The Edge Conference on “The Science of Morality:” The Nature of Good and Evil

The Edge Foundation recently hosted a conference with the moniker, “The New Science of Morality,” It included addresses by nine eminent biologists, psychologists, and philosophers, all but one of whom were drawn from the ranks of academia. Their remarks, which can be found at the Edge website, were an interesting reflection of current thinking on the subject from a preponderantly left of center ideological perspective. As I share their interest in the subject I will post some comments on their talks on my blog. However, before plunging ahead, I will follow E.O. Wilson’s advice to those who would address the subject of morality, and “lay my cards on the table.”
Before one presumes to speak of morality and the categories good and evil that are associated with it, it is useful to first establish what morality is. As an atheist, I base my opinions on the subject on the following two assumptions:

• Morality depends for its existence on innate predispositions hard-wired in the human brain.
• The features of the brain responsible for morality exist because they evolved.

It follows from the first of these assumptions that morality, with its inherent categories of good and evil, has no objective, independent existence of its own. In other words, good and evil do not exist independently as other than mental constructs, nor would they continue to exist absent a mind capable of giving rise to them. As a consequence of this, good and evil cannot be derived or identified logically or scientifically as things in themselves, nor can they in any way acquire validity or legitimacy in their own right.

These conclusions seem counterintuitive to creatures like ourselves because good and evil seem real. We are wired to perceive them as real, presumably because they are most effective in promoting our survival when they are perceived as real. However, their only reality is as emotional responses derived from innate features of the brain. These emotional responses are present in nascent form even in human infants. They evolved in times utterly unlike the present for the sole reason that they promoted the genetic survival of individuals during those times. They can possess no intrinsic or transcendent validity or legitimacy not based on those origins, and it is questionable whether they even continue to promote our survival in the context of the modern world.

There is no such thing as “moral progress.” There can be no progress unless there is some goal towards which one progresses. In the case of moral progress, that goal can only be to approach the “real” good and move away from “real” evil. For that to happen, “real” good and “real” evil must necessarily have an independent existence and legitimacy of their own, but, as noted above, that is impossible. What we describe as “moral progress” is merely the expression of the evolved mental traits responsible for moral behavior in the context of rapidly changing human social organization, culture, and technological advances. The evolved mental traits in question themselves have changed little if any in the process.

It is interesting that conservative religious believers find it much easier to understand the reasoning behind and accept the above hypotheses than the type of people who attended the Edge conference. They, of course, base the legitimacy of their moral claims on the existence of a God. Remove God, and they have no trouble perceiving the fact that those who continue to claim that there can be such things as real good and real evil are sitting out on a limb with no tree attached to it.

In contrast, none of the academics and scientists at the Edge Conference, or at least none I am aware of, would argue that real good and real evil derive from a Supreme Being. In spite of that, they come from an ideological milieu that is heavily invested in the belief in its own moral superiority. Individuals in that milieu routinely refer to the actions and beliefs of others as “moral” or “immoral,” indicating acceptance of some moral standard that is applicable to everyone, and not just themselves. I am not aware of anyone among them who has explicitly rejected the notion of “moral progress.” However, if morality is the expression of evolved traits hard-wired in the brain, this presumption of moral superiority becomes indefensible. The extreme reticence of those at the conference to face these implications is quite evident in the remarks of the nine keynote speakers.

In later posts I will comment on the remarks of each of those speakers in the context of my own understanding of morality.

Quantum Mechanics and Free Will

Quantum theory is one of the most important and least understood advances in physics over the last 150 years.  Beginning with Max Planck’s supposition in a paper published in 1900 that energy could only be emitted in quantized form, it eventually led to the realization that, particularly at the atomic and sub-atomic level, it was more accurate to represent objects and their interactions, mathematically at least, in terms of wave functions and probability distributions than in terms of the deterministic prescriptions of classical physics.  There has been a great deal of speculation regarding the implication of these discoveries touching the matter of free will (see, for example, here, here, and here, and Google will turn up many more examples).  As often happens in such philosophical speculations (and as some of the authors of the linked articles themselves point out), the various hypotheses occasionally go considerably further than is warranted by what we actually know. 

One can’t really say anything positive about free will unless one understands what it is, and to understand what it is, one must understand consciousness.  Unfortunately, we don’t.  We can be more confident in speaking about what free will is not.  For example, let us assume for the sake of argument that insects are not self-aware or conscious, and they only react to their environment via instinct.  They may seem to make decisions such as whether to fight or flee, admit another insect into the hive or nest or not, etc., but free will is not involved.  Machines could be programmed to react in exactly the same ways.  Proponents of free will believe that, somehow, the human mind can consicously override such programming, and deliberately make choices that are not pre-ordained by physical law or instinct.  These choices, in turn, can alter the outcome of events.  Again, without resorting to supernatural arguments, we cannot state positively that free will exists because we lack sufficient understanding of what goes on in the human mind to do so.  We literally don’t understand what we’re talking about.  We can, however, discuss whether it is even possible for it to exist to begin with.

In that limited sense, the implications of quantum physics are profound.  If everything in the universe obeyed the laws of classical physics, there would be no room for free will.  Given a certain initial state of the universe, everything in the future would be pre-ordained by physical law, or so, at least, it has seemed to many great thinkers in the past.  In principle, we could create mathematical models that would predict the future with absolute certainty, although, at least at the current state of the art, the complexity of the universe is so great as to put such models completely out of the question.  We would just be along for the ride, and free will would be just an illusion.  In a quantum universe, at least we have some wiggle room. 

