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Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality
Why efforts to create a scientific basis of morality are neither scientific nor “Important and timely.”—The Wall Street Journal In this illuminating book, James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky trace the origins and development of the centuries-long, passionate, but ultimately failed quest to discover a scientific foundation for morality. The “new moral science” led by such figures as E.O. Wilson, Patricia Churchland, Sam Harris, Jonathan Haidt, and Joshua Greene is only the newest manifestation of that quest. Though claims for its accomplishments are often wildly exaggerated, this new iteration has been no more successful than its predecessors. But rather than giving up in the face of this failure, the new moral science has taken a surprising turn. Whereas earlier efforts sought to demonstrate what is right and wrong, the new moral scientists have concluded, ironically, that right and wrong don’t actually exist. Their (perhaps unwitting) moral nihilism turns the science of morality into a social engineering project. If there is nothing moral for science to discover, the science of morality becomes, at best, a feeble program to achieve arbitrary societal goals. Concise and rigorously argued, Science and the Good is a definitive critique of a would-be science that has gained extraordinary influence in public discourse today—and an exposé of that project’s darker turn. “Science and the Good is a closely argued, always accessible riposte to those who think scientific study can explain, improve or even supersede morality . . . A generous and thoughtful critique.” —The Daily Telegraph
307 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 24, 2022
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About the author
James Davison Hunter
46 books45 followersJames Davison Hunter is the Labrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 26, 2019
This is an interesting book only for those who are interested in the quest of a scientific basis for morality. It was helpful in catching me up on the academic interest in the science of morality. It began with an historical overview of this quest from the Enlightenment onward. In the last decade that quest has continued as technology has advanced and allowed us to image the brain as it processes information, including decision-making when faced with ethical and values dilemmas. The conclusion Hunter comes to is that science is often overreaching in its conclusions based on scientific study. What are actually descriptive results are often portrayed as prescriptive directives giving science an undeserved place of authority in moral pronouncements. I am glad I read it, but am not certain how many would find it beneficial.
July 19, 2019
James Davison Hunter is my favourite sociologist and anything he writes is well worth reading. This book, co-authored with Paul Nedelisky, strikes me as a bit of a departure from some of his other works as he and Nedelisky set out to critique an approach to morality rooted in science. In some respects it reminds of a latter-day version of "The Abolition of Man," with figures such as Sam Harris and Joshua Greene taking the place of Alexander King and Martin Ketley (or Gaius and Titius). Hunter and Nedelisky trace the historical trajectory of how Western intellectuals have attempted to use science as a basis for morality. Though a rigorously-argued (for instance, they point out that the new "moral science" attempts to base rightness or wrongness on one's idea of "happiness" but that happiness is conceived of by each person and culture in very different ways) and well-researched book, its general argument is not new as there have been plenty of apologetics books that counter claims that one can construct morality solely from science, from getting an "ought" from an "is."
November 13, 2018
Can science be the foundation of morality?
That is the question James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky ask in Science and the Good. Their book traces the history of affirmative responses from the early modern period to the present day, focusing on the “new synthesis” that is comprised of four elements: “(1) a Humean mind-focused sentimentalism, (2) a Darwinian account of why the mind has the traits it does, (3) a human interested-based utilitarianism about morality, all embedded within (4) a strident naturalism committed to empirical study of the world.”
Anyone familiar with philosophy knows that sentimentalism, utilitarianism, and naturalism are contested theories. The question facing advocates of the new synthesis, then, is whether science tilts the playing field in favor of those theories. More specifically, does science provide “empirically observable” evidence in their favor? If not, it’s not clear precisely how science contributes to building the foundation of morality.
Hunter and Nedelisky point out that science might contribute to morality at three different levels: (1) “demonstrate with empirical confidence what, in fact, is good and bad, right and wrong, or how we should live”: (2) “give evidence for or against some moral claim or theory”; and/or (3) “provide scientifically based descriptions of, say, the origins of morality, or the specific way our capacity for moral judgment is physically embodied in our neural architecture, or whether human beings tend to behave in ways we consider moral.” Surveying the arguments new-synthesis advocates make, Hunter and Nedelisky conclude that “nearly all of the actual science attempting to deal with morality lands at Level Three findings.” This is a far cry from providing a foundation for morality, let alone of disposing of rival moral theories.
Worse, advocates of the new synthesis have moved the goal posts. Given its commitment to what Hunter and Nedelisky called “disenchanted naturalism,” the new synthesis no longer thinks of morality in terms of “moral realism,” i.e., that distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and vicious, refer to real, objective distinctions. Instead, those distinctions reflect individual preference or social consensus. The authors elaborate:
"The quest [for a scientific foundation of morality] has been fundamentally redirected. The science of morality is no longer about discovering how we ought to live—though it is still often presented as such. Rather, it is now concerned with exploiting scientific and technological know-how in order to achieve practical goals grounded in whatever social consensus we can justify. The science of morality, then has evolved into an engineering project rooted in morally arbitrary goals."
The authors describe this as “moral nihilism,” which seems like an accurate description.
Science and the Goodis a deeply researched, well-written book, and I have only scratched the surface of its argument against the new synthesis, which is detailed and complex. So, if science cannot provide a foundation of morality, what can? The authors eschew theological and natural-law arguments. Historically speaking, they argue, it was the failure of those types of arguments to prevent the European Wars of Religion in the post-Reformation Era that catalyzed the search for scientific arguments in the first place.
