[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]
Why is this happening?
We now need to explore the reasons for this bizarre internecine wars between the two disciplines if we wish to move on to more fertile pursuits. As it happens, there are, I think, a number of potentially good explanations for the sorry state of affairs of which the above was a sample. Moreover, these explanations immediately suggest actionable items that both scientists and philosophers should seriously consider.
One of the characteristics of philosophy as a field of inquiry is that — unique among human endeavors — it also inquiries upon itself. This was true since the times of Socrates and Epictetus, of course. Here is how the latter puts it in his Discourses:
“Now if you are writing to a friend, grammar will tell you that you need particular letters; but it will not tell you whether or not you should write to your friend. The same holds in the case of music’s relation to song. It will not say whether at this moment you should sing or play the lyre, or whether you should not do so. Which faculty, then, will do so? The one that studies both itself and everything else. And what is that? The faculty of reason. Yes; for this is the only faculty we have inherited that can perceive itself — what…
Here comes another of my occasional conversations with my colleague Dan Kaufman of Missouri State University. (Incidentally, he and two other former collaborators to my now archived Scientia Salon webzine have just started an excellent new project, The Electric Agora.)
This time we simply each picked one philosopher that was highly influential in our careers, or who has somehow shaped our way of thinking about philosophy, and chatted about it for a bit. I think the episode is worth checking out, it came out much better than the above somewhat lame description may suggest.
Most of us would like to think scientific debate does not operate like the comments section of online news articles. These are frequently characterised by inflexibility, truculence and expostulation. Scientists are generally a little more civil, but sometimes not much so!
There is a more fundamental issue here than politeness, though. Science has a reputation as an arbiter of fact above and beyond just personal opinion or bias. The term “scientific method” suggests there exists an agreed upon procedure for processing evidence which, while not infallible, is at least impartial.
So when even the most respected scientists can arrive at different deeply held convictions when presented with the same evidence, it undermines the perceived impartiality of the scientific method. It demonstrates that science involves an element of subjective or personal judgement.
Yet personal judgements are not mere occasional intruders on science, they are a necessary part of almost every step of reasoning about evidence.
Among the judgements scientists make on a daily basis are: what evidence is relevant to a particular question; what answers are admissible a priori; which answer does the evidence support; what standard of evidence is required (since “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”); and is the evidence sufficient to justify belief?
Another judgement scientists make is whether the predictions of a model are sufficiently reliable to justify committing resources to a course of action.
We do not have universally agreed procedures for making any of these judgements. This should come as no surprise. Evidence is something experienced by persons, and a person is thus essential to relating evidence to the abstractions of a scientific theory.
This is true regardless of how directly the objects of a theory are experienced – whether we observe a bird in flight or its shadow on the ground – ultimately it is the unique neuronal configurations of an individual brain that determine how what we perceive influences what we believe.
Induction, falsification and probability
Nevertheless, we can ask: are there forms of reasoning about evidence that do not depend on personal judgement?
Induction is the act of generalising from particulars. It interprets a pattern observed in specific data in terms of a law governing a wider scope.
But induction, like any form of reasoning about evidence, demands personal judgement. Patterns observed in data invariably admit multiple alternative generalisations. And which generalisation is appropriate, if any, may come down to taste.
Many of the points of contention between Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould can be seen in this light. For example, Gould thought Dawkins too eager to attribute evolved traits to the action of natural selection in cases where contingent survival provides an alternative, and (to Gould) preferable, explanation.
One important statement of the problem of induction was made by 18th-century philosopher David Hume. He noted the only available justification for inductive reasoning is that it works well in practice. But this itself is an inductive argument, and thus “taking that for granted, which is the very point in question”.
Karl Popper wanted science to be based on the deductive reasoning of falsificationism rather than the inductive reasoning of verificationism. Lucinda Douglas-Menzies/Wikimedia
Hume thought we had to accept this circularity, but philosopher of science Karl Popperrejected induction entirely. Popper argued that evidence can only falsify a theory, never verify it. Scientific theories are thus only ever working hypotheses that have withstood attempts at falsification.
This characterisation of science has not prevailed, mainly because science has not historically proceeded in this manner, nor does it today. Thomas Kuhnobserved that:
No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature.
