Ethical questions science can’t answer

by Massimo Pigliucci

Yes, yes, we’ve covered this territory before. But you might have heard that Sam Harris has reopened the discussion by challenging his critics, luring them out of their hiding places with the offer of cold hard cash. You see, even though Sam has received plenty of devastating criticism in print and other venues for the thesis he presents in The Moral Landscape (roughly: there is no distinction between facts and values, hence science is the way to answer moral questions), he is — not surprisingly — unconvinced. Hence the somewhat gimmicky challenge. We’ll see how that ones goes, I already have my entry ready (but the submission period doesn’t open until February 2nd).

Be that as it may, I’d like to engage my own thoughtful readers with a different type of challenge (sorry, no cash!), one from which I hope we can all learn something as the discussion unfolds. It seems to me pretty obvious (but I could be wrong) that there are plenty of ethical issues that simply cannot be settled by science, so I’m going to give a few examples below and ask all of you to: a) provide more and/or b) argue that I am mistaken, and that these questions really can be answered scientifically.

Before we proceed, however, let’s be clear on what the target actually is. I have summarized above what I take Harris’ position to be, and I have previously articulated what I think the proper contrast to his approach is: ethics is about reasoning (in what I would characterize as a philosophical manner) on problems that arise when we consider moral value judgments. This reasoning is informed by empirical evidence (broadly construed, including what can properly be considered science, but also everyday experience), but it is underdetermined by it.

This may be taken to be somewhat out of synch with Harris’ attempt, because he is notoriously equivocal about what he means by “science.” At one point (in an endnote of the book) he claims that science encompasses every activity that uses empirical facts, not just the stuff of biology, chemistry, physics, neuroscience, and so on. But if that is the case, then his claim comes perilously close to being empty: of course facts understood so broadly are going to be a crucial part of any ethical discussion, so what? Therefore, for the purposes of this discussion I will make what I take to be a commonsensical (except in Harris’ world) distinction between scientific facts (i.e., the results of systematic observations and experiments, usually embedded in a particular theoretical framework), and factual common knowledge (e.g., the n. 6 subway line in New York City stops at 77th St. and Lexington). If you don’t accept this distinction (even approximately) then you “win” the debate by default and there is nothing interesting to be said. (Actually, no you still lose, because I can do one better: I arbitrarily redefine philosophizing as the activity of thinking, which means that we all do philosophy all the time, and that the answer to any question, not just moral, is therefore by definition philosophical. So there.)

I also need to make a comment about the other recent major supporter of the view that I’m criticizing: Michael Shermer. To be honest, I still don’t know exactly what Michael’s position is on this, even though I asked him explicitly on more than one occasion. At times he sounds pretty much like Harris (whom he openly admires). But if that’s the case, then one wonders why Shermer feels compelled to write another book on the relationship between science and morality, as he is reportedly doing. At other times Michael seems to be saying that both science and philosophy are needed for a comprehensive understanding of morality — both in terms of its nature and when it comes to applications of moral reasoning to actual problems. But if that is what he means, then no serious philosopher would disagree. So, again, why write a whole book to elucidate the obvious?

Anyway, let’s get down to business with a few examples of ethical questions that I think make my point (many others can be found in both recent books by Michael Sandel). (Entries are in no particular order, by the way.)

1. Should felons not regain their full rights as citizens after time served? Most US states (the exceptions are Maine and Vermont) prohibit convicted felons from voting while they are serving their sentence. This, seems to me, is relatively easy to defend: being a convicted felon entails that you lose some (though certainly not all) of your rights, and one can make an argument that voting should fall into the category of suspended rights for incarcerated individuals, just like liberty itself. More controversial, however, is the idea of disenfranchising former convicts, which is in fact the case in nine states, with three of them (Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia) imposing a lifelong ban from voting. Is this right? How would science answer the question? One can’t just say, “well, let’s measure the consequences of allowing or not allowing the vote and decide empirically.” What consequences are we going to measure, and why? And why are consequences the ultimate arbiter here anyway? Consequentialism is famously inimical to the very concept of rights, so one would then first have to defend the adoption of a consequentialist approach which, needless to say, is a philosophical, not empirical matter.

2. Is it right to buy one’s place in a queue? This example comes straight from Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy (hint hint), and there are several real life examples that instantiate it. For instance, lobbying firms in Washington, DC are paying homeless people to stand in line on their behalf in order to gain otherwise limited access to Congressional hearings. Yes, on the one hand this does some good to the homeless (even if one were to set aside issues of dignity). But on the other hand the practice defeats the very purpose of a queue, that is to allow people who care enough to get ahead of others because they are willing to pay a personal sacrifice in terms of their own time. Even more importantly, as Sandel argues, the practice undermines the point of public hearings in Congress, which are vital for our democracy: instead of being truly open to the public, they become a near-monopoly of special interests with lots of money. Again, what sort of experiment could a neurobiologist, a chemist, or even a social scientist carry out in order to settle the question on exclusively empirical grounds?

3. Should discrimination (by sex, gender, religion, or ethnicity) be allowed? This may seem like an easy one, but even here it is hard to see what an empirical answer would look like. What if, for instance, it turns out that social and economic research shows that societies that provide disincentives to women in the workplace (in order to keep them at home raising children) thrive better (economically, and perhaps in other respects) than societies that strive for equality? Such a scenario is not far fetched at all, but I would hope that most of my readers would reject the very possibility out of hand. It wouldn’t be right (insert philosophical argument about rights, individuals and groups here) to sacrifice an entire class of people in order to improve societal performance in certain respects. And, of course, there is the issue of why (according to which more or less hidden values?) we picked those particular indicators of societal success rather than others.

4. Those darn trolley dilemmas! I doubt there is need for me to rehash the famous trolley scenarios that can be found in pretty much any book or article on ethics these days. But it is worth considering that those allegedly highly artificial thought experiments actually have a number of real life similes, for instance in the case of decisions to be made in hospital emergency rooms, or on the battlefield. Regardless, the point of the trolley thought experiments is that the empirical facts are clearly spelled out (and they don’t require anything as lofty as “scientific” knowledge), and yet we can still have reasonable discussions about what is the right thing to do. Even people who mindlessly choose to “pull the lever” or “throw the guy off the bridge,” following the simple calculus that saving five lives at the cost of one is the obviously right thing to do, quickly run into trouble when faced with reasoned objections. For instance, what about the  analogous case of an emergency room doctor who has five patients, all about to die because of the failure of a (different) vital organ? Why shouldn’t the doctor pick a person at random from the streets, cut him up, and “donate” his five vital organs to the others? You lose one, you save five, just as with the trolleys. And yet, a real life doctor who acted that way would go straight to jail and would surely be regarded as a psychopath.

