Resuscitating Morality in Public Discourse

I have been very glad to read the many arguments against David Brooks’ column announcing the end of moral philosophy. My own problems with what seems like the cyclical and predictable tendency for new scientific discoveries to signal the end of other modalities of knowing are reasonably well documented on this site. Insofar as I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to what I often can’t help but see as the aggressive imperial tendencies of some strong science proponents — somewhat ironically, it occurs to me that the most aggressive amongst the proponents are often not themselves members of the scientific community — that is not to say that I question the power of science’s explanatory model. It’s just to say that I think that as powerful as science happens to be that it has certain limits that ought not to crowd out other modalities of knowing. Mark had an excellent post on this point some time back when we were batting about the existence of God.

Wrote Mark,

Indeed, in insisting otherwise, both sides insure the continued conflation of science and religion, and both science and religion get demeaned in the process.  For instance, when religion gets up in arms over the teaching of evolution in science class and demands that intelligent design theory be given equal time – also in science class – it must pretend to be something it is not, and was never intended to be.  Religion is not science, and in attempting to gain acceptance as a science, it allows itself to be treated on the same terms as science.  In other words, it begs to be treated as if it were falsifiable, when the entire point in faith is that it is something that is unfalsifiable.  Worse, it forces religion to get tied up in arguments that have precious little to do with the elements of faith that are so very important: things like morality, conscience, meaning, etc.  And so it loses the forest for the trees, to use a cliche.

But similarly, science demeans itself when it used as a proof of the non-existence of god.  Science is not meant to provide unfalsifiable answers, nor is it intended to answer questions that can only admit of unfalsifiable answers.  To do so is to turn the scientific method on its head.  And in so doing, science demeans itself because it loses part of its very essence.

In all honesty, I think that my own cautionary tendencies around the reach of science are at least in part based on a cultural bug. Canada simply doesn’t house the same degree of religiosity as the US and so I don’t perceive myself to operate day-in-day-out within an environment that houses the same degree of antipathy towards science as many of our commenters here at the League do. To my own mind, and in the minds of most of those with whom I interact, the power and position of science in interpreting the world is largely unassailable, so the more pressing exercise is to stand up for those other, less buttressed but, I would argue, equally valuable modalities of knowing.

Post teaser: discussion of torture memos after the jump.

In that regard, John Schwenkler and hilzoy both performed thoughtful and insightful take downs of Brook’s assumptions around the process of moral reasoning.

Wrote John,

Even if we credit the emotions with the kind of role that Brooks follows Haidt and others in envisioning for them, that still leaves to be done all the work of systematizing all those axiomatic intuitions into a rationally cohesive structure; of working out the tensions, lacks, and – perhaps – outright contradictions among them; of developing a robust theoretical understanding of the good that respects those intuitions even as it moves beyond them toward an articulation of the deeper principles that make them true in the first place; and so on.

and hilzoy,

It’s one thing (and a very interesting thing) to ask: how, exactly, do we make moral decisions on the fly? But while that’s useful to moral philosophy in a number of ways, it is not directed at the questions moral philosophy tries to answer. Those questions include: which actions should we perform? What kinds of people should we try to be? What principles should we try to live by?

One reason to try to answer those questions is if you find yourself wondering: what, exactly, should I make of all those moral judgments I make every day? Are they just expressions of taste, or artifacts of my upbringing? Or could they be right or wrong? If they can, how exactly would one go about showing that they were? — You don’t have to be in doubt about your ordinary moral judgments to be interested in these questions; you just have to be curious about whether or not it’s possible to say more about them than: they’re the judgments I make.

But it was Razib Khan commenting on John’s original post who drilled down on my more pressing concern with this debate and the direction in which Brooks’ sought to take it. Khan wrote,

In short the more intelligent, for one, tend to be closer approximations to rational calculators than the less intelligent. My suspicion that only relatively modest plural moral structures are possible, as opposed to an integrated and coherent grand system, is due to the fact that I simply find it unlikely that most humans are have the intellectual disposition to engage in deep and concerted moral reasoning which involves more than a small number of propositions.

To which John responded,

Nevertheless, it still seems worth it to me for philosophy to try to work out maximally general theories when possible[.]

Which I think is exactly right. It seems as though we have largely turned away from that project, especially in the formulation of our collective question about “how we ought to live”. I’m not suggesting that it is obvious that such a project will be successful, nor that it will be easy (that seems to be the furthest thing from obvious). But I would offer that even the process of engaging in  such a project holds the potential for great benefit.

I don’t necessarily think that it is the case that there was a point in time when ethics and moral discourse occupied a larger or more prominent space in public discourse, but it does seem to be the case that there has arisen an active mistrust and suspicion about any formulation/analysis that mentions morality. In large part I think that mistrust comes from the fact that discussions of morality have to a large degree become relegated to the sphere of the religiously minded. It seems increasingly that when one reads a moral formulation on a particular issue, that said formulation is predicated on some appeal to religious doctrine or a value based on the word of God. In a society that features the twin creep of both secularism and religious pluralism, such appeals are problematic for obvious reasons of competing and contradictory claims.

