by Ali-Asad
Last month, uproar broke out in the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill over comments made by a biology professor. In Professor Harris’s opinion, an unborn fetus that will develop Downs syndrome should be aborted. A student took offense to this statement of opinion and subsequently called her pastor who protested and asked that the university fire the professor. Let us set aside this argument - the professor prefaced his comments with ‘in my opinion’; demanding his firing is misguided because he has a right to his own moral opinion.
But I take issue with a professor using his knowledge of science to take a moral position. Science has no morality. That’s not a bad thing and I do not mean to demean science in any way. But science focuses on answering the ‘how’ question, not the ‘why’ question. So a scientist can tell me that a child will develop a debilitating syndrome early in life. But the scientist cannot then turn around and argue that ‘the right thing to do would be to abort the fetus’. This argument disingenuously uses science to argue a moral imperative. I don’t disagree with the scientist about the science. I disagree with the scientist on the philosophical basis for his views. He may hold true that any genetic mutation and evolutionary mistake should be corrected or terminated, and he has a right to that view. But again his premise holds true that life itself either has no purpose, or is not sacred or special in anyway. This difference is the crux of the argument.
The real debate is about philosophical views on life. A scientist cannot use his scientific expertise to give a moral judgment when he has not made clear the personal philosophical beliefs and views that have gone into making that judgment. That would be quite unethical, and dare I say, unscientific.
And that's jus' the tip.
Comment below.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Science has no Morality
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3 comments:
Ali,
A very interesting post. This debate about the demarcation of where science ends and morality begins is an interesting one. However, to say that scientific knowledge should have no bearing on moral decisions is plainly naive. If morality describes or at least aims to systematize some set of 'real' phenomenon, then science is our best hope to help us firgure it out. One only has to look at history and see how profound the impact of scientific progress has been on moral issues. Be it Darwin's monumental 'Origin of the Species' or Nietzsche's destruction of metaphysics through the use of language. There is, and for good reason, a move towards a tremendous loosening up of moral certainties.
Moreover, the idea that science has no morality is a notion that is rather deceiving. First, you run in the problem of defining what is morality (be it in terms of actions, or its results, or duty, or even like Kant, one's intentions). And second, science is not an agent to begin with. It is like saying economics has no morality, which I assume, will strike one as a weird saying to begin with. People are agents, and people have moral sentience and whatever tool they can use to come to 'right' and justifiable moral decisions, should be welcomed. Be it science or principles of monetary theory.
Best,
Govind.
P.S. We should lunch sometime next week, once school reopens.
Some interesting thoughts Govind. But how did Darwin's Origin of Species contribute to morality? I have no doubt that we can use science and economics as great tools towards finding morality (though economics is a social science so may be used to infer some sort of morality on its own). But those tools are wielded by agents who bring their own subjective viewpoints. These subjective viewpoints are what we need to debate and discuss. Science cannot be both the tool for finding morality and at the same time also the rationality behind the subjective perceptions. For example: If a person is shot, can an objective science tell me whether that was a good or bad event? Other than giving me pretty useless facts and numbers, I'm not sure what science can tell me about the morality about that event without becoming subjective and hence losing its scientific objectivity.
Darwin's work had a phenomenal impact on morality. For example, the use of evolution to answer questions about some races being inherently inferior, which for a longest time was wielded as a moral onus on behalf on the colonists (white people), is without a doubt a most severe blow to their agenda. Furthermore, even a cursory look at the Scopes Trial would reveal the kind of impact Darwin had on the paradigm of thought of people in the 20th and 21st centuries. But, I am sure, you understand what I am trying to get at. Furthermore, the idea of subjectivity here is rather fuzzy. There is no doubt that science can answer questions about morality and others in an objective manner. The gunshot example, again, lacks details. The answer would be different for a case where the person suffered from a debilitating and painful sickness. Keeping Schiavo alive would be non-sensical. And science helps us make that decison through the kind of knowledge it empowers us with with regards to how we function as human beings and our biological make-up. Now if you contend that there is a metaphysical constitution to being conscious, it is a different matter, but that too would be defeated in the face of scientific and philosophical inquiry. It is a hard thing to swallow, but really there is nothing that makes us special so as to warrant special treatment in terms of moral decisions. And thats a good thing.
And this idea of science losing is objectivity is something that definitionally wrong. It is like saying Mathematics would lose its objectivity under certain contexts. Which is absurd.
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