Scientists cherish their theories, having invested so much of their personal resources in them. So when a seemingly contradictory datum emerges, they are inclined to make minor adjustments rather than reject core tenets. As physicist Max Planckobserved (before Popper or Kuhn):
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Falsification also ignores the relationship between science and engineering. Technology stakes human lives and personal resources on the reliability of scientific theories. We could not do this without strong belief in their adequacy. Engineers thus demand more from science than a working hypothesis.
Some philosophers of science look to probabilistic reasoning to place science above personal judgement. Prominent proponents of such approaches include Elliot Sober and Edwin Thompson Jaynes. By these accounts one can compare competing scientific theories in terms of the likelihood of observed evidence under each.
However, probabilistic reasoning does not remove personal judgement from science. Rather, it channels it into the design of models. A model, in this sense, is a mathematical representation of the probabilistic relationships between theory and evidence.
As someone who designs such models for a living, I can tell you the process relies heavily on personal judgement. There are no universally applicable procedures for model construction. Consequently, the point at issue in scientific controversies may be precisely how to model the relationship between theory and evidence.
What is (and isn’t) special about science
Does acknowledging the role played by personal judgement erode our confidence in science as a special means of acquiring knowledge? It does, if what we thought was special about science is that it removes the personal element from the search for truth.
As scientists – or as defenders of science – we must guard against the desire to dominate our interlocutors by ascribing to science a higher authority than it plausibly possesses. Many of us have experienced the frustration of seeing science ignored or distorted in arguments about climate change or vaccinations to name just two.
But we do science no favours by misrepresenting its claim to authority; instead we create a monster. A misplaced faith in science can and has been used as a political weapon to manipulate populations and impose ideologies.
Instead we need to explain science in terms that non-scientists can understand, so that factors that have influenced our judgements can influence theirs.
It is appropriate that non-scientists subordinate their judgements to that of experts, but this deference must be earned. The reputation of an individual scientist for integrity and quality of research is thus crucial in public discussions of science.
I believe science is special, and deserves the role of arbiter that society accords it. But its specialness does not derive from a unique mode of reasoning.
Rather it is the minutiae of science that make it special: the collection of lab protocols, recording practices, publication and peer review standards and many others. These have evolved over centuries under constant pressure to produce useful and reliable knowledge.
Thus, by a kind of natural selection, science has acquired a remarkable capacity to reveal truth. Science continues to evolve, so that what is special about science today might not be what will be special about it tomorrow.
So how much faith should you put in the conclusions of scientists? Judge for yourself!
In the 1960s, I knew people who, before going on vacation, would take their dogs to a shelter to be euthanized. They reasoned that it was cheaper to have a dog euthanized – and buy a new one upon returning – than pay a kennel fee.
Two decades later, I was working at Colorado State’s veterinary hospital when a group of distraught bikers on Harley-Davidsons pulled up carrying a sick chihuahua. The dog was intractably ill, and required euthanasia to prevent further suffering. Afterwards, the hospital’s counselors felt compelled to find the bikers a motel room: their level of grief was so profound that the staff didn’t think it was safe for them to be riding their motorcycles.
These two stories illustrate the drastic change in how animals have been perceived. For thousands of years, humans have kept animals as pets. But only during the past 40 years have they come to be viewed as family.
While it’s certainly a positive development that animals are being treated humanely, one of the downsides to better treatment mirrors some of the problems the (human) health care system faces with end-of-life care.
As with humans, in many cases the lives of pets are needlessly prolonged, which can cause undue suffering for the animals and an increased financial burden for families.
The growth of veterinary medicine and ethics
In 1979, I began teaching veterinary medical ethics at Colorado State University’s veterinary school, the first such course ever taught anywhere in the world.
A year later, the veterinary school hired an oncologist to head up a new program on animal oncology. Soon, our clinic was applying human therapeutic modalities to animal cancer. The visionary head of the veterinary program also hired a number of counselors to help pet owners manage their grief – another first in veterinary circles.
I’d been under the impression that people would be reluctant to spend much money on animal treatments, so I was genuinely shocked when the following April, the Wall Street Journal reported individuals spending upwards of six figures on cancer treatments for their pets.
As a strong advocate for strengthening concern for animal welfare in society, I was delighted with this unprecedented turn of events. I soon learned that concern for treating the diseases of pets besides cancer had also spiked precipitously, evidenced by a significant increase in veterinary specialty practices.
