Morality and Well-Being

Sam Harris, famous atheist and neuroscientist, wrote a book on how morality can stand on its own without being propped up by God. In his book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Harris grounds morality in the "well-being" of conscious creatures [including some animals] and "depends entirely on events in the world and on states of the human brain" into which science can speak. Harris defines good as anything that "supports well-being" and bad as that which causes harm: "It seems uncontroversial to say that a change that leaves everyone worse off, by an rational standard, can be reasonably called 'bad,' if this word is to have any meaning at all." Later he writes, "A rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures." This view is similar to 19th utilitarianism which held that morality is what promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people."

This is a worthwhile theory to consider, but there are some issues with it; for example, can we always know the greatest good? How do individuals experience the "greatest good" or collective happiness? If morality is determined by a state of the brain ("well-being"), how can we experience a brain state other than our own? As Stokes writes: "The maximum pleasure ever experienced by anyone is still that of a sole individual's brain state. A collective or additive happiness or well-being is something that no one experiences. It doesn't exist." And when this state of well-being is expanded beyond the human species to certain animals, determining the collective well-being becomes even more difficult. According to ethicist Peter Singer, our moral actions, in some cases, have to consider the well-being of animals: "[In considering pain] the principle of equal consideration of interests demand that we give equal weight to the interests of the human and the mouse." If a true, moral system is to tell us what we ought to do in any given situation, the task become more difficult when we have to consider not only the greater good of the humans involved, but animals, too. And since animals cannot communicate as clearly as humans, in many cases, humans would have to guess about the well-being of the animals and impart our values on them; thereby, risking protests of speciesism.

The other potential problem to consider is, how subjective are Harris' morals? Harris' morality seems to focus on "prudential goods"; that is, those that are good for the subject or the person. Prudential values appear to be conditional rather than absolute. There's always an "if"; for example, if you don't want painful cavities, you should go to the dentist. The lack of cavities is certainly a state of well-being, but not going to the dentist and avoiding the anxiety and discomfort of drilling is also a state of well-being. It's hard to declare from a state of well-being perspective that a person "ought" to go to the dentist. Harris' morality seems to be prudential...conditional. Non-prudential, moral values don't seem to be conditional in this way; for example, you ought to love your neighbor no matter what, regardless of what you or anyone else thinks; regardless of your goals, desires, or needs.

I guess the question is, can Harris' state of well-being morality tell us what we must do - what we ought to do? Does it have the authority and clarity?

A Mistake We Were Born to Make

Mitch Stokes begins Chapter 13 of his book, How to be an Atheist, with a quote from ethicist Peter Singer and evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser on the evidence for the evolution of morality:

[studies] provide empirical support for the idea that like other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics, we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong, interacting in interesting ways with the local culture. These intuitions reflect the outcome of millions of years in which our ancestors have lived as social animals, and are part of our common inheritance, as much as our opposable thumbs are.

Stokes summarizes the position: "The general picture is this: our moral beliefs have been fashioned over time to help us survive. 'Ethical' behavior tends to keep us alive long enough to produce the next generation."

But the question remains: Can evolution really explain our moral sense?

To atheists holding this position, everything people (or anything) does is for survival, even altruism. We are nice to other people - sometimes self-sacrificing our well-being for another - because that act will create a society or environment that is more likely to propagate the species. For example, by being altruistic to kin, we establish a close knit group - family - that serves as a positive environment to raise and protect children. So, even altruism is selfish.

Atheists argue that our sense of right and wrong has evolved to increase chances for the survival of the species. Therefore, morals do not come from outside of nature...not from God. Moral obligations are useful, and don't have to come from some authority; in other words, moral realism (objectivity) is not necessary. We may think that morals are independent of our minds - some objective standard we are tapping into from God - but that's not the case. Morals are just "common sense." As Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene writes:

...we are naturally inclined toward a mistaken belief in moral realism. The psychological tendencies that encourage this false belief serve an important biological purpose, and that explains why we should find moral realism so attractive even though it is false. Moral realism is, once again, a mistake we were born to make.

Evolution has been quite clever so far.

And, of course, if evolution has given us our moral sense, then that moral sense can change. We probably haven't arrived yet as a species, so our morals are also evolving. With time, then, do our moral beliefs improve? And if so what does that look like? If survival and propagation of the species are the trajectory, then one could argue that certain behaviors that we currently find untoward could aid survival: rape, aggression, xenophobia, and male promiscuity. More babies, be wary of strangers, destroy potential threats to survival. These are certainly natural inclinations, yet they now offend us. We choose to consider them wrong. As Stokes notes, since morality is up to us, however, we can choose to put rape and aggression on the immoral list. This is good news. But the bad news is that morality seems to be merely a matter of preference. We can choose our standards.

Finally, while the overarching goal of evolution is survival at any cost, "nothing in evolution says that you ought to value your own survival above all else." This sentiment is summarized by atheist Jerry Coyne:
"How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can't. Evolution is simply a theory about the process and patterns of life's diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the meaning of life. It can't tell us what to do, or how we should behave."

