An Uncertain deFense of deBoer

I. The Argument's Genesis

Sam Harris's February TED lecture begins with a provocative premise:

...It's generally understood that questions of morality, questions of good and evil and right and wrong, are questions about which science officially has no opinion.  It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value.  And consequently most people - I think most people probably here think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life, questions like, 'What is worth living for?', 'What is worth dying for?', 'What constitutes a good life?'; so I'm going to argue that this is an illusion, and the separation between science and human values is an illusion.  And actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history.  Now, it's often said that science can not give us a foundation for morality and human values because science deals with facts.  And facts and values seem to belong to different spheres.  It's often thought that there is no description of the way the world is that can tell us the way the world ought to be.  But I think this is quite clearly untrue.  Values are a certain kind of fact.  They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.  

Andrew Sullivan recently linked to the lecture with this response from Freddie deBoer:

[I]f we are indeed a cosmic accident, the result of the directionless and random process of evolution, then it makes little sense to imagine that we are capable of ordering the world around us, beyond the limited perspective of our individual, subjective selves. This has always been to me the simplest step in the world, from the first two beliefs to the third, from the collapse of geocentrism and creationism to the collapse of objective knowing. Yet I find that it is one many people not only refuse to make, but one that they react against violently. This is the skepticism that is refused, and this refusal is the last dogma.

There's also this clarification, this clarification, and this clarification from deBoer.  Several other bloggers have weighed in on the debate.  The highlights: from Julian Sanchez:

God or whatever other transcendent sources of certainty we might posit just serve as baffles to conceal the ineradicable circularity that’s going to sit at the bottom of any system of knowledge. You’re always ultimately going to have a process of belief formation whose reliability can only be vouchsafed in terms of the internal criteria of that very process. Calling it a divinely endowed rational faculty rather than an adaptive complex of truth-tracking modules doesn’t actually change the structure of it any...I do think we can make “objective” judgments. They’re only “objective” relative to our contingently evolved nervous systems, but since that’s all objective can ever have meant, that's objective.  This is totally distinct from the question of how confident we ought to feel about most of our conclusions. I can be mistaken about an objective fact, but that doesn’t entail that it’s a mistake to think of it as objective one way or the other.  Because objectivity is a system-relative property, it’s not undermined by the fact of our cognitive limitations.

And from Will Wilson:

Contingent minds merely undermine the necessity of our being able to comprehend the world (a necessity that the faithful take quite seriously, as an old Dominican friar once explained to me), they leave open, however, the possibility of contingent minds that “just happen” to be of the sort that can make sense of the universe in which they happen to be located. Nevertheless, Freddie is right about one thing: once we eliminate necessity, we need reasons to think that our minds are of the right sort; after all, the humble Giraffe is well adapted to its environment, but will never come to understand particle physics or the workings of its own neurophysiology. How are we to know that we are not like Giraffes, only with considerably wider possible-knowledge horizons?

This discussion has occupied nearly all my time and brainpower for the last week, and it has stretched my patience and eyesight more than a few times.  Ultimately, many people have forgotten where the debate started: subsequent commentary has wandered uncontrollably from the cosmic questions first proffered by Harris to the merits of various political ideologies to the nature of science, morality, and knowledge.  Straw men pepper the electronic landscape, and there are more than a few reductio ad Hitlerum sprinkled throughout multiple sites.  So, I am going to attempt to grossly (over)simplify the terms of the debate for clarification. 

Let's return to Harris's initial proposition, that science can give us an objective foundation for morality and human values.  By this, Harris means that not only can science explain why morality exists or why we believe what we do, but it can provide certain answers to moral questions.  He specifically models a scenario where advances in neurology will allow for the pinpointing and understanding of "moral" processes in the brain, enough to draw universal conclusions about morality and values, although he does allow for a plurality of individual moral systems. 

DeBoer responds that morality is subjective and personal and therefore beyond objective, universal understanding.  Nothing can truly be said with certain objectivity, and all-embracing theories such as Harris's are dangerous and hypocritical when coming from self-described "skeptics."  True skepticism recognizes the limits of its own theoretical framework: "from the collapse of geocentrism and the collapse of creationism follows logically the collapse of objective knowing."

Sanchez posits that the term "objective" only has meaning relative to an amorphous aggregate of individual subjectivities.  All systems of knowledge we devise will be qualified by the fact that we devised them as conventions to ensure our own well-being, and hence their circularity is inescapable; their objectivity is akin to perfect efficiency for the given system rather than true universality.  Thus, when we speak of something being "objective," we don't mean that it is truly objective, but that it is effectively so.

Wilson believes that while natural selection only establishes a minimum standard for existence, namely that species survive and reproduce, there is not necessarily a maximum.  Nothing in science suggests that human minds are capable of perfectly understanding the world, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that they can.

