A Thinking Reed

Category: Ethics

  • Ruse on The Moral Landscape

    Philosopher Michael Ruse takes a sledgehammer to Sam Harris’s new book on morality:

    I don’t know what Harris studied in his philosophy courses as an undergrad at Stanford, but they don’t seem to have penetrated very deeply. He denounces philosophers before him (including myself, I should admit) without really addressing the challenge their arguments pose to his claims.

    I haven’t read the book (and likely won’t), but from the sounds of things, Harris takes a wild leap from saying that science can inform us about the conditions conducive to human well-being (which seems right to me) to saying that science can define well-being and provide something like a foundation for morality (which seems false). Even assuming something like a hedonistic conception of the good, you still need principles of distribution, justice, etc., and it’s really hard to see how “science” can give us answers to those questions. For instance, Jeremy Bentham’s principle that “each person is to count for one and no one for more than one” is not a “scientific” finding. And yet, without some such principle, how would you decide how “well-being” is to be distributed or fostered? Maybe Harris avoids these kinds of problems, but most of the reviews I’ve read suggest otherwise.

    Ruse is also puzzled that Harris goes on a fifteen-page diatribe against Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, current head of the National Institutes of Health, and a practicing Christian:

    Let me make clear why I find this all inappropriate to the point of being repellent. It is not because Harris mistakenly accuses Collins of being both a scientist and a Christian—Collins is without doubt both of these. It is not because Harris criticizes Collins for being a Christian or for thinking that science and religion can be harmonized. He has every right to do this, and, if truth be known, I am much closer to Harris than to Collins on the matter of the truth-status of Christianity. Also, even though I think that science and religion can be harmonized, I am not sure that Collins shows this successfully. My objection is that in a book on the foundations of ethics it is simply out of place to spend so much time on such a personal attack.

    I myself am puzzled why the mild-mannered and more-or-less liberal Collins has become such a bogey for the new atheist crowd. Is it because he’s a living refutation of their claim, repeated with smug assurance, that no rational, right-thinking person can embrace both science and faith?

  • Chimps, morals, and God

    This Frans de Waal essay and the accompanying video discussion with Robert Wright, on the evolutionary roots of morality, are worth checking out.

    De Waal’s argument is that moral impulses exist in our non-human animal relatives–particularly our closest relatives, the primates–and that we can see morality emerging along a continuum as a completely “natural” phenomenon. I think posing the issue as “morals (with or) without God” is misleading, though. I don’t see why a theist (Christian or otherwise) should have a problem with the idea that morality is “natural.”

    On the contrary, it makes good sense to me, theologically speaking, to say that the potential for morailty would be natural to human beings. God–so the Christian tradition says–wants us to live lives characterized by mutal care and support. This kind of life-in-community is what we were made for.* This is directly contrary to the idea that morality is some kind of divine “add-on” to the human condition. I see de Waal’s proposals as something like an updating of Aristotelian-Thomist ethics in light of current knowledge. Morality is basically about those rules, practices, character traits, and so on that are conducive to human flourishing.

    The other question that comes up is that of sanctions. Will people be moral if they aren’t afraid God will punish them? I think that, one, it’s just an observable fact that a lot of people behave perfectly decently without worrying about divine punishment (including many religious people), and, two, basing morality on the fear of divine punishment is bad theology. Paul’s letters in particular make it clear that a Christian’s motive for morality should come from a freely given response to the love God has shown us, a response empowered by the free gift of God’s Spirit.

    Where we might see a distinctive human quality here (and I realize that arguing for “unique” human capabilities is risky) is in our capacity to take a “God’s-eye” perspective on morality. What I mean by that is that we can grasp a moral vision that goes beyond our immediate kin group, beyond our friends, beyond our religious and national ties, even beyond our species, to encompass all God’s creatures. An example is the imaginative depictions of God’s eschatological peace in the Hebrew prophets. This is consistent with some recent theology, which has located the “divine image” precisely in our function as God’s stewards of creation. On this view, our “dominion” is properly aimed at facilitating the widest possible flourishing of God’s creation.
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    *Talking about “what we’re made for” obviously means something different in an evolutionary picutre of the world than one in which humans are understood to be a direct, special creation of God, but I think we can say that God intended to bring about creatures like us through the evolutionary process, in addition to whatever other divine goals that process serves.

