Ethics as a science

It is a recent underlying theme that I have been promoting in this blog that ethics is not just a philosophical pursuit but can also be a science. I have searched for the best empirical framework within which to do ethics as a science and to date the best I have found is Desire Utilitarianism. I want to focus on this framework, as a scientific research program, here.

Ethics
This is the study of human social interactions. There are many questions here but the dominant one of relevance, in one way or another, to everyone, is that of problematic social interactions and their resolution. This is what Desire Utilitarianism is designed to address. Historically, many of these solutions have been presented as moral codes with differing foundations e.g. gods and different and disagreeing gods to boot , social contracts, universal rights, intrinsic value and so on and so forth. Ironically while many codes - but certainly not all - are roughly congruent, still there is widespread disagreement over these foundations and, most importantly, the differences between such codes,as themselves being a major source of problematic social interactions.

Preference Satisfaction
There has been interminable debate over these as philosophical issues - rational inquiry - more so in the popular arena, where the same well recognised and long refuted mistakes are repeated ad infinitum. Meanwhile, within the the specialist community of those who study these issues full-time, even as they differ on different bases for morality, there is widespread convergence on various forms of utilitarianism, most broadly stated as Preference Satisfaction.

For example Mackie with his error-theorist cognitivism and who is sometimes and, in my opinion, mistakenly called a moral anti-realist, Hare with his non-cognitivist universal prescriptivism, Singer with his act utilitarianism, Mills with his rule utilitarianism, Griffin with his informed desire fulfilment and even Moore with his moral intuitionism as well as numerous others including Hume, all with sometimes radically different bases do converge on something which can be loosely called preference satisfaction. Of course there are dissenting, significant and complementary voices (aretists, deontologists etc.) and these are not be ignored but I hold that this distinction - a broad agreement over a broad conception over Preference Satisfaction - serves as a major distinction between popular and specialist debates in morality.

However, whilst this alone is insufficient to be a science of ethics, this academic basis serves as the most likely best starting point to develop such a science. This is the angle that I have pursued. To choose to be as most orthodox as possible, or to assume the minimum amount of alternate and hence more controversial approaches, in developing this, maybe one could call it, a, for now, proto-science. This begs the question of what for our purposes here serves as a science?

A scientific standard
There are many discussions over what science is and I do not want to go over well trodden ground. Instead I want to focus on what particular aspect of what could be called a scientific standard. For any given domain the standard is partly specified by eliminating errors and minimising mistakes such that for any proposed solutions that persistently ignore identified and identifiable errors and mistakes are not science and can, sometimes, be labelled as pseudo-science. There is no justification for allowing and permitting or even encouraging such errors and mistakes and calling it a scientific endeavour. Here errors and mistakes are meant quite broadly and with overlap, with, if they are not synonyms, errors standing more for those due to a philosophical - a priori and logical - and mathematical - calculation - nature and mistakes more pertaining to data collection, cleaning and measurement as well empirically introduced and avoidable biases and distortions. This distinction is not important, but whether one encourages or discourages them is. Regarded this way when I say that Desire Utilitarianism is currently the best approach is not to deny that this is still provisional and is open to review, revision, replacement or rejection. It is, in my view the best, because it makes less errors and mistakes than any other proposed approach. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition to qualify as a full science, but is a minimum standard which other approaches fail to meet. This is a work in progress and there is much work to compare, contrast and criticise this with other approaches which will be developed in forthcoming posts, although many of these issues have already been mentioned in passing and already I believe are sufficient to make a case for Desire Utilitarianism (that it makes less errors and mistakes than other approaches).

Blockers to ethics as a science
There are a number of well known challenges to anyone who attempts an empirical, material, physical model of and application of moral prescriptions. I have already covered these at some length such as Hume's Is-Ought distinction, fact-value dualism and Moor's naturalistic fallacies and Open Question argument. These objections need to be taken seriously and not ignored, as other appoaches have and I have been quite specific as to how these can be dealt with and that they do not absolutely (sic) block a science of ethics. For a tentative summary see Objections to Ethical Naturalism and for earlier drafts see Hume's Is-Ought Problem, Facts and Values and The Naturalistic Fallacy Fallacy .

