Let’s get it straight to start with. Without factual information, some of it provided by science, ethics could not get off the ground. But factual information is not enough, despite the continuing attempts by scientists or science-minded amateurs to suggest that science is sufficient to accomplish what moral philosophers have been unable to accomplish — namely, a more completely adequate understanding of the moral life. Michael Shermer, who already has one book to his credit regarding this issue, is now planning another, and if his essay over at Rationally Speaking is anything to go by, this next foray into the world of philosophy is going to be, if anything, less satisfactory than the first. At least it shows a lamentable failure to learn about moral philosophy before undertaking the journey.
Why Shermer should think that he can really provide a grounding for morality without studying what the best of the philosophical tradition has had to say about morality is simply beyond me. The overweening hubris involved is a bit like military commanders who forget that every battle has flanks around which enemies can move unmolested, unless they are protected in advance so as to protect what the Germans call the Schwerpunkt of the battle. Shermer begins by dismissing moral philosophy with disarming words about “the Is-Ought Fallacy of Science and Morality.” To start by dismissing as irrelevant the fundamental distinction between science and morality, without any effort to learn what the so-called “fallacy” of the movement from “is” to “ought” consists in, is a recipe for aporia or confusion which must dog the remaining steps that he must then undertake. It is fine to pass an enemy’s strong points, if you intend to come back and neutralise their power, or if you can blockade them, so that they wither on the vine, but to leave an enemy at your back who is self-sustaining is simply a fallacious strategy, and will render all that you do otiose.
This is what happened to Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, which, for all its fanfare, has sunk almost without a trace in the continuing project of moral philosophy’s search for understanding. There seems to be a misapprehension of scientific pretenders to the victor’s crown of moral philosophy. They imagine that they are in the vanguard, beavering away scientifically at the only seam of truth in morality, where alone it is supposed that progress can be made. Moral philosophy is apparently thought by such giants to be, like theology, perhaps, sophisticated, yet meaningless, a battlefield where ignorant armies clash by night, where doubts, differences of opinion, and nuanced argument litter the field, in a pointless display of logic chopping and word play which have no end. Yet scientific moralists have yet to give us any insight into what would constitute morality, other than a few unsatisfactory references to human flourishing or happiness. Everyone, of course, believes that human flourishing is worth aiming at, but that is where the problems begin, for there is simply no agreement as to what human flourishing is, and how it is to be achieved, and how, at the individual level, this helps to guide moral action.
Shermer, of course, much like Harris, thinks that we can best achieve human flourishing and survival by economic means, and in his essay gives us a brief rundown on the achievements of what amounts to welfare economics. He gives us some rough figures of the reduction in polio cases over the years 1988 to 2012, and then asks:
Is that a moral good? Ask the 350,000 polio victims [in 1988].
Now, no doubt much moral good went into the achievement of the result, but whether the result itself is a moral good we may question. It is a social good, certainly, and the outcome of much moral good by individuals. But the actual reduction of numbers of polio cases from 350,000 to 222 is not, by ordinary measures, what we think of as a moral good. It is a social good which is the outcome of a great deal of hard work and dedication by many people, many of whom were driven by moral considerations. If this had happened by purely natural means, as is quite conceivable, its goodness would have no clear relation to morality at all.
This is a problem which, I fear, goes right to the heart of the scientific understanding of morality. Let’s take another case which was just brought to my attention by an email. In a response to my last post – ”Uncle Eric goes all scientistic, argues for “ways of knowing” other than science” — Jerry Coyne points out that,
If you think abortion is wrong because fetuses feel pain, science can in principle investigate that. If you think that torture is wrong because in no case can the suffering of one individual prevent the suffering of many, that’s amenable to investigation, too.
But in neither case would the scientist be examining the morality of action. Certainly, science can in principle investigate whether or not foetuses feel pain, but determining that does not in fact determine whether or not abortion is right or wrong. The same goes for torture. If torture is wrong it is likely to be wrong whatever the outcome of torture is. Even if torturing Al Qaeda members ended in the capture of high ranking Al Qaeda leaders, this would not show that torturing people is not wrong.
Far more serious, however, is Jerry’s belief that I argued for “ways of knowing” other than science. Indeed, in the post in question I say, explicitly, that
I have, to start with, to say that I do not find this language [of "ways of knowing"] useful, for it either includes too much or too little.
It is just not clear that talk of “ways of knowing” is particularly helpful. Perhaps, as one commenter says, it is a spinoff from Gould’s use of the word ‘magisterium,’ to delimit different spheres of knowledge, science being one magisterium, religion and ethics being another. But to run on from the claim that I find this use of language unhelpful, to the remarkable suggestion that I have suddenly joined forces with John Polkinghorne and Paul Davies, as Jerry does, or to suggest, falsely, as it turns out, that what I was doing in my last post was “going after science,” is simply an unwarranted extrapolation.
But you don’t [he says] have to go after science to deny religion’s moral authority.
But I did not in any sense at all “go after” science. Indeed, I am at pains to say how vital science is to our understanding, that it is indeed, paradigmatic for what it means to know, and that it has essential elements to contribute to moral judgement.
Nor did I, as Jerry suggests, make the egregious error of supposing that we can draw a straight line from Darwin to Hitler. Nothing that I said can reasonably be taken otherwise. There would be more reason to suggest that a straighter line could be drawn between Nietzsche and Hitler, but I don’t even think that that line can be drawn. Hitler’s perversion of science, which it indeed was, may not be able to be traced to Darwin, but it would be foolish to deny that Hitler had scientific backing for his conception of the survival of the fittest as applied to human societies, or for his use of eugenics to achieve those goals. Indeed, some of the normative language of conservative economics, as was in evidence during the recent American election, expresses this view precisely. However, to suggest that scientists are immune to the blandishments of ideology is simply implausible. Even Darwin himself thought that the white races were destined to rise superior to the darker races of humankind, and in the hands of supporters less gentle and human than his this belief was to turn into the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, and eventually into H.G. Wells’ belief that wide-scale slaughter might indeed be necessary in order for humanity to thrive.