True, we still don’t know at a fundamental level what all this stuff in the universe around us really is, or why it exists to begin with.  However, we can demonstrate with repeatable experiments that it conforms to mathematical models in which probability plays a significant role.  Now if, once again, we are given a certain initial state of the universe, the claim that the future outcome of events is pre-ordained by the laws of physics is not as plausible in such a probabilistic universe.  The mathematical models may be misleading us about the true nature of things, but, in principle, an infinity of possible outcomes becomes possible.  In such a universe, it is at least possible for free will to exist, although it is hardly certain, and the manner in which it exists, if it does, must remain a mystery to us until we learn a great deal more about the nature of our own minds. 

That is the implication of quantum physics regarding free will.  From a classical universe whose eventual fate was written in stone depending on its state at some point in the past, we have proceeded to one in which many outcomes are possible, and free will is, therefore, not completely excluded.  It seems a rather limited implication on the face of it.  However, it’s comforting that a universe in which what we think or do actually matters is, at least, not out of the question.

On the Legitimacy of Virtuous Indignation

As noted in an earlier post, Mark Shapiro has informed us that he is “outraged” about the publication of the Journolist e-mails. Of course, as I write this, virtuous indignation is as common as dirt on both sides of the political spectrum, but the incident illustrates something I’ve occasionally referred to before; the disconnect between what morality is and how it is perceived.

Morality is a term used to describe certain manifestations of human behavioral predispositions hard-wired in the brain as we evolved. As such, it does not and cannot have any legitimacy in itself. However, when Shapiro tells us that he is outraged, he is not merely describing his emotional response to a given external stimulus. His statement also implies the claim that his outrage is actually legitimate and justified. Rationally, however, this is nonsense.

Since time immemorial, philosophers have been seeking a logical basis for the legitimacy of morality. None of them has ever succeeded in finding one, for the very good reason that the existence of such a basis is impossible. Good and evil are not real objects, things in themselves independent of human emotional traits. Rather, they are the outcome of subjective processes that cause us to perceive them as real objects and things in themselves. We all share this illusion, presumably because the perception of good and evil as real things is effective in promoting our survival, or at least was effective in times very unlike the present. As a result, when Shapiro says he is outraged, we immediately understand what he is talking about. He is referring to moral good and evil, things that we also experience as real, independent objects, and that most of us actually believe are real, independent objects in spite of the fact that they cannot actually exist outside of our imaginations. As a result, our response is not simply to reply “So what? What difference does your current emotional state make to me?” Rather, we wrack our brains for arguments to demonstrate that Shapiro is mistaken in his belief that he has correctly identified the “real” moral good, and to substitute a different, more legitimate version of our own.

In fact, one person’s emotional response can be no more “objectively legitimate” than another’s. As one of the quatrains of the “The Rubaiyat” puts it;

The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep
They told their comrades, and to Sleep return’d

The “ethics experts” of our own day are just the modern versions of the people the poet Omar was talking about. They are no closer to the truth than the Persian sages and prophets of long ago. In spite of the increasingly common acceptance of recent scientific revelations about what morality actually is, they continue as before, chasing the illusion. Before one announces one’s outrage to the world, it is well to consider the fact that one is declaring allegiance to just such an illusion.

The Rubaiyat of Edward Fitzgerald as a Critique of Islam

According to Voltaire, “one merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words that prose.” The Rubaiyat of Edward Fitzgerald is a case in point. It is a succinct refutation of the Judeo-Christian religions in general and Islam in particular.

I say the Rubaiyat of Edward Fitzgerald rather than the more familiar Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam because the version most English speaking people are familiar with, while it may have been inspired by the Persian poet, is really attributable to Fitzgerald. A book review in the Guardian coined the very appropriate term “transcreation” for it. Anyone reading the modern translation by Peter Avery and Heath Stubbs will get the point. Many of Fitzgerald’s quatrains bear only a vague resemblance to the original Persian, and others were apparently invented entirely by the English author. Taken together, however, they are consistent and effective critique of Islam, and an expression of the author’s own world view.

Fitzgerald was certainly an agnostic, and may have been an atheist. According to his bio-sketch at Wikipedia,

As he grew older, FitzGerald grew more and more disenchanted with Christianity, and finally gave up attending church entirely. This drew the attention of the local pastor, who decided to pay a visit to the self-absenting FitzGerald. Reportedly, FitzGerald informed the pastor that his decision to absent himself from church services was the fruit of long and hard meditation. When the pastor protested, FitzGerald showed him to the door, and said, “Sir, you might have conceived that a man does not come to my years of life without thinking much of these things. I believe I may say that I have reflected [on] them fully as much as yourself. You need not repeat this visit.”

If he did admit the possibility of God’s existence, and the inscription on his gravestone, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves,” implied that he did, he nevertheless denied that we should devote our lives to some divine purpose, or that we could expect any reward in heaven or punishment in hell for our earthly deeds:

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

and:

Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

He saw no reason to believe that any of the conflicting accounts in the different religions of life after death were factual:

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

Strange, is it not? That of the Myriads who
Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.

The familiar Moslem and Christian accounts of heaven and hell, were simply human fantasies taken to their extreme:

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some Letter of that After-Life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and
Hell.”

Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg’d from, shall so soon expire.