One of the family
So what’s behind the shift in how pets are perceived and treated?
For one, surveys conducted over the last two decades indicate an increasing number of pet owners who profess to view their animals as “members of the family.” In some surveys, the number is as high as 95% of respondents, but in nearly all surveys the number is higher than 80%.
In addition, the breakdown of nuclear families and the uptick of divorce rates have contributed to singles forming tighter bonds with companion animals.
Such attitudes and trends are likely to engender profound changes in societal views of euthanasia. Whereas before, many owners didn’t think twice about putting down a pet, now many are hesitant to euthanize, often going to great lengths to keep sick animals alive.
Vets caught in the middle
However, veterinarians continue to experience extensive stress as they experience two opposite – but equally trying – dilemmas: ending an animal’s life too soon, or waiting too long.
In a paper that I published entitled Euthanasia and Moral Stress, I described the significant stress experienced by veterinarians, veterinary technicians and humane society workers. Many chose their profession out of a desire to improve the lot of animals; instead, they invariably ended up euthanizing large numbers of them, often for unethical reasons.
These ranged from “I got the dog to jog with me, and now it’s too old to run,” to “If I die, I want you to euthanize the animal because I know it can’t bear to live without me.”
In other cases, the animal is experiencing considerable suffering, but the owner is unwilling to let the animal go. With owners increasingly viewing pets as family members, this has become increasingly common, and many owners fear the guilt associated with killing an animal too soon.
Ironically this, too, can cause veterinarians undue trauma: they know the animal is suffering, but there’s nothing they can do about it unless the owner gives them permission.
The consequences are manifest. One recent study showed that one in six veterinarians has considered suicide. Another found an elevated risk of suicide in the field of veterinary medicine. Being asked to kill healthy animals for owner convenience doubtless is a major contribution.
How to manage the decision to euthanize
Here is my suggestion to anyone who is thinking about getting a pet: when you first acquire it, create a list of everything you can find that makes the animal happy (eating a treat, chasing a ball, etc). Put the list away until the animal is undergoing treatment for a terminal disease, such as cancer. At that point, return to the list: is the animal able to chase a ball? Does the animal get excited about receiving a treat?
If the animal has lost the ability to have positive experiences, it’s often easier to let go.
This strategy can be augmented by pointing out the differences between human and animal consciousness. As philosopher Martin Heidegger has pointed out, for humans much of life’s meaning is derived from balancing past experiences with future aspirations, such as wishing to see one’s children graduate or hoping to see Ireland again.
Animals, on the other hand, lack the linguistic tools to allow them to anticipate the future or create an internal narrative of the past. Instead, they live overwhelmingly in the present. So if a pet owner is reluctant to euthanize, I’ll often point out that the animal no longer experiences pleasant “nows.”
In the end, managing euthanasia represents a major complication of the augmented status of pets in society. Ideally, companion animal owners should maintain a good relationship with their general veterinary practitioner, who has often known the animal all of its life, and can serve as a partner in dialogue during the trying times when euthanasia emerges as a possible alternative to suffering.
It has been a good week for philosophy. The results of a year long study on the benefits of teaching philosophy to primary school aged children has just been published in the UK and the reports are positive. The project was delivered by SAPERE, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, and independently evaluated by a team at Durham University.
Philosophy for Children (P4C) started in the 1970s in order to encourage children to think for themselves. The term ‘P4C’ was coined by Matthew Lipman who wanted to encourage reasonableness in citizens, and figured the best way to do so was to teach philosophical thinking skills from an early age. I have previously written about why children should study philosophy.
Supporters of P4C believe that philosophy need not be confined to the domain of the academy, but rather children from ages 3 and upwards (years K – 12) are capable of critical, creative and caring thinking. It is argued that these thinking skills will create reasonable and democratic citizens. The current research is lending support to this claim.
A few days ago the academics from Durham University wrote a piece for The Conversation. Examining the results of students who participated in one P4C class per week over the course of a school year, the researchers discovered that:
The gain in reading for the pupils on the programme… was around two months of extra progress. There was even some evidence of greater improvement in reasoning skills, with about one month’s extra progress for those children who did the philosophy programme. For both reading and reasoning, the results were more pronounced for those children eligible for free school meals.