It is surprising how many physicians in the Third Reich complied with the project of Nazi ideology, and practiced, not only eugenics, but participated in experimentation on living human beings, a practice that had its Japanese equivalent in China. Jerry says that
[i]f Eric wants to maintain the notion that scientists are ideologues who resemble the faithful, let him give examples, and not just a few, either! I deny that accusation, and think that the notion that “scientists are as prone to quasi-religious absolutism as any other human being” is a vile and baseless claim. Are we just as absolutist as, say, Southern Baptists?
This is simply a misunderstanding of what I meant. I did not say that “scientists are ideologues who resemble the faithful,” and was careful not to do so. I said clearly that scientists are as prone to ideological thinking as any other human being; my point being simply that scientists are no more immune to moral ill-doing than non-scientists, and should not be supposed to be so. Far from providing a foundation for morality, science can as easily underwrite wrongdoing on a massive scale, especially if morality is thought to be somehow the province of science itself, and I see no reason to think otherwise. We are, after all, as Hitch used to remind us, primates, and it shows.
Does this mean that morality or ethics is a special way of knowing? No, it does not. Indeed, as I have suggested several times, as I suggested in my last post, the language of “ways of knowing” is, in my estimation, at least, mistaken and unhelpful. All knowing requires reasons and evidence. We cannot be said to know something unless we can give adequate reasons or evidence for believing it to be true. That is why religion fails so miserably at the business of knowing, and why so many religious apologists try to suggest that religion is not a matter of knowledge at all, but of mythical self-understanding, or some such thing. But, for all that, it still does not help to speak of morality or ethics as in fact grounded in science, for it isn’t. Certainly, empirical information is vital in making many moral decisions; but it is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition for moral knowledge.
And that’s where the whole idea of domains of knowledge, as I have taken to calling them, comes in. A domain of knowledge is an area of knowing which has its own canons of proof or demonstration. Science works by means of hypothesis and empirical confirmation, but morality needs a considerable degree of what might be called “human” (or humane) understanding, the kind that can be conveyed by stories and poems, and even, sometimes, truth be told, theological analyses of human situations fraught by uncertainty and confusion. Without this emotional/human depth, moral outcomes will be, for the most part, superficial and unsatisfactory. Though I have not read James Joyce’s “The Dead,” that Jerry extols so highly, my guess is that the excellence of the prose is closely related to the depth of perception of human feelings and emotions, and how these are taken up and illustrated by the characters as they interact in the story. Style and moral seriousness are often closely allied in literature, which is what makes Tolstoy the novelist so superior morally to Tolstoy the religious zealot.
I would be remiss here, however, if I did not also address one of Jerry’s central concerns, which he expresses in the following terms:
I am starting to think that we should dispense with the idea of “moral” and “immoral” acts for two reasons. The first is because morality is implicitly connected with free choice, that is, with “free will.” If one can’t choose one’s acts freely, that one can’t decide to be “moral” or “immoral.” Rather, as a consequentionalist, I’d replace “morality” with what it really means for most people, “the effects of an act on an individual or society.” Thus an “immoral act” might better be seen as “an act that reduces societal well being.”
In response to this what more can I say than that I disagree with the claim that we can give no sense either to freedom or to moral responsibility? This is a fundamental disagreement which is not susceptible to scientific proof, at least at present, in very much the same way that consciousness is unamenable to scientific explanation. Besides this, defining immorality in terms solely of a reduction to social well-being seems to me inadequate to what we normally mean when we speak of morality, which is as or more important in the context of individual relationships than it is on the scale of whole societies. Indeed, one of the besetting problems of utilitarianism is that it seems unable to deal with the more immediate concerns of individuals, and, indeed, in its classic form, would legitimate actions which most people rightly take to be immoral.
And this raises a further problem which it is impossible for me to deal with in the scope of a blog post, but should be of concern to us all, namely, the question as to the objectivity of morality. Jerry says, without providing any evidence for the claim, that there are no objective moral truths, and takes me to be arguing as follows:
In other words, by denying that morality can be subject to the same empirical standards that determine truth in science, we scientists are enabling religion. After all, if there aren’t objective moral truths, why not just turn to religion for guidance?
This is certainly not what I am arguing, though I think the claim that we can be good without god, without providing some guidance as to the good that we can achieve is certainly leaving an opening for religion to hold that secularism reduces goodness to the level of mere subjective preference. Humanism must, in the end, provide some sense, not only of the wonder and beauty of the intricacies of the scientific understanding of nature, but of the depth and resonance of being human. Our moral understanding, as well as our understanding of justice and equity, are essential elements, I believe, of this depth and resonance. I am not at all convinced that science can provide this, and one of the aporias which contemporary nonbelief seems to have reached lies in a disagreement about the status of moral claims, and the attempt by some simply to short-circuit the intricacies and depth of contemporary philosophical disagreements about morality by opting for an overly simplistic understanding of what morality consists in, and how it is grounded.
It may be true that moral philosophy does not reach assured conclusions in the way that science does; but it may, for all that, be the nature of the human condition that these things are undecidable in a strict sense, yet, at the same time, be such that the continuing discussion of morality is the way in which morality’s objectivity, as an aspect of our understanding of being human, is maintained. Absolute moral conclusions are probably, simply as absolute, immoral, because morality, given the nature of being human, cannot arrive at absolute principles that are valid for everyone, whatever the time, place or occasion; yet it may be vital that, as a part of what Philip Kitcher terms “the ethical project,” issues of morality be maintained in public discourse, in order to assure that whatever we do is reliably based on the ongoing moral conversation in which the objectivity of morality itself consists. I can only gesture generally in the direction of Amartya Sen’s notion of “positional objectivity” here (for reference to which I thank my daughter Kirsten — see Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol 22. No 2 (Spring 1993), 126-145), for an important part of the human experience is diversity of belief, which can only be dealt with by way of rigorous thought and continuing conversation. In this respect, the objectivity of morality consists, not in the achievement of general moral agreement, which is not likely to be forthcoming, but in commitment to a process of discussion and the piecemeal settlement of disagreements, in an effort to reach moral consensus — a consensus which, of course, is never fully achieved, and continually shifts through time.