To (over)simplify these four responses even further, let's regard the question as "Can moral questions be definitively answered (by science or otherwise)?"  The four responses can be characterized as believer, Harris: yes, and they will be very soon; strong agnostic, deBoer: objective truth can not be found and the pursuit itself is dangerous; ignostic, Sanchez: the question is devoid of meaning and absurd; and weak agnostic, Wilson: we can not know now, but that does not preclude the possibility of knowing in the future.

My personal leanings are towards Wilson's weak agnosticism on the issue, but I must admit that this inclination is based on my own uncertain interpretations of the relevant terms "science" and "morality".   

II. Science

More than any other philosophy here, I think Wilson's weak agnosticism serves as the major underpinning of what we call the scientific method.  Creationists and intelligent design advocates are correct to point out that evolution is a theory, but only in the sense that nothing in science purports to be objective fact.  This crucial point is tragically and ironically ignored by radical men like Harris and his creationist kinsmen. 

By deifying science and declaring it infallible, the new atheists replace one god with another - a slippery slope indeed.  The scientific certainty of the early twentieth century bequeathed upon humankind the gifts of electric shock therapy, lobotomies, and eugenics.  The prevailing, visceral reaction to the atrocities of World War II provided a necessary correction to scientific overreach.  Some believers in science today exhibit a certain tribalism, that only their methods are legitimate; however, whatever the current woes of the scientific community, they are nothing like the dark path of only a few generations past.

Because of past and present muscular misinterpretations, the true nature of science remains widely bastardized.  True science represents what measured comparison of available alternatives shows to be the best explanation we have for the various events unfolding around us.  Accordingly, we enforce principles of competition to mimic our most measured perceptions of the forces of nature, and we impose universal standards of procedure which theoretically and empirically seem to correct for what we recognize as human bias and error.  Therefore, we can never be sure that the prevailing explanations are the "best" explanations.  We can , however, believe with a high degree of confidence that they are the best given all the other explanations of which we are aware.  Science is ultimately a process, and as such, never purports to be perfect and complete.  And so we see with quantum physics that science itself has embraced the nonexistence of objective truth.  

Friedrich Nietzsche seems to imply in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (referenced and linked by deBoer) that rationality and intuition are mutually-exclusive, antagonistic concepts:

As a "rational" being, (man) now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions...There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. 

However, science represents a balanced symbiosis of rationality and intuition.  Even a cursory glance at the history of science reveals it is full of intuitive leaps and accidents.  Witness the work of Gregor Mendel: the result of Mendel's famous first bean sprout experiment was something like 3,468 tall plants and 1,256 short plants.  The ratio here is not 3:1, but 2.76:1.  Mendel made a leap of faith, assumed he had made some mistakes along the way, and guessed that the data were trying to tell him that the ratio should be 3:1.  When he conducted more trials under this assumption, the data seemed to fit his intuition, and he modeled with reasonable certainty the theory of inheritance that bears his name, a theory that so far has proven very useful in helping to solve problems and allowing people to live better lives.

And so accordingly, I must disagree with deBoer's statement that: "Among the few necessary social  functions that religion performed, and that we now are lacking in a post-theistic world, is the enforcement of a certain humility."  Far from lacking humility, science is humble by its very nature.  This fundamental humility has been confused of late by ideologues like Harris who dress up their political agendas with unwelcome scientism.  A clarification is necessary.

III. Morality

While I think deBoer wins the day on the question of whether or not moral questions can be definitively answered by science, his conclusion begs the question of application.  We have to do stuff.  We have to act.  Our very survival requires it.  Action is a predetermined, necessary condition for continuing existence, and morality is the complex mechanism whereby we attempt to ascertain and clarify "right" ways of acting for the benefit of the community.  Intellectuals may imagine a perfect morality, and for the blindly faithful, like Sam Harris, a philosopher king or deity is the source, but in practice, community moral order evolves spontaneously.  Morality exists by convention and is enforced and clarified by a particular community in the form of derivative maxims on which a majority of community members agree; for example, "thou shalt not commit adultery" or laws against fraud.  

As such, morality is akin to a social contract: constructs of morality represent anything that we perceive as "better" than the "war of all against all".  And from a pragmatic standpoint, it is in the interest of the community to clarify and enforce moral codes.  Serious violations still often arise.  Since our moral codes represent but an approximation bound to the human conditions of penetrative ignorance and subjectivity and no one can perfectly understand the moral code of the community, there is less potential for harm if moral actors lack conviction.  If I mistakingly believe that President Obama intends to enslave mankind and must be stopped by any means necessary, but lack the conviction to act on this belief, there is no harm.  The resulting nothing is the same were I not to believe that absurdity.  

Accordingly, as deBoer posits - and I agree - history's greatest villains were all certain of their convictions; they all thought they were serving the greater good.  No one thinks he or she is evil.  No one foresees the unintended consequences of his or her actions.  It is most prudent to recognize this fact, do nothing, and avoid stepping on the ant that could be your reincarnated grandmother.

Nevertheless, I agree with Edmund Burke and William Butler Yeats that action is often necessary to prevent evil.  The moral conundrum consists of balancing the tendency to make mistakes out of self-righteousness with the necessity to correct the moral failings of others.  At the level of the subjective individual, this is a daunting task with large margins for error.  At the community level, even more so.  Yet this is the task that is our responsibility as humans: to act with uncertainty is the burden of existence.

