I have grown soul sick of listening to the
Trump escapades on the news feeds, so I have been listening to Esta Tonne (I
particularly like the video “Flight of the Butterfly”) and some other odd ball
stuff which prompts more odd ball stuff to pop up as YouTube tries to guess my
preferences. I chanced upon a rather
lengthy discussion between Steven Pinker and Sam Harris, and then another
between Steven Pinker and Stephen Fry.
In both discussions the topic or pretext was Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Today. I had read Pinker’s earlier book, The Language Instinct, in which he
defends Chomsky’s hypothesis that language is innate to humans and thought it
good. I have ordered the new book, and
it awaits me on my Kindle, so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it more, but I wanted to capture my thoughts, for emendation, before reading the book.
At any rate, Pinker was talking about “human flourishing”
and the triode of health, happiness, love (or something very close to it)
rolled off his tongue naturally. I
rather like the notion of “human flourishing,” and I have articulated similar
ideas in my other, more political blog – that is to say, the governing
intentionality of the state should be the alleviation of suffering. There is a
Buddhist slant to that statement, though it’s not inherently or exclusively
Buddhist, and I think of it mostly in “secular” terms. Though we need a bit of empathy to understand
the suffering of others, we don’t need any particular religion, or for that matter
any religion at all, to understand human suffering. We all suffer. From there, of course, it’s all nuance,
distinctions within distinctions, with plenty of room for discussion. If I might be permitted one such distinction,
for example, the suffering that results from our biology (e.g. thirst, hunger,
“horniness,” et cetera) and the suffering that results from our social
circumstances (e.g. invidious comparisons of possession or wealth). I could go on from there, but you can see
there’s plenty of room for discussion. As the notion of “invidious comparison”
reminds us, many of the distinctions are relative distinctions, or what I have
called elsewhere “spectrum issues.” It’s
one thing to be hungry in the sense of starvation, another in the sense that I
haven’t eaten since noon and I’m developing a craving for sushi. More on that below.
Setting some of the nuance aside for the moment, if we can
accept that the governing intentionality of the state (the moral imperative of
the state) should be the alleviation of suffering, then the means to that end
are simply “technical” and we can come at them through rational means. By "technical" and "rational means," there are essentially two questions, one epistemological and the other ontological – how do we measure and then how do we affect that
measure? It’s important to determine
first “how we measure,” though there need be nothing mysterious about it. Suffering is much to vague a concept to be
operative, even a second level exemplar like hunger is too vague to be
operative, so we need what might be called a “pragmatic” definition of hunger
that measurement provides. We want to
alleviate hunger, for example, and one way of determining if we’re moving in
the right direction might be the number of deaths per capita from
starvation. Or perhaps more relevant to
our immediate circumstance, the prevalence of “diet” related diseases, to
include obesity, which, it might be argued, is a form of starvation resulting
from the relative cost and availability of empty calories. From there, of course, we can devise
“actions” that can go a long way toward reducing the number of deaths, or the
prevalence of diet related disease. There are, of course, "treatment" options for those individuals who have the disease. Diabetes, one of the knock off effects of obesity, for example, has a number of treatment options available. There are also social actions that can be taken. We could, for example, decide to tax “empty calories,” addressing the
relative cost and helping defray the costs of treating the resultant diseases,
or we could ban “empty calories” altogether.
In either case, you can see there’s still plenty of room for discussion
about how best to proceed, but it’s possible to proceed on both the individual and social front, and make “progress,”
even if we can’t achieve perfection.
At this point, a couple of obvious things. First, it’s important to decide first, not
after, what the “measure” -- that is to say, we must be able to answer the questions “how do we know we’re
making progress?” – otherwise it all devolves into tautology. This is a rather technical point, but it
points to a human desire to “act first, think later.” Simply put, if you place the action before a
clear understanding of what one wants as a result of that action, the action
itself is often considered and held up as the mark of success and progress, even if the results are counter-productive. One might leap from a cliff expecting to fly,
and one does, briefly, but the sudden stop might suggest it was a bad
idea. If one is nevertheless committed
to leaping from cliffs, it’s almost always possible to find “post hoc reasons” after the
fact to “justify” it. The leap did,
after all, produce flight for 3.7 seconds, and we might improve on that by
flailing our arms ever harder. I’m not
being as facetious as it might seem.