This is why moral philosophy is so important, not because general agreement has been achieved, but because there is a continual process, within moral philosophy, of challenge and response, keeping our moral language limber and clear. The problem with the idea of a science of morality is that it aims at cutting the Gordian knot, and jumping straight to conclusions, without undergoing the rigours of disciplined thought and discussion, which is, given the complexities of human thought, relationship and emotion, unending. I hope after all this that Jerry can feel that, while I disagree with him sharply on some issues, that disagreement is meant to be, and is in fact offered, with the greatest respect.
Eric, I don’t think we can usefully go any further in this debate without a clear indication of what you consider ‘science’ to be; what are its goals, how it operates, and what criteria — in your view — are used to determine whether something falls within the purview of science. The more you say about ‘science’, the harder it becomes for me to recognise who and what you think you are actually talking about.
But I will say that I see one obvious flaw in your proposal for different ‘domains’ of knowledge: when two people disagree as to what propositions belong in a given domain — as people do all the time — how are you going to determine which of them is correct?
Jon,
I know this was addressed to Eric, but let me say I’ll concede that there is no higher court for truth than science, if you will concede two things: 1) that math and logic must be allowed to inform science 2) philosophy can offer criticisms of science when its claims are inconsistent, ungrounded, and confused. We have a deal?
Eric,
Great point about how continuing the discussion of morality, in a way, maintains an objective morality.
The queerest thing about this discussion is many scientific moralists act as if their argument is a novel one. There is nothing novel about it, that fact alone should humble some people.
Regards
Eric, I think you are reading too much into what Shermer wrote. It seems very clear to me that what he is calling for is an approach to morality where empirical methods play an integrated role. Nowhere does he say that science has to take over.
You wrote, “empirical information is vital in making many moral decisions; but it is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition for moral knowledge.” Shermer agrees with you. What he is suggesting is that we create that necessary condition. Since we (ie. you, me, Shermer, Pigliucci, Jerry Coyne… who doesn’t?) all agree that empirical information is vital in the study of morality, shouldn’t we be glad that Michael Shermer is cheerleading an approach that actually has the empirical component? The only reason why Shermer has to do it is because today’s philosophers, the self-appointed experts on morality, do not deal with empirical information (yes they, like you do, pay lip-service to being “empirically informed” but come on), which again we all agree is not enough.
Yours and Pigliucci’s reactions to Shermer’s article I think is unnecessarily defensive and insecure. You wrote “The problem with the idea of a science of morality is that it aims at cutting the Gordian knot, and jumping straight to conclusions, without undergoing the rigours of disciplined thought and discussion, which is, given the complexities of human thought, relationship and emotion, unending.” Nowhere does Shermer say that or imply that. Nor is it a requirement of science to “jump straight to conclusions”. This is where your bias (or your shallow understanding of science) shows. I see no reason why a scientific approach to morality has to be anything like you described. Science is the only human enterprise where jumping to conclusions without rigorous thoughts and discussion is systematically and consistently avoided.
You seem to be advancing a position which holds that the domain of knowledge for morality includes literature and arts. If possible I’d like you to say more about this issue because I feel that this is where your point of view is most refreshing. If it can be argued convincingly that literature is a way to advance our moral understanding, I agree with you that a scientific approach to morality is at least not exclusive. The problem is that this claim is an empirical claim and it has to be investigated empirically. Your guess is that “the excellence of the prose is closely related to the depth of perception of human feelings and emotions, and how these are taken up and illustrated by the characters as they interact in the story”. My guess is not. The good news is that a research program advocated by Shermer and others will support this type of study. It’s much better to test this hypothesis than to speculate. My feeling is that artists are no wiser than anyone else. Call me a cynic. Your “domain of knowledge” seems to be wishful thinking more than anything else. I do wish that we were living in a world where intuitive understanding of the human condition by the means of art can be a foundation of morality but I must take the issue more seriously than that. It is odd that your require so much from science but so little from everything else.
If we take the above definition for science, I don’t know what field it excludes and I think it answers Persto’s question above that math is part of science. philosophy is part of science, unless I am missing something here.
I agree with Eric we need to continue to have this discussion on morals.
Presto, about your “two-part deal”: 1. Math and logic do not need to be “allowed” to inform science. They have always been integrated components of science. Haven’t you noticed how many theoretical scientists (who don’t do or test hypotheses) are working today? It’s a little funny that the most celebrated scientists in our times are mostly theoretical physicists who did no experiments at all, but somehow it is very often assumed that science is exclusively about experiments. It very obviously is not.
2. Philosophy, of course, “can” offer criticisms to science just like everybody else. There is no laws or conspiracy against that. A philosopher can talk to a scientist anytime he or she likes. A philosopher can organize seminars in scientific meetings if he or she wants. A philosopher can write letters to scientific journals to criticize a research just like anyone can. Some philosophers do. Most don’t. It’s up to the philosophers. They are free to engage as much or as little with science as they choose. No permission or license from anyone is required. If what they say is valuable (which is true from time to time), they will be heard. Just out of my own experience, I read Dennette’s papers published in science journals in a science class. They are respected and read just like any other good papers.
I’ll keep digging away at my ‘jargon’ perspective. Just as there are different meanings attached to the word ‘knowledge’ depending on whether you are speaking scientifically or philosophically, I think there are different meanings attached to the word ‘objective’.
Unfortunately ‘objective’ is another key word for science and it triggers a sharp response form scientists when they see philosophers “misusing” it by their accepted usage. Similarly philosophers take umbrage when scientists “misuse” the words ‘free will’ because of the specialist meanings in each domain.
