In the Long Cool Hour Amia Srinivasan
The Ethical Project by Philip Kitcher. Harvard, 422 pp., £36.95, November 2011, 978 0 674 06144 6
hese English psychologists,’ ultimate explanation of morality – not to Nietzsche wrote in 1887, ‘just what mention love, sex, religion and art – in brain ‘Tdo they want?’ scans and evolutionary just-so stories. ‘It is increasingly evident that moral standards, You always find them at the same task, whether practices and policies reside in our neuro- they want to or not, pushing the partie honteuse biology,’ the ‘neurophilosopher’ Patricia of our inner world to the foreground, and looking for what is really effective, guiding Churchland claims. ‘Our moral nature is and decisive for our development where what it is because our brains are as they man’s intellectual pride would least wish to are.’ Steven Pinker writes that the ‘human find it (for example, in the vis inertiae of habit, moral sense turns out to be an organ . . . with or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and random quirks that reflect its evolutionary history coupling and mechanism of ideas, or in and its neurobiological foundations.’ Thus something purely passive, automatic, reflex- Daniel Dennett feels able to claim that Dar- ive, molecular and thoroughly stupid) – what is it that actually drives these psychologists in winism is a ‘universal acid’ that ‘eats through precisely this direction all the time? just about every concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionised worldview’. Some Nietzsche’s complaint is not that morality neuro-evo evangelists, especially those writ- should be protected from explanation – this ing for a mass audience, take themselves passage opens On the Genealogy of Morality – not only to be explaining morality, but to be but rather that the ‘English psychologists’ explaining it away. All talk of persons and appear to be driven by self-loathing. Under character, just and unjust, the very idea of the cover of cool empiricism lies a ‘secret, moral reasoning, should be given up: we malicious . . . instinct to belittle humans’, must speak now only of brains, hard-wired or a disillusioned idealism, or maybe just ‘a through natural selection to serve the inter bit of everything, a bit of vulgarity, a bit of ests of selfish genes. John Gray declares that gloominess, a bit of hostility to Christian morality is a ‘myth’ obscuring the fact that ity, a little thrill, and a need for pepper’. our existence has ‘no more meaning than Nietzsche would no doubt have been just the life of a slime mould’. David Brooks, as wary of those today who look for the author of the bestselling pop-science Bil-
1 6 december 2012 dungsroman The Social Animal, explains that for moral reasons in a causal world. As a his fictional everywoman ‘Erica’ is slow to philosopher and historian of science, Kitch trust ‘Harold’ because ‘while Pleistocene er is wedded to Naturalism, the doctrine men could pick their mates on the basis of that philosophy should posit nothing that fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleisto cannot be found in our best science. Like cene women faced a more vexing problem,’ many Naturalists, he is convinced of the since they had to choose a man ‘not only for power of Darwinian theory to explain not insemination but for continued support’. only biological but also cultural develop- The widespread belief that scientific ex- ment, and wants to draw on it to elucidate planation replaces morality and moral talk – morality. But he is also a humanist – he has and its corollary, that science must be re- written in the past about political philo jected if morality is to be saved – labours sophy, the history of early modern philo under a confusion. Consider the question: sophy, and the aesthetics of Wagner and ‘Why does Sarah believe that it’s good to Joyce – and wants to do justice to the text keep promises?’ It can be answered in two ure of our moral lives. His goal is to provide ways: by giving a causal explanation of Sar- a meta-ethics – an account of the nature of ah’s belief, or by listing the considerations ethical truth – that respects the demands of Sarah might reasonably cite in support of both Naturalism and humanism. This isn’t her belief. When we answer the question in an easy thing to do. Most attempts to re the first way – for example, by saying some- concile ethics with evolutionary theory thing about the evolutionary origins of offend against humanism by equating what promising – we inhabit the world of cause is morally good for persons with what is and effect. When we answer it in the sec- evolutionarily adaptive for organisms – a ond way – for example, by talking about the mistake Kitcher himself criticised in Vault- special duties that are incurred when one ing Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for makes a promise – we inhabit what Wilfrid Human Nature (1985). Sellars called the ‘space of reasons’. The Kitcher’s attempt to devise a scientific mistake is to think that living in a world of ally and philosophically cogent meta-ethics causes precludes our also inhabiting the draws inspiration from Pragmatism, the space of reasons. We are indeed creatures American philosophical tradition developed of cause, living within and as part of the by William James, C.S. Peirce and John natural order; but at the same time we are Dewey. Pragmatists urged philosophers, creatures of reason. Our capacity to justify and culture as a whole, to let go of their pre- ourselves to each other, to persuade with- occupation with truth. Do not ask whether out coercion, is constitutive of our person- beliefs or theories are true, they suggested, hood, and as important for the scientist as but whether they are useful. Truth is a sec- for anyone else. ondary matter; progress, understood as the In The Ethical Project, Philip Kitcher at- more efficient satisfaction of human needs, tempts to show that there is adequate room is the fundamental concern. What makes a
2 6 december 2012 given belief true, according to Pragmatism, ancestors – unlike our primate cousins – to is that it survives progressive transitions in check the selfish dispositions that interfere human development, proving itself useful with altruism, first through the fear of soc before the court of history. Kitcher augments ially regulated punishment, then through Pragmatism with the conceptual apparatus more refined mechanisms like respect for of 21st-century evolutionary theory, and authority (including divine authority), the then applies it specifically to ethics. The setting up of moral exemplars – saints, result is a view according to which ethical heroes and the like – and, ultimately, fully- beliefs are true if they survive the course of fledged moral codes transmitted through human evolutionary and cultural develop- language and social institutions. The moral ment. Moral truths evolve along with us, and truths, according to Kitcher, are those be- because of us: the space of reasons is an liefs, for example in the importance of evolutionary product of the world of causes. keeping promises, that both resulted from Kitcher’s case for this view, which he and made possible this progress towards calls Pragmatic Naturalism, begins with our increased social harmony. early hominid ancestors roaming the sav In evolutionary accounts of human psych annah fifty thousand years ago. He argues ology, much hangs on how strong we take that psychological altruism – acting in the the connection between ourselves and our interest of another, in virtue of its being in prehistoric ancestors to be. Once it is con- the other’s interest to do so – evolved as an ceded that we are far more complex creat adaptation that allowed our ancestors, like ures than they were, and that culture is not present-day bonobos and chimpanzees, to exhaustively determined by biology – Kitch- live in co-operative communities.* (This may er insists on both things – it’s reasonable to seem obvious, but many evolutionary theor ask what we stand to learn from evolution- ists insist that displays of altruism among ary history. Can our contemporary moral our primate cousins are really just instances concerns – the trade-offs between liberty of Machiavellian self-interest. Some of these and security; the injustices of global capit theorists like to argue that the same goes alism; clashes of values and beliefs; the for humans.) However, our ancestors’ altru negotiation of desire; the formation of ident ism had its limits. There was always a ity – really be said to resemble anything temptation to cheat or defect when the pay- that went on in the savannah fifty thousand off was big enough. Resulting snags in the years ago? And if our problems are essent social fabric had to be repaired through ially different from those of our ancestors, painstaking sessions of mutual grooming. why should we care what innovations they (Chimpanzees spend up to six hours a day came up with to solve theirs? They would huddled together in moments of group presumably be in no better position to deal stress.) A new psychological adaptation was with climate change or gender politics than needed, which Kitcher calls ‘the capacity chimpanzees are today. for normative guidance’. This allowed our Anticipating this worry, Kitcher proposes