IV.  Conclusion  

For simplicity's sake I have assumed four possible answers to the question of whether science can answer moral questions: yes (Harris), never (deBoer), silence (Sanchez), and not now (Wilson).  My answer is that because science is a process for maintaining an appropriate balance between rationality and intuition, with the ultimate goal of explaining phenomena, and morality is a process for maintaining an appropriate balance between action and inaction, with the ultimate goal of minimizing harm, we can use the tools of science to help us more-effectively minimize harm vis-a-vis, for example, a polio vaccine; but the idea that science itself can be a moral authority seems incoherent and frankly undesirable.

Yet, another epistemic arrogance lies in assuming that science and morality will be forever irreconcilable. It is extremely doubtful that science or morality will ever be more than imperfect processes, yet it is because I lack conviction that I am inclined towards Wilson's cautious hope.  I must now venture out of my cave, and it serves me to choose an answer that is immediately applicable.  The only answer with this practicality is Wilson's, and so I suspect that deBoer is correct, yet behave as though Wilson is.

Comments

[Zdenek]

Hi there,

You suggest that "it is in the interest of the community to clarify and enforce moral codes". How do you suggest we do that if we can't use science? Who will decide? Will we vote? Is majority a good and right choice? Where is the process that ensures we continue to improve our morality framework?

If we all agree on minimizing suffering and maximizing freedom of choice we can then create a universal framework based on scientific approach. We can measure/observe how much suffering or freedom each person has and continue search for the highest peak.

Cheers,
Zdenek

[Dyske]

Personally, I believe that science could explain what morality is. I suspect that it's merely an evolutionary mechanism. It's sort of like an emergent phenomenon, like how a flock of birds coordinate their movement unconsciously, without any one of them leading or directing it. The purpose of morality is self-serving for our own race. Morality, I believe, is just a survival mechanism for our own species.

I agree with you that "to act with uncertainty is the burden of existence" but I don't see it as anything noble or meaningful. It's just what we do for our own interest as a species.

Try to imagine a bird in a flock who is deeply contemplating which way the whole flock should go and why. He then comes up with a scientific explanation for which way the flock should go. What would it mean for him to be right? And what would it mean for him to be wrong?

Suppose his scientific logic told him that the flock is going in a wrong direction, but others don't understand him or disagree with him. The bird on his own wouldn't be able to survive, so what would be the point of leaving the flock just because science proved that he is right? In this scenario, the concept of being "right" becomes irrelevant. What would this concept of being "right" serve in this situation?

If this bird were to seek the meaning of being "right" outside of his own species, the entire premise collapses anyway. Other species wouldn't care if his species survived. The mechanism of evolution wouldn't care about their survival either. They are supposed to perish if they fail to adapt to a new environment. Extinction is an important part of evolution.

We overrate our own ability to reason. We conveniently determine superiority by our ability to manipulate, control, or beat other species. By that definition, yes, we are the most "intelligent" species, but that's self-serving.

Many people with Aspergers Syndrome are highly "intelligent" in an IQ sort of way, but they actually have to use their "intelligence" as a coping mechanism to manage their lives. Why? Because their other facilities are lacking, such as empathy and intuition about other humans. In other words, our ability to think and reason could in fact be a coping mechanism because we are lacking in other areas.

Praising our own ability to reason is like marveling at a high-tech wheel chair while forgetting the fact that it's better to be able to walk without it.

On NPR, I once heard a story about a mother who tried to get her son to clean up his room by turning it into a competition. It worked so well for him that she decided to use the same tactics on her daughter. When she told her that she was going to time how quickly she can clean up her room, her daughter responded by asking "Why?". Why indeed. Why do we humans constantly try to dominate, control, conquer, and win? And, why do we use that as a gauge of superiority? (Or why do we even care about the concept of superiority?) Maybe like this little girl, other animals are too smart to fall for such irrational behavior.

[Christopher Carr]

Here is a fair clarification of my take on this topic by Alex Rosenberg, who taught a seminar I took my senior year:

http://www.duke.edu/~alexrose/dditamler.pdf

"Darwinian naturalism departs from Darwinian nihilism when it goes on to suggest that the natural selection of
cooperation, justice, and other normative institutions underwrites some moral claims as true or
correct. The Nihilist will deny that adaptational explanations can preserve “the values we
cherish”, and still less that they enable us to construct “sounder versions of our most important
ideas”"

Harris seems to think that a Philosopher King morality universally-applied is superior to the status quo. Given the history of failed human attempts to design that which spontaneous order has wrought, I'm far more cautious.

[Christopher Carr]

Here's another good quote from the Sommers/Rosenberg essay:

"If there are ethical truths to be naturalized they will not be the systematic claims of Mill
or Kant, but the singular, particular claims we make about the rightness or wrongness of
individual actions and outcomes."