Now if philosophers spoke of ‘dispassionately reasoned morality’ rather than objective morality I suspect most scientists would accept that usage. Philosophers are under no obligation to change their jargon of course, but they need to realise that what they say may not be what is heard. The same applies to scientists, too.
@Persto: Scientists USE maths and logic, obviously: I don’t know what you mean by ‘allowing them to inform’ science. And of course philosophers can criticise individual scientists or scientific enterprises when these are based on faulty assumptions or wishful thinking; and so can anybody else, including other scientists, if that’s what you mean by ‘criticise science’. But suggesting that someone might respond to an inappropriate choice of method by claiming that ‘science’ as a whole is somehow defective is like suggesting that we scrap the English language because some people have difficulty in making themselves clear in it.
You can travel in any direction you like, but if you want to get to the North Pole you have to go north. You can aspire to anything you like, but if you want to confirm your knowledge, you have to do science. Everything else is just guessing or extrapolation.
The reiterated request for a “definition” of science is really, I think, a smokescreen, but I’ll take AC Grayling’s description of science in his book Ideas that Matter. It is, however, a bit tiresome to be told that my understanding of science is poor, and that I fail to define it. We all have a fairly good idea of what scientists do and how they do it, but I’ll settle for this:
When I spoke of Shermer cutting the Gordian knot and jumping straight to conclusions, I was referring, not to science, but to his apparent refusal to take moral philosophy seriously. It had nothing to do with characteristing Shermer’s practice of science, nor does it presuppose a misunderstanding of that practice.
Nor, I might add, to I feel in the slightest defensive or insecure. I think Harris and Shermer and many other dabblers in moral philosophy (or a supposed simulacrum of this within science) are simply wrong, and instead of taking the experts seriously, are in the business of what might be called scientistic dogmatism. I am familiar with dogma, and the idea of being inside and outside the pale of an institution, and I get the distinct feeling that in some measure the new atheism is in the process of building up a dogmatism, based on a few premises regarding science, and their extrapolation to deal with any other domain of human activity that aims at knowledge. Those extrapolations are, one and all, I am afraid, trends towards a kind of dogmatism, and sits ill with the project of a rational unbelief. I am very familiar with the pressure to toe dogmatic lines, and I find it neither helpful nor reasonable, whether with respect to religion or unbelief.
Where does Shermer say that moral philosophy shouldn’t be taken seriously?
Nowhere, punktbild, to my certain knowledge, but it is implied, I believe, in the idea that a science of morality is possible. While I think there are relationships between natural facts and values, you cannot move directly from natural facts to values without a considerable degree of argumentative subtlety. This is lacking in what I hear Shermer say. Of course, having said that, if you have evidence that he does take it seriously, I would rescind my claim.
What would a science of morality do? Tell us what to do in particular circumstances? In rather the same manner that Roman Catholic moral dogma tells Roman Catholics what to do in particular circumstances, and bugger the consequences (like the deaths of pregant women)? (Which is why many, though not enough, sensible Roman Catholics pay small attention, though still not small enough, to the anathemas and moral instructions emanating from Roman Catholic popes, bishops, magisteria etc,). I must say, the idea of a science of morality, which would presumably involve scientifically trained moral specialists whose business it is to tell us, the great unwashed and insufficiently educated, what is moral or what is not, just as the theologically trained have done for centuries, and continue to do, strikes me as a foolish and dangerous idea that shows no understanding of what a moral or immoral life might be. I’m all for science studying moral behaviour in Homo sapiens, how it arose and how it functions, but having some prissy scientific functionary telling me what I or others should or should not do: No! People like Michael Schermer, who is not, I think, a scientist, seem to me to have a ridiculous and near-mystical regard for what they suppose science to be. They are attracted not by what it does, but by the authority they see it as having, by the power that attaches to it.
Eric, is it possible that you are being paranoid? Shermer wrote “there is a smooth transition from is to ought”. I don’t read it as “you can always derive ought from is” but “there are situations where ought can be derived from is”. The situations are made possible by philosophy, but nowhere does Shermer deny that. The hostility or naivete that you inferred from what I consider a very modest piece is simply not there. You sound a little defensive. I’ve seen Shermer give talk to philosophers. The philosophers were critical but not defensive and did not accuse him of things. May I suggest that you take your own advice and act like a philosopher? Haven’t you forgotten the Principle of Charity?
Where does Shermer say that moral philosophy shouldn’t be taken seriously?
No, I don’t think I am being either defensive or paranoid. Shermer speaks quite bluntly of the is-ought fallacy of science and morality. It doesn’t get much plainer than that. I think it is just wishful thinking to believe that science has a moral arc, and while his piece over at Rationally Speaking is, as you say, modest, it is modest because largely simplistic, and it is simplistic because it simply doesn’t take moral philosophy into consideration. That is my judgement, at any rate. I do not find what he has to say in his post of the slightest interest to morality. A few general points about general welfare scarcely qualifies as a moral theory.
Jon, I meant that math and logic are essential to science. In fact, I would say that you wouldn’t get science without math and logic, but, guess what, you would still have math and logic without science. Math and logic exist independently of science but it doesn’t work the other way round.
Yes, I mean that philosophy can point out that certain scientific claims are not scientific or are contradictory or are muddled. In a sense, philosophy of science and, to a certain extent, all of philosophy would become one with science. Philosophy would still operate similarly and would still have an important role and philosophers wouldn’t be saying science is entirely correct, but it would satisfy your request that science be granted the highest court of truth, while still maintaining that these other fields can provide knowledge because one would inform–give an essential or formative principle or quality to–science and one would influence the nature of scientific claims. The only difference would be science is proclaimed the highest court of truth. If you can find disagreement with this then you are truly trying to dismiss other fields, as some people have suggested.
“Everything else is just guessing or extrapolation.”
See Punktbild.