The revelations of the prophets were so much imposture:

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so wisely – they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their words to scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with
Dust.

The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep
They told their comrades, and to Sleep return’d.

Having excluded the existence of a God, or at least a God who had any claim on our affections or actions, Fitzgerald concluded that there could be no legitimate “purpose of life.”

Alike for those who for Today prepare,
And those that after some Tomorrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
“Fools! Your Reward is neither Here nor There!”

That being the case, deep philosophical reasonings to uncover such a purpose and make sense of human existence were futile:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door where in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own Hand wrought to make
it grow
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d –
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

If any answers to the questions posed by philosophers really existed, they were beyond the grasp of human understanding:

There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was – and then no more of Thee and Me.

Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn;
Nor rolling heaven, with all his signs reveal’d
And hidden by the Sleeve of Night and Morn.

Fitzgerald rejected the Moslem belief, reiterated over and over in the Koran, that humans will suffer eternal fiery torture in hell for “sins” which are predestined, and therefore unavoidable. He points out the inconsistency of such a God, capable of calling beings into existence from nothingness in the full knowledge that he would later subject them to almost unimaginable tortures for the paltry sins he knew they would commit, with the moral sense that very God, if he existed at all, must have planted in our consciousness:

Oh Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin’d Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!

But helpless Pieces of the Game He Plays
Upon his Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Such a God would be more in need of forgiveness than the creatures he created:

What! Out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the Yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!

What! from His helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what He lent him dross-allay’d:
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer – Oh the sorry Trade!

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken’d, Man’s Forgiveness give –
and take!

The poet elaborates on this theme with the metaphor of a potter and his pots:

And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man’s successive Generations roll’d
Of such a Clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould?

The pots speculate about why they were made, their purpose, and their eventual fate. Once again, Fitzgerald returns to the theme of the Creator as tyrannical monster, a being capable of calling into life creatures far more inferior to Himself than amoeba are to human beings, and then torturing them for billions of years because they didn’t deliver what they “owed” him, even though he knew in advance that it would be impossible for them to do so:

Then said a Second – “Ne’er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy;
And He that with His hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy.”

He elaborates on the absurdity of eternal punishment for sins that are predestined, and therefore not the fault of the created but of the creator:

After a momentary Silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
“They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?”

One of the pots suggests that such an irrational “potter” can only exist as a concoction of the pots themselves:

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot –
I think a Sufi Pipkin – waxing hot –
“All this of Pot and Potter – Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”

Whereat another agrees and concludes that the real Potter isn’t really capable of such an extreme departure from the notion of moral righteousness with which he has imbued his Pots;

“Why,” said another, “Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr’d in making – Pish!
He’s a Good Fellow, and ‘twill all be well.”

It seems such thoughts must occur to anyone who has the courage to question the validity of received religious “truths.” In the Islamic world, of course, the amount of courage needed is somewhat greater, because the penalty for apostasy can be extreme. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it is death. When the penalty for thinking is that extreme, truth must inevitably be a casualty.

Fitzgerald did think, and the world view he arrived at did not include a Master of an eternal torture chamber as God. It was, however, somewhat pessimistic. In fact, the poet accepted notions of predestination usually attributed to Islam:

With Earth’s first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow’d the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

It’s interesting to speculate on the effect the revelations of the probabilistic world of quantum mechanics may have had on such a deterministic world view. For that matter, it’s interesting to speculate on whether Fitzgerald’s apparent conclusions about the ultimate purposeless of life might have been moderated if he’d taken a closer look behind the veil that Darwin had lifted more than 20 years before his death. As it was, those conclusions were lugubrious enough:

When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the sea’s self should heed a Pebble-cast.

A Moment’s Halt – a momentary Taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste –
And Lo! – the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The Nothing it set out from – Oh, make haste!

There is some consolation in the fact that, if we must die, at least we’ve all been there before,

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in – Yes;
Think then you are Today what Yesterday
You were – Tomorrow you shall not be less.

Fitzgerald’s poem has touched more than a few readers over the years. In fact, more copies of it have been sold than any other English poem. I suspect many among those who can recite its lines by heart have come to conclusions similar to those above about what the author was trying to tell us. His quatrains have enabled them to repeat opinions they may have felt uncomfortable stating in so many words. As Thomas Hardy put it, “If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.” Fortunately, the inquisition is no longer with us, but, until quite recently, there have been serious social sanctions against “free thinking” in matters of religion in the West. Of course, those sanctions not only still exist, but are becoming stronger in the Moslem world. There is some solace in the thought that that world provided the inspiration for one of the most devastating critiques of its own theocratic ideology.

Edward Fitzgerald

Sam Harris and his Butterfly Net Revisited

In an earlier post, I commented on fellow atheist Sam Harris’ chase after that gaudy butterfly, the good-in-itself. Well, the chase continues. In an article that appeared on no less virtuous a site than Huffpo, he describes his recent progress “Toward a Science of Morality.”

