In the fifth installment of the Hitchens-Wilson debate, Hitchens writes:
[O]ur "innate" predisposition to both good and wicked behavior is precisely what one would expect to find of a recently-evolved species that is (as we now know from the study of DNA) half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. By the way, do not take that as a denigration of humankind. Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. As Darwin put it:Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or nearly as well-developed, as in man.We can now observe this to be the case. But animal and human "altruism" is contradicted by the way in which species are also designed to fight with, kill, dominate, and even consume each other. Humans are capable of even greater cruelty because only they have the imagination to inflict it. ...
The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space: some societies have licensed cannibalism but they tend to die out, and others have licensed human sacrifice and infanticide. ... But I answer your question by making the pragmatic observation that, if we surrendered to our lower instincts all the time, there would be no language in which to write this argument between us and no society in which we could find an audience.
He is, of course, missing the point again. And Wilson, again, points this out:
I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? Why do we call it "good"?
What Wilson has written is a perfectly good response, if you already get what Wilson is driving at. But Hitchens, clearly, hasn't figured it out yet. Of course, he should have. Wilson was quite clear in earlier posts. But not so much in this one. I think Wilson missed an opportunity here to explain more clearly why it is that Hitchen's response was missing the point. When Wilson asks "Why do we call it 'good'?", Hitchens might respond, "We call it 'good' because we speak English, and 'good' is the word English-speakers use to refer to that innate behavioral tendency that makes humans act in ways that promote the life and health and happiness of others."
But the point of Wilson's questions are not semantic but epistemological. And the epistemological "warrant" he is asking for is warrant for Hitchens's normative claims. This was an excellent opportunity for Wilson to explain the difference between normative and merely descriptive discourse.
Hitchens has described how moral behavior and moral concepts arise in the animal homo sapiens. It is a description that an ethical nihilist could agree with. Ethical nihilists believe there is no such thing as right and wrong. Of course they know most human beings talk about right and wrong and often follow the inner promtings that lead them to do what people consider "right". But, according to the ethical nihilist, those ethical claims aren't actually true. An inner promting to help those in need is on the same level as an inner prompting to rape. And the same goes for outer promptings: American high society discourages anti-Semitism. German high socity once encouraged it. An ethical nihilist may prefer one to the other, but he doesn't pretend that his personal preferences are anything other than personal preferences.
Both Hitchens and the ethical nihilist agree about the facts of history. But the nihilist does not himself make any normaitve claims. Hitchens does. What justifies this practice? To illustrate the nature of normativity, consider the following discussion:
Bill: Don't do that.
Bob: Why not?
Bill: Because it is morally wrong.
Notice that the conversation begins with a sentence in the imperative mood. The statement that something is right or wrong will, if true, justify an imperative. Now, one way to justify an imperative is to appeal to a person's desires. But that's not ethics yet. Don't put your hand on the stove because if you do you will get burnt, and (we assume) you don't want to get burnt. Go to college because if you do you will be able to make more money. Ah, but what if I don't care about money? What if I prefer to work for hourly wages, leave my work at work, and come home to my sweetheart whom I would rather marry now than four years down the road? When the justification of an imperative is based on desire, then what is justified is what Kant called a hypothetical imperative: if you want these things, then behave this way. But if you don't want those things, or if you want other things more, then do as you please. Morality says more than that, though. Morality issues what Kant called a categorical imperative: do this, regardless of what your desires are. The authority of these categorical imperatives, their normative force, is what is in question.
Moral indignation pressupposes normativity. You aren't indignant at someone who burns his hand because he didn't know (or forgot that) the stove was hot. And you aren't indignant at someone who chooses chocolate over vanilla because his tastes differ from yours. Morality presupposes that some desires are better than others. Not just stronger, or more socially acceptable, but better. Not just called "better" by people, but actually better. That's a normative claim. And there is no way to get from a description of how people behave, and of the evolutionary origin of that behavior, to a justification for normative claims -- not even if we include a description of the normative claims that other people make.
Wilson asked Hitchens what makes his normative claims true. Hitchens responds by describing the evolutionary process that brought it about that people make normative claims, and (sometimes) behave in corresponding ways. But the question is not why people make those claims and behave in those ways. The question is what makes those claims true, and why should people behave in those ways?
All of this will be familiar to anyone who has read Kant, or G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica), or C. S. Lewis (Abolition of Man). But many popular atheists aren't very well educated. Either they haven't read those folks, or they didn't learn the lesson very well. And I wish Wilson had taken this into account: if your interlocutor isn't getting your point because he's uneducated, then you have to educate him a bit. Otherwise he still won't get your point when you repeat it for the fifth time.
Posted by mccartney at May 27, 2007 03:56 PM | TrackBack