OK. Maybe evolution cannot tell us what we ought to do, but naturalists have posited other ways that we can account for objective moral standards without God. That's next.

Feeling Moral

In this chapter, Stokes answers some miscellaneous questions before he goes deeper into his argument in chapter 13, where he pokes at evolution to see how it can account for objective morality.

Here's some passages I plucked out that I found interesting:

No one - or no one I know - thinks that atheists can behave [morally]. Atheists can love their spouses, care for the poor, desire world peace, and enjoy long walks on the beach. Atheists can behave in accord with traditional moral standards, regardless of whether naturalism can ground these standards. We've all seen it done. The real question is whether naturalism can support or account for the moral standards themselves.

We have such a powerful sense of objective right and wrong that we often can't imagine alternatives....And therefore many people - philosophers included - mistake the strength and universality of our moral beliefs for an argument that these beliefs are true. Atheist philosopher Kai Neilsen claims that morality needs not be justified by religion. Why does he think this? He explains:
"Torturing human beings is vile; exploiting and degrading human beings is through and through evil; cruelty to human beings and animals is, morally speaking, unacceptable; and treating one's promises lightly or being careless about the truth is wrong. If we know anything to be wrong we know these things to be wrong and they would be wrong and just as wrong in a Godless world and in a world in which personal annihilation is inevitable as in a world with God and in which there is eternal life."

[Yes, but to say that] "we all know these things are wrong, and that they would be wrong even if there were no God, is to beg the question. After all, this is what we're questioning. At this point...this is a conclusion that must be argued for, not merely restated." In other words, if we grant that we all know these things are wrong, we have to ask what makes them wrong. That's the goal.

Stokes goes on to show how Hume - the great skeptic - concluded that morals are subjective, but they feel like they are not. Yet - according to Hume - this should not be disconcerting because even though morals are subjective, we feel and act as if they are not. That is they seem objective and humans act accordingly. We get the authority of objective morals without having to admit that we are beholden to a supernatural law giver. Most naturalist do not follow Hume to this conclusion that there is nothing more to morals than the strength of our convictions, but if that is the case, what is the naturalists justification for our morals? If they are to hold to their sober skepticism, they'll need to base morals on something more than strong feelings.

For help. let's turn to Darwin.

The Enlightenment Project

Beginning in Chapter 11 to the end of the book, Stokes sets out to challenge "The Enlightenment Project," an attempt starting during the Enlightenment to ground morality in something else than God. Stokes will argue "that given the very nature of morality, if God does not exist - that is, if naturalism is true - there can be no morality in the robust sense that we understand it. Morality, whatever else it turned out to be, would be grounded in nothing more than human preference." Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer agrees:

Without the notion of an independent moral reality to back them up, however, claims made on behalf of these moral rules or principles can be no more than expressions of personal preferences which, from the collective point of view, should receive no more weight than other preferences.

From all of this, Stokes will argue the following point: If naturalism is true - if God does not exist and everything arises from natural causes and laws - then there is no morality. By "no morality" Stokes means there is not objective morality, no morality that is independent of human beliefs and desires. And if this is the case, then morality wouldn't have the kind of authority we need. As the great atheist J.L. Mackie wrote:

We need morality to regulate interpersonal relations, to control some of the ways in which people behave towards one another, often in opposition to contrary inclinations. We therefore want our moral judgments to be authoritative for other agents as well as for ourselves: objective validity would give them the authority required.

Atheists, obviously, hold that there can be morality without God. Stokes - applying our grid of sober skepticism - will attempt to show that this position should - at minimal - be controversial, and is, more than likely, untenable.

God: The Failed Hypothesis?

Stokes closes this part of the book, with this question: Could science ever show that God doesn't exist?
For those who are already committed to believing that naturalism is true, then of course God cannot exist. Stokes quotes from scientist Lee Smolin:

It is true that the universe is as beautiful as it is intricately structured. But it cannot have been made by anything that exists outside it, for by definition the universe is all there is, and there can be nothing outside it. And, by definition, neither can there have been anything before the universe that caused it, for if anything existed it must have been part of the universe. So the first principle of cosmology must be "There is nothing outside the universe."

One way to show that God does not exist is to assume the impossibility of his existence. Here, naturalism assumes that nothing can exist outside the universe. Ok...can you prove that? No. It is a presupposition.

Another approach to proving God does not exist is to assume that people believe in God as a source of explanation. How else can we explain this "beautiful" and "intricately structured" world? If science can show that there's a perfectly natural explanation for the universe, then this would remove the reasons for believing in God. This seems like a reasonable argument, but it falls short because - for the vast majority of people - they don't believe in God because his existence provides the best explanation for the world and everything in it. It's mostly quite the opposite: People already believe in God and, therefore, he becomes the source of explanation of the universe. Scientific theories that challenge my beliefs may cause some consternation, but I'm not going to abandon my believe in God because God is not fundamentally a scientific hypothesis that is subject to inference. It is the result of a personal revelation and relationship with him. Credo ut intelligam: "I believe so that I may understand" not "I understand in order that I may believe."