(I would like to register a demurral at this point. I think theological and natural-law arguments are stronger than Hunter and Nedelisky do. So, I’m not as convinced as the authors are that appeals to such arguments represents a dead end. Moreover, it’s not clear to me that the Wars of Religion were religious failures as much as they were a political failures. They resulted not so much from differences in religion but from desires for sovereignty. But those are arguments for another day.)
Instead of appealing to religion or natural law, Hunter and Nedelisky challenge the premise of the quest to provide a single foundation for morality in the first place—religious or scientific. “In both cases,” they write, “the effort represented different ways of achieving a foundation for a just and humane social order by denying, avoiding, or transcending the knotty, seemingly irreducible problem of difference.” That being the case, the way forward is “to find a common moral understanding throughour particularities—through our differences—and not in spite of them. Surely there are goods we can all affirm and corruptions we can all repudiate, despite coming from different perspectives.”
Hunter and Nedelisky voice this plaintive cry in the last five pages of the book. It is a hoped-forrather than an argued-forposition, so not much can be said against it since not much was said for it in the first place. Regardless, in a pluralistic society, perhaps this plaintive cry is the most practical way forward. After all, we can agree thatsomething is right or wrong even if we cannot agree on whyit is so. But we can only find that agreement if we talk to one another across the divides—religious, ideological, partisan, etc.—that separate us.
Book Reviewed
James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
That is the question James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky ask in Science and the Good. Their book traces the history of affirmative responses from the early modern period to the present day, focusing on the “new synthesis” that is comprised of four elements: “(1) a Humean mind-focused sentimentalism, (2) a Darwinian account of why the mind has the traits it does, (3) a human interested-based utilitarianism about morality, all embedded within (4) a strident naturalism committed to empirical study of the world.”
Anyone familiar with philosophy knows that sentimentalism, utilitarianism, and naturalism are contested theories. The question facing advocates of the new synthesis, then, is whether science tilts the playing field in favor of those theories. More specifically, does science provide “empirically observable” evidence in their favor? If not, it’s not clear precisely how science contributes to building the foundation of morality.
Hunter and Nedelisky point out that science might contribute to morality at three different levels: (1) “demonstrate with empirical confidence what, in fact, is good and bad, right and wrong, or how we should live”: (2) “give evidence for or against some moral claim or theory”; and/or (3) “provide scientifically based descriptions of, say, the origins of morality, or the specific way our capacity for moral judgment is physically embodied in our neural architecture, or whether human beings tend to behave in ways we consider moral.” Surveying the arguments new-synthesis advocates make, Hunter and Nedelisky conclude that “nearly all of the actual science attempting to deal with morality lands at Level Three findings.” This is a far cry from providing a foundation for morality, let alone of disposing of rival moral theories.
Worse, advocates of the new synthesis have moved the goal posts. Given its commitment to what Hunter and Nedelisky called “disenchanted naturalism,” the new synthesis no longer thinks of morality in terms of “moral realism,” i.e., that distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and vicious, refer to real, objective distinctions. Instead, those distinctions reflect individual preference or social consensus. The authors elaborate:
"The quest [for a scientific foundation of morality] has been fundamentally redirected. The science of morality is no longer about discovering how we ought to live—though it is still often presented as such. Rather, it is now concerned with exploiting scientific and technological know-how in order to achieve practical goals grounded in whatever social consensus we can justify. The science of morality, then has evolved into an engineering project rooted in morally arbitrary goals."
The authors describe this as “moral nihilism,” which seems like an accurate description.
Science and the Goodis a deeply researched, well-written book, and I have only scratched the surface of its argument against the new synthesis, which is detailed and complex. So, if science cannot provide a foundation of morality, what can? The authors eschew theological and natural-law arguments. Historically speaking, they argue, it was the failure of those types of arguments to prevent the European Wars of Religion in the post-Reformation Era that catalyzed the search for scientific arguments in the first place.
(I would like to register a demurral at this point. I think theological and natural-law arguments are stronger than Hunter and Nedelisky do. So, I’m not as convinced as the authors are that appeals to such arguments represents a dead end. Moreover, it’s not clear to me that the Wars of Religion were religious failures as much as they were a political failures. They resulted not so much from differences in religion but from desires for sovereignty. But those are arguments for another day.)
Instead of appealing to religion or natural law, Hunter and Nedelisky challenge the premise of the quest to provide a single foundation for morality in the first place—religious or scientific. “In both cases,” they write, “the effort represented different ways of achieving a foundation for a just and humane social order by denying, avoiding, or transcending the knotty, seemingly irreducible problem of difference.” That being the case, the way forward is “to find a common moral understanding throughour particularities—through our differences—and not in spite of them. Surely there are goods we can all affirm and corruptions we can all repudiate, despite coming from different perspectives.”
Hunter and Nedelisky voice this plaintive cry in the last five pages of the book. It is a hoped-forrather than an argued-forposition, so not much can be said against it since not much was said for it in the first place. Regardless, in a pluralistic society, perhaps this plaintive cry is the most practical way forward. After all, we can agree thatsomething is right or wrong even if we cannot agree on whyit is so. But we can only find that agreement if we talk to one another across the divides—religious, ideological, partisan, etc.—that separate us.