Punk,
1)Thank you for making my point for me. However, Jon, has made it very clear that it is not science without experimentation. What to do?
As I told Jon, math and logic are, as you say integral components of science, but science is not integral to them. So, by saying that they are allowed to inform science, a ‘way of knowing’ that is not scientific is offering knowledge, which is what I was getting at.
2) Once again, thank you for making my point for me. I just wanted to make sure philosophy still had a place at the table. It seems it would and it would still operate in much the same way. For instance, when Sam Harris claims that science can determine human values philosophers would tell him that is not scientific.
So, it seems we are agreed that science is the highest court of truth, but…wait….where are we at in the discussion? Same place. Wow! What a disappointment. I think everyone on planet Earth would agree that science plays a part in morality. The problem comes when people say it should determine morality. How?
Regards
I’m afraid to say that I agree with punktbild a bit. Re-read, especially, paragraph #3.
“sunk almost without a trace”
“scientific pretenders”
“beavering away”
“such giants”
Which, I gather, means you don’t approve. But it drips of too much sarcasm to not sound defensive. Shermer, Harris, Coyne… these are not names that deserve derision.
And the sentence “Yet scientific moralists have yet to give us any insight into what would constitute morality,…” rings to my ear rather similar to an unhappy god-of-the-gaps argument being hurled against a proto-discipline. Sure, the gaps in the science of morality are large. But so were gaps of evolutionary evidence in 1800.
I’ve been posting about the same thing, without (until now) having seen your post, Eric. I see it the same way – the breezy way he ignores existing moral philosophy seems very arrogant to me.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/02/churchland-on-morality-and-science/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/02/another-book-on-science-and-morality/
P.S. I’ve clicked on the link to Jerry Coyne’s post now, and I just have to say, the first sentence annoys me – you are not “avuncular.” What an annoying, patronizing word to use. You’re about as “avuncular” as Christopher Hitchens.
GBJames, those expressions are certainly sarcastic, but not defensive. They are an expression of concern. One of my comprehensive areas when studying for my doctorate was moral philosophy. (I do not want to mislead you, so I must add that, after a period of sickness, I did not, however, finish my dissertation, and pursued other studies whose value, now, I question.) I left the field for over thirty years, and I am trying, slowly, to read myself back into it. Much has happened over those years, and my life is waning. I am, however, deeply concerned that scientists, who are committed to basing knowledge on evidence and reason, do not consider moral philosophy a discipline of knowledge, but something they can do on the side, as an aspect of science. It is not, and while I do not deride those who do so, it does concern me, and I often wonder about their commitment to the principles of scientific knowledge. Science requires certain kinds of methodologies and types of evidence. Moral philosophy has similar requirements that are peculiar to it. It is unseemly of a scientist to act with flagrant disregard of the standards of moral knowledge and understanding. Since they would not do this regarding their scientific endeavours, they should not do so respecting other knowledge domains. It seems to me that they would not do the same with respect to history, or example, or sociology. Why should they do it with respect to moral philosophy? I have elsewhere written about my dissatisfaction with Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape. It receives low marks as a contribution to our understanding of morality, in my view.
Ah, well, Ophelia, what can I say? It is meant, I think, as a term of endearment, as well as conveying a sense of long-suffering bewilderment at my contrary ways! Jerry and I do not see eye to eye on certain matters, which, I think, he finds puzzling. I take it as kindly intended, and have no reason to think otherwise.
I don’t know, Eric. It sounds like territorial marking to me.
(But it is nice to encounter another “all but dissertation” type. The same happened to me lo, these many years ago when the thrill of computer programming lured me away from my dissertation.) I sometimes dabble in conversations around my old discipline (Anthropology/Archaeology) have forgotten too much and failed to learn much of what’s new.)
Oh… and regarding “avuncular”. It is clearly a term of endearment. There is no doubt that Jerry appreciates your engagement. Friends can think one another wrong about this or that matter.
I think “Uncle Eric” is a term of endearment, and that’s fine (assuming the endeared one is fine with it – I think Karl Giberson didn’t like it, because it seemed possibly sarcastic). But I think “avuncular” is one of those stupidly patronizing labels people stick on their seniors (even if senior by only a few years, as in this case) without thinking about them. I’m a bit touchy about labels these days…
P.S. Eric there’s an earlier comment of mine in mod – it has links.
Well, Eric, Grayling’s view of science is pretty clearly restricted and wrong. Perhaps you should consult someone who actually engages in it.
“…knowledge of the physical world, its basis in material reality, and its various contents..”
And what about economics, psychology, anthropology, political science? Practitioners of all these regard themselves as scientists, and their activities as science, even though they deal with abstractions and models rather than directly with the ‘contents’ of the material world. Of course, so do physicists and biologists, and all other scientists: a biologist studying reproduction is not concerned with any one specific material organ or organism, but is constructing a model of a process which in turn can be slotted into other models of other processes to generate knowledge at a higher level of abstraction.
In short I think your — and Grayling’s — view of ‘science’ is a caricature that would be unrecognisable to most of the people who actually engage in it. If you really have ‘a good idea of what scientists do’ then you haven’t demonstrated it to me.
@Persto, I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, and we seem to be substantially in agreement, but let me add that the knowledge that comes from maths and logic is what I had in mind when I mentioned extrapolation. We can of course generate an infinite number of expressions that are internally consistent with any given system of maths or logic, but whether ‘Y is logically (or mathematically) consistent with system X’ is equivalent to ‘Y is true’ depends on whether or not system X is itself consistent with reality. We have in a sense ‘chosen’ or ‘developed’ a generally-used logical and mathematical system which connects up with what we know about the real world: but there’s nothing to stop us generating any number of others which don’t — except the fact that they would be useless in practice.
In short, ‘Y is a statement consistent with system X’ is not an empirical fact about the real world. But ‘mathematical system X produces results that correspond with what generally happens when combining or separating objects’, and ‘logical system Z produces propositions that people agree are true when derived from true inputs’ are.