Defeasibility
Another related criterion for a scientific standard is that of Popper's demarcation criterion - falsifiability. This again, is a necessary but not sufficient condition to qualify as a science but if not met it clearly is not science (or proto-science) but is a pseudo-science to the degree it is claimed to be a science and, where there is no such claim nor implication, it is just metaphysics. So the question is whether the framework I am arguing for here, Desire Utilitarianism is defeasible or not. Again this has been mentioned in passing but I will address this point directly now.

External Falsifiability
This is criticising the framework itself.

Desire Utilitarianism holds that value is the relation between desire and states of affairs and that moral value is the relation between malleable desires - that can be influenced by social forces - and their affects on all other relevant desires. Morality is then about promoting desires that tend to fulfil other desires and demoting desires that tend to thwart other desires, promotion and demotion being done by social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward and punishment. Apart from desires there are no other motives that exist.

There are a number of claims here which are falsifiable. They will be just listed for now and it should be clear that these are defeasible claims. Future posts will examine this points in detail but much of this has already been covered and argued for previously.

• Desires exist.
• Malleable desires exist.
• Desires are the only motives that exist,
• Malleable desires can be influenced by social forces.
• Relations between desire and states of affairs exist.
• Relations between desires exist.

(Note this is not an exhaustive list but is sufficient for our purposes here) Indeed in setting the tone for a discussion the introduction of Desire Utilitarianism as in the above paragraph really just is a statement of falsifiable claims, and is also asserting that these that have not yet been falsified. Challenging these claims is an external critique of Desire Utilitarianism. Any other ethical framework needs to make equivalent falsifiable claims and where it differs from Desire Utilitarianism needs to falsify the relevant claim here to argue for such an alternative framework. (Desires as the only motives being the most likely to challengeable and will be examined sooner rather than later in future posts).

Internal Falsifiability
This is accepting the above falsifiable claims as not being falsified and to apply them in whatever scenario is required. There are many challenges here between Desire Utilitarians - or those just using this framework to test it out - and upon which they can differ and disagree. Some key ones are:

• Causes: have all the desire under question been established
• Scope: what desires are affected?
  
• Temporality: are future desires relevant ort discounted
  
• Duration: does the time frame capture all relevant desires
  
• Type: (related to scope) does one include the desires of babies, children, the senile, foetuses, animals?
• Measurement: How confident can the conclusions be, given the limitaion of data collection
  
• Target: What is being examined - actions, rules, laws, principles, cultures
  

Like any empirical inquiry any conclusions are at best provisional and open to review based on new evidence and argument. One common confusion to mix an external and internal critique. Any alternative framework should permit the equivalent internal critique and debate.

Conclusion
This has not presented the specifics of Desire Utilitarianism in detail as a science but initial drafts for this are in two previous posts Science and Ethics 1 : A Theory of Value and
Science and Ethics 2: A Theory of Prescription. To conclude Desire Utilitarianism is an empirical ethical framework and meets the requirements to qualify at least as a proto-science and any other ethical system needs to do the same or be discarded. A new task will be to examine the alternatives even if they do not or even deny the possibility of ethics as a science.

It is U.S.A. Election Day

So probably not many people will be reading blogs today worldwide but rather following the election. Why? Well whoever is President of the U.S.A. for the next four years will have a significant effect on the world.

As an outsider the consensus, based on numerous arguments and evidence, is that Obama is to be preferred. No-one is ideal or remotely great, but he is the better of the two options, especially after McCain cynically chose Palin. It seems the USA Presidential electoral system - or at least the voters - has no bias towards competence - the very socialist idea of anti-elitism, ironical that it was used by the Right in this election, so much for the tired political categories of Left and Right (or should I have said it is time for these to be retired?). Anyway this what McCain is relying on, hoping he will get elected with his choice of a blatantly ignorant hence most liekly incompetent running mate, just becuase he thinks that the electorate can identify with her. (Was there not a recent US TV series based on a similar premise of a female running mate who did become president? However, unlike here, the point there was that she was not incompetent) If for this reason alone, let us hope he fails.