Book Reviewed
James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
December 30, 2024
snappy and thoughtful read. clearly ate up. they slightly lost me at all the stuff about wars, but overall i agreed w their thesis. need to read more on elective affinity bc i never have heard ab that before. wish they expanded more on how natural law could be the foundation if science is indeed not, but maybe im greedy since it was such a short book! this was a pregame for reading the book my dad got me for christmas
September 25, 2023
I absolutely loved this book, it's totally my jam. It deals with the question: Can science be the foundation of morality? In short, no. People have been trying for 400 years, and this book outlines why the quest has failed. Although it deals with science, the topic cannot help but be deeply philosophical, and I found its arguments well-founded and compelling.
I could not help but write a detailed summary for my own future reference:
- “Can science be the foundation of morality?” People have been trying now for 400 years. For some time it seemed hopeless - nothing had succeeded - but starting in the 70s, there's been a new push for it, using new scientific techniques (e.g. brain scans). It still hasn't succeeded, because it has ended up dealing only with the descriptive (what happens physiologically when we reason morally) but cannot tell us what we *should* do. In fact, modernity has even abandoned the idea that morality exists, instead focusing only on what is useful, how to get what we want.
- For a long time the dominant theories of morality were based on scholastics, who worked off of Aristotle: there were final causes that could be deduced through nature.
- Sectarianism and increasing world trade revealed that what were thought to be moral rules were just European customs. There was a need for some other morality that could be universally accepted so cultures could deal with each other.
- The success of the scientific method in various fields in the early 17th century led some (e.g. Grotius) to apply it to ethics. Hobbes said all men pursue good and avoid bad, and that morality comes from the social contract that facilitate that. Locke agreed that we pursue good and bad, and added that we only know that (and anything we know) through experience, so moral knowledge must be empirical.
- The Enlightenment spurred 3 approaches:
- Sentimentalism (18th century) - moral sentiment is ultimately grounded in feelings, not the actions themselves. Hume said it's grounded in pleasure and discomfort. We learn morality by the pleasure / uneasiness of social approval / disapproval. Humanity is marked by shared disposition towards approval, he calls this "sympathy".
- Utilitarianism - Bentham, Mill. What's moral is what maximizes the total happiness of a group. Bentham believed this could be scientifically measured along dimensions like intensity and duration. He saw Hume's concept of sympathy as the reason why what makes one happy aligns with what makes all happy.
- Evolutionary Ethics - other theories didn't adequately explain *why* we have the moral feelings we do. Darwin applied natural selection to morals, saying goodness is what promotes the preservation of the species. It is thus instinctual, not learned as other theories claim. Pleasure doesn't matter, only species survival.
- Waned in popularity in early 20th century. It was unclear to philosophers how some aspects of morality could develop through the evolutionary process. T.H. Huxley argued even if it explains why we think of something as good, it doesn't explain why that notion is preferable. Moore said it commits the Naturalistic Fallacy - that what is natural is necessarily good. This stunted the evolutionary approach for 70 years.
- There was a growing worry that no universal basis for morality could be found. The Darwinian approach suggested that there's no compelling justification for ethics at all, it just is what developed. Logical positivists and emotivists added to skepticism.
- The Darwinian approach died, and while Utilitarianism persevered, different Utilitarians disagreed with each other, and there was no empirical method that led to consensus. People remained guided by religion, cultural trends, and intuition.
- E.O. Wilson helped re-kickstart a scientific approach. He gave a genetic explanation for a longstanding evolutionary puzzle - altruistic behavior (observed in his specialty: ants, but also applied to humans). He argued that ethics should come back to science - the chemistry and biology that underlies the emotional mechanics of morality. This was controversial - biologists like Stephen J. Gould argued that this was biological determinism that would hinder things like overcoming racial inequalities. Others argued that it's bad science, improperly anthropomorphizing animal behavior.
- By the 1990s, "evolutionary psychology" emerged as a field. It has 4 elements that ultimately combine the 3 Enlightenment approaches:
- Human mind-focused Sentimentalism - we feel things then rationalize to justify them
- Evolution as the paradigm for understanding its function - all our moral impulses exist for their survival value
- A human-interest based utilitarianism - couched more around the best than pure human happiness, and treated as an engineering problem
- Embedded in a naturalist world view - the only things that exist are things that can be described in the language of science.
- What science has shown about morality falls into 2 main categories:
- Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology explain empathy and altruism by kin selection or reciprocal altruism. Note that this explains *biological* altruism but not necessarily *moral* altruism.
- Neuroscience has shown what brain processes we use when we engage in moral reasoning. Seems to be dual-process, one more rationally utilitarian, one more emotional rights and duties oriented.
- Social psychology calls into question virtue theory - people don’t consistently act ethically, it’s highly situational.
- Moral Foundations Theory tries to look across all cultures and see what basic universal building blocks there are for morality and whether they offered an evolutionary advantage.
- All of these have ended up being descriptive of morality. None tell us which moral rules we should actually choose.
- There has been a constant tendency to overreach on conclusions based on these results.
- Greene argues that the dual-process demonstrates the validity of utilitarianism. But he’s drawing huge universal claims based on relatively few white university students. And others have shown it’s the intuitiveness of the situations, not utilitarian framework itself, that explains the deliberation.
- Primatologists have argued that the empathy they see in primates are the basis for human morality. But descriptive moral behavior doesn’t explain prescriptive moral ethics - empathy can be the basis for both good and bad behavior.
- There are 2 other intractable problems with the science of morality - the "morality" part.