    UPDATE: In retrospect, “Monkeys, Morals, and God” seems like the obviously superior title for this post. I’m really terrible at coming up with catchy blog post titles.

  • Human “exceptionalism” as moral exclusion

    In his review of Wesley Smith’s book that I linked to below, Angus Taylor puts his finger on exactly what has long bothered me about Smith’s rhetoric of “human exceptionalism”:

    Even if can be shown … that all human beings deserve an elevated moral status, it is not clear why this elevated status should entail the right to exploit, kill, and consume beings of lesser status – especially in those instances where no human vital needs are at stake. The issue of moral agency is a red herring. There is no logical requirement that all humans be moral “by nature” in order for every one of them to be entitled to respectful treatment. If not Tom Regan’s “subject of a life” theory, then surely Gary Francione’s sentience-based rights view would give Smith all he desires in terms of recognizing the equal inherent worth of all humans, including the mentally handicapped. By recognizing sentience as a sufficient condition for the right to be treated with respect, Smith could make a rationally defensible argument against the abuses to which he believes many incapacitated humans are vulnerable. But his doctrine of human exceptionalism cannot countenance just any ethical view that protects humans, for it is not enough to include all humans within the moral community – one must simultaneously exclude all non-humans. And this is crucial: human exceptionalism is at least as much about whom we are determined to exclude from the moral community as about whom we wish to include within it.

    Smith is able to get so much traction against proponents of animal rights/liberation largely by waving the red flag of “dehumanization.” In his view, elevating our treatment of animals necessarily involves downgrading our treatment of humans. But as Taylor points out, there’s just no logical reason for thinking this.

    It should be added, though, that at least part of the blame for this might fall on the “father” of the animal rights movement himself–Peter Singer. Singer has long staked out controversial views on abortion, infanticide, euthansia, the rights of the disabled, and other “life” issues, which has led some to think that his arguments for animal liberation are simply part of an agenda to debase the value of human life. I think this is misleading–both Singer’s positions on animal liberation and his bioethical views derive from a prior commitment to a particular form of utilitarianism. On this view, the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its overall consequences, understood in terms of the satisfaction of preferences. From this it follows, argues Singer, that life–whether human or animal–is not inherently “sacred.” Rather, whether it’s wrong to end a life has to be judged in terms of the prospects for preference-satisfaction of all affected parties. Nevertheless, what some may consider admirable philosophical consistency, others regard as a dangerous cheapening of human life.

    But Singer’s view is by no means embraced by all who advocate better treatment for animals (nor, for that matter, do all utilitarians embrace all of Singer’s more controversial bioethical views). As Taylor points out, a rights-based view such as that of Tom Regan elevates the moral status of animals without “demoting” human beings to some lesser status. I’d add that theological views like Andrew Linzey’s function in a similar way; in his book Why Animal Suffering Matters, Linzey is quite critical of Singer’s utilitarianism and its implications for vulnerable human life.

    None of this takes away from the fact that Smith is generally quite sloppy in his engagement with the arguments of pro-animal rights/liberation thinkers. And I agree with Taylor that Smith’s version of “human exceptionalism” largely seems crafted to justify the ongoing human domination and exploitation of non-human animals.

  • Friday links

    – Chris Hayes: Postcard from Palestine

    – Endangered red wolves being hunted to extinction

    – Tea partiers fantasize about a “constitutionally pure” government

    – Jean Kazez on Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape

    – On not really believing in heaven

    – Corporations gain privacy rights as people lose them

    – Soldiers against torture

    – A rabbi writes about speaking out against anti-gay prejudice

    – A review of Wesley Smith’s anti-animal-rights book

  • Ethics and isolation

    Scu at Critical Animal has interesting take on the Anthony Bourdain-Jonathan Safran Foer debate I posted about last week. One of Bourdain’s arguments (which echoes an argument made by Michael Pollan, among others) is that embracing vegetarianism alienates you from human community. As Scu points out, however, sometimes this is a good thing. Not to mention, embracing a particular ethical perspective can also lead you to new forms of community.

    (Incidentally, the Henry Salt Scu mentions as a mentor to Ghandi was an English social activist and campaigner for animal rights; here’s a link to his “Logic of the Larder.”)

