Scientism

Apr 19, 2006

Who thinks about moral philosophy? Do you? If not, why not?

It seems that most people I ask about morality say something along the lines that they usually avoid thinking about that sort of thing, and that each person has their own morality, and that no one system is better than the other. Moral Relativism, however, seems to answer only the question of what other peoples' morality is - it does nothing to help you decide what you believe you should do or not do.

Science has been gradually eroding philosophy away since the enlightenment. Whereas Aristotle's "philosophy" included everything from physics to biology, few philosophers would dare venture into those areas anymore. Science has taken over almost every key area of philosophy - physics, ecology, sociology, political science, computational science, and psychology went long ago. Even traditional questions such as "what is consciousness?" have been taken over by cognitive science since the 1970's. These areas are no longer considered by philosophers because empirical science does a better job. So it becomes an obvious question - when will there be an empirical science of morality?

As much as it seems that ethics are in a separate category - that of something that simply cannot be handled by the brute experimental methodologies of empirical science - the track record is currently against it. Experimental methods do more to show how things really are than the logical propositions and analogies favored by philosophers. But moral philosophy is concerned with something fundamentally different - it is not a question of how things are, it is a question of how things should be. It is inherently loaded with human values from the outset. It seems that at best a science of morality could only describe what the outcomes would be if certain moral principles or systems are followed.

Stanley Sapon, author of veganvalues.org, argues that science has no place in ethics:

For valid answers to questions of science, address your questions to people whose way of knowing is through science. For meaningful answers to questions of ethics, spirit, conscience and human values, turn to people who follow other roads to knowledge.

In part two of the article, he provides an answer to where he thinks knowledge arises from:

There is yet a fourth dimension to knowledge - one that calls on still other human capacities. That fourth dimension is called "wisdom," and is something that takes place at the confluence of "facts," "feelings," "values" and "judgment."

But suppose we accept all of the vegan values - namely those of reverence of life, of belief in personal responsibility for action, of nonviolence. These are the goals of our moral system, these are the things we want our moral system to result in. The question is now how do we best achieve those goals? Is veganism really the best way to be reverent of life? Is it really a good expression of personal responsibility? It could be, for example, that well cared for animals providing dairy and eggs to a small local population does less to harm life than shipping a soy product across half the world. It could be that purist thinking and strict rules practiced by vegans turns others away from veganism, where a more relaxed attitude with less hubris would bring more people around to your values.

I propose that some smart scientists start to tackle ethics wholeheartedly - to try to figure out the efficacy of various moral systems. We need more than just intuition to figure out what actions would best fulfill our values.