- To be a science, what is meant by morality has to be well-defined. There are 3 senses we use - the realm of right and wrong (prescriptive, what people should do), what people think is right and wrong (descriptive, what society thinks apart from whether it's actually right or wrong - most of the scientific work on morality examines this sense), what people ought to do if they want some result (prudential, not about right or wrong, but what is effective). Virtually all work in the science of morality confuses these senses. E.g. if we found the neurological basis for how most Americans spend their money, that doesn't imply we should spend our money in that way. It's the same with morality, knowing why people do things does not imply that it's what we should do.
- It also has to be demonstratable. And these arguments are not - they all assume agreement about what is good, then apply science to it. But science has not proven or demonstrated what should be good in the first place. Theories that make happiness the base still can't prove that wanting to be happy is the same as ethically good. That's in fact why Bentham and other utilitarianism failed - people could not be convinced that pleasure were the only valuable things in moral life, or that things like duties and rights did not exist outside of consequences.
- The science of morality has also taken 2 radical turns from the original quest:
- It's adopted a disenchanted naturalism. All concepts of right and wrong come from humans, the moral attitudes we have can be explained biologically, and our moral intuitions are untrustworthy. But there is no independent moral reality. This differs from other sciences, which posit that real laws and forces exist and can be discovered - morality isn't real, it's just a human construct. Sam Harris is one of the few moral scientists who is a naturalist that believes in a moral reality - almost everyone else does not.
- It abandoned the original point - to arbitrate moral disagreement between different world views by finding an objective moral truth. Few moral scientists think this is possible today, as moral reality does not exist, it's just an arbitrary human construct.
- What this implies is not just that objective morality cannot be found (which for hundreds of years was moral skepticism) to objective morality does not exist - moral nihilism.
- Thus to talk about morality is not longer about what's right or wrong, but about what serves human interests, which are what we want or what is typically done. The prudential. Utilitarian based on what people happen to value at the time, not on what is intrinsically valuable.
- So the search for a science of morality has failed. And yet, the original goal - to find a unifying morality to help humankind address our differences - is a worthy one. But science will not get us there.
- It also suffers from an insularity that imagines science and philosophy to be pure and objective, and thus sufficient. That's arguable at best, and in fact the new moral science suffers from its insularity, not realizing that history, culture, political economics matter. The new utilitarian logic talks about social consensus being the basis for ethics, but social consensus had led to horrors in history.
- Is there any way forward? Perhaps not by trying to find our universal similarities, but precisely by working through our differences.
I could not help but write a detailed summary for my own future reference:
- “Can science be the foundation of morality?” People have been trying now for 400 years. For some time it seemed hopeless - nothing had succeeded - but starting in the 70s, there's been a new push for it, using new scientific techniques (e.g. brain scans). It still hasn't succeeded, because it has ended up dealing only with the descriptive (what happens physiologically when we reason morally) but cannot tell us what we *should* do. In fact, modernity has even abandoned the idea that morality exists, instead focusing only on what is useful, how to get what we want.
- For a long time the dominant theories of morality were based on scholastics, who worked off of Aristotle: there were final causes that could be deduced through nature.
- Sectarianism and increasing world trade revealed that what were thought to be moral rules were just European customs. There was a need for some other morality that could be universally accepted so cultures could deal with each other.
- The success of the scientific method in various fields in the early 17th century led some (e.g. Grotius) to apply it to ethics. Hobbes said all men pursue good and avoid bad, and that morality comes from the social contract that facilitate that. Locke agreed that we pursue good and bad, and added that we only know that (and anything we know) through experience, so moral knowledge must be empirical.
- The Enlightenment spurred 3 approaches:
- Sentimentalism (18th century) - moral sentiment is ultimately grounded in feelings, not the actions themselves. Hume said it's grounded in pleasure and discomfort. We learn morality by the pleasure / uneasiness of social approval / disapproval. Humanity is marked by shared disposition towards approval, he calls this "sympathy".
- Utilitarianism - Bentham, Mill. What's moral is what maximizes the total happiness of a group. Bentham believed this could be scientifically measured along dimensions like intensity and duration. He saw Hume's concept of sympathy as the reason why what makes one happy aligns with what makes all happy.
- Evolutionary Ethics - other theories didn't adequately explain *why* we have the moral feelings we do. Darwin applied natural selection to morals, saying goodness is what promotes the preservation of the species. It is thus instinctual, not learned as other theories claim. Pleasure doesn't matter, only species survival.
- Waned in popularity in early 20th century. It was unclear to philosophers how some aspects of morality could develop through the evolutionary process. T.H. Huxley argued even if it explains why we think of something as good, it doesn't explain why that notion is preferable. Moore said it commits the Naturalistic Fallacy - that what is natural is necessarily good. This stunted the evolutionary approach for 70 years.
- There was a growing worry that no universal basis for morality could be found. The Darwinian approach suggested that there's no compelling justification for ethics at all, it just is what developed. Logical positivists and emotivists added to skepticism.
- The Darwinian approach died, and while Utilitarianism persevered, different Utilitarians disagreed with each other, and there was no empirical method that led to consensus. People remained guided by religion, cultural trends, and intuition.