His latest on the subject was inspired by feedback on a talk he gave at this year’s Ted Conference from, as he puts it, ”literally thousands” of people. It would seem that many of them are no more impressed by Sam’s quest for the holy grail of scientific goodness than I am. In his words,

If nothing else, the response to my TED talk proves that many smart people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from making cross-cultural moral judgments — or moral judgments at all. Thousands of highly educated men and women have now written to inform me that morality is a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions and, therefore, nonsensical, and that concepts like “well-being” and “misery” are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them. Many people also claim that a scientific foundation for morality would serve no purpose, because we can combat human evil while knowing that our notions of “good” and “evil” are unwarranted. It is always amusing when these same people then hesitate to condemn specific instances of patently abominable behavior. I don’t think one has fully enjoyed the life of the mind until one has seen a celebrated scholar defend the “contextual” legitimacy of the burqa, or a practice like female genital excision, a mere thirty seconds after announcing that his moral relativism does nothing to diminish his commitment to making the world a better place. Given my experience as a critic of religion, I must say that it has been disconcerting to see the caricature of the over-educated, atheistic moral nihilist regularly appearing in my inbox and on the blogs.

Well, I’d like to think that not all of those thousands of commenters were caricatures of over-educated, atheistic nihilists.  As Sam describes them, they don’t make a lot of sense.  For example, it is logically impossible to “combat human evil while knowing that our notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are unwarranted” because the statement itself is an admission that the speaker doesn’t know what “human evil” is.  Similarly, one can’t be committed to “making the world a better place” unless he actually knows what he’s talking about when he uses the term “better.”  However, Sam is no more logical than the opposition.  In the same paragraph he implies that good and evil must have a real existence by virtue of the fact that human beings are capable of strong negative emotional responses to practices such as forcing women to wear burqas, or female genital excision.  By that logic, God must exist, too, because otherwise there would have been no one around to create the world.  For that matter, I also have a strongly negative subjective emotional response to liberal “progressives” striking ostentatious poses of public piety.  That doesn’t mean that such people are “really evil.”  It merely means that my subjective identification of “out-groups” is different from Sam’s, a difference that human moral behavior is entirely flexible enough to accommodate.  Sorry, Sam, but human emotional responses are adequately explained as the expression of evolved behavioral traits.  They do not require the existence of real good and real evil.

Sam continues,

First, a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy. There are two reasons why I haven’t done this: First, while I have read a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “anti-realism,” “emotivism,” and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful.

Here I can only agree wholeheartedly.  My own thoughts on morality are based on the fundamental hypotheses that

1.  The human behavioral traits associated with morality exist because they have evolved.

2.  They evolved at a time when the nature of human relationships and human societies were much different in many respects from what they are in the modern world.

3.  Good and evil exist only as subjective mental constructs of the mind associated with these behavioral traits.  They have no objective existence independent of their manifestation in the minds of individuals.

Acceptance of these hypotheses requires, at a minimum, knowledge and acceptance of the theory that human beings have evolved as a result of a process of natural selection.  No pre-Darwinian moral philosopher could have understood or appreciated the significance of these fundamental assumptions.  Therefore, until someone can demonstrate that my hypotheses are wrong, it makes no more sense for me to learn everything they had to say about the real existence of good and evil that it would have made for Copernicus and Galileo to learn everything that had ever been written based on the assumption of a geo-centric universe. 

As for the modern effusions of the “experts on ethics,” they have a remarkable aversion to, as E. O. Wilson put it,” laying their cards on the table.”  In other words, they tend to wander off in obscure reasonings about good and evil without bothering to first explain to the rest of us why they believe such categories even exist, and, if they do exist, what the nature of their existence might be.  I have” laid my cards on the table” by setting forth the fundamental assumptions noted above.  They make it possible for others to agree or disagree with me by simply demonstrating that my hypotheses are right or wrong.  To the extent that the “experts” fail to lay their cards on the table in similar fashion, I consider what they have to say on the subject of morality irrelevant, regardless of how many articles they have published on the subject in scholarly journals.

Sam continues with the assertion that one can have a science of morality.  That is certainly true in the sense that one can seek to discover truths about its nature and the reasons for its existence.  One can also use science to examine the legitimacy of moral claims.  Hume realized long ago that good and evil are not objective things, and that one cannot, therefore, demonstrate their existence using reason.  That certainly doesn’t mean one can’t subject the phenomena associated with morality to scientific study.  One cannot, however, use science to create something that doesn’t exist.  If objective good and evil don’t exist to begin with, then they will not magically spring into existence, even if one invokes science until one is blue in the face, any more than God will spring into existence by virtue of the fact that he is subjected to scientific study. 

However, we soon discover that Sam does not refer to a “science of morality” in this limited sense.  In the following paragraphs he claims that the real, objective good consists in maximizing human well-being.  He does so rather subtly, as if embarrassed to make such a claim, but still, he makes the claim.  In his words,

I might claim that morality is really about maximizing well-being and that well-being entails a wide range of cognitive/emotional virtues and wholesome pleasures, but someone else will be free to say that morality depends upon worshipping the gods of the Aztecs and that well-being entails always having a terrified person locked in one’s basement, waiting to be sacrificed.

Notice that, though their definitions of “well-being” differ, both Sam and the worshipper of Aztec gods in the paragraph above are made to implicitly accept the claim that well-being can be equated with real moral good.  In later paragraphs, Sam confirms the surmise that he equates well-being with the objective good.  For example,

Even if there were ten thousand different ways for groups of human beings to maximally thrive (all trade-offs and personal idiosyncrasies considered), there will be many ways for them not to thrive — and the difference between luxuriating on a peak of the moral landscape and languishing in a valley of internecine horror will translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.

For instance, I think that Kant’s Categorical Imperative only qualifies as a rational standard of morality given the assumption that it will be generally beneficial (as J.S. Mill pointed out at the beginning of Utilitarianism).