Winston Churchill once said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. " I agree but that is no reason to improve the forms of democracy we do have. Anyway let us also hope that the shannigans of 8 years ago does not recur in this election.

The Brights and Morality

I have been a member of the Brights constituency and have been active at Brights meetings in the UK. A bright is someone who has a naturalistic worldview, well I am a self-declared naturalist, so I certainly qualify. However a Bright - as opposed to a bright (lower case) - is some who self-identifies with the aims and principles of the Brights Movement and I have done that too - although there is scant reason, in the UK to date, to use the label Bright -well I have self-identified...till now. Anyway to clarify why I have been a self-identified Bright:

The aims, which I endorse are :

1. Promote the civic understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, which is free of supernatural and mystical elements.
2. Gain public recognition that persons who hold such a worldview can bring principled actions to bear on matters of civic importance.
3. Educate society toward accepting the full and equitable civic participation of all such individuals

indeed you do not have a naturalistic worldview to endorse these, that is whether you beleive in god or not, have a religion or not, unless you are a bigot or uninformed, there is no reason not to support these aims, is there?

The principles include

8. The Brights movement is a positive force...The Brights movement is not by design an anti-religious force in society. The overall aim is civic fairness for all, which necessitates there being a place in politics and society for persons who hold a naturalistic outlook.

I wholly support this and, again, you do not need to have a naturalistic worldview to support this too, indeed what justifiable reason would one have not to?

So, as I see it, the Brights Movement is a civil rights movement and one that I have and hope to continue to support. However I see a problem beginning to occur. Just because you know that someone is a naturalist, just as if you know they were some sort of supernaturalist, one cannot logically determine what their politics or ethics is. Any could be left or right wing, a libertarian or authoritarian, a moral subjectivist or objectivist or something else. It is only from the specifics and details of their particular (super)naturalist worldview - apart from just being one or the other - that could tell you more. Just because some positions are more popular than others, such as the claim of some supernaturalists that also, optionally, believe in god and, again, optionally, tie this to morality, still there is no necessary connection between the two and the same goes for any other position.

Now today, as a Bright, I received the latest Newsletter and in it it mentioned a Morality Project Report. The first paragraph of the outline is spot on:

The idea of the “Reality about Morality” is to challenge the widespread presumption that ethical systems and morals are imparted to humankind by some form of divine being or power.

Indeed I have written about this in this blog on numerous occasions in many ways. There are two points here, first, I am espousing a version of moral realism - Desire Utilitarianism - a variant within the dominant consensus of Preference Satisfaction, which itself is derived from a variety of different bases, of modern moral philosophy. The second point is, contrary to academic and justified experts conclusions, that Divine Command and its variants is, in spite of having long been shown to be fatally flawed - not even wrong once could say - is unjustifiably popular and is a major source of bigotry against brights and as well as just Brights.

Now two consequential points result from these first two. Whilst I think that Desire Utilitarianism is the best available solution to date and am willing to discuss, defend, review and revise it on this blog, it would be naive in the extreme to impose this on all others who have a naturalistic worldview or, say, exclude them if they do not endorse this or at least some form of Preference Satisfaction. It seems that many with naturalistic worldviews are woefully ignorant of the latest thinking based on rational and empirical inquiry in ethics (i.e meta-ethics), still that does not excuse at all those supernaturalists who encourage or endorse bigotry against naturalists based on their ignorance too of meta-ethics and the unadmitted invalidity of Divine Command type theories.

The second consequential point is that I recognise that there are many methods using such means of persuasion including marketing and advertising to deal with the bigotry resulting from the promoters of Divine Command theories, which often relies on manufacturing moral cripples, who are unable to comprehend ethics without the artificial crutch of the church, synagogue or mosque. So, most definitely, this is one of the areas that the Brights Movement should be investigating and seeking solutions for, as a civil rights movement.


So what is my concern here? Well it is in the draft assertions of Area A of the project

Project Area A involves developing, in the form of a declaration, a scientifically defensible listing of statements regarding the naturalistic origins of morals. The declaration will be short, but it will cover the evolution of biological and social morals, starting from pre-human origins to the present.