5. How do we deal with collective responsibility? Another of Sandel’s examples (this one from Justice). He discusses several cases of apologies and reparations by entire groups to other groups,  cases that are both complex and disturbingly common. Examples cited by Sandel include the Japanese non-apology for wartime atrocities that took place in the 1930s and 40s, including the coercion of women into sexual slavery for the benefit of its officers; or the apologies of the Australian government to the indigenous people of that continent; or the reparations of the American government to former slaves or to native Americans. The list goes on and on and on. What sort of scientific input would settle these matters? Yes, we need to know the facts on the ground as much as they are ascertainable, but beyond that the debate concerns the balance between collective and individual responsibility, made particularly difficult by the fact that many of these cases extend inter-generationally: the people who are apologizing or providing material reparations are not those who committed the crimes or injustices; nor are the beneficiaries of such apologies or material help the people who originally suffered the wrongs. These are delicate matters, and the answers are far from straightforward. But to boldly state that such answers require no philosophical reasoning seems just bizarre to me.

Of course, in all of the above cases “facts” do enter into the picture. After all, ethical reasoning is practical, it isn’t a matter of abstract mathematics or logic. We need to know the basic facts about felonies, voting, queues, Congressional hearings, sex / gender / religion / ethnicity, trolleys, war crimes, genocide, and slavery. From time to time we even need to know truly scientific facts in order to reason about ethics. My favorite example is the abortion debate: suppose we agree (after much, ahem, philosophical deliberation) that it is reasonable to allow abortion only up to the point at which fetuses begin to feel pain (perhaps with a number of explicitly stated exceptions, such as when the life of the mother is in danger). Then we need to turn to developmental and neuro-biologists in order to get the best estimate of where that line lies, which means that science does play a role in that sort of case.

Very well, gentle reader. It is now up to you: what other examples along the lines sketched above can you think of? Or, alternatively, can you argue that science (in the sense defined above) is all we need to make moral progress?

New Rationally Speaking collection: A Skeptics' Skeptic

What? Another Rationally Speaking collection? So soon? What can I say, it’s summer, and I really like putting together these e-booklets of selected essays from the blog (this is the fifth, the second this year...). The one you are hopefully holding on your iPad, Kindle, smart phone or whatever is one that I had thought about for a long time before assembling it.

You see, I’ve been writing about “skepticism” (meaning, taking a skeptical stance on pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-politics, and a few other “pseudos”) since as far back as 1997, when I began organizing Darwin Day events at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. From time to time, over the intervening 16 or so years, I found myself turning my gadfly-sh keyboard toward other skeptics, usually famous ones.

The reason is that it seems to me that a community — such as the skeptic / atheist / humanist (S/A/H, for short) one — that prides itself in its intellectualism and openness to reason and evidence, ought to critically examine its own tenets and positions, especially when espoused by prominent members of said community. Indeed, one of the gratifying things about being a skeptic is precisely that, by and large, we don’t act like a church. We recoil from dogmas, and we don’t ostracize dissenting members of our community, immediately rushing to build a new church down the street. Or do we? Well, okay, the recent history of the S/A/H community actually does sometimes eerily recall religious schisms and doctrinal disputes. Still, at least we don’t burn people at the stakes, or launch fatwas against them!

The gentle reader will notice that several of the essays included in the Skeptics’ Skeptic collection are, ahem, quite ironic, even sarcastic at times, certainly more so than the typical Rationally Speaking post. There are reasons for that. To begin with, the people targeted here are Big Boys who can definitely take the heat (many are academics, and academics are selected for having a thick skin). Moreover, rest assured that they can (and have, in several cases!) fight back with equal or larger force.

But the most important explanation for my above-average forcefulness here is that I take public intellectualism seriously, and these people are somewhat major public intellectuals. They influence countless others, and they therefore bear the responsibility of writing rigorously as well as clearly. When they don’t (in my opinion, of course) I call them out.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it any way: contra persistent insinuations to the contrary (by, say, The Discovery Institute, the inane “think tank” that promotes Intelligent Design creationism), these and other writings by yours truly do not signal the beginning of a move away from my philosophical naturalism, support for science, or defense of reason. They are simply cases in which I deploy precisely those tools to engage the best minds of the S/A/H, so that we as a broader movement can keep Carl Sagan’s famous “candle in the dark” alit against the always numerous and always powerful forces of obscurantism and repression.

Science, morality, and genital mutilation

by Massimo Pigliucci

As readers of Rationally Speaking know, recently Michael Shermer and I have had a friendly debate over the role of science in answering moral questions. I commented on an initial article by Michael, invited him to respond on these pages, and provided a point-by-point commentary on his response. We then both appeared at the 2013 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, where Julia Galef moderated a spirited but, I think, informative discussion between Michael and me on the same topic.

A couple of days ago, Michael tweeted the link to the podcast episode, with these two comments:

Can science tell us what is ‘moral’? Shermer (yes) v. Pigliucci (no, not sure, don’t know, maybe, depends, doubtful)

and:

Is female genital mutilation wrong? Shermer (yes) v. Pigliucci (depends, sometimes, in some cultures yes in others no)

I was a bit surprised by this, as well as taken aback. Surprised because I thought I made very clear, during the live discussion, that I do think female genital mutilation is wrong, and gave my reasons for it. Taken aback because, frankly, tens of thousands of people may now think that I am a moral relativist (including my 16 years old daughter!), which I am most definitely not, and that I have no principled objection to female genital mutilation, which I definitely do.

After an email exchange with Michael, we both agree that I would publish this post to rectify the record, and that he would tweet it to his followers, with the same aim. Below you will find three items: first, a transcript of the bits of the podcast where I explain my position on female genital mutilation; second, a transcript of the bits of the podcast where I explain my position on the relationship between science and philosophy when it comes to ethical issues; third, a question that Michael sent me directly, asking me to include it in this post, and my response.

I want to thank Michael for yet another example of how to conduct civil and productive discourse in the skeptic community. We will continue to disagree, but hopefully our thoughts will stimulate discussion and understanding.