3 6 december 2012 that we think of ethics as a technology we adapted to facilitate the participation of have inherited from our hominid ancest everyone in the global community. Kitch- ors. Technologies are refined over time the er’s is a utopian vision according to which better to discharge their original function. everyone would enjoy not only material In the process, new problems arise, whose equality but also an equal opportunity to solution requires further refinement of contribute to the ethical project. the technology, which turns up more new problems, and so on. Ethics, Kitcher argues, n its insistence that ethics is creat was invented as a technology to overcome ed rather than discovered, Pragmatic failures of altruism, but as it was refined, INaturalism is directly at odds with new problems – new desires, new sources Moral Realism, the ascendant meta-ethical of social tension – arose, which themselves view among contemporary philosophers. required further ethical refinement. It is Realists maintain that there are universal, this dialectical process, which Kitcher calls timeless, mind-independent truths about the ‘ethical project’, that links our contemp what is right and what is wrong. In no orary ethical concerns, however distantly, sense is ethics ‘up to us’. Kitcher, like most with those of our hominid ancestors. Naturalists, thinks that a commonsensical, Kitcher ends his book by proposing that scientifically informed worldview rules out a much needed renewal of the ethical pro Realism. Clearly, there is no place for trans ject could be achieved by emulating its earl cendent moral facts in a world of blind iest phases, when, as he pictures it, bands particles and brute forces. To hold other- of our ancestors gathered together in the wise, as the Realist does, is to traffic in ‘long cool hour’ to work out how best to get suspect metaphysics, perhaps to indulge along, without deferring to the supposed nostalgia for an exiled God. moral authority of priests or philosophers. In bringing these charges, however, The primordial goal of ethics – overcoming Kitcher hasn’t been watching his oppon failures of altruism in order to ease social ents closely enough. The most prominent tension – is not, Kitcher thinks, being defenders of Realism today – Thomas Nagel, adequately met in contemporary societies. T.M. Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin and Derek Poverty and inequality are allowed to per- Parfit – explicitly deny that Realism carries sist because of our attachment to moral the heavy metaphysical burden Kitcher is codes and institutions that we should treat worried about. According to the Naturalist, not as immutable, but as provisional sol all genuine truths correspond to states of utions to social problems – solutions that affairs of the spatio-temporal world. Ethic can now be seen to have failed. What is al statements like ‘keeping one’s promises needed is a renewed attention to the orig is good’ either reduce to such states, or inal function of ethics, and a return to they aren’t true. The New Realists reject the deliberative principles used, if his hypo this opposition. Of course, some truths – thesis is right, by the early hominids, but like ‘Mount Kilimanjaro is a dormant volc
4 6 december 2012 ano’ – correspond to states describable by causal explanation, not as a demand for science. Others – ‘two plus two is four,’ ‘the justification. Feminism is justified not be- world financial markets collapsed in 2008’ cause women want to be treated like men or ‘Agamemnon’s downfall was his pride’ – and because it so happens that granting are not (obviously) reducible to such states, them equality doesn’t cause too much yet seem to be true nonetheless. So too with damage to family life: it is justified because ethical statements: they can be true with- of the equality of men and women. Simil out corresponding to any fact ‘out there’, arly, writing about the liberalisation of either in the spatio-temporal universe or in attitudes towards homosexuality, Kitcher some imagined Platonic sphere. The Nat argues that ‘accepting same-sex preference uralist’s mistake, the New Realists argue, rests on establishing facts about the pre is to think that all truths must finally be valence of homosexual desires and about accounted for in the ledger of science. The the consequences of expressing them.’ No Naturalists, they believe, are actually the doubt cultural attitudes towards homo ones suffering the theological hangover: sexuality have shifted in tandem with the they yearn to replace God with science. greater visibility of gays and lesbians and Even if one remains unconvinced that a with the deepening of public understanding metaphysically unburdened Realism is ten- of sexuality. But the question ‘Why should able, there is something compelling about we be accepting of homosexuality?’ isn’t the New Realists’ refusal to ground the satisfactorily answered by observing that space of reasons in the world of causes. For ‘homosexual desires are widespread and Naturalists, even when they are as sophist their expression is non-disastrous for soc icated as Kitcher, can sometimes appear to iety.’ Questions about what justifies claims be making category errors. Consider Kitch- of equality, rights and obligations must be er’s account of the emergence of feminism: answered within the space of reasons. What was discovered? Factual knowledge ad- The ambition, central to the Naturalist vanced: people learned that, under different programme, to ground the space of reas conditions of socialisation, women wanted ons in the world of causes always runs the things traditionally denied to them; that they risk of leaving all cause and no reason. But found satisfaction in attaining some of these this doesn’t mean that we should give up on things; that fulfilment of the wishes did not reconciling science and morality. What if, thwart desires previously seen as central to instead of the theoretical reconciliation female nature – public life combined more or less satisfactorily with family life. which Kitcher and many other philosophers chase after, we were to take a more prac This may or may not be a sound account tical approach? This would involve show- of how the feminist movement originated, ing, by example, how to speak in the lang but the point is that Kitcher interprets the uages both of science and of morality, question ‘Why do we believe that women without anxiously translating the one into and men have equal rights?’ as a request for the other. In a culture increasingly seduced
5 6 december 2012 by scientific discourse, a demonstration of Kitcher tries to defuse this problem by such bilingualism would be one of the more arguing that the method he proposes for useful things philosophy has to offer. ethical decision-making – that is, mutual deliberation – is one that leads to utopian, oes an unwillingness to re- not dystopian outcomes. By contrast, dys- duce reason to cause require us to topian proposals cannot furnish a self- be Realists? That is, does it require reinforcing method of moral adjudication. D Only such proposals as Kitcher’s – those us to believe that ethics is a body of eternal, objective, mind-independent truths? Real- that favour radical equality both of life- ists, unsurprisingly, say that it does. They chances and of participation in ethical argue that when we deliberate about eth decision-making – have the coherence nec- ics, when we seek to justify ourselves and essary for a viable ethics. There are two convince others, we tacitly adopt a Realist diffi culties here. First, there is no assur- framework. When we condemn torture, say, ance that mutual deliberation will save us we do so as if it were objectively wrong, and from dystopian outcomes: fascists are some not wrong just as a matter of taste or con- times democratically elected, and fear and vention. Besides, the alternative is unpalat- false consciousness are an effective means able: a world in which the permissibility to produce consensus on bad ideas. Kitcher of torture is negotiable is one in which is forced to invoke perfectly rational agents nothing is forbidden. The Naturalist’s re- making decisions in ideal conditions, but fusal to go along with the Realist leaves him this brings him closer to the Realism he open to the accusation that he has nothing wants to reject: if ethical progress involves to say in the face of moral atrocity. How pursuing an objective ideal, then ethics is would Kitcher respond to the proposal that not so ‘up to us’ after all. Second, it isn’t we might continue the ethical project – that hard to see that some methods of moral is, the easing of social tension – not by over- decision-making do effectively reinforce a coming failures of altruism, but through dystopian status quo. Deferring to the will genocide or fascism? If ethics is an adapt- of the Führer or Dear Leader might not able technology that we use to deal with enjoy the sophistication of Kitcher’s method social instability, isn’t it possible that our of mutual engagement, but as a model of ethical experiments could lead just as eas social coherence it can hardly be faulted. ily to a dystopia of systematic oppression as And yet the question posed by moral evil to Kitcher’s utopian democracy? The worry – how to vindicate the intuition that it ex- is not that our collective future might turn ists not as a matter of convention, but as a out to be ugly – no meta-ethical theory, matter of objective truth – might in the end Realism included, will stop would-be per- be a distraction. For there are other moral petrators of evil – but that according to reasons to favour Kitcher’s view of ethics. Pragmatic Naturalism, evil might turn out In his model of collective deliberation, to be good. moral experts – priests and philosophers –
6 6 december 2012 give way to a democracy of ethical decision- makers. Those who think that Realism is the only morally sound meta-ethics are often motivated by the belief that the most important thing is to be able to condemn atrocities as always and everywhere wrong. Anti-Realists prefer to think that people are ultimately answerable, not to abstract principles or divine commands, but to each other. We should take this view seriously not because it is demanded of us by science, but because it is ethically attractive in its own right. c
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