- E.O. Wilson helped re-kickstart a scientific approach. He gave a genetic explanation for a longstanding evolutionary puzzle - altruistic behavior (observed in his specialty: ants, but also applied to humans). He argued that ethics should come back to science - the chemistry and biology that underlies the emotional mechanics of morality. This was controversial - biologists like Stephen J. Gould argued that this was biological determinism that would hinder things like overcoming racial inequalities. Others argued that it's bad science, improperly anthropomorphizing animal behavior.
- By the 1990s, "evolutionary psychology" emerged as a field. It has 4 elements that ultimately combine the 3 Enlightenment approaches:
- Human mind-focused Sentimentalism - we feel things then rationalize to justify them
- Evolution as the paradigm for understanding its function - all our moral impulses exist for their survival value
- A human-interest based utilitarianism - couched more around the best than pure human happiness, and treated as an engineering problem
- Embedded in a naturalist world view - the only things that exist are things that can be described in the language of science.
- What science has shown about morality falls into 2 main categories:
- Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology explain empathy and altruism by kin selection or reciprocal altruism. Note that this explains *biological* altruism but not necessarily *moral* altruism.
- Neuroscience has shown what brain processes we use when we engage in moral reasoning. Seems to be dual-process, one more rationally utilitarian, one more emotional rights and duties oriented.
- Social psychology calls into question virtue theory - people don’t consistently act ethically, it’s highly situational.
- Moral Foundations Theory tries to look across all cultures and see what basic universal building blocks there are for morality and whether they offered an evolutionary advantage.
- All of these have ended up being descriptive of morality. None tell us which moral rules we should actually choose.
- There has been a constant tendency to overreach on conclusions based on these results.
- Greene argues that the dual-process demonstrates the validity of utilitarianism. But he’s drawing huge universal claims based on relatively few white university students. And others have shown it’s the intuitiveness of the situations, not utilitarian framework itself, that explains the deliberation.
- Primatologists have argued that the empathy they see in primates are the basis for human morality. But descriptive moral behavior doesn’t explain prescriptive moral ethics - empathy can be the basis for both good and bad behavior.
- There are 2 other intractable problems with the science of morality - the "morality" part.
- To be a science, what is meant by morality has to be well-defined. There are 3 senses we use - the realm of right and wrong (prescriptive, what people should do), what people think is right and wrong (descriptive, what society thinks apart from whether it's actually right or wrong - most of the scientific work on morality examines this sense), what people ought to do if they want some result (prudential, not about right or wrong, but what is effective). Virtually all work in the science of morality confuses these senses. E.g. if we found the neurological basis for how most Americans spend their money, that doesn't imply we should spend our money in that way. It's the same with morality, knowing why people do things does not imply that it's what we should do.
- It also has to be demonstratable. And these arguments are not - they all assume agreement about what is good, then apply science to it. But science has not proven or demonstrated what should be good in the first place. Theories that make happiness the base still can't prove that wanting to be happy is the same as ethically good. That's in fact why Bentham and other utilitarianism failed - people could not be convinced that pleasure were the only valuable things in moral life, or that things like duties and rights did not exist outside of consequences.
- The science of morality has also taken 2 radical turns from the original quest:
- It's adopted a disenchanted naturalism. All concepts of right and wrong come from humans, the moral attitudes we have can be explained biologically, and our moral intuitions are untrustworthy. But there is no independent moral reality. This differs from other sciences, which posit that real laws and forces exist and can be discovered - morality isn't real, it's just a human construct. Sam Harris is one of the few moral scientists who is a naturalist that believes in a moral reality - almost everyone else does not.
- It abandoned the original point - to arbitrate moral disagreement between different world views by finding an objective moral truth. Few moral scientists think this is possible today, as moral reality does not exist, it's just an arbitrary human construct.
- What this implies is not just that objective morality cannot be found (which for hundreds of years was moral skepticism) to objective morality does not exist - moral nihilism.
- Thus to talk about morality is not longer about what's right or wrong, but about what serves human interests, which are what we want or what is typically done. The prudential. Utilitarian based on what people happen to value at the time, not on what is intrinsically valuable.
- So the search for a science of morality has failed. And yet, the original goal - to find a unifying morality to help humankind address our differences - is a worthy one. But science will not get us there.
- It also suffers from an insularity that imagines science and philosophy to be pure and objective, and thus sufficient. That's arguable at best, and in fact the new moral science suffers from its insularity, not realizing that history, culture, political economics matter. The new utilitarian logic talks about social consensus being the basis for ethics, but social consensus had led to horrors in history.
- Is there any way forward? Perhaps not by trying to find our universal similarities, but precisely by working through our differences.
April 11, 2019
"For many years after each of the morning and evening Sunday services I remained in the auditorium for another hour to field questions. Hundreds of people stayed for the give-and-take discussions. One of the most frequent statements I heard was that 'Every person has to define right and wrong for him- or herself.' I always responded to the speakers by asking, 'Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?' They would invariable say, 'Yes, of course.' Then I would ask, “Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is "there" that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?'" - Tim Keller in "The Reason for God."
The book "Science and the Good" is an investigation into the scientific quest for the foundations of morality. Can science discover what is moral? After 200ish pages the answer is decidedly: no, it cannot. This is no revelation to most people except apparently scientists of morality. We just can't live in a practical sense without taking our own view of morality and placing it on those around us. This is clear evidence that, no matter what we may think or feel, there is an absolute standard of morality within every one of us that came from some where. Mr. Hunter and his co-author Paul Nedelisky make clear that this standard did not come from science. Indeed, all the scientists of morality have succeeded in doing is concluding that the "truth"—I love how, even though they deny that there is objective truth, they write and live as if there is—is that there is no such thing as morality. This is moral nihilism.