These are all good questions: Some admit of straightforward answers; others plunge us into moral paradox; none, however, proves that there are no right or wrong answers to questions of human and animal well-being.

What we have then, is a version of Mill’s Utilitarianism with “well-being” substituted for “utility,” but with the added claim that well-being and objective good are actually the same, a claim that Mill, who explicitly rejected claims of “transcendental good” would never have made.  As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, I suspect Mill would have rejected even his own qualified version of Utilitarianism if he’d been able to sit on the shoulders of Darwin, but, unfortunately, he was born a bit too early.  He died some years after publication of “On the Origin of Species,” but before the implications of Darwin’s theory concerning morality had a chance to sink in.

In what follows, Harris addresses the objections to his “scientific morality” from a number of individuals, who all, oddly enough, agree with the notion, at least implicitly, that real objective good exists, and that it can be equated to well-being.  Far from denying that well-being and objective good are the same, they merely quibble about whether one can find adequate metrics to determine scientifically what “well-being” is.  For example, prominent among them is physicist Sean Carroll, whom Harris quotes as saying,

Surely all right-thinking people agree on the primacy of well-being.

Imagine that we are able to quantify precisely some particular mental state that corresponds to a high level of well-being; the exact configuration of neuronal activity in which someone is healthy, in love, and enjoying a hot-fudge sundae. Clearly achieving such a state is a moral good.

More importantly, it’s equally obvious that even right-thinking people don’t really agree about well-being, or how to maximize it.

And from biologist P. Z Myers, again, implicitly accepting the criterion of well-being, but rejecting the possibility of scientifically measuring it.

I don’t think Harris’s criterion — that we can use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals — is valid. We can’t… Harris is smuggling in an unscientific prior in his category of well-being.

Of course, the elephant in the room that all these comments and counter-comments studiously avoid is the validity of the claims that a) objective good actually exists, and b) objective good can be equated with well being.  In fact, Harris seems to be aware of this, as he belatedly gets around to moving from “is” to “ought” at the end of the article:

So, while it is possible to say that one can’t move from “is” to “ought,” we should be honest about how we get to “is” in the first place. Scientific “is” statements rest on implicit “oughts” all the way down. When I say, “Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen,” I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor doesn’t share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence? What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place?

This paragraph makes no sense for a variety of reasons.  To begin, the nature of water “is” what it is regardless of the value one assigns to the means of discovering its nature.  That nature does not depend on mental processes going on in the minds of those trying to find out what it is, and it would not change a bit if those minds were living, dead, or never existed to begin with.  Furthermore, the “ought” Harris refers to has nothing to do with a moral “ought.”  It refers to the effectiveness of methods of acquiring knowledge of the nature of water.  In other words, it assumes a goal, and assigns value to the different means of achieving the goal depending on their relative effectiveness.  If someone preferred an approach different from my own to determining the true nature of water, I might conclude they are wrong, but I would not conclude they are immoral. 

The “oughts” related to human morality, on the other hand, are associated with emotional responses in the form of innate predispositions that are hard-wired in the brain.  These “oughts” can vary somewhat depending on education and culture, but display striking commonalities across widely varying societies.  We experience them as absolutes, independent of their effectiveness in achieving one goal or another.  The behavioral traits associated with morality evolved because they promoted our survival in times very different from the present.  They are not relevant to any other purpose one might name, including the well-being of mankind. 

False conclusions can be dangerous.  For example, if we falsely conclude we can fly, and walk off a cliff, we will die.  False conclusions about morality can be far more dangerous.  When the Communists tried to associate morality with their version of the well-being of mankind, they did not succeed in creating a “New Soviet Man” whose moral behavior was infinitely adaptable to suite the purpose they had in mind.  Rather, they unleashed human emotions they did not understand, resulting in the greatest episodes of mass murder and brutality mankind has ever witnessed.  One can rationally discuss whether the “well-being of mankind” is a desirable goal.  Attempting to achieve that goal by tinkering with innate behavioral traits that are as yet poorly understood is to invite disaster once again.

Continuing with Harris’ remarks:

But the consequences of moral relativism have been disastrous. And science’s failure to address the most important questions in human life has made it seem like little more than an incubator for technology. It has also given faith-based religion — that great engine of ignorance and bigotry — a nearly uncontested claim to being the only source of moral wisdom. This has been bad for everyone. What is more, it has been unnecessary — because we can speak about the well-being of conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science. I think it is time we tried.

Yes, we can speak about the well-being of conscious creatures rationally, and in the context of science, but we cannot cause the well-being of conscious creatures to be identical with the real, objective good, because the real, objective good doesn’t exist, and one can’t call it into existence by an act of will.  Have the consequences of moral relativism been disastrous?  So what?  Objective good either exists or it doesn’t, and that reality will not be changed one iota by our conclusions regarding the consequences of moral relativism, or our dissatisfaction with the perception that science hasn’t achieved some noble end or other.  One wonders why Harris ever became an atheist.  After all, one can as easily claim that the decline in religious belief has been disastrous because it has deprived many people of a purpose in life.  Should we not, therefore, magically call God back into existence and make him “true,” out of concern for the suffering of these people?  If we conclude that seeing the color red has been disastrous, will it suddenly turn to green to spare our sensitivities? 

