In the final chapter of Braintrust, “Religion and Morality,” Patricia Churchland is doing an exegesis of The Euthyphro.
The pattern of questioning strongly hints, however, that whatever it is that makes something good or just or right is rooted in the nature of humans and the society we make, not in the nature of the gods we invent. There is something about the facts concerning human needs and human nature that entails that some social practices are better than others, that some human behavior cannot be tolerated, and that some forms of punishment are needed. [p 196]
That second sentence makes a nice summing up of the book, and it’s also what Sam Harris was trying to say but didn’t.
It sounds like a fascinating book. I’ll have to add it to my already-too-long reading list.
I don’t understand this:
“There is something about the facts concerning human needs and human nature that entails that some social practices are better than others”
When people talk about goodness or justice they usually mean ideals, absolutes. Does she mean better in a universal way, independent of human needs and nature? If a million years from now we’re extinct and moths have evolved conscience, would “what’s better” be a different thing? Or is it that we naturally tend to think in some certain way and that is what makes it better?
Jose
How about better in the sense that a sharpened stick is a better weapon than a banana. The thing is, people don’t usually talk about goodness or justice, they talk about things being immoral or unjust. Morality tends to be located in the here and now (and it’s usually though not exclusively negative). The grand abstractions are about as relevant as the grand abstraction (the one we don’t take very seriously around here).
How could she possibly mean that, Jose? Did you read the sentence you quoted? In saying that, “There is something about the facts concerning human needs and human nature that entails that some social practices are better than others,” Churchland can only mean a standard dependent on those facts concerning human needs and human nature. That’s simply what the word “entails” means.
Churchland is not saying anything profoundly new here, though. Nor, I think, is she necessarily even saying anything as radical as Sam Harris wanted to say (but failed to say convincingly). All ethical theories are logically dependent on an underlying conception of human nature — and not just any conception of human nature, but one containing some facts about humanity which are argued to have inextricable value entailments. Sam wanted to get the inextricable value entailments for free, refusing to recognize that they are not simply deducible from the facts, and therefore not providing the separate argument for them that is required. In contrast, I don’t see anything in Churchland’s position (in this quote, or anything else I’ve read) which tries to smuggle in the value entailments as a freebee: She seems to realize that the mere existence of human needs does not in itself entail any moral obligation on anyone that such needs ought to be met; she only draws the purely pragmatic conclusion that some social arrangements will be better at meeting human needs than others, that some behaviors cannot be tolerated and must be punished if human needs are to be met.
I strongly disagree that there is some metaphysical or universal intrinsic human nature that guides morality. I think it’s oversimplifying the complexity and confusion of human psychology and social organization.
Humans have imagination and memory which makes them able to evaluate their future and past actions, and that is how judgment rather than instinct has an effect.
Note that the “transcendent” options (e.g. the religious ones) themselves also presuppose an account of human nature too. That is, they presuppose that we can have access to it. That this seems implausible at best is one reason to reject such accounts.
I too enjoyed Braintrust and hope it is one of many books on the subject eventually. Lots of places Churchland has to say “we don’t know”; I hope some day we can fill many of those in.
Egbert, Churchland isn’t saying “that there is some metaphysical or universal intrinsic human nature that guides morality.” Maybe you realize that and are just making an announcement of what you strongly disagree with, independent of what Churchland said – but if you think it’s Churchland you’re strongly disagreeing with, you’ve got her wrong.
jose, no of course she doesn’t mean that. It seems to me it’s very clear even in just those two sentences that she’s not talking about absolutes.
The book as a whole, of course, makes clear what she does mean.