The only way to make a logical moral argument is to presuppose morality and meaning to start with.
Here the film is enigmatic, and it is difficult to locate the morality and meaning to which Requiem for a Dream appears to be gesturing.
That's because truths about morality and meaning must "relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures," and science alone — especially neuroscience, his field — can uncover those facts.
A British Catholic abbot who has just published a guide to happiness criticizes Disney for "exploiting spirituality" to create a culture of materialism: "Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products".
Notable candidates include: property, government, justice, law, morality, linguistic meaning, necessity, ontology, mathematics, and logic.
It is quite similar to Christian fundamentalism; created by an assurance that one's own opinions are the height of morality -- meaning that contrary opinions must be of the most immoral and evil nature.
He has previously published the Nautilus Book Award winners Spirituality: What it is and Why it Matters and the short story collection Engaging Voices: Tales of Morality and Meaning in an Age of Global Warming.
Kalanathi wasn't just a brilliant, talented neurosurgeon--he was also a deeply thoughtful and empathic man who was concerned with that nebulous area where science and medicine and morality and meaning intersect.
And of course, there are some questions of morality and meaning that were first posed by ancient thinkers and that we must continue to question as humanity evolves: How should we treat one another?
Religion deals with questions about what Harris calls "meaning, morality and life's larger purpose," questions that have no scientific answers.
Second, and not unrelated, popular culture in America rules our spiritual lives and is a more important source of wisdom, morality, transcendence, and meaning, than the traditional institutions like the church that used to provide these religious elements.
