlightenment ideals of
reason, empricism, and the rejection of blind faith and tradition.
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