But I think this is getting off-topic.
Well, Jon, the so-called “social sciences” have always been the ugly sisters of the physical and biological sciences. Anthropologists, I believe, in the US at any rate, not too long ago determined that their discipline is not a science, and from the lacklustre prognostications of the economists, the “scientific” character of their discipline is in doubt. The same goes, so far as that goes, for sociology and psychology, which are still struggling with their credentials. I do not think that Grayling is clearly wrong, but that is quite an independent question about the characterisation of science. No doubt, some place the dividing lines in different places and for different reasons, but there is enough wiggle room between the physical and biological sciences and the social sciences that your confident statement is not very clearly right. My point, however, is not to denigrate the status of the social sciences, but to again make the point that the exactitude and methodology of a domain of knowledge (which, indeed, I do not doubt, in their various ways, anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics are) do not determine their status as domains of knowledge.
Ophelia, I’m sorry I missed your earlier comment. I don’t know how I missed it. However, I do commend Ophelia’s take on these matters to your patient consideration. See comment 16 above.
But Eric, if you agree that the practice of science involves reading, thought, and the abstraction of higher-level concepts from observations of material events, then I don’t see what’s left. There’s no ‘domain’ in which this doesn’t work; or more correctly, there’s no domain in which these methods don’t work and any other method does.
GBJames:
That is not my primary concern. My concern is that domains of knowledge are being ignored simply because of a dogmatic prejudice in favour of a particularly successful methodology. This has repercussions on the soundness and effectiveness of the atheist and freethought point of view, and it is a concern that we not pretend to more certainty than is warranted. Scientism is not a respectable philosophical position, and I cannot adopt it. Philip Kitcher and Susan Haack (and doubtless others) have important things to say about this growing tendency to see science as omnicompetent. I think we should listen to them.
Jon, I’m sorry, but really: read some philosophy of science, and see how science is quite reasonably delimited from other disciplines. If science is, as you say, “science involves reading, thought, and the abstraction of higher-level concepts from observations of material events,” then you have not individuated any particular domain of knowledge, but have run many different domains carelessly together. And not all knowledge depends on observations of “material” events (whatever those are). I sometimes despair, to be quite honest, of ever conveying what I am thinking to another person. If I have not indicated anything more than this, then I have failed miserably in saying what I intended to say. Philosophical logic, ontology and various other very complex disciplines await you. When Hawking says that his “Grand Design” takes for granted what he calls “model dependent realism” what “material events” is he speaking about? That’s perhaps a good place to start.
I joke that I’m a founding member of AA… Anthropologists Anonymous.
I’m a former anthropologist, trained in the ’70s and was appalled when I learned about the American Anthropological Association’s “not a science” statement. It was a controversial statement, apparently the work of some of the more post-modernist folk who came into organization leadership in recent decades. Turns out that a great many working anthropologists were also alarmed that the AAA leadership would take such a stance. It was a sad day in the history of a great old discipline.
From my now-somewhat-distant view, anthropologists who are not doing science (broadly defined) are not really contributing much of value and belong, perhaps, over in the Philosophy Department, or perhaps Theology where such departments exist.
But in any case, it is wrong to characterize Anthropology situation as one where anthropologists have “determined that their discipline is not a science”. Some of them seem to think so, but many of their colleagues are of the opinion that those folk should be working other jobs. There seems to be a bit of an internal civil war going on there.
After reading Ophelia Benson’s links referring to Patricia S. Churchland’s “Braintrust”, I skimmed my copy again with all my highlights and page markers and conclude there is a science of morality, but there is also more to morality than just science.
Churchland’s hypothesis is that morality is a four-dimensional scheme for social behaviour that is shaped by interlocking brain processes:
1) caring
2) recognition of others’ psychological states
3) problem solving in a social context
4) learning social practices
So both natural (i.e. not supernatural) and susceptible to scientific investigation, plus the rather more fuzzy set of social behaviours.
She writes about Normativity and the Moral “Ought” from p185 onwards.
See Punktbild.
Punk,
1)Thank you for making my point for me. However, Jon, has made it very clear that it is not science without experimentation. What to do?
As I told Jon, math and logic are, as you say integral components of science, but science is not integral to them. So, by saying that they are allowed to inform science, a ‘way of knowing’ that is not scientific is offering knowledge, which is what I was getting at.
It’s really very simple. Since math and logic are integral to science, math and logic are not a different way of knowing. They are just part of science’s way of knowing. Once you understand that science is not limited to experiments, there is no contradiction. You only think you are making a clever point because your understanding of science is too limited. No proponent of science uses your definition of science. Nobody is advocating removing math or logic from science.
All scientific theories have to be tested by experiments, but it does not mean that testing theories is all that there is to science. You very obviously can do science without doing any experiment. Think Einstein. Einstein’s theory of relativity was a piece of theoretical science as soon as it was written down. But before it was tested by experiment, it was not complete.
2) Once again, thank you for making my point for me. I just wanted to make sure philosophy still had a place at the table. It seems it would and it would still operate in much the same way. For instance, when Sam Harris claims that science can determine human values philosophers would tell him that is not scientific.
Everybody has a place at the table. There is no contradiction here. Ecologists receive inputs from farmers or hunters all the time. That does not mean that ecology is incomplete by itself and requires a “farmer’s way of knowing”. It only means that anyone can use their intellect and make a contribution.
What you are asking is not that philosophers have seats at the table. What you are asking is that seats are reserved for philosophers. That is not granted.
Sorry, Eric, but if you want to distinguish ‘domains of knowledge’ you’re going to have to give some concrete examples and explain why you want to separate them. If it’s not the case that ‘science involves reading, thought, and the abstraction of higher-level concepts from observations of material events’, then why do scientists get paid for doing it, and why do they inevitably go through this process at length in preparation for any new experiment or study? I honestly can’t envisage what science looks like to you: the best I can come up with is something like the opening scenes of a 1950′s horror movie, with serious-looking people in glasses and white coats injecting random fluids into cowering animals with no thought for the consequences, and not a journal or reference book in sight.