1. On female genital mutilation

@15:20 [Michael] So Massimo, back to my opening example. Would you say that in some cultures female genital mutilation is morally acceptable? You think it’s ok.
[Massimo] No, I don’t.
[Michael] Why? On what basis?
[Massimo] I don’t because I don’t think it is ethical to force especially a child, especially somebody who cannot actually object to it, to undergo pain for arbitrary reasons that are not useful to the person. It’s okay to undergo pain for reasons that are not arbitrary and are good for you. Like, you know, if you have to have an operation to get a tumor out of the way, well that’s going to cause you pain. And if I have to do it on a child, even without her consent, I think that’s ethically acceptable. But in [the other] case I don’t. Now, this was the short story, then we can get into a more complex discussion because in fact the choice of the child, the welfare of the child, is not just as simple as a question of, as a matter of, pain or not pain. There is also the societal context, because as it turns out if you don’t do it the children will suffer because they live in a certain society. Now I still think that doesn’t outweigh the idea that genital mutilation is wrong, so I still think it should be objected to.

@18:19 [Michael] I think we can do better than what you just said about female genital mutilation. I think we can do better than that. Than just say well, you know, in Western democratic cultures it’s wrong, but for those other cultures...
[Massimo] That is not at all what I said. I said that it is wrong, period.
[Michael] How do you know that it’s wrong period?
[Massimo} I think I explained that I think it’s wrong to impose pain for arbitrary reasons. And those are arbitrary reasons, as I said, as opposed to I’m going to cure you of a tumor.
[Michael] What are you basing that on?
[Massimo] That’s not based on any empirical evidence whatsoever, because what empirical evidence would that be, that people don’t want to feel pain and want to feel pleasure? If that were all the basis to our morality we could just hook ourselves to a drug machine for the rest of our lives. we would be very happy and not in pain. And yet most of us don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do. Why not?

2. On the relationship between science and philosophy as it pertains to ethics

@19:54 [Massimo] By the way, I should, again, just in case there is some doubt, I should reiterate that I don’t think science is irrelevant. In fact, no moral philosopher thinks science is irrelevant, or [that] empirical evidence is irrelevant to these discussions. It’s a question of how do we balance things out.

@23:09 [Michael] Why not add [science]? It’s a great tool.
[Massimo] But who is arguing against adding it?
[Michael] You seem to be.
[Massimo] No, I don’t think so. We need to be careful about making this distinction. Again, I don’t think any reasonable moral philosopher would object to importing empirical evidence, empirical issues, into discussions of morality. The question is how much does that empirical information weigh.

@23:53 [Massimo] As I said during my talk before this discussion here, the major distinction, or a major distinction, between science and philosophy, and the reason I do think that they really do need to both work together on these and other issues, is that science deals with the empirical world, and philosophy tends to deal with logical possibilities. ... Logical possibilities are much broader than empirical possibilities, which is another way to rephrase Julia’s question a minute ago. Which is science constantly will underdetermine, the empirical information, will constantly underdetermine our ethical problems, because our ethical problems are a question of conflicts of values. We need to explain to ourselves and to others why is it that certain things need to take priority over others. The empirical information is relevant, but it doesn’t determine a unique answer.

3. Michael’s question and my response

Massimo, you and I agree that Female Genital Mutilation is morally wrong, but can you say that it is absolutely, objectively wrong? That is, can you do more than say you personally think it is wrong but you acknowledge that other people in different cultures than ours think it is acceptable, and that being the case you cannot condemn their actions against women as immoral? The point I was trying to make in my lecture and in our discussion is that I go so far as to say that there is no moral universe (culture, worldview, etc.) in which FGM is not immoral, based on the fundamental moral principle of not harming individuals. I argue that the individual is the fundamental moral agent because the individual is the primary target of natural selection, and thus it is in our nature to survive and flourish, and so actions that permanently rob us of our nature are immoral. Thus, I can deduce that permanently mutilating women robs them of their right to flourish as fully human individuals. Likewise, banning gays from getting married is immoral (and, conversely, gay marriage is moral) because it robs these individuals of their right to survive and flourish according to their nature. You apparently reject my argument for this basis of morality. You and I agree on these two issues (FGM is immoral, gay marriage is moral), but I think our disagreement is in WHY. I claim that FGM is absolutely and objectively morally wrong, and that we can defend this position in a solid scientific argument. You apparently disagree with this. If so, can you explain WHY you think FGM is wrong?

Michael, let me unpack your claim, before I explain (again) my position on female genital mutilation, gay marriage and the like. Your argument seems to be:

1. The individual is the primary target of natural selection.
2. (1) Makes the individual the fundamental moral agent.
3. Natural selection favors human survival and flourishing.
4. From (3), human nature demands the survival and flourishing of the individual.
5. Anything that violates (4) is immoral.
6. FGM (or the prohibition against gay marriage, or other things) violates (4).
7. Therefore, (from 2, 5 and 6) FGM is morally wrong.

Premise (1) can be questioned. Indeed, it is a well known problem for individual-based selection theories to explain the evolution of altruism and of moral sentiments more generally. Some sort of group selection seems necessary, though I don’t have a definitive position on that. Still, I will let this premise stand for the sake of argument.

To derive (2) from (1) is a non sequitur. Since natural selection has targeted every individual of every other species, and yet the category “moral” seems to apply only to human beings (and perhaps a few other species), something is clearly missing in your account. I suggest that what is missing is the evolution of a brain capable of self-reflection, as well as the entire phenomenon of cultural evolution. Those are crucial conditions that have to occur in order to be able to talk about morality. Nonetheless, let’s proceed as if.

(3) is clearly wrong: natural selection promotes the survival and reproduction of individuals, the concept of flourishing doesn’t enter into it. (Notice that already at this point your argument has crumbled, since all one has to show is that one or more of the premises is untenable. But let’s continue.)

(4) would indeed logically follow from (3), except for the fact that (3) itself is not true.

(5) is a stipulation for which you give no argument. I may agree, but then again it is easy to come  up with counter examples: when we punish a member of society for wrong doing we usually deprive him of his ability to flourish (and sometimes to survive, via the death penalty). But surely you will agree that that is morally permissible. Except that to justify punishment for moral wrong doing we need to explain why we allow exceptions to (5). This would quickly lead us to a philosophical discussion of rights, justice, etc.

(6) is a stipulation, with which I agree. But not for the reason you give, since in your case it is based on (4), which in turn relies on (3), and I reject the latter. (See below for my positive reasons.)

Given all the above, your conclusion (7) does not follow logically from your premises.