  • Jonathan Safran Foer keeps it real

    One thing that Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer does really well in this debate about vegetarianism with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain is to keep bringing the discussion back down to earth from Bourdain’s hyper-idealized view of meat-eating. Safran Foer’s not interested in arguing that meat-eating is always, everywhere, and under any conceivable circumstances wrong; he’s more interested in making people aware of the horrors of modern factory farming, which, after all, is the method by which upwards of 90 percent of the meat consumed by Americans gets produced. Bourdain waxes poetic about meat-eating as a convivial celebration of human commonality, but Safran Foer keeps presenting the listener with the stark reality that makes all that cheap meat possible–an industry that wreaks havoc on animal, human, and environmental well-being.

    (Incidentally, the quip attributed to Bourdain at the beginning of the show, to the effect that humans were designed to chase down “smaller and stupider” creatures makes me wonder how many of his meals Bouradain has personally chased down.)

  • “Self-awareness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon”

    From Wired, a report of laboratory monkeys (rhesus macaques, to be specific) that have shown signs of self-recognition (and thus potentially self-awareness):

    In the lab of University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Luis Populin, five rhesus macaques seem to recognize their own reflections in a mirror. Monkeys weren’t supposed to do this.

    “We thought these subjects didn’t have this ability. The indications are that if you fail the mark test, you’re not self-aware. This opens up a whole field of possibilities,” Populin said.

    Populin doesn’t usually study monkey self-awareness. The macaques described in this study, published Sept. 29 in Public Library of Science One, were originally part of his work on attention deficit disorder. But during that experiment, study co-author Abigail Rajala noticed the monkeys using mirrors to study themselves

    The article goes on to point out that self-awareness, long thought a unique identifier of human beings, isn’t an all-or-nothing phenomenon:

    So-called mirror self-recognition is thought to indicate self-awareness, which is required to understand selfhood in others, and ultimately to be empathic. Researchers measure this with the “mark test.” They paint or ink a mark on unconscious animals, then see if they use mirrors to discover the marks.

    It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants. These successes challenged the notions that humans were alone on one side of a cognitive divide. Many researchers think the notion of a divide is itself mistaken. Instead, they propose a gradual spectrum of cognitive powers, a spectrum crudely measured by mirrors.

    Indeed, macaques — including those in Populin’s study — have repeatedly failed the mark test. But after Rajala called attention to their strange behaviors, the researchers paid closer attention. The highly social monkeys only rarely tried to interact with the reflections. They used mirrors to study otherwise-hidden parts of their bodies, such as their genitals and the implants in their heads. Mark tests not withstanding, they seemed quite self-aware.

    I would think that this kind of sliding scale of cognitive abilities is just what evolutionary theory would lead you to expect. After all, it posits a continuity between human beings and other forms of life.

    I’d also add that creatures with self-awareness probably shouldn’t be kept in labs and have electrodes stuck in their heads. (Though, ironically, laboratory conditions probably made it more likely that we’d discover their self-awareness.)

  • Attention must be paid

    There have been a couple of articles recently on the “slow reading” movement, one in Newsweek and one in the Guardain. Actually, “movement” may be a bit strong; it seems to be more of an impulse, or a reaction against our 24-7 ultra-connected, multitasking, information-saturated lives. (Where “we” are a relatively small minority of affluent elites, just to be clear.)

    Slow reading is just what is sounds like: taking your time, really engaging with a text, not skimming or snacking on bits and pieces of information. The concerns of the slow reading movement echo those of technology writer Nicholas Carr, who in an Atlantic Monthly article from 2008 worried that Google was making us stupid. That is, re-wiring our neural circuitry to make it harder for us to pay sustained attention to a piece of writing, or an argument, or narrative. (Carr followed up his article with a book called The Shallows that has gotten a lot of attention.)

    I think most of us probably sense that there’s something to this. I know that when I’m reading something online the urge to follow a link or open a new tab is almost irresistible. Rarely do I read anything of substantial length online from start to finish they way I might when reading, say, a long magazine article or a novel. It does seem to require more effort to pay attention.

    If this is right, it has implications beyond reading. The ability to pay attention–to attend to some person, or thing that exists apart from (but also in relation to) us–plays a large role in the moral and spiritual life. The philosopher-novelist Iris Murdoch argued that the moral life begins in the ability to appreciate something–a part of nature, a body of knowledge, a person–for its own sake, independent of any benefit it may have for us. In other words, to pay attention. Buddhism teaches that the path to liberation is learning to pay attention to reality without the distortions imposed upon it by the chattering of our minds. Christian prayer involves paying intentional attention to God–the ultimate context of Being. So, if our minds are rendered incapable of sustaining that kind of focus (and, to be fair, not everyone agrees this is happening), what happens to us as moral and spiritual agents?