As for a ‘science of morality’, how would it verify its hypotheses? What could it possibly test them against, other than the real world, inasmuch as the real world includes those brain states we call feelings and beliefs? What would a moral ‘experiment’ look like? What would be the null hypothesis, the sample size, the control group, the confidence intervals?
Like Jerry Coyne, I think that morality is one of those concepts like ‘free will’ which evaporates when we look at it closely. For some years now I’ve been trying to get someone to explain to me the determining difference between a moral decision and an ordinary decision, with no success.
But if reading about the philosophy of science has made you despair of trying to convey your meaning, then perhaps it’s time to stop reading.
Dear Jon, I don’t want to put word in Eric’s mouth, but I took his meaning of “(despairing)… of ever conveying what I am thinking to another person…” to be unrelated to his reading of the philosophy of science, but rather, to people not reading what he has written down (and perhaps despairing about the limits of language and human communication). You say, “science involves reading, thought, and the abstraction of higher-level concepts from observations of material events”. All of these things I do when I pick up my clarinet to play: I read music, think about the correct notes and rhythm, and abstract from higher level concepts (base clef, treble clef, different styles, whatever). Have I created knowledge? If not, why, according to your definition? Does it not count because it is merely my expression through music? If you could answer just one question, let it be “What gets to count as knowledge, and why”?
To me, science is a tool or process that we use to determine what is true. Hypotheses are defined and tested and found true or false. From these results, further hypotheses are designed and tested, progressively working towards an explanation of everything (not that we are probably ever going to reach that point). Through science we are constantly refining what we consider true.
Within the sciences some are “harder” or “softer” than others. This is mostly based on how easy it is to design and test a hypothesis within a field. This has a lot to do with complexity of the system under study, and the number of variables involved. When we are studying human constructs like politics, psychology, sociology and anthropology it is difficult even to define measurable criteria, let alone interpret data collected, thus they are softer sciences.
Can we use science to answer the question of what is right and wrong? I don’t think science alone can do it. Morality comes from what we value as human beings, and people value different things, therein lies the problem.
Religions have tried, and I think failed, to make hard and fast rules about what is right and wrong. Human evolution has given most of us a sense of it as well. It is wrong to kill someone, most of the time. There are incidences where it would be right to kill someone, for example when they are trying to kill others.
I am a humanist, which means I value all humans equally. Some would argue that makes me speciesist. Why do I value the lives of humans over other species? Probably, because I happen to be one. But then there are people who put increased value on people of their own race, or country, or social caste/class. Some will say all mammals or vertebrates or animals have equal value and we shouldn’t kill any of them. But then we all draw a line somewhere. Is it ok to eat vegetables? Vegetables are alive too you know.
Moral philosophy is important, but the softer the science, the harder it will be to prove/disprove hypotheses. The important thing though is that we should be thinking about it. This is the problem with religion. Religion is designed so that people don’t have to think about it. It is always wrong to kill someone PERIOD. There is no room for discussion or what ifs – even if the someone is a loved one suffering horribly and death is a release they are asking for.
I’m going to cross-post a comment I left at Butterflies & Wheels, because it’s all I have to say on the subject, but first I’m going to note that I endorse the tenor of our host’s perspective on morality as a
and secondly say that, since half the people I know call me Uncle Jim, I cannot consider the appellation “avuncular” pejorative.
As an amateur, I’m continually frustrated by the philosophical approach to morality. In my lifetime I’ve seen enormous changes to the popular consensus on moral issues concerning race and sexuality which as far as I can tell were the result, not of conceptual breakthroughs, but of those most affected making their voices heard. Progress in sexual ethics has come mostly from women deciding what not to put up with.
Morality is more a matter of politics than philosophy. How we treat other people (or other living things) is very much a matter of their status and their power. The principle of universality is thousands of years old, taught by Jesus, Hillel, the Buddha and Confucius, but none of them advocated democracy or any number of things which we now consider morally obvious.
We’re moral animals, and there’s nothing more intuitive to us than the conviction that some things are right and wrong. We may very well be wired that way. There are however very good reasons to suppose that our convictions are somewhat arbitrary, since they change over time.
If morals are something we make up as we go along, the reasonable ways to deal with the subject are to describe the actual state of affairs or to advocate what we think are improvements. It’s inescapably messy, like everything else, but in this case resolution is more a matter of negotiation than discovery.
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@northstar: part of our problem here, I think, is that some participants are regarding ‘it’s not science!’ as a perjorative. I certainly don’t mean it as such: there are plenty of worthwhile and valuable ways to add quality to human life without ‘doing’ science, and music making is one of them. As for whether you are producing ‘knowledge’, I’m not sure; I think you would have to show that your music could transmit information of some kind from your head to that of someone who didn’t have it already. If you can do that then I don’t see any obstacle to calling it a form of knowledge, any less than a map or spoken podcast. Do you regard musicology as a science?
If people want to make the definition of science so broad so that it incorporates any intellectual activity, then they have made the word pretty much meaningless and useless. There are plenty of ways to gain knowledge, most of them empirical, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that all of those ways are science.
Eric, I have followed your past discussions of scientism and history and ethics, etc. and think the view you’re defending is correct. Though I’m a supporter of science in general, some of the work on ethics coming from the pro-science and amateur-scientist crowd are pretty disappointing. That some of them think they can ignore the serious work philosophers have produced over the years would be more plausible if this produced good results. But as it is the material from those like Harris and Shermer is a pale comparison. I leave you with this passage from someone who expressed the point rather well.
