As I've said before, I'll continue to discuss the biological basis of morality.
To reiterate, these are the five pillars of human morality elucidated by Dr Jonathan Haidt:
1) Fairness/Equity
2) Injury/Harm
3) In-Group Loyalty
4) Respect for Authority/Elders
5) Sanctity/Purity
As I said, the first two form the basis for reciprocal altruism. The third reinforces that by forming an us vs them mentality; those on the inside are fully human (or chimp, for our chimp cousins), those on the outside are not. We can see this among ourselves today and in history. Our close family is incredibly important, our more distant family/friends come next, and so on, until we come to strangers who are also foreigners of a different religion who dress funny who barely qualify as human. Yes, that's an increasingly outdated concept, but it's still out there.
How does identifying someone as not being worthy of altruism reinforce altruism? Because we can't be indiscriminate. Resources are scarce and we can't share all the time with everyone. Identifying some people as more important than others helps decide who we share our limited resources with, who we fight for and who we abandon. From the standpoint of the gene, we need to defend those closely related to us and help them because they share our genes. From the game theory point of view, cooperation, whether among kin or strangers, leads to a greater degree of success.
The fourth I believe started as respect for authority, a way to sort the group into a less egalitarian family band, with certain individuals in charge and others following. Think on this, the origin of the "moot point". "Moot" is an old English word, originally meaning, essentially, "a democratic assembly to discuss important points", hearkening to the democracies that were Germanic English villages. Important things had to be discussed before the moot (you may recall the term showing up in the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, as Treebeard [AKA Fangorn] called for the Ent-Moot), thus a 'moot point' was something too important for one person to decide. However, the nature of democratic assemblages is that the larger the population, the more untenable direct democracy becomes, and thus the moot got sidelined in favor of more autocratic processes and a 'moot point' gradually became something so unimportant that it could be put before the moot without any harm. To put it another way, "A committee is the only animal with twenty stomachs and no brain".
When one person is in charge, things get done (not necessarily for the best, see my explanation, forthcoming, for why democratic-republics are the most awesome form of government). Although our ancestors were apparently largely egalitarian while living in small family groups (according to anthropology), they segued into pseudo-chiefdoms, followed by chiefdoms, followed by increasingly stratified, rigidly defined hierarchical religious kingdoms. Respect for authority started as a way to organize small, flexible group relationships and was reinforced as a method for organizing large, inflexible group relationships.
However, I believe that number four became, for humans at least, respect for elders as a method of education. We're not the only animal that teaches their young, but we may be unique in that we educate through language. Our young are credulous to a fault and respect for elders reinforces that. It's not just among children, though; think about the last time you were the new guy in the workplace. How respectfully did you listen to the guy who showed you around? How long did it take for you to stop being the new guy? And when the next new guy came in, how easy was it to assume an air of authority as the guy who knows what's up? It works.
In short, I feel that these first four pillars of human morality shape our interactions among a group, for short- and long-term benefit through mutual cooperation and reciprocal altruism.
What of sanctity/purity? That's the notion that the body can be harmed/made impure through immoral behavior, which notion isn't restricted to religion (vegans, anyone?). I believe it started as a simple biological compulsion to avoid eating things like poop that was repurposed. Our hierarchical/authoritarian bent was repurposed by our need to educate our offspring, and I think our disgust imperative was repurposed for a social function. I'll get into that more later.
For now, I think I've discussed where our moral sense comes from enough to provide a good argument that, although the god hypothesis does not explain either good or evil, evolution certainly explains good as the result of game theory and gene theory.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Health Care as a Public Good
A few days back, the Atheist Ethicist spent some time arguing against public health care. He criticized it from a number of angles, principally that it is a private benefit (with a few exceptions) rather than public and that it's a subsidy for poor lifestyle choices.
