Scientific morality: an example

Every once in a while, I hear these stirrings from scientists that there can be an objective morality, and that by following reason and evidence we can achieve great advances in ethics and reduce human suffering. I agree, in part. I think reason and science are the only ways we can implement our goals effectively, and that we should be empirically assessing our progress and making changes as necessary in a rational way. But — and this is a huge exception — science is not sufficient. Scientists are flawed, and while you can use science to optimally reach a particular goal, setting that goal in the first place is not determinable by scientific methods.

As a useful corrective to the scientific optimists, I suggest you read Francis Galton’s Memories of My Life, and try to do so with an open mind. That’ll be hard to do, because he says things that we now regard as repugnant, that we learned with hard lessons in the 20th century, lessons he did not experience. I think if Galton had lived through that period, he would have adjusted his opinions accordingly; charitably, I think I can safely assume from his writings that he had a sincere concern for improving the state of humanity, and that all that he proposed would have been for the betterment of individuals.

Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.

Try to keep that in mind when you read these quotes from his chapter on “Race Improvement”. He’s a scientist with only the highest aspirations for others. But he’s also a flawed scientist with imperfect knowledge, and a human being with a heavy freight of prejudices. He doesn’t realize that he’s paving the road to Hell with his intentions.

Here are the words of an upper middle class Victorian gentlemen who proposes to judge people and determine the value of other lives.

The most common misrepresentations now are that its methods must be altogether those of compulsory unions, as in breeding animals. It is not so. I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble- mindedness, habitual criminality, and pauperism, but that is quite different from compulsory marriage. How to restrain ill-omened marriages is a question by itself, whether it should be effected by seclusion, or in other ways yet to be devised that are consistent with a humane and well-informed public opinion. I cannot doubt that our democracy will ultimately refuse consent to that liberty of propagating children which is now allowed to the undesirable classes, but the populace has yet to be taught the true state of these things. A democracy cannot endure unless it be composed of able citizens; therefore it must in self-defence withstand the free introduction of degenerate stock.

Note what he considers both undesirable and heritable: Poverty. Crime. Intelligence. He can glibly divide humanity into classes, some of which are “undesirable”. He is looking for humane ways to prevent undesirables from propagating.

He has high moral aims! Keep that in mind; if it were actually true that poor people birthed children who were genetically determined to be poor, shouldn’t we do something about it? Of course, he’s not thinking it through: he can’t legitimately claim that poverty is biologically heritable (it sure is environmentally influenced, though!) and he certainly doesn’t seem to comprehend that poverty is a consequence of an unequal distribution of resources.

He’s also incredibly unaware of his own peculiar biases, biases that leap out to the more modern eye.

Most notabilities have been great eaters and excellent digesters, on literally the same principle that the furnace which can raise more steam than is usual for one of its size must burn more freely and well than is common. Most great men are vigorous animals with exuberant powers and an extreme devotion to a cause. There is no reason to suppose that in breeding for the highest order of intellect we should produce a sterile or a feeble race.

So “great men” are big-bellied men? Where is cause and effect here? Where is the evidence?

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