“When scientists decide to “settle” the hard questions of ethics and meaning, for instance, they usually manage to make fools of themselves, for a simple reason. They are smart but ignorant. The reason philosophers spend so much of their time and energy raking over the history of the field is that the history of philosophy consists, in large measure, of very tempting mistakes, and the only way to avoid making them again and again is to study how the great thinkers of the past got snared by them. Scientists who think their up-to-date scientific knowledge renders them immune to the illusions that lured Aristotle and Hume and Kant and the others into such difficulties are in for a rude awakening.”
–Dennett
@Laurence — you’ve just taken us back to the beginning again. What are your non-empirical ways of gaining knowledge, what are your empirical ways that aren’t science, why aren’t they science and — most importantly — what knowledge do they produce and how? As I pointed out to Eric long ago, all he needs to do to win this argument is to come up with one generally-agreed on item of knowledge that we can also agree hasn’t been obtained via the methods associated with science. Have you got one?
@northstar: my comment wasn’t entirely serious, but I do think that for Eric (or anyone else) to claim they understand science because they’ve read books on the philosophy of science is rather like me claiming to understand religion because I’ve read books about Sophisticated Theology. Once Eric has actually talked to scientists about what they do, then further reading may broaden his perspective, but till then it seems to me he’s at the mercy of whatever fashionable slanders philosophers care to make about members of a profession which is better paid and more attractive to the opposite sex.
That’s pretty easy. Logic and mathematics are clear examples of knowledge that aren’t empirical. I don’t have to have to have empirical information to know the law of non-contradiction. As for empirical knowledge that is not based on the methods of science. I know there is a beer in my fridge. I know this because I just looked and have justified my true belief that there was a beer in my fridge (justified true belief is the common definition of knowledge). I didn’t have to envision a study or anything formal like the methods of science. I just looked and gained knowledge. Everyday we gain knowledge via our experience in ways that are not scientific. It’s not that hard.
A less clear example is that I know that the n-word is offensive. How do I know this? Well, I was taught it by my parents but also by experiencing the effect of it being used by others. Did I need to employ the methods of science to come to this knowledge? I don’t think so. At least not any reasonably accurate definition of science.
I don’t think there are many things that can be knowledge that can be gained non-empirically, but even David Hume believed things like math and logic were knowledge even though they weren’t known empirically.
Laurence, You are confusing the broad definition of science that most (?) of us are using with guys in white coats. When you looked in your fridge to verify the existence of your beer you were doing science. The same with your second example. “Doing science” in this context mean verifying your idea against reality.
GBJames, this simply won’t do as a definition of, or even a vague “waving towards” science. The question as to the content of reality is simply too complex to be used in this way. Do numbers exist? In what way do they exist? Do rights exist — that is, are they part of the furniture of reality? In what sense do they exist? In what way can they be said to be real? What about aesthetic value? Verifying an idea against reality, that is, presumably, finding a correspondence between idea and reality, is a deeply contested issue in philosophical discussions of truth. Indeed, the assumption behind your suggestion raises all sorts of questions about philosophical logic, including truth, realism and anti-realism, what ideas consist in, and how they are compared to (or verified by) reality, and so on. Even the question of how verification takes place, and what that reveals about reality (whatever that is) raises all sorts of questions as to the nature of inquiry and confirmation. Hawking speaks of a model dependent realism, obviously combining thoughts about what scientific theories consist in, and what may be said about the character of reality. It simply won’t do to speak in these general ways about science as though anything at all is settled by doing so.
I’m not a philosopher and quickly get bored with the the snarl of back-and-forth over whether reality exists, whether qualia exist or not, and so on. To me it feels a bit like teenaged sleep-over conversation. Yes, I know that philosophers have spent lifetimes worried about the subject. But then theologians have spent centuries fretting over the nature of hell. There are severe limits to the value of that sort of effort. They seem to make little progress.
In what sense is looking in your fridge to verify the existence of beer not science? How is this less “doing science” than examining Jupiter with a telescope and finding moons? Or investigating the properties of radioactive rocks? The whole point of “doing science” is to check your ideas against reality and test to make sure if you are fooling yourself. Formal rules are important to science but they aren’t the same thing as science itself.
I am coming to believe that this dispute over “scientism” boils down to a difference between those who argue that “learning about stuff”, at the core, requires checking ideas about the stuff against the stuff itself. That Jerry Coyne’s “science broadly defined”. Others, like you Eric, seem unable to stomach such a broad definition and insist on limiting the word far more. It is like it is OK for science to work with test tubes and statistical analysis as long as practitioners don’t cross the line and start looking at things-they-shouldn’t. As I commented earlier, it smacks of territorial defense.
I think the move towards this broad definition of science that includes any kind of empirical investigation is just as illegitimate as Paul Tillich’s move to define religion as ultimate concern. I think both of those moves make their respective terms so broad that they are effectively useless. It also seems like a question-begging move as well.
Suppose I am having sex with my wife and it occurs to me: “if I move and do this other thing X to her, she will like it.” Then I do it and she makes clear she approves. I have thus verified my idea against reality. We should say I’m doing science? Seriously? Should I apply for an NSF grant to fund my “research”?
couchloc, Are you doing science (broadly-defined)? Yes. Should you apply for a grant? No. NSF doesn’t fund everything that is science.
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I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, but you are welcome to continue this discussion over at my new blog at FTB, where I have just put up a post entitled “Continuing My Struggle with Scientism.” Some of you will already have received a copy with your email subscription.
Is FTB now the “main” place for Choice in Dying? (Is this location deprecated?)
Well, FTB will be the location (barring difficulties like your own), at least if the transition goes well, and I can get things moved over there entirely. I know some of the people over there and they invited me some time ago to join up with them, so I thought I’d give it a try. Not to deprecate this site, since I have enjoyed it, but joining with a gang leads to a bit of trepidation for me. We’ll see how things work out. I rather like having the whole blog to myself, so I can use sidebars for my own purposes. As I say, we’ll see how it works. I will continue to post here, and then, once they are sent to subscribers to truncate posts and link to FTB, for the time being. It’s an experiment.
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