The second is simpler to address: take smoking. It's a choice and it's bad for you, full stop. Why should the public at large pay to address the poor health brought on by your poor choice? This is a compelling argument that ignores the fact that the majority of health problems are not brought on by poor choices, but are the result of illness, accidental injury, or poverty. I deliberately avoided his example of obesity because when you're poor, the cheapest food choice is often going to lead to an ironic combination of obesity and malnutrition. Even in the case of self-inflicted illness as with smoking-induced lung disease or a heart condition from years of being overweight, I'm willing to argue that treating the health of the public is a public good and for the exact same reason that education is.
The ethicist is more than happy to grant that items like national defense, police and fire protection, education, etc are all public goods. Why exactly is education a public good, though? After a few centuries of demonstrating, in America and Europe, that free education is for the benefit of all, it should seem obvious, but let's go ahead and explore it.
Imagine a person born into the world circa 15,000 years ago. He lives in a reasonably fecund area of the planet and, although he's five or seven thousand years too early for agriculture, his nutritional needs are well met by a settled, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. He has some free time. Unfortunately, he's some ten thousand years too early for written music as well. He'd have made a great composer. Now imagine a person born in Somalia today. What are the odds he'll become a composer?
Education is a public good because it opens up the possibility for us all to achieve our potential, our dreams (with hard work and luck). Without it, we're lucky to scratch out a living doing whatever scut work is available. By giving everyone a solid grounding in math, science, literature, art, history, writing, music, all of it, we open them up to the possibilities and let them discover natural talents that, were they to languish in ignorance, they could never learn they had except by accident. We all benefit when we can all dive into our passions, master them, and create and discover wonderful new things. Minutiae of law, science, music, and art, even if you never hear about them, enrich your world and make it a better place. And none of that is possible without education.
So why is healthcare a public good? A pianist can't play with broken fingers. A diva can't sing with bronchitis. A janitor can't sweep on broken legs. We all benefit when everyone can explore their passions and their talents. Just as they can only explore them when they have the educational foundation to do so, they can only explore them when they have the health to do so.
Just as we should do what we can to keep our schools and our police well funded, well maintained, and well regulated, so should our public health, and for all the same reasons. When we're all free, healthy, and happy, we can do amazing things.
The second is simpler to address: take smoking. It's a choice and it's bad for you, full stop. Why should the public at large pay to address the poor health brought on by your poor choice? This is a compelling argument that ignores the fact that the majority of health problems are not brought on by poor choices, but are the result of illness, accidental injury, or poverty. I deliberately avoided his example of obesity because when you're poor, the cheapest food choice is often going to lead to an ironic combination of obesity and malnutrition. Even in the case of self-inflicted illness as with smoking-induced lung disease or a heart condition from years of being overweight, I'm willing to argue that treating the health of the public is a public good and for the exact same reason that education is.
The ethicist is more than happy to grant that items like national defense, police and fire protection, education, etc are all public goods. Why exactly is education a public good, though? After a few centuries of demonstrating, in America and Europe, that free education is for the benefit of all, it should seem obvious, but let's go ahead and explore it.
Imagine a person born into the world circa 15,000 years ago. He lives in a reasonably fecund area of the planet and, although he's five or seven thousand years too early for agriculture, his nutritional needs are well met by a settled, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. He has some free time. Unfortunately, he's some ten thousand years too early for written music as well. He'd have made a great composer. Now imagine a person born in Somalia today. What are the odds he'll become a composer?
Education is a public good because it opens up the possibility for us all to achieve our potential, our dreams (with hard work and luck). Without it, we're lucky to scratch out a living doing whatever scut work is available. By giving everyone a solid grounding in math, science, literature, art, history, writing, music, all of it, we open them up to the possibilities and let them discover natural talents that, were they to languish in ignorance, they could never learn they had except by accident. We all benefit when we can all dive into our passions, master them, and create and discover wonderful new things. Minutiae of law, science, music, and art, even if you never hear about them, enrich your world and make it a better place. And none of that is possible without education.
So why is healthcare a public good? A pianist can't play with broken fingers. A diva can't sing with bronchitis. A janitor can't sweep on broken legs. We all benefit when everyone can explore their passions and their talents. Just as they can only explore them when they have the educational foundation to do so, they can only explore them when they have the health to do so.
