A Thesis entitled The Dream of a Scientific Ethics by Jorge Piaia Mendonca Junior Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy ____________________________________________________ Dr. John Sarnecki, Committee Chair ____________________________________________________ Dr. Madeline Muntersbjorn, Committee Member ____________________________________________________ Dr. James Campbell, Committee Member ____________________________________________________ Dr. Amanda C. Bryant-Friedrich, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May, 2018 An Abstract of The Dream of a Scientific Ethics by Jorge Piaia Mendonca Junior Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2018 In the present thesis, I analyze the idea of using descriptive/indicative statements, rooted in natural sciences, as a mean to derive prescriptive/normative moral statements. In the first chapter, I examine different attempts to develop an account of ethics based on scientific knowledge. I try to explain how some philosophers and scientists, namely, August Comte, Moritz Schlick, and Sam Harris, argued for a science-based ethics, why they were inclined to do it, and which problems their projects came across. I argue that each of these attempts fails to reach its goal. In the second chapter, I look at the work of the biologist/political philosopher Peter Kropotkin, as a case study. I also explain the development of the concept of altruism in science, addressing the limitations of different concepts of altruism. In this second chapter, I try to demonstrate how scientists can be misled by scientific results in the pursuit of the dream of a scientific ethics. iii Ao meu irmão, Gabriel, por me dar razões para comprar a briga contra a impassível mesquinharia que é engrenagem do mundo e por me fazer ver como a dicotomia egoísmo-altruísmo é redução grosseira do abismo sem penhascos que é o afeto. Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii Contents ............................................................................................................................. v Preface ............................................................................................................................... vi 1. The Dream of a Scientific Ethics ................................................................................. 1 1.1. Comte, Positivism, and Altruism ..................................................................... 5 1.2. Schlick and Ethics in The Vienna Circle ....................................................... 12 1.3. Harris and the Scientific Ethics in the 21st Century ....................................... 20 2. The Science of an Ethical Dream ............................................................................... 30 2.1. Kropotkin and a Cooperative Natural Selection ............................................ 31 2.2 The Concept(s) of Altruism ............................................................................ 41 References ........................................................................................................................ 57 v Preface The astonishing success of scientific knowledge, impacting every sector of life, reasonably encourages our trust in science. But this reasonable trust sometimes mutates into an unreasonable optimism. This mutation is not always clear and assumes different forms. In this thesis, I address an idea that I consider to be a consequence of such optimism: the idea that science, in addition to telling us how things are, can tell us how they should be. In other words, I address the idea of using descriptive/indicative statements, based on natural sciences, as a mean to derive prescriptive/normative moral statements. The fundamental problem that will be addressed in this thesis can already be found in the 18th century, in the work of David Hume. In his A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), Hume comments that some philosophers claimed that “morality is susceptible of demonstration”, and, even though “no one has ever been able to advance a single step in those demonstrations”, these philosophers had “taken for granted that this science may be brought to an equal certainty with geometry and algebra” (Hume, 1738, p. 330). Hume argued against the possibility of deriving morality from pure reason1, presenting different 1. This thesis will focus on the project of a scientific-based ethics, and not much on projects that want to derive ethics from pure reason, even though both projects often overlap significantly. vi arguments against it. For the purposes of this thesis, one specific problem mentioned by Hume will be particularly important. This problem is known as the “is-ought problem”. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the authors proceed for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning… when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it should be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it (Hume, 1738, p. 334). The attitude that Hume is reporting here is the attempt to deduce an “ought” from an “is”. Using more a more precise terminology, it is the attempt to derive imperative/prescriptive statements from descriptive/indicative statements. The British philosopher G. E. Moore (1903) introduced a similar problem in reasoning, which he called the “naturalistic fallacy”. While Hume focused on the problem of deriving ought from reason, Moore focused on the problem of deriving ought from nature. In short, Moore’s naturalistic fallacy consists in inferring a positive moral value from what is considered to be natural. In Moore’s terms, the naturalistic fallacy was “the supposition that good can be defined by reference to a natural object” (1903, p. 39). For Moore, anyone who argues that “because something is natural it should be acceptable or have a moral value due to its status of being natural” was committing the naturalistic fallacy. To assume that we can derive normative statements from what is natural can be considered a subset of the more general problem of deriving normative statements from descriptive statements. Years later, in the context of Philosophy of Science, Henri Poincaré presented the same “is-ought problem” focusing more on the linguistic aspect of the problem. He argues vii that “[t]here cannot be a scientific morality”, since “[i]f the premises of a syllogism are both in the indicative, the conclusion will also be in the indicative. For the conclusion to have been stated in the imperative, at least one of the premises must itself have been in the imperative” (Poincaré, 1913, p. 105). As Hare (1952, p. 5) explains, “[a]n indicative sentence is used for telling someone that something is the case; an imperative is not—it is used for telling someone to make something the case”2. In the context of science, or, more broadly, of natural philosophy, we assume that sciences are giving us descriptions of nature. Thus, the derivation of normative statements from the scientific body of knowledge is clearly problematic. Nevertheless, some philosophers believed that they could overcome this problem. The first chapter of this thesis will present how some of these philosophers—Auguste Comte, in the 19th century, Moritz Schlick, in the 20th century, and Sam Harris, in the 21st century—have argued for a scientific ethics. More than simply presenting the arguments of these authors, a broader understanding of the context in which such authors defended these ethical projects will be an important part of this thesis and will help the understanding of why the idea of a scientific ethics was (and still is) so seductive. After addressing, in the first chapter, the philosophical development of the idea of a scientific-based ethics and different arguments for such an ethical project, the second chapter will focus on the scientific aspects of scientific-based ethics. The attempt to use scientific knowledge to justify morality isn’t just a problem in moral philosophy, it can also be a problem for scientific research. Thus, if the first chapter will focus on the philosophical 2. Imperative statements aren’t the only form of normative statements. An evaluation of something, like “this painting is good” is a normative statement, too. These differences will be addressed in the first chapter. viii development of the idea of a scientific-based ethics, addressing examples of philosophers and their arguments for such ethical project, the second chapter will explore how moral values can have an influence on the scientific research and which mechanisms can be used in science in order to avoid such influence. It is a fair assumption to consider that regardless of the methodological differences between different disciplines of scientific knowledge, one thing that we want to be able to say about a proposition