The problem with moral nihilism is that it is inadequate to grapple with the great issues of our age. As the authors put it: "The new moral science, in itself, provides no resources for either affirming any moral idea or resisting any injustice."
The authors do a fine job of tearing down the false edifice that the moral scientists have tried to erect, but they don't have any answers either because there really is no answer if there is no God. Tim Keller puts it this way: "Either God exists or He does not, but if He does not, nothing and no one else can take His place." I'm grateful to Mr. Hunter and Mr. Nedelisky for inadvertently supporting Mr. Kellers argument by tearing down the attempts of science to come up with a moral standard. It is impossible.
The book "Science and the Good" is an investigation into the scientific quest for the foundations of morality. Can science discover what is moral? After 200ish pages the answer is decidedly: no, it cannot. This is no revelation to most people except apparently scientists of morality. We just can't live in a practical sense without taking our own view of morality and placing it on those around us. This is clear evidence that, no matter what we may think or feel, there is an absolute standard of morality within every one of us that came from some where. Mr. Hunter and his co-author Paul Nedelisky make clear that this standard did not come from science. Indeed, all the scientists of morality have succeeded in doing is concluding that the "truth"—I love how, even though they deny that there is objective truth, they write and live as if there is—is that there is no such thing as morality. This is moral nihilism.
The problem with moral nihilism is that it is inadequate to grapple with the great issues of our age. As the authors put it: "The new moral science, in itself, provides no resources for either affirming any moral idea or resisting any injustice."
The authors do a fine job of tearing down the false edifice that the moral scientists have tried to erect, but they don't have any answers either because there really is no answer if there is no God. Tim Keller puts it this way: "Either God exists or He does not, but if He does not, nothing and no one else can take His place." I'm grateful to Mr. Hunter and Mr. Nedelisky for inadvertently supporting Mr. Kellers argument by tearing down the attempts of science to come up with a moral standard. It is impossible.
February 18, 2020
Well worth a read to clarify one's understanding of the science of morality. The authors begin with a sweeping overview of the history of the attempts to establish a scientific basis for morality and how each has failed. This is in itself is worth the price of the book. But the authors go much further into why the entire endeavor is futile and, by the end, do their best to help the reader think about realistically where we go from here.
Side note: For readers who might think that the book gives validation to some sort of theistic basis for morality, it may give some comfort because it does expose the physicalist assumptions of the new 'moral science', but ultimately someone trying to establish a theistic foundation for morality runs into a much deeper morass than even the new moral scientists. The fact that I might think or feel that there is some universal 'true for all' morality doesn't prove anything. Nor does my abhorrence of the moral practices of others. It proves only that bedrock moral feelings are very strong in humans. If I _felt_ that my moral feelings were not universal, they wouldn't be moral feelings. 'Moral feeling' implies that the holder believes they are universal, else we are just talking about 'preferences'. No matter how strong my moral intuitions are, my feelings can't demonstrate that there is some transcendent 'true morality' that exists outside of human culture.
Side note: For readers who might think that the book gives validation to some sort of theistic basis for morality, it may give some comfort because it does expose the physicalist assumptions of the new 'moral science', but ultimately someone trying to establish a theistic foundation for morality runs into a much deeper morass than even the new moral scientists. The fact that I might think or feel that there is some universal 'true for all' morality doesn't prove anything. Nor does my abhorrence of the moral practices of others. It proves only that bedrock moral feelings are very strong in humans. If I _felt_ that my moral feelings were not universal, they wouldn't be moral feelings. 'Moral feeling' implies that the holder believes they are universal, else we are just talking about 'preferences'. No matter how strong my moral intuitions are, my feelings can't demonstrate that there is some transcendent 'true morality' that exists outside of human culture.
September 16, 2019
This is an excellent and well-argued presentation of the problems with seeking a scientific basis for morality. Here's my review of the book on the Patheos blog Driven to Abstraction.
December 9, 2018
This book is a comprehensive study on the relationship of science and morality and the failure of the former to account for the later. Very irenic and judicious.
June 16, 2023
Growing up there was never a question where our strong sense of what was moral and right came from. I was engulfed by the culture and theology of the Gospel Church. It was all right there in the Bible, or at least in our particular reading of the Bible.
Subjectively what is good, what is moral or right, runs unquestionably deep within each of us. We are perplexed when others don’t share the same sense of what is to be valued; to us it seems so fundamental. Those others are equally perplexed or angered that we don’t appreciate what their sense of the good is. Religion and politics become fractured into different camps taking opposing positions on complex issues. In arguing we all forget we’re living on the same planet with each other.
For hundreds of years philosophers endeavoured to use language with rational argument to define the good. But a new move is afoot. Could science, with its powerful tools of enquiry, its capacity for demonstration and, its edifice of the known answer the question for us? Can science finally tell us what is good, what is moral, what is to be valued, sought, practiced and, preserved?
Science and the Good: The tragic quest for the foundations of morality poses these questions. First comes an examination of the progress of philosophy around the delineation of the good. Then the book delves into the more recent efforts of science to address the issue. There are the findings of evolutionary psychology (for example, the prosocial behaviors such as apparent altruism in some primates) and those of neurobiology (with the identification of brain structures involved in ethical decision making). The conclusion? At this stage of enquiry, science can only tell us what is rather than how we ought to be. Unfortunately, science’s understanding of what is good happens to be wracked with methodological difficulties and over-reach in its interpretations.