Just as we should do what we can to keep our schools and our police well funded, well maintained, and well regulated, so should our public health, and for all the same reasons. When we're all free, healthy, and happy, we can do amazing things.
Knowledge vs Knowledge
A few comments in reply to my thesis on whether or not we can know that god exists were of the form, "You admitted at the start that you can't know god exists, but then you argue that you can. WTF?"
I should have made this distinction more clear then; I was speaking initially of mathematical certainty and arguing at the end for scientific knowledge.
Some things can be absolutely known within a mathematical framework. "If (if A then B) then (if not B then not A)" is a tautological truth within the framework of mathematical logic. On a different note, beginning with the assumption of "B" then it's trivially simple to prove "If A then B". Within mathematics, some things can be proven with absolute certainty. In that sense, we cannot be absolutely certain on the existence of god because it's not a mathematical question.
Scientific knowledge is a different matter. We begin with facts, build from there to laws, and thence to theories. At any time, a contradictory fact could bring the edifice crashing down. Biologist J.B.S. Haldane said, according to popular myth, that rabbits in the Precambrian would explode the theory of evolution. In a sense, scientific knowledge is a mass of supposition resting precariously on the admission that it hasn't been proven false yet. However, the longer a scientific theory lasts without being proven false, the more certain we can be that it is true.
At this point an English major might be tempted to butt in with, "But everything ends up getting proven false! We used to think the Earth was flat! Einstein proved Newton wrong! Neener neener!" At this point I gleefully crib from a delightful essay by Isaac Asimov. Yes, older models have been proven incorrect, but they weren't entirely incorrect and they weren't equally incorrect. The Flat Earth model breaks down after just a few miles when you disappear under a horizon it simply cannot predict. Nevertheless, I've taken advantage of the Flat Earth model on each of my dozen or so cross-country drives by referring to a book of maps, all of them printed on flat paper without losing my way (at least not because of the maps). It's wrong, yes, but it's not entirely wrong. And the spherical model that replaced the flat model is also wrong! The Earth is an oblate spheroid (flattened at the poles) thanks to Newtonian physics, a fact ably demonstrated by the much more oblate Jupiter. And yet the oblate model is incorrect as well because, thanks to odd internal geography, our planet is slightly larger on the southern hemisphere. However, to say that the oblate spheroid model is as incorrect as the spherical model and as incorrect as the flat model is just wrong. One model is more wrong, and none of them are entirely wrong.
Each model accounts for certain observed facts (the earth is apparently flat) and is replaced by a better model that accounts for those and for others (the shadow on the moon is round and we disappear over the horizon), which is replaced in turn by another that takes further facts into account (the laws of motion). In each case, our knowledge is never scrapped or replaced entire, but upgraded and patched. Einstein didn't replace Newton, for Newton's observations and mechanics are nearly perfect for the observations he was capable of making; rather, Einstein expanded upon Newton by developing a mechanic for observations made in the centuries that followed, and Quantum Mechanics did the same a few decades later in the other direction. In other words, scientific knowledge has never truly been one of scrapping a false system for a true system, but of replacing a system with a more accurate one. Lose the burlap sack and put on a prom dress, lose the prom dress and put on a tailored suit.
So why do I believe there is no god on the basis of scientific evidence? Because, after thousands of years of observation, there is no evidence. The old canard "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be discarded because absence of evidence, when one would reasonably expect to find evidence is evidence of absence. The longer we go with nothing more than feelings and hopes to confirm the alleged existence of a deity, the more firmly we can say, "Sorry, you've not only failed to convince me you're right, you've convinced me you're wrong." Yes, evolution could be toppled by a Precambrian bunny, but a century and a half of repeated attacks have failed to disprove it; we can say we know evolution is true, in spite of its precarious "not false yet" scientific status. After millenia of abject failure to provide proof or evidence for the existence of a god, or any supernatural phenomenon, why does religion still get a free pass in the opposite direction?