The UK newspapers have been excited by these results and reports on the study have appeared in The Guardian, The Times and The Independent. The results of the study was also reported by the BBC, who write, “weekly philosophy sessions in class can boost primary school pupils’ ability in maths and literacy” and then go on to note that, “crucially, they seem to work especially well for the children who are most disadvantaged.”
Teachers of P4C use various techniques, with the Community of Inquiry (CoI) as a central pedagogy. The CoI is based on democratic student led discussions where the teacher acts as a facilitator of philosophical dialogue. Participating in a CoI helps students to see themselves as belonging to a community of lifelong learners.
The CoI encourages students to ask their own questions and explore diverse opinions in an effort to reach a shared truth. This democratic process often results in pluralism, but is designed to eliminate unreasonable ideas along the way. It does this by asking participants for reasons and evidence to support all claims.
The social and behavioural improvements that accompany P4C have been noted by teachers who see students gain confidence and tolerance when they are able to ask their own questions and hear perspectives that differ from their own. By practising listening to different ideas that they are then able to critically discuss, it has been found that students are better able to deal with disagreements and conflict. Schools that have adopted a whole school P4C approach like Buranda primary school in Queensland, have found there is less bullying in the school playground.
In our global world, there is more need than ever before to engage with ideas critically as well as with empathy. We are facing universal moral questions such as “what should we do about climate change?” that will affect future generations. Teaching these future generations how to think critically, creatively and collaboratively will surely improve their resourcefulness and problem solving abilities. For all of these reasons, teaching philosophy to children is a brilliant idea.
I’m criticising what I’ve called the Fallacy of Inferred Insensitivity, which often looks like this: “You wrote about X, so you don’t care about Y.” A sample:
In some cases, those who charge authors or speakers with indifference are correct. They accurately identify some moral blind spot, which is relevant to the case at hand but has been ignored or forgotten. In other words, they rightly recognise some bias. But in most cases, the critics are in no position to make this charge reasonably: even if they are right, they lack the evidence to establish this reasonably. They do not know the mercurial substance of another’s mind. At best, they are guessing well. At worst, they are simply rehashing their own biases.
The human animal takes a remarkably long time to reach maturity. And we cram a lot of learning into that time, as well we should: the list of things we need to know by the time we hit adulthood in order to thrive – personally, economically, socially, politically – is enormous.
But what about ethical thriving? Do we need to be taught moral philosophy alongside the three Rs?
Ethics has now been introduced into New South Wales primary schools as an alternative to religious instruction, but the idea of moral philosophy as a core part of compulsory education seems unlikely to get much traction any time soon. To many ears, the phrase “moral education” has a whiff of something distastefully Victorian (the era, not the state). It suggests indoctrination into an unquestioned set of norms and principles – and in the world we find ourselves in now, there is no such set we can all agree on.
Besides, in an already crowded curriculum, do we really have time for moral philosophy? After all, most people manage to lead pretty decent lives without knowing their Sidgewick from their Scanlon or being able to spot a rule utilitarian from 50 yards.
But intractable moral problems don’t go away just because we no longer agree how to deal with them. And as recent discussions on this site help to illustrate, new problems are always arising that, one way or another, we have to deal with. As individuals and as participants in the public space, we simply can’t get out of having to think about issues of right and wrong.
Yet spend time hanging around the comments section of any news story with an ethical dimension to it (and that’s most of them), and it quickly becomes apparent that most people just aren’t familiar with the methods and frameworks of ethical reasoning that have been developed over the last two and a half thousand years. We have the tools, but we’re not equipping people with them.
So, what sort of things should we be teaching if we wanted to foster “ethical literacy”? What would count as a decent grounding in moral philosophy for the average citizen of contemporary, pluralistic societies?
What follows is in no way meant to be definitive. It’s not based on any sort of serious empirical data around people’s familiarity with ethical issues. It’s a just tentative stab (wait, can you stab tentatively?) at a list of things people should ideally know about ethics, and based, on what I see in the classroom and, online, often don’t.
1. Ethics and morality are (basically) the same thing
Many people bristle at the word “morality” but are quite comfortable using the term “ethical”, and insist there’s some crucial difference between the two. For instance, some people say ethics are about external, socially imposed norms, while morality is about individual conscience. Others say ethics is concrete and practical while morality is more abstract, or is somehow linked to religion.