And yet, as you noted, we do agree that FGM is wrong, so I need to explain why by way of a different account from your own.

To begin with, the way you asked the question seems to me to lead to a false dichotomy: either one thinks that FGM is “absolutely, objectively wrong,” or one is a moral relativist. But the options afforded by moral philosophy are much broader than that. Once again, I am not a moral relativist. But you seem to be a strong moral realist (“absolutely, objectively”), which is a very untenable position (ironically, it puts you in the company of Kant — though for different reasons from his own — and that should make you feel uncomfortable).

My position is that morality in the modern sense is the result of a process of evolution favoring pro-social behavior (not “flourishing”), which we can trace to other species of primates, followed by millennia of self-reflection and discussion among human beings (i.e., cultural evolution, which doesn’t enter into your scenario at all). As such, I think moral precepts are contingently (as opposed to absolutely) and non-arbitrarily (as opposed to “objectively”) true. Neither of those two qualifiers comes even close to moral relativism. The contingency arises from the fact that morality makes sense only for certain types of intelligent, conscious, social animals, like us. If we were a radically different type of organism we may have developed different moral norms, or perhaps no morality at all. Non-arbitrariness separates morality from, say, rules of etiquette. But ethics is often an issue of balancing contrasting rights and alternative norms of behavior, so that there may be more than one reasonable way to address a particular moral problem, and none of the reasonable alternatives may be objectively better than another one.

Let me give you a simple example before we finally turn to FGM. Consider Michael Sandel’s discussion of the recent practice of lobbyists in Congress to pay homeless or poor people to secure a place for them for a particular hearing in which they are interested (while presumably they have lunch at an expensive restaurant nearby). Some people consider the practice wrong, because it bypasses the standard system of queuing, which allows interested citizens (not just lobbyists) to attend congressional hearings. The idea is that buying a place in a queue goes counter to the egalitarian purpose of the queue, limits access to the democratic process by ordinary citizens, and undermines the integrity of the institution of Congress. Others, however, argue that the practice of queue-buying is justified because it deploys a market approach to the problem of limited seating (if you really want to go there, you show that by how much you are willing to pay), and it has the positive side effect of giving money to the poor or homeless.

Which view is absolutely, objectively right? Empirical evidence here simply doesn’t enter into it, since everyone agrees on the relevant facts (which, needless to say, are not “scientific” facts, but mundane, everyday observational facts). The way a moral philosopher would go about it (read Sandel’s chapter, it’s illuminating) is by unpacking the premises of the contrasting positions, exploring what they logically entail, thereby clarifying the problem. But at some point we need to decide what we value more: equal access by citizens to government, efficiency of the system, collateral benefits (such as money for the homeless), or what? There are plenty of wrong answers, but not necessarily a clear (absolute, objective) winner, and the empirical evidence — though relevant — underdetermines the problem.

And now back to female genital mutilation. As I said in the podcast (see transcripts above) I think it is wrong because I subscribe to a broader moral principle: that it is wrong to impose pain on others, particularly if unable to object, for arbitrary reasons. From the broader principle I derive my specific objection to FGM, since the reasons advanced by its supporters are indeed arbitrary. The qualification that followed during the podcast, and which may have engendered your confusion about my position, is that even though FGM is wrong, there are a number of consequences for girls who do not undergo the procedure when they enter the adult population, since they will be shunned by men in their own society. This sort of consequence very much affects the ability of those women to flourish, don’t you think? Still, I remain convinced that, on balance, and despite the risk of not being able to marry and have a family, FGM is wrong and needs to be condemned. In other words, I think those societies — and especially their male members — should revise their moral system. But this isn’t the result of any calculus about the women’s overall degree of flourishing, it’s the result of ethical reflection that leads me to condemn the practice despite the fact that women who do not undergo it, in those societies, will very likely have lower flourishing than they would otherwise.

Now, you can ask me where the broader principle that causing pain for arbitrary reasons to non-consenting human beings comes from. There we agree that by nature human beings recoil from pain and suffering, so that other things being equal this should be avoided. But I frame this within the context of my preferred moral framework, virtue ethics, not on an evolutionary account (because natural selection doesn’t favor flourishing — Aristotle himself was big on human nature, obviously without any input from evolutionary theory). Notice, of course, that there are plenty of other things we could ascribe to human nature (e.g., violence, xenophobia) which I think are wrong on ethical grounds, but which you would have a hard time criticizing (since they did evolve, possibly by natural selection).

[I should add, to hopefully prevent further misinterpretation, that we hardly need “science” to give us the basic outline of human nature, just like we don’t need, say, an fMRI scan to tell us that a girl undergoing genital mutilation is in pain. That said, in some cases we may want actual science, especially psychology, to come to the table with empirically relevant input.]

Finally, FGM is a bad example for our discussion, since we both agree that it is wrong, though we arrive at that conclusion very differently. Much more informative would be to debate cases where we disagree on the ethical judgment itself (perhaps the queue-buying one mentioned above?). That would be more revealing of our differences, but I guess we’ll have to leave it for another time.

Rationally Speaking podcast: the Pigliucci-Shermer debate on the science of ethics

In a special live Rationally Speaking, taped at NECSS 2013, Julia Galef moderates a lively discussion between Massimo and Michael Shermer, head of the Skeptic Society and founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine. The topic: Can science tell us what is "moral"?

This discussion comes after both men have tackled the question separately in books (Massimo's Answers for Aristotle and Michael's The Science of Good and Evil), and jointly in a recent debate on the Rationally Speaking blog. Questions under scrutiny include: Does "natural" = "morally right"? How do we make tradeoffs between different people's happiness? And what role should science and philosophy play in making these decisions?

Toward a science of morality. An annotated response to Michael Shermer.

by Massimo Pigliucci

Michael Shermer and I have been engaged in what I hope has been a productive discussion on the relationship between science and philosophy as it concerns the field of ethics. Roughly speaking, Michael contends that science has a lot to say about ethical questions (though he is not quite as reductive as Sam Harris, who contends that science is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to ethics). I respond that science provides informative background but grossly underdetermines ethical issues, which therefore require philosophical reflection. Michael’s opening salvo was followed by my response, with Shermer recently adding some thoughts, further articulating his position. The notes below are my point-by-point commentary on that third round. (Throughout, italics indicates Michael’s writing, with my comments immediately following.)

...I begin with a Principle of Moral Good: Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that leads to someone else’s moral loss...