And even if scientists like Hawking were entirely successful in their arguments, the most they may be able to show is that it's not impossible that God didn't create the universe. They offer an alternative explanation. OK. But an "it's not impossible that God didn't create the universe" argument is not that impressive. Hardly a slam dunk.

To end this chapter, Stokes poses a "what if": What if science can show that it can explain everything and that there is no being such as God. It is nowhere near accomplishing this, but Stokes concedes the point for sake of argument. Suppose Hawking and friends are right. What follows from this?

In the last part of the book, Stokes explores the state of morality in a world without God.

God and Physics

In this chapter, Stokes brings home the notion that physics is not good at metaphysics; that is, physics helps us a lot in the observable realm, but is not trustworthy at all regarding the unobservable realm. Stokes summarizes:

Let’s land the plane on the whole discussion and turn to the question of whether science has shown that God doesn’t exist (or, more modestly, that it provides at least some good evidence that he doesn’t). It seems to me that we can say with a modicum of confidence that if science doesn’t get it right about the basic elements of nature – the constitution and behavior of matter, energy, and spacetime, for example – then there are good reasons to doubt what it says about such “unobservables” as God, angels, demons, the soul, and the afterlife. Even if none of these existed, science wouldn’t necessarily be the most reliable source of this gloomy news.

But Stokes also warns about “religious physics-based metaphysics” too. This is interesting. Thinkers like William Lane Craig and Hugh Ross use scientific theories to provide evidence of God’s existence. They will use theories about dark matter and quantum mechanics to demonstrate that science and faith are aligned. The apologetic is: If you believe in science, you should believe in God. But as we have seen, scientific theories come and go. When they go, does evidence for God go with them? We need to be cautious in making these connections.

This type of evidence is often used in the intelligent design argument. As we study life around us, things look designed. Evidence from how humans build things spills over to how God builds things. We infer design from evidence. Stokes argues for caution even here. He thinks this notion of design comes not from inference, but from a God given instinct (Stokes does not cite this, but Romans 1:19 might help here) to form belief in God, what John Calvin calls sensus divinitatis. Interesting and something to think about. Either way, the point is we need to use caution when attaching God’s existence to temporal and often erroneous conclusions from scientific inference.

God give us science so we can learn about him and his world. Like many things in life, we do not see things perfectly. It’s the nature of a fallen world. But we are getting better at understanding his world through science. Why doesn’t God just show us the truth all at once instead of allowing us to fumble around and learn about his universe just a little at a time? I don’t know. As Stokes points out, it’s analogous to the problem of evil. We don’t fully know why God allows horrible atrocities to occur in this life. But we do know that all things – even evil things – work together for good. They are part of his plan.

The failures – and the triumphs – of science are also part of his plan. In the end of this age, perhaps then, it will all be perfectly clear.

Unraveling String Theory

Newtonian physics ruled the day until the early 1900's when quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity shocked the scientific world. Together, these two theories seemed to account for the entire universe: quantum mechanics takes care of the subatomic world, while general relativity handles everything else. However, neither one by itself can explain how the universe works and their explanations for how the universe works are completely incompatible with one another. Physicist Brian Greene writes, "When the equations of general relativity commingle with those of quantum mechanics, the result is disastrous. The equations break down entirely." Physicists have been living with this problem for decades because, basically, the discipline is bifurcated: "In all but the most extreme situations, physicists study things that are either small and light (like atoms and constituents) or things that are huge and heavy (stars and galaxies), but not both. This means that they need use only quantum mechanics or only general relativity...." However, physicists do need a theory that can combine or unify these disparate phenomena for situations where both theories could be used simultaneously, like when studying the center of a black hole.

Stokes continues with a study of the pursuit of a unifying theory. Currently, this involves the development of superstring theory or string theory. I won't try to explain this theory in a couple of sentences - you can Google it if you are interested. M-Theory is apparently the mother of all string theories, but even that is a network of theories, which - according to Stephen Hawking - "is good at describing phenomena within a certain range." So, it's a unified theory comprised of many theories. Interesting. For all of its relative beauty and elegance, however, there is little observable evidence for string theory. Author Peter Woit wrote the following:

No matter how things turn out, the story of superstring theory is an episode with no real parallel in the history of modern physical science. More than twenty years of intensive research by thousands of the best scientific papers has not led to a single testable experimental prediction of the theory.

Obviously, the situation in physics is obviously vastly more complicated than what I could cover here, and I'm certainly in no position to critique the scientists' efforts. But it does seem clear that the bases for scientific theories - that is, what is actually happening beyond what can be observed - are not on rock-solid ground. For example, if general relativity and quantum mechanics are irreconcilable then doesn't at least one of them have to be wrong? As aether served as a good predictor of behavior in the real world, but got the explanation - the "why" wrong - could this be the same fate of these two theories?

Could be? Maybe? Probably? Stokes' point is that it's reasonable to be cautious about science's explanations of phenomena even within their own purview. Shouldn't we then be cautious about scientists' claims about the existence - or non-existence - of God? Scientists - as good, sober skeptics - should be wary. So why aren't they?