Many of our “committed” economic ideas are not unlike “leaping from a
cliff.” We might want to take the leap
and “reduce corporate taxes” to improve business investment of the sort that
leads to jobs (and it does, perhaps, free up capital here and there for those
businesses that are feeling the pressure of unmet demand) but the cost of
starving the public coffers can be devastating.
The state of Kansas provides a good example. The decrease in taxes was not met with an
increase in “taxing paying jobs” sufficient to replenish the public coffers,
and everything from education to law enforcement suffered as a result. This is not a trivial observation insofar as “human
flourishing” or the alleviation of human suffering are directly or indirectly facilitated
by those institutions dedicated to the public weal. Still, look!
Lower taxes. We are now going down the same path nationally, and Paul Ryan at least has held the action itself is held up as a mark of
success and progress.
Second, there are ethical concerns behind the question, “how
best to proceed?” Taxing and banning “empty calories” begs questions of
“individual freedom and accountability.” Here again, however, it is not
an either/or issue, but rather a spectrum issue. The outright ban of “empty calories”
represents one end of the spectrum. The
state does everything. The individual is
not free to consume “empty calories,” and so cannot be held accountable for
what he cannot do. At the other end of
the spectrum, the state could do nothing, and the individual bears the whole
“accountability.” Food processors
continue to manufacture and market “empty calories,” and people continue to
consume them and develop the diabetes and the heart diseases that result from
“supersize me.” Although the food
processors may try to persuade people to consume the “empty calories,” they are
not forcing people to consume them, and so individuals who do so should bear
the full and sometimes devastating costs of treating the diseases that result. On the spectrum, the “tax and defray” option
might be considered “centrist,” but the ethical concern remains as a matter of
degree – to what extent do we accommodate individual freedom and to what extent
do we then hold individual’s accountable?
Implicit in the example above is another problem that Pinker mentions during the pod casts. We might think of “human flourishing” and/or
the “alleviation of human suffering” as one among many human values. Another might be “individual freedom.” It is one thing to say, the governing intentionality of the state should be "human flourishing," another to say that the governing intentionality of the state should be the preservation of "human freedom." These values are not necessarily commensurate. In the example above, the core problem of obesity is one
of human flourishing, but if it is a problem that must be solved within the
context of “individual freedom and accountability,” many social options available to address it are, so to speak, off the table. It is, of course, possible to reverse the
order of precedence and see the core problem as the preservation of “individual
freedom and accountability,” a value which must be maintained against various
pressures to limit freedom, even those clearly aimed at improving “human
flourishing.”
The first order of
precedence is normally associated with “liberalism” (in a squishy sort of way)
while the second is normally associated with “conservatism” (in an equally
squish sort of way). Consider, for
example, the problem of “guns.” There is
a rather substantial, evidence-based argument that guns add to the store of
human suffering. As a consequence, to
mitigate that suffering, “liberals” are quite willing to consider limitations
on individual freedom that have been successful elsewhere in the world. On the other hand, although “conservatives”
might feel distraught in those instances where guns contribute to human
suffering and wish to hold the individuals perpetrating the havoc responsible,
the preservation of an individual freedom conveniently expressed within the
Second Amendment takes precedence over any other “technical” attempt to
mitigate the damage by limiting access to guns.
The parenthetical “squishy” comes to the fore when we
consider other potential values. As
Pinker points out, something like “the
glorification of and obedience to God” might be seen as the primary purpose of the state. There remain various theocracies around the world, mostly in the middle
east, for whom this value, this moral imperative, takes precedence over both
individual freedom and human flourishing.
Within the United States, as a direct result of the First Amendment, we
can talk about “religious preference” in much the same way that we talk about
“ice-cream preference,” as a matter exercised within the realm of individual
freedom and conscience. Generally
speaking, “liberals” are all in for individual choice when it comes to
religion. There is, however, a movement, mostly
associated with “conservatives,” that would, not unlike the middle eastern theocracies, make “the glorification of and
obedience to God” the governing intentionality of the state. In contrast to “guns,” a more purely secular issue where “individual
freedom” takes precedence, homosexuality cannot be consigned to the realm of
“individual freedom” because homosexuality has been expressly forbidden by God and a state that sanctions or protects homosexuality fails in the glorification of and obedience to God.