The alleged deity is such a large phenomenon that I feel safe saying I know there is no god because the evidence of such an overwhelming entity should be equally overwhelming. A natural high underwhelms those who don't experience it.
I should have made this distinction more clear then; I was speaking initially of mathematical certainty and arguing at the end for scientific knowledge.
Some things can be absolutely known within a mathematical framework. "If (if A then B) then (if not B then not A)" is a tautological truth within the framework of mathematical logic. On a different note, beginning with the assumption of "B" then it's trivially simple to prove "If A then B". Within mathematics, some things can be proven with absolute certainty. In that sense, we cannot be absolutely certain on the existence of god because it's not a mathematical question.
Scientific knowledge is a different matter. We begin with facts, build from there to laws, and thence to theories. At any time, a contradictory fact could bring the edifice crashing down. Biologist J.B.S. Haldane said, according to popular myth, that rabbits in the Precambrian would explode the theory of evolution. In a sense, scientific knowledge is a mass of supposition resting precariously on the admission that it hasn't been proven false yet. However, the longer a scientific theory lasts without being proven false, the more certain we can be that it is true.
At this point an English major might be tempted to butt in with, "But everything ends up getting proven false! We used to think the Earth was flat! Einstein proved Newton wrong! Neener neener!" At this point I gleefully crib from a delightful essay by Isaac Asimov. Yes, older models have been proven incorrect, but they weren't entirely incorrect and they weren't equally incorrect. The Flat Earth model breaks down after just a few miles when you disappear under a horizon it simply cannot predict. Nevertheless, I've taken advantage of the Flat Earth model on each of my dozen or so cross-country drives by referring to a book of maps, all of them printed on flat paper without losing my way (at least not because of the maps). It's wrong, yes, but it's not entirely wrong. And the spherical model that replaced the flat model is also wrong! The Earth is an oblate spheroid (flattened at the poles) thanks to Newtonian physics, a fact ably demonstrated by the much more oblate Jupiter. And yet the oblate model is incorrect as well because, thanks to odd internal geography, our planet is slightly larger on the southern hemisphere. However, to say that the oblate spheroid model is as incorrect as the spherical model and as incorrect as the flat model is just wrong. One model is more wrong, and none of them are entirely wrong.
Each model accounts for certain observed facts (the earth is apparently flat) and is replaced by a better model that accounts for those and for others (the shadow on the moon is round and we disappear over the horizon), which is replaced in turn by another that takes further facts into account (the laws of motion). In each case, our knowledge is never scrapped or replaced entire, but upgraded and patched. Einstein didn't replace Newton, for Newton's observations and mechanics are nearly perfect for the observations he was capable of making; rather, Einstein expanded upon Newton by developing a mechanic for observations made in the centuries that followed, and Quantum Mechanics did the same a few decades later in the other direction. In other words, scientific knowledge has never truly been one of scrapping a false system for a true system, but of replacing a system with a more accurate one. Lose the burlap sack and put on a prom dress, lose the prom dress and put on a tailored suit.
So why do I believe there is no god on the basis of scientific evidence? Because, after thousands of years of observation, there is no evidence. The old canard "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be discarded because absence of evidence, when one would reasonably expect to find evidence is evidence of absence. The longer we go with nothing more than feelings and hopes to confirm the alleged existence of a deity, the more firmly we can say, "Sorry, you've not only failed to convince me you're right, you've convinced me you're wrong." Yes, evolution could be toppled by a Precambrian bunny, but a century and a half of repeated attacks have failed to disprove it; we can say we know evolution is true, in spite of its precarious "not false yet" scientific status. After millenia of abject failure to provide proof or evidence for the existence of a god, or any supernatural phenomenon, why does religion still get a free pass in the opposite direction?
The alleged deity is such a large phenomenon that I feel safe saying I know there is no god because the evidence of such an overwhelming entity should be equally overwhelming. A natural high underwhelms those who don't experience it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)