You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.
There have been many attempts to bridge the moral gap scientifically. Several books have been written that present the possibility of science, not only describing what is happening when we think and act, but also prescribing how we should think and act. This article briefly highlights three such works, all of which have received considerable acclaim. Also, I try to demonstrate that each work in some sense uses at least one of the secular strategies for bridging the gap recommended by John E. Hare (see part 1)—(1) by reducing the demand, (2) by exaggerating our natural capacities, and (3) by replacing God.
Dawkins’ Selfish Gene of Altruism
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposes “to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism.”[1] His discussion of evolution focuses on gene replication by which “a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals.”[2] However, Dawkins clarifies early in the book that he is “not advocating a morality based on evolution.”[3] He admits that his work is primarily descriptive, not prescriptive: “I stress this, because I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.” (Emphasis added.) Instead, he warns his readers:
Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something which no other species has ever aspired to.
It appears that Dawkins’ strategy is not replacing God or exaggerating our natural capacities. He seems to see no need for the former, and he forgoes the latter by admitting to our born selfishness. Instead, he reduces the moral demand by aiming at a biologically grounded altruism as a more scientifically feasible goal. However, this strategy is not without its consequences, namely that it alters terms and concepts to mean something other than we typically understand them to mean.[4] Samir Okasha explains that Dawkins’ exclusively biological altruism with its kin selection theory posits supposedly altruistic behavior for the selfish goal of dominating the gene-pool. He goes on to state:
The key point to remember is that biological altruism cannot be equated with altruism in the everyday vernacular sense. Biological altruism is defined in terms of fitness consequences, not motivating intentions. If by ‘real’ altruism we mean altruism done with the conscious intention to help, then the vast majority of living creatures are not capable of ‘real’ altruism nor therefore of ‘real’ selfishness either.[5]
In other words, reducing the moral demand seems to, as Okasha describes, “take the altruism out of altruism.”[6]
Haidt’s Moral Foundations of Righteousness
In The Righteous Mind, Jonthan Haidt presents a Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) in which he discusses a socio-psychological basis for morality, including an explanation for the variation of moral sentiments across cultures. Haidt presents a framework of six couplets of moral senses that are shared across humanity.[7] He makes the analogy to the taste receptors on the human tongue—every person has the same set of receptors, but different cultures emphasize and prefer different tastes. Haidt explains that this is why even within a single culture we find multiple conflicting “moral matrices,”[8] such as the conflict we find between political liberals and conservatives in the United States. Haidt’s conceptualization is certainly an interesting description of morality, but it tells us little about which moral matrix we should prefer. Haidt does not intend for it to do so. Like Dawkins, he seems to be keenly aware of the ought/is gap. He states, “[I]n psychology our goal is descriptive. We want to discover how the moral mind actually works, not how it ought to work….”[9]
In closing the moral gap, however, Haidt seems to take the strategy of exaggerating our natural capacities. His MFT relies heavily on human reason and intuition working in tandem to understand moral inclinations of our own and of those around us. Haidt concludes, “We may spend most of our waking hours advancing our own interests, but we all have the capacity to transcend self-interest and become simply part of a whole. It’s not just a capacity; it’s the portal to many of life’s most cherished experiences.”[10]
However, there are difficulties in this strategy. Among Haidt’s concluding recommendations—yes, he speaks somewhat prescriptively—he suggests that we ought to be patient with people whose moral sentiments are driven by things that we believe have no basis in reality. Thomas Nagel explains:
Haidt’s Durkheimian utilitarianism reduces the values of loyalty, authority, and sanctity to a purely instrumental role. Religion, patriotism, and sexual taboos, for example, have no validity or value in themselves, according to this view; they are merely useful in creating bonds that allow collective achievement of the greatest total good, which utilitarians identify with the satisfaction of individual interests. But can such values and practices as loyalty and authority serve this function if they are seen as purely instrumental? Can they even exist? The purely instrumental, utilitarian endorsement of these “binding” moral attitudes seems essentially that of an outsider, someone who does not share them in their authentic form.[11]
In other words, Haidt’s MFT exaggerates not only our capacities for morality, it exaggerates our capacities for unbiased objectivity. The practical consequence is that the real value of things like religion and patriotism can only be appreciated by recognizing their ultimate superficiality. Meanwhile, they only achieve what makes them valuable if we are unaware of their superficiality.
Harris’ Moral Landscape of Well-Being
In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris attempts to deliver on his subtitle, showing How Science Can Determine Human Values. Harris argues that as our understanding of science—specifically neuroscience—increases, so will our ability to solve moral dilemmas. Harris’ thesis is “that questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.”[12] However, in his review of the book, Kwame Anthony Appiah reminds us of a familiar problem with Harris’ assumption of what is possible through science:
But wait: how do we know that the morally right act is, as Harris posits, the one that does the most to increase well-being, defined in terms of our conscious states of mind? Has science really revealed that? If it hasn’t, then the premise of Harris’s all-we-need-is-science argument must have nonscientific origins.[13]
Also noteworthy is the fact that, unlike Dawkins and Haidt, Harris pushes through the ought/is divide. He states, “[T]his notion of ‘ought’ is an artificial and needlessly confusing way to think about moral choice.” He goes on to denigrate Hume’s Law as “another dismal product of Abrahamic religion.”[14] The lack of evidence and argument in the book led Appiah to remark, “I found myself wishing for less of the polemic against religion…and I wanted more of the illumination that comes from our increasing understanding of neuroscience.”[15]
What is important for the project at hand is the strategy Harris seems to take in bridging the moral gap. I believe what we have in Harris’ work is an attempt to replace the “possible holy being.” For Harris, science replaces God. Science is the source of the moral demand in that it describes the well-being of conscious creatures and prescribes the best means of achieving that goal. Science enables us to understand our natural capacities in which natural selection has enabled our moral species to survive.
Nevertheless, this strategy is also lacking. Appiah explains, “Yet such science is best appreciated with a sense of what we can and cannot expect from it, and a real contribution to the old project of a “naturalized ethics” would have required a fuller engagement with its contradictions and complications.”[16] In other words, Harris pushes through the ought/is distinction only to fall in the gap between the two.
In the final installment, I will offer some concluding thoughts.
[1] Richad Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19.
[2] Dawkins, 20.
[3] Dawkins, 21.
[4] Hare, “Naturalism and Morality,” 198.
[5] Okasha.
[6] Samir Okasha, “Biological Altruism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 3, 2020, accessed on April 2, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/altruism-biological/.
[7] Haidt lists care and harm, fairness and cheating, loyalty and betrayal, authority and subversion, sanctity and degradation, as well as liberty and oppression.
[8] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), p. 145.
[9] Haidt, 141.
[10] Haidt, 370.
[11] Thomas Nagel, “The Taste for Being Moral,” review of The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, The New York Review, December 6, 2012.
[12] Harris, The Moral Landscape, 1.
[13] Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Science Knows Best,” review of The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris, The New York Times, October 1, 2020.
[14] Harris, 38.
[15] Appiah, “Science Knows Best.”
[16] Appiah.