So, is this a good book? I imagine it is as supplementary reading in a university philosophy course. With my long time interest in science, I was drawn to some of the accounts of the methods of moral scientists (thus described not as a comment on their character, just the focus of their endeavours). But I grew tired of the intellectual hand-wringing. It all seemed to just miss the point for me of why I feel so strongly my sense of the moral and the good while others feel so strongly differently, even oppositely, than do I.
What the book lacked for me was a sense of humanity and story. Obviously, those are strong in the sense for me of what is good when I read. A few poignant anecdotes would have gone a long way to suggest that the author’s not only thought about this, but actually reflected on it in a human sort of way.
That said, I could agree with the course of action proposed in the final chapter. Rather than seeking a morality that would be right at the exclusion of others, instead we can value differences, entering into dialogue for the purpose of respecting and understanding.
Subjectively what is good, what is moral or right, runs unquestionably deep within each of us. We are perplexed when others don’t share the same sense of what is to be valued; to us it seems so fundamental. Those others are equally perplexed or angered that we don’t appreciate what their sense of the good is. Religion and politics become fractured into different camps taking opposing positions on complex issues. In arguing we all forget we’re living on the same planet with each other.
For hundreds of years philosophers endeavoured to use language with rational argument to define the good. But a new move is afoot. Could science, with its powerful tools of enquiry, its capacity for demonstration and, its edifice of the known answer the question for us? Can science finally tell us what is good, what is moral, what is to be valued, sought, practiced and, preserved?
Science and the Good: The tragic quest for the foundations of morality poses these questions. First comes an examination of the progress of philosophy around the delineation of the good. Then the book delves into the more recent efforts of science to address the issue. There are the findings of evolutionary psychology (for example, the prosocial behaviors such as apparent altruism in some primates) and those of neurobiology (with the identification of brain structures involved in ethical decision making). The conclusion? At this stage of enquiry, science can only tell us what is rather than how we ought to be. Unfortunately, science’s understanding of what is good happens to be wracked with methodological difficulties and over-reach in its interpretations.
So, is this a good book? I imagine it is as supplementary reading in a university philosophy course. With my long time interest in science, I was drawn to some of the accounts of the methods of moral scientists (thus described not as a comment on their character, just the focus of their endeavours). But I grew tired of the intellectual hand-wringing. It all seemed to just miss the point for me of why I feel so strongly my sense of the moral and the good while others feel so strongly differently, even oppositely, than do I.
What the book lacked for me was a sense of humanity and story. Obviously, those are strong in the sense for me of what is good when I read. A few poignant anecdotes would have gone a long way to suggest that the author’s not only thought about this, but actually reflected on it in a human sort of way.
That said, I could agree with the course of action proposed in the final chapter. Rather than seeking a morality that would be right at the exclusion of others, instead we can value differences, entering into dialogue for the purpose of respecting and understanding.
May 20, 2025
Inspired by a WSJ review, I put this on my "Things to Check Out" list. (That review is from January 2019, which should give you some indication of the slow churn of my TtCO list. Fortunately the topic is timeless.)
As you can tell from the book's subtitle, the authors believe that the effort to use scientific insights and objective facts to illuminate and discover a solid foundation for human morality has been, and will continue to be, an utter failure. Not for lack of trying; the book describes efforts going back centuries by very smart people: Grotius, Mill, Herbie Spencer, Hume, and many more.
Speaking of Hume, there have been attempts to refute or evade his classic "Is–ought problem", essentially the linguistic observation that you can't proceed from statements about what reality "is" to deduce what people "ought" to do.
But people try. The authors note, usefully, different "levels" of possible scientific explication. The gold standard is "Level One": science settling longstanding moral questions unambiguously. Somewhat weaker is "Level Two": science providing solid evidence of some outstanding moral claim or theory. Finally, there's "Level Three": science indicating the origins of some aspect of our moral sense in the raw facts of evolution, neurochemistry, etc.
Scholars in the field are so far stuck on Level Three, although there are aspirations and claims otherwise. For example, the evolutionary explanation for "altruistic" behavior, where individuals self-sacrifice for the betterment of their community gene pool. Fair enough.
It would seem that, from a 100% "science" view, the "moral nihilists" have the high ground in this discussion. When you consider the fundamentals, it's all just interactions of mindless particles and fields, physics and chemistry. The authors helpfully list some concepts that (from a "disenchanted" viewpoint) are, at best, illusory: purposiveness, consciousness, the self, free will, intentionality, and (gulp) life itself.
But never say never; maybe someday "science" will suss things out.
(Obtained via the University Near Here's Interlibrary Loan wizards from Brandeis University. Thanks as always.)
April 5, 2021
A very worthwhile project, supported by the Templeton Foundation and intended for "interested lay readers, students, and young scientists". The book explores the fortunes of the Enlightenment project to place morality on a scientific basis, and so rescue it from the apparently irreconcilable world-views of religious traditions. It finds scant evidence of modern scientific disciplines (evolutionary psychology, neuroscience etc.) getting to the root of the question of what is moral; and - more importantly - points out that as scientific tools have improved, the sense that there is such a thing as a universal morality has largely been abandoned. "The science of morality", they conclude, "has evolved into [a social] engineering project rooted in morally arbitrary goals" - goals, moreover, often bent to serve fashionable nostrums. The conclusion is simple, if maybe a little disappointing to some: empirical science does have a role, but only a very limited role, in helping us understand something so complex and entangled with human culture as is morality.