Harris doesn’t realize it, but his claim that faith-based religion is a great engine of ignorance and bigotry is itself a manifestation of human moral behavior; namely, out-group identification.  The statement is both untrue and morally loaded on the face of it.  I myself am an atheist, and would be the first to agree that religion is potentially harmful by virtue of the fact that it is not true, but “a great engine of ignorance and bigotry?”  I don’t think so.  On a general level it is simply untrue that religion has never resulted in anything good, and on the individual level, I know a host of firm religious believers who are neither ignorant nor bigots.  Harris’ identification of religious believers as an out-group in this fashion is a manifestation of moral behavior that is entirely similar to the identification of “the bourgeoisie” as an out-group by the Communists, or the Jews as an out-group by the Nazis.  It seems to me the results in those experiments in the creative application of morality did not contribute to the “well-being of mankind.”  Out-group identification is an aspect of human moral behavior that continues to be ignored as an inconvenient truth, but it exists, nevertheless.  To demonstrate that fact to himself, Harris need merely glance around him at Huffpo and take note of the furious ongoing demonization of political opponents.  If he really believes in the fantasy of a “real good” that is identical with human well-being, he might want to consider the fact that the “real evil” must inevitably accompany it.  It always has in the past.  Under the circumstances, Harris would do well to rethink his conclusion that well-being and moral good are identical.  As for the notion of “moral relativism,” I doubt that it even exists, except as a chimera of moral philosophers.  Most, if not all, human beings perceive the moral good as an absolute, because that’s the way in which it has most effectively promoted our survival. 

Continuing with Harris,

So it is with the linkage between morality and well-being: To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that a rational understanding of the universe is good. We need not enter either of these philosophical cul-de-sacs.

In fact, it is anything but exactly the same.  Is it really so difficult see that “the good” in the sense of a real, objective thing having an independent existence of its own is not the same as ”the good” in the sense of a useful method of finding the truth?  There is no similarity between good defined in terms of usefulness for achieving some preconceived goal, such as discovering truth, and good defined as real objective moral good, having an existence of its own independent of subjective human emotions, yet corresponding to the subjective feeling of Sam Harris and a subset of human beings who think like him.  Are all the recent revelations about the hard-wired origins and emotional nature of human moral behavior really meaningless and irrelevant?  I can understand the reluctance of some people to give up the only objective justification they have for the great joy they derive from virtuous indignation.  Unfortunately, that justification simply doesn’t exist.  There is no such thing as real, objective good, nor is there any such thing as real, objective evil, any more than there is a real, objective God.  By attempting to force them into existence Harris isn’t inaugurating a new science of morality.  He’s inaugurating a new secular religion, complete with an imaginary God of its own.

The Moralists Stagger On

Morality is a characteristic of human beings, and therefore, like every other characteristic of human beings, an evolved trait. Furthermore, the various physical features of the brain that contribute to moral behavior in modern humans evolved at different times in the distant past. At none of those times were human societies and groups organized into anything like the massive states, religious sects, political parties and international political organizations of today. The physical features in question evolved because they enhanced the likelihood that the individuals who possessed those traits and their offspring would survive. They exist for no other reason. There is no compelling reason whatsoever to expect that behavioral traits that evolved under conditions utterly different from the present will continue to enhance the likelihood of individual survival in the modern world, and certainly no reason to expect that any other identifiable purpose or goal can best be achieved by consistent application of some version of morality. We act morally because we are compelled to do so by our nature, and because there is no alternative to morality for regulating our day to day interactions with other human beings. Under the circumstances we make a virtue out of necessity by imagining there is a “true” or “legitimate” morality existing outside the realm of the mere expression of behavioral traits hardwired in the brain. In fact, there is not, and cannot be any “true” or “legitimate” morality. When we consider the nature of and reason for the existence of moral behavior in human beings, particularly in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the brain, that conclusion is obvious.

In spite of that, legions of moral philosophers continue their quest for the holy grail of a true morality, as they did in the days of Kant, and the days of Aristotle, and, in fact, since time immemorial. Logically, what they are attempting is absurd, yet they stagger on as before, clutching their tomes of moral philosophy. Many of them have accepted the truth, now becoming difficult to ignore in the light of recent advances in neuroscience, that morality is an evolved trait. Assuming that it is, then rationally, one is forced to the conclusion that all the musings of the old philosophers about what is “really” good are irrelevant except as historical curiosities. For all that, the deontologists, consequentialists, and other “experts” in ethics of every stripe continue their pontifications as if nothing had changed. One reads their papers, couched in the jargon of their trade, published by the score in scholarly journals with imposing reputations as if they were entirely serious, and wonders at the hubris of human beings in our belief that we are an intelligent species.

Hume on Morality

In 1729 the French Roman Catholic priest Jean Meslier left behind a Testament begging the pardon of his flock for the falsehoods he had been forced to teach during his life. It systematically and brilliantly exploded the myths of organized religion and demolished the notion of a God. I’m sure similar thoughts have occurred to countless human beings through the ages, but I have never seen them set forth so simply, forcefully, and thoroughly as in Meslier’s Testament, later somewhat incongruously christened, “Superstition in all Ages.” I personally rejected religious belief at an early age, and many years later found that not a single one of my reasons for doing so was missing from the pages of the Testament. Meslier did not require Darwin and his theories to reject religious belief. He simply recognized truths that should be obvious to any intelligent human being and set them down. Voltaire complained that Meslier wrote “in the style of a carriage horse,” but if the Testament was not elegantly written, it was simple, logical, and understandable. Anyone who wants to know the reasons I don’t believe in a supernatural being will find every one of them of any significance in its pages.