Well, that sounds good (and mighty close to Kant’s famous categorical imperative), except for the significant degree of begging the question hidden in Michael’s principle (but not in Kant’s). What is a moral good? Reading the principle as it stands I would have pretty much no idea of how to actually act, or whether my acting would lead to someone else’s moral good or loss.

...Even if there is a God, divine command theory was refuted 2500 years ago by Plato through his “Euthyphro’s dilemma”...

Good point. So we have at least one example of a philosopher arriving at a major — and still standing — conclusion about morality regardless of empirical evidence or scientific insight...

...The Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has a severe limitation to it: What if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? ... This is why in my book The Science of Good and Evil I introduced the Ask-First Principle: To find out whether an action is right or wrong ask first.

Besides the fact that the golden rule is strictly speaking a religious, not a philosophical precept, I don’t see the difference at all. The ask-first principle seems to suffer from precisely the same problem as the golden rule. What if someone wanted to be hurt, or humiliated, or being treated as inferior? Would that make it ok? It’s not just 12-yr old girls belonging to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (to use Michael’s example) who may be morally incompetent or not sufficiently mature.

Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women.

This is just a parenthetical observation, Michael, but that study has been debunked, together with a lot of the other questionable “science” about gender we get from a certain brand of evolutionary psychology...

... applying evolutionary theory to not only the origins of morality but to its ultimate foundation as well, it seems to me that the individual is a reasonable starting point...

Two problems here: first, Michael confuses evolutionary explanations for the origin of morality with the much more complex, and extremely culturally dependent, context of modern-day moral decision making. Natural selection has pretty much nothing to tell us about under what circumstances abortion may be acceptable or not, whether we should pursue drone warfare, or whether health and education should be considered as human rights. Second, morality is an inherently social phenomenon, so I’d say that the individual is precisely the wrong place to start.

... The survival and flourishing of the individual is the foundation for establishing values and morals, and so determining the conditions by which humans best survive and flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality.

Natural selection has everything to do with survival (and reproduction), but pretty much nothing to do with flourishing. The latter, in turn, is an inherently cultural concept, that is difficult to articulate and whose specifics vary with time and geography. Which means that Michael’s “smooth transition” between is and ought is anything but smooth.

In his annual letter Bill Gates outlined how and why the progress of the human condition can best be implemented when tracked through scientific data...

This seems to me a good example of a recurring confusion on the part of those who claim that science can answer moral questions. No philosopher would doubt Gates’ statement. But that data becomes relevant only after one has already engaged in moral judgment and decided that we ought to reduce poverty. It is, rather, a very sensible way to check whether our actual policies are having the desired effect. Shermer et al. seem to confuse ethics with social policy. It is the first that informs the second, not the other way around.

This is why Bill Gates is backing with his considerable wealth and talent the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals program...

Good for Gates. But Bill Gates has also decided that public education is a rotten concept and has put his considerable wealth and talent in the service of undermining it. I think that was a bad decision, and yet I’m sure Mr. Gates can easily produce statistics that measure how well his misguided policy is being implemented.

A second example may be found on the opposite end of the economic scale in a study conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth” by the University of Pennsylvania economists Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers, in which they compared survey data on subjective well-being (“happiness”) with income and economic growth rates in 140 countries.

I am aware of that sort of survey, and I appreciate their value, as is clear in several chapters of my Answers for Aristotle (where I explore the relationship between science and philosophy in a number of areas of human interest, from morality to love). But “subjective” well-being has little to do with morality, since it is about the psychological satisfaction of an individual. That satisfaction can be easily increased by just hooking said individual to a perpetual drug machine, as philosopher Robert Nozick famously pointed out, something that can straightforwardly be argued would actually be morally wrong. Besides, again, morality is about how we behave towards others, not about how happy we feel.

Why does money matter morally? Because it leads to a higher standard of living. Why does a higher standard of living matter morally? Because it increases the probability that an individual will survive and flourish. Why does survival and flourishing matter morally? Because it is the basis of the evolution of all life on earth through natural selection.

Given what I have written so far, and in my previous post, I’ll leave it to the reader to unpack the above chain of reasoning and show where he goes wrong (hint: there are at two problems with it, but I may have missed an additional one or two).

The fact that there may be many types of democracies (direct v. representative) and economies (with various trade agreements or membership in trading blocks) only reveals that human survival and flourishing is multi-faceted and multi-causal, and not that because there is more than one way to survive and flourish means that all political, economic, and social systems are equal.

I’m afraid this is a straight straw man. To my knowledge, no moral or political philosopher has argued that “all political, economic, and social systems are equal,” so I don’t think this requires a response, except insofar as it shows that science enthusiasts tend to read little philosophy, moral or otherwise. (Which, of course, is fine, except when they then go on to make major claims about the limitations of moral philosophy.)

We know that belief in supernatural sorcery and witchcraft and their concomitant consequences of torturing and murdering those so accused is wrong because it decreases the survival and flourishing of individuals — just ask first the woman about to be torched. ... The ultimate solution is science and education in understanding the natural causes of things and the debunking of supernatural beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. And it is science that tells us why witchcraft and sorcery is immoral.

Not at all. Science tells us that witchcraft and sorcery are unfounded superstitions, not that they are immoral. If they were real, and people really used them to kill innocents, then it would be perfectly moral to prosecute the perpetrators (though not to burn them alive. But again, why not? Because we think torture and the death penalty are immoral on ethical grounds, since they respectively cause needless suffering and are done out of revenge, neither of which are morally salient reasons). Also, about Shermer’s “just ask” principle: clearly it won’t work. Just ask the murderer who is serving life in prison if he’d rather do something else with his life. Certainly his ability to flourish has been curtailed by society, but presumably this is happening because of a (philosophically) justified moral judgment.

There seem to be two major sources of error in Michael’s reasoning about science and morality. First, his insistence on evidence-based decisions is perfectly appropriate to the implementation of policies, but it is entirely unclear how it applies to the sort of issues that moral philosophers actually discuss. Just as an exercise, try reading any chapter of Michael Sandel’s Justice and let me know which of the questions that Sandel discusses so clearly would be settled by empirical evidence. Again, empirical evidence is relevant to our ethical choices but it grossly underdetermines them.

