Sam Harris and the Problem of Disagreement

Is conversation our only hope?

Substack stack-leader

Excerpt:

What about ethical instruction?  Only a liberal fool would advocate conversations with young children about theft and murder and lying and bestiality as if the rightness or wrongness of these acts is subject to reasonable debate or is a matter of mere opinion.  They must be taught that these things are wrong for their own good and for the good of others. Discussion of ethical niceties and theories comes later, if at all, and presupposes ethical indoctrination: a child who has not internalized and appropriated ethical prescriptions and proscriptions cannot profit from ethical conversations or courses in ethics.  ‘Indoctrination,’ contrary to ‘woke’ dogma, is not a dirty word. To have had sound doctrines inculcated in one at an early age is obviously a good thing. You cannot make a twenty-year-old ethical by requiring him to take a course in ethics.  He must already be ethical by early upbringing, and thus by indoctrination and example without conversation.