May 16, 2020
David Hume famously formulated what is now called Hume's Law: that many writers make claims about what ought to be, based on statements about what is, that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones.
This book tracks the intellectual history of moral theory from the Enlightenment's rejection of God or religious authority as the basis for normative assertions about human behavior. It looks at the twists and turns of the attempt to base morality upon science.
The argument made is that Hume was right: science is about description, not prescription. And that modern attempts to derive an objective morality based upon the demonstrated results of science have universally failed.
The corollary question, If not science, then what?, is addressed in the final chapters. I leave that to you the reader to discover.
This book tracks the intellectual history of moral theory from the Enlightenment's rejection of God or religious authority as the basis for normative assertions about human behavior. It looks at the twists and turns of the attempt to base morality upon science.
The argument made is that Hume was right: science is about description, not prescription. And that modern attempts to derive an objective morality based upon the demonstrated results of science have universally failed.
The corollary question, If not science, then what?, is addressed in the final chapters. I leave that to you the reader to discover.
October 2, 2019
Full disclosure - I read this for a book club, and would not have picked it up otherwise.
This serves as a decent introduction to the hunt for a science of morality, but I can't help but think that the same information could have been presented in a shorter, and less pretentious, format. The authors lay out existing works, only to immediately tear them down, while offering no alternative. It seems that this "moral nihilism" is the point, but I was left wanting more: some direction for future investigation, perhaps, or guidance on how science could be used to direct moral discussions, even if it cannot evaluate them.
A fine book, but probably best for those in closely related disciplines, and not true "hard" scientists, who will be frustrated at the lack of data.
This serves as a decent introduction to the hunt for a science of morality, but I can't help but think that the same information could have been presented in a shorter, and less pretentious, format. The authors lay out existing works, only to immediately tear them down, while offering no alternative. It seems that this "moral nihilism" is the point, but I was left wanting more: some direction for future investigation, perhaps, or guidance on how science could be used to direct moral discussions, even if it cannot evaluate them.
A fine book, but probably best for those in closely related disciplines, and not true "hard" scientists, who will be frustrated at the lack of data.
October 12, 2020
This book provides an excellent, accessible overview of the search for a scientific foundation of morality. While there have been many important, practical advances due to this research, we are still not any closer to a scientific justification of our morals.
Many proponents of giving morality a scientific foundation use deceptive language to describe descriptive morality (simply describing a process) with prescriptive (the right type of morality) morality's language.
This book is well worth the read.
Many proponents of giving morality a scientific foundation use deceptive language to describe descriptive morality (simply describing a process) with prescriptive (the right type of morality) morality's language.
This book is well worth the read.
July 20, 2022
Very glad this book was written.
The sleights of hand and pretenses of some modern public intellectuals and scientists needed to be called out in this way. Hunter and Nedelisky are, I think, charitable and specific in their criticisms. They hit the nail on the head when they talk about how most modern discussions of morality have swapped definitions; what we used to call morality has been given up on, and what is now being discussed is either prudential heuristics or utilitarianism or something else.
The sleights of hand and pretenses of some modern public intellectuals and scientists needed to be called out in this way. Hunter and Nedelisky are, I think, charitable and specific in their criticisms. They hit the nail on the head when they talk about how most modern discussions of morality have swapped definitions; what we used to call morality has been given up on, and what is now being discussed is either prudential heuristics or utilitarianism or something else.
May 22, 2023
Great Book
I got to this book after listening to Steven Pinker and reading a Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Both of this brilliant thinkers had me pondering on just how morality came to be and they were quite certain it was through evolution and naturalism.
This book offered an in depth history of the search for morality in science, and a great overview of the modern attempt and failure to do the same. Scathing insight into the new moral scientists bait and switch of moral language to disguise nihilism and political influences.
I got to this book after listening to Steven Pinker and reading a Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Both of this brilliant thinkers had me pondering on just how morality came to be and they were quite certain it was through evolution and naturalism.
This book offered an in depth history of the search for morality in science, and a great overview of the modern attempt and failure to do the same. Scathing insight into the new moral scientists bait and switch of moral language to disguise nihilism and political influences.
April 3, 2023
This was a good book, albeit too philosophical for me. But that is my fault, not the fault of the book. The short summary is that after multiple centuries the scientific attempt to explain and study morality has failed, and the current consensus of the controlling group is that morality is a myth and doesn’t exist.
March 31, 2020
James Davison Hunter is always worth reading and this book proves no exception. A wonderful romp through the intellectual history of science’s (and its many proponent’s) claims of finding an empirical base for our moral claims.
Read
November 11, 2020Makes you deeply think on what morality means to you - and that, in and of itself, is an important step, inasmuch as, asking the right question, even if such a question is ultimately unanswerable, is a very necessary step in personal development.
January 12, 2021
Bravo! This book is such an interesting history of science and its relationship to a development of moral theory. The authors present the history and then show how science fails to achieve this goal. (And they call out a lot of prominent scientists in the process...which was very enjoyable!)
April 21, 2020
Last chapter is most useful as they sum everything up.
February 5, 2023
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December 28, 2018Alan Jacobs: https://blog.ayjay.org/science-and-th...
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