Second, Michael keeps talking about survival and flourishing in a single breadth, invoking natural selection as working to increase both. This is absolutely wrong. Natural selection increases survival, and even that only insofar as it assures reproduction (after that, good luck to you, my friend!). Selection has nothing whatsoever to do with flourishing, the realization of which completely breaks any evolutionarily based “smooth transition” between is and ought. Not to mention, of course, that Michael should know that natural selection likely also produced a number of nasty behavioral patterns in humans (e.g., xenophobia), which we have been trying  — in good part through philosophizing about them! — to get rid of throughout the past couple of millennia.

So, again, science — or more broadly, factual evidence — most certainly has a place at the high table of any meaningful discussion about how to achieve human goals and fulfill human desires. But philosophical reflection remains central to ethics because ethics is about reasoning on the implications of and conflicts generated by those goals and desires. To put it as Kant did: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

Towards a Science of Morality. A Reply to Massimo Pigliucci

by Michael Shermer

In this year’s annual Edge.org question “What should we be worried about?” I answered that we should be worried about “The Is-Ought Fallacy of Science and Morality.” I wrote: “We should be worried that scientists have given up the search for determining right and wrong and which values lead to human flourishing.” In response, the evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci penned a thoughtful response, which I appreciate given his dual training in science and philosophy, including and especially evolutionary theory, a perspective that I share. But he felt that my scientific approach added nothing new to the philosophy of morality, so let me see if I can restate my argument for a scientific foundation of moral principles with new definitions and examples.

First, morality is derived from the Latin moralitas, or “manner, character, and proper behavior.” Morality has to do with how you act toward others. So I begin with a Principle of Moral Good:

Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that leads to someone else’s moral loss (through force or fraud).

You can, of course, act in a way that has no effect on anyone else, and in this case morality isn’t involved. But given the choice between acting in a way that increases someone else’s moral good or not, it is more moral to do so than not. I added the parenthetical note “through force or fraud” to clarify intent instead of, say, neglect or acting out of ignorance. Morality involves conscious choice, and the choice to act in a manner that increases someone else’s moral good, then, is a moral act, and its opposite is an immoral act.

Given this moral principle, the central question is this: On what foundation should we ground our moral decisions? We have to ground the foundations of morality on something, and we secularists (skeptics, humanists, atheists, et al.) are in agreement that “divine command theory” is untenable not only because there probably is no God, but even if there is a God, divine command theory was refuted 2500 years ago by Plato through his “Euthyphro’s dilemma,” in which he asked “whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?”, showing how it must be the former — moral principles must stand on their own with or without God. Rape, for example, is wrong whether or not God says it is wrong (in the Bible God offers no prohibition against rape, and in fact seems to encourage it in many instances as a perquisite of war for victors). Adultery, which is prohibited in the Bible, would still be wrong even if it were not listed in the Decalogue. 

How do we know that rape and adultery are wrong? We don’t need to ask God. We need to ask the affected moral agent — the rape victim in question, or our spouse or romantic partner who is being cuckolded. They will let you know instantly and forcefully precisely how they feel morally about that behavior.

Here we see that the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has a severe limitation to it: What if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? What if you would not mind having action X done unto you, but someone else would mind it? Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women. Most men, then, in considering whether to approach a woman with an offer of unsolicited sex, should not ask themselves how they would feel as a test. This is why in my book The Science of Good and Evil I introduced the Ask-First Principle: 

To find out whether an action is right or wrong ask first.

The moral doer should ask the moral receiver whether the behavior in question is moral or immoral. If you aren’t sure that the potential recipient of your action will react in the same manner you would react to the moral behavior in question, then ask… before you act. (This principle applies to rational sane adults and not to children or mentally ill adults. Asking a 12-year old girl raised in a polygamous family belonging to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints if she feels it is moral to marry a man in his 60s who is already married to many other women is not a rational test because she does not have the capacity for moral reasoning.)

But what is the foundation for why we should care about the feelings of potentially affected moral agents? To answer this question I turn to science and evolutionary theory.

Given that moral principles must be founded on something natural instead of supernatural, and that science is the best tool we have devised for understanding the natural world, applying evolutionary theory to not only the origins of morality but to its ultimate foundation as well, it seems to me that the individual is a reasonable starting point because, (1) the individual is the primary target of natural selection in evolution, and (2) it is the individual who is most effected by moral and immoral acts. Thus:

The survival and flourishing of the individual is the foundation for establishing values and morals, and so determining the conditions by which humans best survive and flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality. 

Here we find a smooth transition from the way nature is (the individual struggling to survive and flourish in an evolutionary context) to the way it ought to be (given a choice, it is more moral to act in a way that enhances the survival and flourishing of other individuals). Here are three examples:

In his annual letter Bill Gates outlined how and why the progress of the human condition can best be implemented when tracked through scientific data: “I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”


One notable sign of progress is seen in this graph from Gates’ Annual Letter:


If the survival and flourishing of the individual is the foundation of values and morals, then this graph tracks moral progress because we can say objectively and absolutely that reducing extreme poverty by half since 1990 is real moral progress. On what basis can we make such a claim? Ask the people who are no longer living on less than $1.25 a day. They will tell you that living on more than $1.25 a day is absolutely better than living on less than $1.25 a day. Why is it better? Because individuals are more likely to survive and flourish when they have the basics of life. 

This is why Bill Gates is backing with his considerable wealth and talent the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals program that is supported by 189 nations, in which the year 2015 was set as a deadline for making specific percentage improvements across a range of areas including health, education, and basic income. Gates reports, for example, that the number of polio cases has decreased from 350,000 in 1988 to 222 in 2012. Is that a moral good? Ask the 350,000 polio victims. They’ll tell you. Or ask the 5.1 million children under the age of 5 who didn’t die in 2011, who in 1990 would have died (Unicef reports that the number of children under 5 years old who died worldwide was 12 million in 1990 and 6.9 million in 2011).