  • Another thought on religion and values

    In thinking about the relation between ethics and theology, it helps to distinguish the metaphysical aspects of this problem from the epistemological ones. Or, as St. Thomas would say, the order of being from the order of knowing. Value, or ethics, may depend metaphysically on the existence of God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that knowing moral truths requires knowing (or believing) that God exists.

    It seems to me that, difficult moral dilemmas aside, I have no particular difficulty discerning my day-to-day moral duties to family and friends, co-workers, strangers, etc. (I may have difficulty doing my duty, but that’s a separate issue.) Likewise, I have no great difficulty in telling good apart from bad, at least in the normal run of things. By contrast, I have very little idea of how to tie these perceptions and duties together into some grand unified theory of ethics or how such a theory is, or should be, grounded in an overall metaphysical view of the world.

    Since at least some moral truths are far more obvious than God’s existence, it’s odd to suggest that you can’t have ethics without God. After all, that would imply that the more certain has to be based on the less certain. (Well, maybe there are people for whom the existence of God is more self-evident than their normal moral duites, but I’m not one of them.) In fact, it’s plausible to think that if God created us and wants us to be good, he would make it possible for us to know moral truths even without believing in him.

  • God, value, and “secular reasons”

    Camassia and Eve Tushnet have been discussing this Stanley Fish column that takes aim at the idea of “secular reasons”–reasons which, according to Fish, “because they do not reflect the commitments or agendas of any religion, morality or ideology, can be accepted as reasons by all citizens no matter what their individual beliefs and affiliations.” This seems like a pretty tendentious definition to me since it equates “secular” (i.e., non-religious) reasons with non-moral ones, and I’m not sure how many secular people would accept that.

    Here’s my view in a nutshell: values–truth, beauty, compassion, happiness, etc.–are part of our experience of the world and we experience them as “objective.” These are compelling to most people with even minimal sensitivity, and they often inform our thinking and debating about what public policies to pursue, what kind of lives we should lead, and so on. This is true of both religious and non-religious people.

    As a religious person myself, I believe that these values reflect, or point to, God, but I don’t think you have to believe in God to apprehend them. It’s quite possible to perceive the goodness of compassion or happiness, or to apprecitate beauty or truth, without thinking that they require the existence of God. So I think Fish is wrong if he thinks that “secular reason” can’t appeal to moral values. Secular reason only has this problem if you define it to exclude values a priori.

    It’s true, of course, that some hard-bitten materialists may want to deny that values are anything more than subjective, emotional responses, but (a) most people aren’t hard-bitten, reductionistic materialists and (b) even hard-bitten materialists, happily, don’t generally live their lives as though they believe this. Plus, it’s quite possible to be a non-reductionistic naturalist of some sort or the other who affirms the objectivity of values (say, J.S. Mill).

    When people talk about “secular reasons,” what they’re generally talking about are reasons and arguments that don’t make explicit reference to theological claims, particularly confessional ones, and can be offered as potentially compelling to one’s fellow citizens who don’t share one’s theological commitments. I think there are good moral and pragmatic reasons for Christians and other religious folk to approach public debate in this way.

    Certainly, much of our public discourse is constrained by a narrowly “utilitarian” or economistic set of assumptions. But, in my view, that has more to do with capitalism than secularism. We can supposedly do without public discussoins of value because everyone’s preferences or interests will be automatically taken into account by the functioning of the market, and the result will be the optimal outcome for society as a whole. Value-talk thus becomes extraneous. This is the dream of the fully self-regulating market society.

    However, since values aren’t reducible to preferences or interests, this economic picture of society is radically incomplete. For example, we may argue for government provision of health insurance on the grounds that it is just or compassionate. Or we may argue for environmental preservation for aesthetic or spiritual reasons. These are the kinds of values that transcend mere preference and require a kind of public deliberation to put them into effect. That’s why we need democracy to frame, and constrain, the market. This public deliberation will necessary make reference to the language of values, but it’s a language that is available, in principle, to anyone, regardless of their relgious beliefs.