Religion is a particularly fraught subject, which brings me back to Pinker and Harris. If we’re on the path to theocracy, it will be
a “Christian theocracy,” though I’m not sure just what that
means. There are sophisticated
theological arguments about the nature of God and Christ, and I’ve touched a
few, but at the end of the day, other than my acculturation within
“Christendom,” I have no objective way of deciding between the “truth” of
Christianity and the “truth” of Islam. Even if I capitulate to my acculturation, I
have no objective way of deciding between Catholicism and Protestantism, much
less between Lutheranism and Methodism, and then there are outliers like the LDS church, not to mention the so-called "prosperity gospel" churches. So long as this is a matter of individual
freedom and conscience, and the state is expressly forbidden to declare for a particular religion, it probably doesn’t much matter. I can believe what I want to believe, but
when the “glorification of and obedience to God” becomes the governing intentionality of the state, we will be asking "what kind of Christian theocracy?' and what might be perceived as minor differences will matter. Consider the recent history of Ireland, and
the on-going struggles within the Middle East between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Back to the thread of the argument. Pinker, in his lectures, makes a general case
for the Enlightenment, where "humanism" provided the governing intentionalities, and "science" providing the technical means of satisfying those governing intentionalities. Humanism, or secular humanism, does not so much disparage or discourage religion, but it does put it in brackets as irrelevant to the matter at hand, a more inclusive "human flourishing." Science provides the technical means of
enhancing “human flourishing.” In his
lectures, he doesn’t fully address the post-modernist critiques of “science,”
but from what I can gather, he has a very broad view of science and sees it as
Popper sees it – “conjecture and refutation.”
If “science” is a religion, it is based on a single article of faith –
that the “world” is “progressively comprehensible,” our theoretical conjectures are more and
more accurate because our inaccurate conjectures are refuted and replaced with
more accurate conjectures. A Rawls like
thought experiment provides justification.
Suppose you were sitting in heaven and about to be reborn. What you DON’T know is your gender, race,
sexual preference, parental social class, parental or social religion, or the other markers of “identity”
politics, but you ARE given a choice of the historical era in which you can be
born. What would you choose? The obvious answer is now. Unless you are reborn as a straight, white
male to upper class parents, chances are you will be much better off today than
at almost any time in the past. Even if you are
reborn in the most favorable position, you will be susceptible to a wide range
of disease that has more or less vanished from the earth. Could things be better now? Of course.
Could things get worse? Of
course. The former stands as a cause for
optimism, the latter as a cause for caution.
Progress is not inevitable, but the result of human endeavor.
A couple of ancillary points. “Conjecture and refutation” cannot occur
within a “closed society," to use Popper's term. To refute a flawed conjecture, and all conjectures are to one degree or another flawed, one must not only have free speech, but the "freedom" to at least try out different means. If there is a notion of “heresy,” things that simply cannot be said, then it is a closed society. Theocracies are inherently “closed societies.” Within a religion one might dispute the finer points of theology, and one might even justify the ways of God to man, but one cannot be among the faithful if one rejects the existence of god. Other, secular forms of “heresy” (aka
“political correctness”) are equally damaging. Consequently, at a political
scale, “conjecture and refutation” seems to demand one or another form of
“democracy,” at least open elections where party platforms serve as the
conjecture about what best serves the public well being and human flourishing, with the vote as affirmation or refutation of that conjecture. There are enormous complications associated
with this. It assumes that people will vote their "well-being," or their "self-interest" -- that is to say, that people will vote "rationally" -- but such is manifestly not always the case. Moreover, party platforms (e.g. contemporary “conservatism,”
which leans toward a nationalist theocracy) are not necessarily predicated on
“enlightenment” values or an open society.
In other words, people living in an open society dedicated to human flourishing can “vote” to close it
down in favor of a society dedicated to God's or the Nation's greatness. While there is still considerable
opposition to full closure, “Trumpism,” if left unchecked, could well result in a
nationalist theocracy with Trump himself as the messianic leader – a
charismatic David Koresh type, libido and all, as the supreme Leader. Progress
is not inevitable, but the result of human endeavor.
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