What Meslier wrote regarding religion is reminiscent of what another of his great contemporaries wrote regarding morality and human nature. I refer to the philosopher and historian, David Hume. Through the power of his logic, Hume grasped a truth that a whole generation of behaviorist psychologists denied, and that has only recently been vindicated thanks in large part to the development of powerful new tools that have enabled us to peer deep into the working brain. In Book III of his “A Treatise of Human Nature,” published in 1740, Hume set forth the reasons for his conclusions that morality has no independent existence of its own, cannot possibly be merely the result of culture and education alone, and has its roots in human nature. Quoting from the book:

…nothing can be more certain, than that it is not any relation of ideas, which gives us this concern (a sense of justice), but our impressions and sentiments, without which everything in nature is perfectly indifferent to us, and can never in the least affect us. The sense of justice, therefore, is not founded on our ideas, but on our impressions.

Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be derived from reason; and that becaquse reason along, as we have already proved, can never have any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.

Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.

If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, ’twere in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts, with which all moralists abound.

The utmost politicians can perform is to extend the natural sentiments beyond their original bounds; but still nature must furnish the materials, and give us some notion of moral distinctions.

Obviously, some of these conclusions are based on logical arguments set forth in the earlier books, as are Humes idiosyncratic definitions of terms such as “impressions” and “ideas.”  I heartily recommend that anyone interested in the development of these ideas read the whole book.  However, the point is that one of the greatest thinkers our species has produced didn’t require Darwin and fMRI brain scanners to realize that morality has its roots in human nature, and that it has no existence of its own independent of the human mind.  Now, nearly 300 years later, as attested by a growing flood of books on hard-wired behavior and evolutionary psychology, it’s finally starting to dawn on the scientific establishment that maybe Hume had it right all along.  I suspect the great man may have found it comical that the people who are writing these books are often the same Don Quixotes who continue to earnestly chase that gaudy imaginery butterfly, the good-in-itself.  After all, if their books prove anything, it is, as Hume himself so unequivocably pointed out, that the butterfly doesn’t exist.  Still, let us be optimistic.  One step forward is better than none.

David Hume

Frans de Waal and Moral Mysticism

Go to the website of any of the major booksellers and do a search with the keywords “evolution” and “morality” and you will find an avalanche of books about the biological origins of morality. Acceptance of the connection between these two words implies the slaughter of any number of ideological sacred cows, not the least of which was Communism, but these books generally mention the bitter, decades-long battle the ideologues waged against that acceptance only in passing, if at all. In fact, the connection between evolution and morality has always obvious to anyone with an open mind since at least the days of Darwin, but, of course, such people are rare, especially in academia. In the end, thanks in large measure to advanced neurological imaging and a host of other emerging assistive tools, the weight of evidence finally buried the ideologues.

They may have been buried, but they didn’t go away. The context has certainly changed, but the ideological struggle continues. Read any of the books mentioned above and you are sure to find some trace of it. An interesting example for those whose tastes don’t run to long tomes is a brief work by Frans de Waal entitled, “Primates and Philosophers.” De Waal is a professor at Emory specializing in the field of animal behavior. In Part I of his book he takes issue with “veneer theory,” something of a straw man whose proponents supposedly believe that humans are consciously competitive and selfish creatures, with morality merely a “a thin crust underneath of which boil antisocial, amoral, and egoistic passions.” Part II consists of critical comments supplied by Robert Wright, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Singer, academics specializing in the area of evolutionary psychology, philosophy, and bioethics. Wright is author of the recent bestseller, “The Evolution of God.” The final section of the book consists of De Waal’s response.

As we learn in an introduction to the book written by Josiah Ober and Stephen Macedo, de Waal and his commenters all “accept the standard scientific account of biological evolution as based on random natural selection,” and “None suggests that there is any reason to suppose that humans are different in their metaphysical essence from other animals, or at least, none base their arguments on the idea that humans uniquely possess a transcendent soul.” However, immediately following these caveats, we are also informed that “A second important premise that is shared by de Waal and all four of his commentators is that moral goodness is something real, about which it is possible to make truth claims… The two basic premises of evolutionary science and moral reality establish the boundaries of the debate over the origins of goodness as it is set forth in this book.”

I actually find it stunning that comments like that could appear in a book by a bevy of perfectly respectable professors as if it were a commonplace, not even worthy of further discussion. One recalls the comment by E.O. Wilson in his book, “Consilience,” that if these people really believe that “moral goodness is something real,” they should “lay their cards on the table” and explain why. I find myself reaching for the works of John Stuart Mill to reassure myself that, even though, like the rest of us, he experienced morality as a transcendental reality, he, too, grasped the irrationality of genuinely believing in that reality. Let me lay my cards on the table. Moral goodness is not something real. The idea that it is real is irrational and basically absurd.

If it is real, pray tell, what is the nature of its existence? Anything that is real in itself cannot depend on human minds for its existence. In what sense, then, would morality exist in a lifeless universe? It would, of course, cease to exist, because it is, in fact, a subjective construct of the human brain. There is no rational justification for morality as a real thing.