Out on the value theory front lines, however, there’s no clear agreed distinction, and most philosophers use the two terms more or less interchangeably. And let’s face it: if even professional philosophers refuse to make a distinction, there probably isn’t one there to be made.
2. Morality isn’t (necessarily) subjective
Every philosophy teacher probably knows the dismay of reading a decent ethics essay, only to then be told in the final paragraph that, “Of course, morality is subjective so there is no real answer”. So what have the last three pages been about then?
There seems to be a widespread assumption that the very fact that people disagree about right and wrong means there is no real fact of the matter, just individual preferences. We use the expression “value judgment” in a way that implies such judgments are fundamentally subjective.
Sure, ethical subjectivism is a perfectly respectable position with a long pedigree. But it’s not the only game in town, and it doesn’t win by default simply because we haven’t settled all moral problems. Nor does ethics lose its grip on us even if we take ourselves to be living in a universe devoid of intrinsic moral value. We can’t simply stop caring about how we should act; even subjectivists don’t suddenly turn into monsters.
3. “You shouldn’t impose your morality on others” is itself a moral position.
You hear this all the time, but you can probably spot the fallacy here pretty quickly: that “shouldn’t” there is itself a moral “shouldn’t” (rather than a prudential or social “shouldn’t,” like “you shouldn’t tease bears” or “you shouldn’t swear at the Queen”). Telling other people it’s morally wrong to tell other people what’s morally wrong looks obviously flawed – so why do otherwise bright, thoughtful people still do it?
Possibly because what the speaker is assuming here is that “morality” is a domain of personal beliefs (“morals”) which we can set aside while continuing to discuss issues of how we should treat each other. In effect, the speaker is imposing one particular moral framework – liberalism – without realising it.
4. “Natural” doesn’t necessarily mean “right”
This is an easy trap to fall into. Something’s being “natural” (if it even is) doesn’t tell us that it’s actually good. Selfishness might turn out to be natural, for instance, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to be selfish.
This gets a bit more complicated when you factor in ethical naturalism or Natural Law theory, because philosophers are awful people and really don’t want to make things easy for you.
5. The big three: Consequentialism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics
There’s several different ethical frameworks that moral philosophers use, but some familiarity with the three main ones – consequentialism (what’s right and wrong depends upon consequences); deontology (actions are right or wrong in themselves); and virtue ethics (act in accordance with the virtues characteristic of a good person) – is incredibly useful.
Why? Because they each manage to focus our attention on different, morally relevant features of a situation, features that we might otherwise miss.
So, that’s my tentative stab (still sounds wrong!). Do let me know in the comments what you’d add or take out.
This is part of a series on public morality in 21st century Australia. We’ll be publishing regular articles on morality on The Conversation in the coming weeks.
[This essay is part of a special “free will week” at Scientia Salon. The Editor promises not to touch the topic again for a long while after this particular orgy, of course assuming he has any choice in the matter…]
Despite the question having been around forever, the topic of Free Will (FW) has been pretty hot lately, including several entries at Scientia Salon [1-4]. Personally, I find the philosophical aspect of the topic of Free Will a bit pointless (either we have it or we don’t), but references to questionable “findings” in neuroscience and claims of how FW beliefs impact ethics and social policy do interest me (quite a bit) and force me to beg everyone’s patience for yet another essay on FW. If you will, think of this as an entry on how not to interpret findings from neuroscience (or biology).
[This essay is part of a special “free will week” at Scientia Salon. The Editor promises not to touch the topic again for a long while after this particular orgy, of course assuming he has any choice in the matter… Also, as part of Scientia Salon’s apparently somewhat controversial “(slight) course correction” we are beginning to publish book reviews and — forthcoming — interviews. Stay tuned.]
Sometimes it’s good, or even necessary, to go back to the basics. This is true of all complex and/or confusing issues, and free will certainly qualifies. Scientia Salon has published a number of essays on free will before [1], and this special “free will week” has begun with a vigorous, neurobiologically based defense of compatibilism and will end (in a couple of days) with a provocative, high-tech, apology for libertarianism!
Yet, underlying all current discussions about the topic is…
[for a brief explanation of this ongoing series, as well as a full table of contents, go here]
This article was originally published on 
The Logical Place 