A second example may be found on the opposite end of the economic scale in a study conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth” by the University of Pennsylvania economists Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers, in which they compared survey data on subjective well-being (“happiness”) with income and economic growth rates in 140 countries. The economists found a positive correlation between income and happiness within individual countries, in which richer people are happier than poorer people; and they also found a between-country difference in which people in richer countries are happier than people in poorer countries. As well, they found that an increase in economic growth was associated with an increase in subjective well being: “These results together suggest that measured subjective well-being grows hand in hand with material living standards.” How much difference? “A 20 percent increase in income has the same impact on well-being, regardless of the initial level of income: going from $500 to $600 of income per year yields the same impact on well-being as going from $50,000 to $60,000 per year.” Contrary to previous studies, the economists found no upper limit in which more money does not correlate with more happiness. As well, on a 0-10 scale measuring “life satisfaction,” people in poor countries averaged a 3, people in middle-income countries averaged a 5-6, and people in rich countries averaged a 7-8 (Americans rate their life satisfaction as a 7.4). The economists’ conclusion confirms my moral science theory that the survival and flourishing of individuals is what counts:

The fact that life satisfaction and other measures of subjective well-being rise with income has significant implications for development economists. First, and most importantly, these findings cast doubt on the Easterlin Paradox and various theories suggesting that there is no long-term relationship between well-being and income growth. Absolute income appears to play a central role in determining subjective well-being. This conclusion suggests that economists’ traditional interest in economic growth has not been misplaced. Second, our results suggest that differences in subjective well-being over time or across places likely reflect meaningful differences in actual well-being.

Here is the figure for the relationship between happiness and GDP from this study:

Why does money matter morally? Because it leads to a higher standard of living. Why does a higher standard of living matter morally? Because it increases the probability that an individual will survive and flourish. Why does survival and flourishing matter morally? Because it is the basis of the evolution of all life on earth through natural selection. 

There are many more examples like these in which we can employ science to derive all sorts of findings that show how various social, political, and economic conditions lead to an increase or decrease of the survival and flourishing of individuals. This is why in my Edge.org essay I discussed data from political scientists and economists showing that democracies are better than dictatorships and that countries with more open economic borders and free trade are better off than countries with more closed economic borders and restricted trade (think North Korea, whose citizens are on average several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts because of their crappy diets). These are measurable differences that allow us to draw scientific conclusions about moral progress or regress, based on the increase or decrease of the survival and flourishing of the individuals living in those countries. The fact that there may be many types of democracies (direct v. representative) and economies (with various trade agreements or membership in trading blocks) only reveals that human survival and flourishing is multi-faceted and multi-causal, and not that because there is more than one way to survive and flourish means that all political, economic, and social systems are equal. They are not equal, and we have the scientific data and historical examples to demonstrate which ones increase or decrease the survival and flourishing of individuals. 

One final example on the regress side of the moral ledger: On Wednesday, February 6, 2013, a 20-year old woman and mother of one named Kepari Leniata was burned alive in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea because she was accused of sorcery by the relatives of a six-year-old boy who died on February 5. As in witch hunts of old, the conflagration on a pile of rubbish was preceded by torture with a hot iron rod, after which she was bound and doused in gasoline and ignited while surrounded by gawking crowds that prevented police and authorities from rescuing her. Tragically, a 2010 Oxfam study reported that beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft are not uncommon in the highlands of New Guinea, as well as in many parts of Melanesia in which many people still “do not accept natural causes as an explanation for misfortune, illness, accidents or death,” and instead place the blame for their problems on supernatural sorcery and black magic.


By now it seems risibly superfluous to explain why this is immoral and what the solution is, but in case there is any doubt: We know that belief in supernatural sorcery and witchcraft and their concomitant consequences of torturing and murdering those so accused is wrong because it decreases the survival and flourishing of individuals — just ask first the woman about to be torched. The immediate solution is the enforcement of laws prohibiting such acts. The ultimate solution is science and education in understanding the natural causes of things and the debunking of supernatural beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. And it is science that tells us why witchcraft and sorcery is immoral.

Note to my readers: What I am outlining here is the basis for my next book, The Moral Arc of Science, which I am researching and writing now, so I ask you to post your critiques here or email me your constructive criticisms (mshermer@skeptic.com). My role model is Charles Darwin, who solicited criticisms of his theory of evolution and included them in a chapter entitled “Difficulties on Theory” in On the Origin of Species. Of course, if you agree with me, and/or think of additional examples in support of my theory, then I would appreciate hearing those as well!

Philosophy & Science: Overlapping Magisteria

by Steve Neumann

Recently Massimo posted about Michael Shermer’s misguided attempt to claim for science what traditionally — and rightfully — belongs to philosophy. It is another episode in a recently growing trend, as exemplified by Sam Harris’ book-length treatment of the same matter in The Moral Landscape. For anyone convinced that ethics is ultimately the proper domain of philosophical inquiry (though philosophical reasoning can and should be informed by our best science), it can be a very frustrating experience to have to continually combat this rising tide of incipient scientism.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean we stand back and assume that the opposing viewpoint will ultimately exhaust itself. On the contrary, we should be more inclined to criticize positions that are becoming successful (i.e., popular); at the vey least responding to others sharpens our own way of thinking. In this sense, I must admit to a love/hate relationship with people like Sam Harris. Although I disagree with many of his positions, I have to admit that I admire his tenacity and his courage to stand alone and be criticized. And his popularity (or at least his controversial public persona) helps create the necessary conditions for a vigorous dialectic — and that is a good thing.

Harris’ central premise, which is essentially the same premise shared by Shermer and others in that camp, is that questions of value can at least in principle be reduced to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, and that these facts and their interpretations fall within the purview of science. Harris further maintains that the most relevant discipline here is neuroscience. 

Back in August, 2012, Philosophy Now published an essay by philosophers Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson entitled “Moral Enhancement”, where they essentially argue for a nascent program of eugenics, what they call the “biomedical means of moral enhancement,” or “moral bioenhancement.” Their reasoning is that the evolutionary course of the human species has left us ill-equipped to deal with specifically modern existential challenges like global climate change or warfare that may involve weapons of mass destruction, thus threatening to eradicate all sentient life on the planet. This echoes Sam Harris’ motivation for writing The Moral Landscape: “changing people’s ethical commitments ... is the most important task facing humanity in the twenty-first century.”

But, just as with Harris’ book, where he admits that concepts like “well-being” and “flourishing” are notoriously difficult to measure, Savulescu and Persson also acknowledge that “it is too early to predict how, or even if, any moral bioenhancement scheme will be achieved.” What these authors do have in common is an unflagging confidence that science will be able to figure it out. I understand this feeling of confidence. In fact, I share this confidence concerning many if not most things science tackles. But ethics isn’t one of them.