I know, I am wasting my breath here. After all, how likely is it that people who have spent their whole lives laboriously absorbing the tomes of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer will suddenly realize that, while these works may be interesting intellectual curiousities, the idea that they can serve as guides to “real goodness” is nonsense? I suppose I should be content to have witnessed the remarkable paradigm shift in the acceptance of the notion of morality as an evolved trait in my lifetime. It was always a stretch to believe that all the philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists who have spent their lives on the quest for the holy grail of “real moral goodness” would suddenly see the light when they grasped the connection between morality and evolution and stop cobbling away on their transcendentalist theories. The only problem is that this cobbling away is dangerous.

It is dangerous because, to the extent that these people concoct this or that gaudy chimera of the “good in itself,” they will ignore or reject truths about human beings that are in conflict with it. These notions prevent us from knowing ourselves, and, unless we know ourselves, unless we thoroughly understand our own nature and learn to control it, we ourselves will always pose the greatest threat to our own survival.

Read the book, and you’ll see the latest version of the “New Soviet Man” these true believers are aiming at. In their Brave New World, human beings will have finally grasped the “fact” that “society” includes all mankind, and universal brotherhood will prevail. It’s merely a question of recognizing “true goodness” followed by a little judicious “reasoning,” to the effect that, because a equals b and b equals c that, (surprise, surprise) we have really been evolving towards that “true goodness” all this time, and are perfectly suited for it, and, voila, the new straightjacket is ready.

To his credit, de Waal does take a brief peek at the emperor’s new clothes. As he puts it,

It should further be noted that the evolutionary pressures responsible for our moral tendencies may not all have been nice and positive. After all, morality is very much an in-group phenomenon. Universally, humans treat outsiders far worse than members of their own community: in fact, moral rules hardly seem to apply to the outside… Obviously, the most potent force to bring out a sense of community is enmity toward outsiders. It forces unity among elements that are normally at odds. This may not be visible at the zoo, but it is definitely a factor for chimpanzees in the wild, which show lethal intercommunity violence… In the course of human evolution, out-group hostility enhanced in-group solidarity to the point that morality emerged.

It mystifies me that anyone can grasp all these things and yet still, against all odds, fail to see the light. In almost the next sentence, however, we witness the good professor stumbling over the edge of a very familiar cliff;

Humans go much further in all of this than the apes, which is why we have moral systems and apes do not. And so, the profound irony is that our noblest achievement – morality – has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior – warfare.

I have some suggestions of my own. Let us reject the straightjacket once and for all. Let us finally jettison the intellectually bankrupt notion of the “good in itself.” Let us embrace morality as something fundamental about us that will always play a decisive role in our day-to-day relationships with other human beings. At the same time, let us grasp the fact that certain aspects of our nature have been and will continue to be highly destructive in the modern world, and represent, even now, a threat to our survival, and will continue to pose such a threat unless and until we learn to understand and control them. Let us give over the chasing of gaudy moral butterflies. Our intellectual powers are limited, but, if we are to survive, we must at least try to apply them.

Should we Survive?

As far as the species is concerned, it’s a personal problem.  The rest of the universe doesn’t care one way or the other.  There is no objective reason why we should survive.  Basically, it depends on our own whims, and there’s no reason to suggest that any one person’s whim should carry more weight than another’s. 

My own whim is in favor of survival.  I can give no objective reason for preferring it to the alternative.  However, the thought has occurred to me that we only exist in the first place because we have been good at surviving.  If I were to prefer not to survive, then, from a biological point of view I would be dysfunctional, and I find that thought distressing.  Subjective as it is, I can think of no more fundamental “good” than survival.  It may not be a good in itself, but, as a subjective good, it trumps all the rest.  After all, our very perception of good and evil, and the way in which we experience these categories, are themselves artifacts of evolution.  They exist for no other reason whatsoever than the role they have played in promoting our survival.  In that sense, then, all other goods and all other evils, fundamentally irrational emotional entities that they are, are ancillary to survival.  Survival, then, becomes the subjective “good of goods.”

Again, I am by no means claiming that survival is good in itself.  I am merely describing my own, personal emotional response to the circumstances I find myself in.  To put it in the broadest possible terms, I desire the survival of the life I carry, regardless of the manner in which it evolves in the future to accomplish that end.  It has been alive for billions of years.  In that sense, it is really who “I” am, as opposed to the consciousness writing these lines.  It would distress me to know that, after all those eons of survival, its fate was only to be extinguished in a universe that doesn’t care.

Ben Franklin on Nationalized Health Care

In 1778, while serving as Minister of the Continental Congress to the French government, Benjamin Franklin received an insulting anonymous letter from some British “gentlemen,” expressing contempt for the American Revolution and the scorn felt by ruling elites in all ages for the common people. His answer was interesting in the context of the current debate over nationalized health care. An excerpt:

The weight, therefore, of an independent empire, which you seem certain of our inability to bear, will not be so great as you imagine; the expense of our civil government we have always borne, and can easily bear, because it is small. A virtuous and laborious people may be cheaply governed, determining, as we do, to have no offices of profit, nor any sinecures, or useless appointments, so common in ancient or corrupted states. We can govern ourselves a year for the sum you pay in a single department, for what one jobbing contractor, by the favour of a minister, can cheat you out of in a single article.

We’ve wandered far from the vision of our Founding Fathers, haven’t we? They valued Liberty. Today the sine qua non is Security, not Liberty, whether for “liberals” or “conservatives.” The left would secure Security with state power. The right would secure it with torture, indefinite detention without trial, and the assumption that “terrorists” are guilty until proven innocent.