This needn’t necessarily be the case and while I’m not interested in sticking any rhetorical shivs in the formulation of morality based on religious reasoning, I do think it is important that we recognize that there is a rich tradition of moral calculus that doesn’t base the strength of its explanatory power on religiously focused premises.The contemporary challenge, it occurs to me, is that there is a general skepticism about what moral discourse stands to offer us in terms of providing final answers on a variety of topics. In short, there is widespread disenchantment with moral discourse because it strikes many as impossible for any such theorizing to provide absolute or final answers. Ergo, what’s the point?

In morality, as is the case for philosophy in general, there is great value in the act of asking the questions even if no answers immediately arise. We benefit as a whole by cultivating a public and political culture where this kind of grand synthesizing and systematizing is seen not only as worthwhile, but, one step further, as something that ought not to illicit a knee-jerk suspicion. While we might not immediately, or ever, come to any firm and definitive conclusions about any variety of issues, we do further sharpen our capabilities around moral reasoning and bring to light a important and useful insights and arguments about ethical issues that will impact our thinking on and understanding of those issues. Unlike Razib, I am inclined to see moral reasoning as a muscle we can exercise and therefore stengthen over time. However, if we choose to take Razib’s position that such discourse is beyond the abilities of most, then we resign our collective public discourse to an exercise of largely pragmatics and that dulling of moral analysis only becomes more deeply entrenched than it already is. Our muscle will shrink  and atrophy over time if it isn’t used.

This correspondingly strikes me as a major challenge facing liberalism as a force in the twenty-first century modernist (or as Chris often likes to note: (post)modernist) malaise. A sizable chunk of liberal analysis about a variety of issues seems to be fundamentally resting on an appeal to pragmatism that actively turns away from making moral claims about the rightness of certain courses of actions. It is not surprising then that Barack Obama exhibits an almost obsessive focus on enacting reforms that have primarily to do with “what works”, this attitude is a natural outcome of the liberal abandonment of morality as a foundation of public policy.

And while it might be true that a shifting demographics in favour of outcomes that cotton to liberal perspective on the issues that make up the bedrock of the culture wars will inevitably win the day based on numbers alone,  there will remain a discussion that needs to take place over a much longer period of time whose content is moral in basis. An underlying whispering prejudice will continue to undermine any substantial resolutions if the moral components of those issues continue to languish in disrepair. Whether one is talking about the question of abortion and woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, the legalization of same-sex marriage, or the disparity of wealth and income that currently exists between the few and the many, all of these issues require the explicit recapturing of moral language to realize any genuine entrenchment as social and cultural issues. An unwillingness to even attempt such a project will result in all too predictable loggerheads, at the end of the day.

In fact, we needn’t look any further than the recent release of previously classified memos on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (aka torture) by the CIA to see how our skepticism around moral discourse has traumatic and destructive consequences. There are any number of pragmatic arguments that have been floated about why the use of such techniques was necessary and carried out.

But when push comes to shove, the ultimate argument against such actions is ethical in its origins: we ought not to torture other human beings regardless of the pragmatic considerations because doing so is an affront to human dignity. That the decisions to engage in those techniques went unchallenged by all but a small segment of the population is indicative of a fundamentally moral failing of the country as whole and can not be easily separated from the disinclination to place a moral discussion about what ought and ought not to be the case in a more prominent position when it comes to public life and national decision-making. It also, I believe, points to fundamental failing that occurs when we choose to  regard morality as a one sided affair and a sphere of discourse that obtains only in conservative/religious circles.

On the face of it, it might seem easy to ignore the ramifications of this topic or any other of the ramifications from our generally one-sided and abusive relationship to moral reasoning, the average individual might ask, “Sure, but how does that impact my life?” But the consequences for the kind of moral failing as allowing an environment where a seemingly exemplary government like that of the United States uses torture techniques are perhaps all the more insidious in their subtley, eating away at both the foundations of the country’s way of life and its degree of legitimacy within the world at large. The impacts might not be obviously felt by the average individual in an immediate, but their diffusion is already being felt by the nation as a whole. Those impacts stand only to compund in an exponential manner over time.

In this regard, it seems more important than ever that we re-engage in a full-throated discourse of the moral implications of our decisions and an effort to articulate a robust moral picture for our lives as lived. Difficult or not, morality remains a cornerstone of our obligation in charting a path for ourselves both individually and as a whole.

Tagged as: biological origins of morality, culture wars, David Brooks, hilzoy, John Schwenkler, moral discourse, pragmatism, Razib Khan, science, torture memos