Crucially it is the first draft - and I emphasize - it is a draft assertion:

A: Morality is an evolved repertoire of cognitive and emotional mechanisms with distinct biological underpinnings, as modified by experience. (23 studies)

Well I am sorry I totally disagree with this definition of morality. It is not a question of the number of scientific studies - in other words empirical inquiry - this is a matter of rational inquiry - philosophy - and, specifically, meta-ethics. Are the "evolved repertoire of cognitive and emotional mechanisms with distinct biological underpinnings, as modified by experience" to do with morality, I argue yes, as captured best, I think, in the neo-Humean beliefs and desires philosophical psychology approach. However it is a deep mistake to insist that this just is morality, whilst far, far better than Divine Command etc, it is still a mistake and not one I can endorse.

Now I am sure it is not just me but many, many others - all naturalists and all who support the underlying aims of the Brights Movement - whether they have self-identified or not - will also draw issue with this assertion. For sure, many of these would disagree with my own take on morality, buh that is exactly the point, we would still all be united, nonetheless, in disagreeing with this potential assertion becoming somehow part of what it means to be a Bright.

How does this actually relate to the aims and principles noted above? I do not know but if the Brights Movement is to thrive as a successful civil rights movement it needs to avoid the danger of alienating many of its constituents which is what this project will do. My tentative conclusion is that unless this is resolved I am no longer a Bright and will discourage anyone from being a Bright even as we still have the same aims in mind.

Intense Debate - End note

I never planned to post about Intense Debate but since I have started I might as well finish. I have used Intense Debate on other blogs and think it is brilliant. A very clever solution and one that I completely missed when I was, not so long ago, looking a business opportunities in the blogging world. And it offers a way for using blogs as a proper alternative to forums, I really like that.

However as well as it works on WordPress blogs I might have suffered, possibly, from being an early adopter, trying this on Blogger quite a while back. The benefit is that if you get something like this working you have tomorrow's solution today, the danger is that it might take too much time to get working, if indeed you can at all. Now I am an early adopter in all sorts of ways and recognize this dichotomy. I do not blame Intense Debate for me taking that risk, then.

However, blogging, as interesting and fun as it is, is time consuming enough and I realize I just want to use what works and focus on content. Certainly Intense Debate would significantly help in this respect - if I was or were to become again a regular blogger and to have generated sufficient responses to my posts. Well this blog is not at that stage.

I am more than content with Blogger's embedded comments for now and only wish that other blogs I comment on such as say Alonzo Fyfe's, Stephen Law's, Richard Chappell's and Massimo Pigliucci's blogs - to name but four - would update theirs to suit. Oh Richard just did his this week, it was simple huh? In fact all those blogs would greatly benefit from installing Intense Debate, far more than mine would. Still, since Intense Debate are currently working on importing old comments from Blogger into Intense Debate, I cannot recommend it at this point in time. I hope when this is solved that Intense Debate will post a comment to this effect here.

Part of my annoyance was due to wanting to use a great product rather than rely on inferior solutions such as that provided by Blogger. Innovative companies like Intense Debate provide a great service in preventing big companies like Google and Microsoft from keeping us locked into their inertia as if that is the way it should be. How could I include Google in that last sentence? Well Google's way of managing Blogger seems to be an early (?) indication that it is indeed starting to follow the well trodden path of Microsoft of being an innovative follower rather than leader, or maybe it is just a mistaken blip in my radar, we shall see.

Getting this blog going again

Well I am going to review all my posts on Desire Utilitarianism and will correct any typos, which means these old posts might reappear depending on how Blogger's and Feedburner's feeds update. I will then address any outstanding comments from those old posts and also think it a good idea to create a glossary to avoid repetition in the future.

I also intend to start monitoring topical issues primarily in the UK, the USA is more than adequately covered but it certainly needs it!

I will also review the Science Network's latest Beyond Belief series but probably do session summaries rather examine each lecture in detail - again I do not have the time and Alonzo Fyfe will, I am sure, provide a very good report and critique of the individual lectures.

Note that I do not have the time to write full length essays every day but will try and provide regular updates.