I think that moral reasoning and the related dialectical activity is the most important thing we can do in life. I believe this not only because of obvious existential threats we face, but because knowing “how to live and what to do,” to paraphrase the late poet Wallace Stevens, seems to be the most indispensable and perhaps even the oldest need of our species — going back possibly to the earliest emergence of self-consciousness in our evolutionary lineage. I mean, so far as we know, other animals don’t experience ethics (broadly conceived) as a problem; every aspect of their existence is determined or ordered by instinctual behavioral patterns. Obtaining sustenance, finding mates, avoiding dangers: these aren’t problems for them in the way ethics is a problem for us. We still face the same issues, of course, but our nature as social creatures and more critically our capacity for knowing that we know (and knowing we have the ability to choose between alternatives based on reflection), creates the possibility for doubt about which course of action is best, whether it’s deciding which personality type would ensure the best marriage or which hobby or career would give the most satisfaction in life. We humans do more than wonder which action is the most utilitarian (lowercase “u”); it’s also about which action is the most rewarding.

Despite Harris’ confidence in his moral realism, there is a streak of relativisn in his own approach as articulated in The Moral Landscape. In my own annotated copy of his book, I’ve marked six significant concessions to the variability of the concept of “well-being.” Most tellingly, when comparing moral well-being to the notion of physical well-being (i.e., health), he says that science “cannot tell us why, scientifically, we should value health.” Of course, Harris doesn’t see this as a knock-down punch to his general project; he goes on to say that “once we admit that health is the proper concern of medicine, we can then study and promote it through science.” Yes, that’s true; but the key words here are “study” and “promote.” Just think about the voluminous yet conflicting scientific pronouncements on health from sites like Medical Xpress: one week there’s a report that “coffee will make you live forever!”, and the next week they report that “coffee kills you faster!” (Full disclosure: I truly believe coffee will allow me to live forever. Of course, my cognitive apparatus may be compromised by addiction in this case.) Reading any of these medical news aggregation sites illustrates perfectly the amorphous nature of “well-being,” whether physiological or psychological.

And as a professional dog trainer, I have to ask: whatever happened to good old operant conditioning, the discovery that a system of naturally-occurring rewards and punishments determine and shape behavior? The principles of operant conditioning apply to all animals, humans included. There are four basic “quadrants” delineated by this concept: 1) positive reinforcement; 2) negative reinforcement; 3) positive punishment; and 4) negative punishment. 

Positive reinforcement is the idea that when a subject receives a reward for doing a particular action, then that subject is likely to perform that action with more frequency and more vigor in the future, and it results in lasting behavior modification in most cases. A classic example of this is the pigeon in the lab pressing a lever and receiving a pellet of food every time it does; the bird will peck the crap out of that thing!

Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is the idea that removing an aversive stimulus will increase the frequency and vigor of a desired response. As an example, think of that godawful buzzing noise you hear if you don’t buckle your seatbelt when driving.

Positive punishment is by far humanity’s favorite method of behavior modification (despite its inadequacy), and it entails introducing an aversive stimulus in order to decrease the frequency of an undesirable behavior. I hardly need to cite an example, but think of smacking someone’s hand when they reach for the cookie jar.

Negative punishment, on the other hand, is the removal of a desired stimulus or reward in order to decrease an undesirable behavior. Think of taking away your teenager’s video game privileges because he’s been bullying his sister.

The unique and most fantastic consequence of discovering these principles is that we are in a position to intentionally manipulate and exploit them, whether with other animals (consider the history of animal domestication for human benefit) or with our fellow human beings. We don’t have to simply rely on naturally-occurring environmental circumstances to trigger a behavior that we hope will happen. We all use these four quadrants in varying degrees every day, without really being aware of what we’re doing (or why), and without the sense that if we apply a little sophistication to our approach, we may be able to make more effective use of them. 

Of course, I think there is a bit of difference between changing behavior and changing beliefs; but if behavior flows from belief, then the principles of operant conditioning should be able to accomplish what we desire from moral philosophy, assuming we’re assiduous enough and creative enough to apply them properly. If we can succeed in changing behavior for the better, do we need to change beliefs? If we can succeed in indefinitely deterring Iran from using nuclear weapons against Israel or us, do we need to change their belief that we’re the Devil Incarnate? 

I think those in Harris’ camp believe that “science” — particularly neuroscience, but possibly even evolutionary psychology and the like — is a powerful shortcut to the type of behavior modification we’re all seeking. Harris contrasts the type of “science of morality” that psychologists like Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Greene do with the kind Harris envisions. He believes that theirs is important but ultimately insufficient. I also believe that the work of those like Haidt and Greene is important; but I think that it’s up to philosophers to be aware of and utilize the findings from this science of morality in their moral reasoning.

Interestingly, there was an article entitled “The Folly of Scientism” in The New Atlantis by biologist Austin L. Hughes, who takes Harris and others to task. Hughes blames in part the discipline of philosophy for abdicating its prerogative with regard to some intellectual matters, allowing the louder voices of the hard sciences to take over discourse on things like “values” and such. I’m not a part of academia, but based on published books, essays and blogs by philosophers, I don’t think Hughes is correct here. It seems more likely that scientists have simply become emboldened by and enamored of the success of their respective disciplines, and are thus riding that wave onto the shores of philosophical discourse, where they come crashing impudently down.

Unlike the dispute between religion and science, where most people believe the two approaches have nothing to say to each other, and where Stephen J. Gould famously sought to establish an ideological Switzerland with his notion of N.O.M.A. (Non-Overlapping MagisteriA), philosophy and science do overlap; and I believe the best course forward is to maintain and enhance the dialogue currently taking place between philosophers and scientists. Having prominent (or at least popular) thinkers like Shermer and Harris and others stake out their positions with verve, and having others muster an equally vigorous critique of their positions carries on the ancient Greek tradition of the agon, a good way of getting clear on how to solve the problems of our age.

Harris and others seem to be desperately seeking a way out of this intellectual morass we call moral philosophy. But why should we expect it to be anything but a morass? Why should we expect definitive or clear-cut answers to ethical questions? Instead of trying to settle once and for all the questions upon which humankind has meditated since time immemorial, we should strive for the best approximation to sensible answers, which will of necessity be moving targets (at a minimum, insuring job security for philosophers!).

A “science of morality” should result from the best efforts of philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists — and even economists — working in the most open, mutually-beneficial manner possible. I think that is what is actually shaping now, despite a growing tidal swell of scientistic sentiment coming from some skeptical quarters. And scientism needs to be countered both because it’s intellectually misguided and because it engenders endless misconceptions about science in the public at large.

Shermer’s piece was a response to John Brockman’s annual question, “What should we be worried about?” In my opinion, we should be worried about the usurpation of philosophy by scientists.