Professors love to pontificate, and sometimes at far greater length than they should. But underlying this obvious truth is sometimes a well-honed skill for finding words, in real time, to express an evolving idea. Like pianists and athletes, well-practiced professors have autonomic systems that take care of the essentials of their craft so that they can inject their energy, thought, and personality at just the right moment. For a professor, this involves planning sentences ahead; modulating loudness, tone, and body motion; and all the while measuring audience reaction and understanding. This frees the mind and soul to achieve a new synthesis that, on occasion, makes the individual lecture or discussion a unique and unrepeatable event for both the audience and the professor.
As part of a journalism project, one of my students was interviewing me about cosmology, and particularly about the evolution of the universe, when the conversation took a slightly unexpected turn.
"What about the future of the human race?"
I was in full flight as a cosmologist and remarked that we were not much more than a grease spot on a lump of rock. I was about to continue on this theme, but my audience did not like having all of humanity written off in such a cavalier manner.
"What can we do?"
"Not a lot. The Sun is going to evaporate the entire solar system in 7 billion years. We would obviously need to move out by then. However, the universe will eventually become uninhabitable for any form of intelligent life: The universe will approach absolute zero temperature, galactic clusters will become immensely widely separated, and eventually all the matter will be collected into black holes at the center of where galaxies used to be."
"But what about the very near future?"
I continued with apocalyptic themes: global warming, pandemic diseases, overpopulation, habitat destruction, wars caused by environmental degradation... My student frowned and continued undeterred.
"So, again, what can we do?"
I instinctively dove for the safety of being a theorist in a non-applied science.
"This is really not my area of expertise, and the tragedy is that people and their politicians have really stopped listening to anyone who tries to point to consequences of actions that go beyond 'bread and circuses.' They care more about the cost of cable TV than about good stewardship of the planet."
"But what would you tell those people who would listen? What can science and scientists do to help guide them?"
There it was: one of those magical moments that can lead to deeper understanding or deeper disappointment, a moment that must be carefully and honestly addressed from the heart as well as from science.
As an atheist, I have always made a point of reading about religion and religious beliefs, sometimes to understand humanity better, and at other times to simply understand the enemy: dogma. Due to great respect for a religious colleague and friend, I have been reading a number of books about Buddhism. As a non-theistic religion that places empiricism above scriptural authority, Buddhism is far more appealing to me than the Abrahamic religions, and particularly the Protestant faith in which I was (rather loosely) raised. Buddhism still contains much pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo about the interconnectedness of all things to levels that violate causality, relativity, and even the foundations quantum mechanics. On the other hand, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are a much more satisfying basis for an ethical system than the Ten Commandments of my Christian upbringing.
My autonomic systems were playing for time as I rooted through my mental attic to find a good answer to my student. The answer formed unconsciously, and straight out of the fundamental principles of Buddhism.
"Decrease suffering," I suggested. "All science can do is decrease the suffering of all species, not just humans, as we face and try to handle future calamities."
Maybe it wasn't a blindingly original thought (it certainly dates back to the Buddha, if not earlier), but for me it was something of an epiphany. As a physicist, I seek the fundamental, universal laws that underpin how the universe works. As an atheist, I have a well-established and well-thought-out ethical code, and I had thought that such things were personal and culturally dependent. Indeed, attempts to make ethical codes into universal truths can lead, and have led, to some of the very worst aspects of organized religion.
Many admirable ethical ideals are culturally dependent. The Hippocratic Principle of "do no harm" works well for medicine but would paralyze science and engineering, because there is always a dark side to any piece of knowledge. At that moment in that interview, I realized that a universal moral imperative based on working to decrease suffering is something that I and, I think, many scientists could embrace, and upon which one might even become positively evangelical.
More importantly, my student seemed to agree.
Please excused me but I didnt learnd english by a Scool only allone with myself.
"Excuse me" is also the Title of my First Book what so I hope this you can read ina short Time all over the world !
Please excused me but it is not my Idea we can make a better future with a new universal ethik ! if all People learn they self are a church of god than we all heve a nice time in the next and all other future-times was follow this time.The Idea is all People on the world accept the 10 Orders of god than now and all of time we live in the "New Paradies" and this "with" the living God ! Sinclery, -your,;
mrstefanm60-creativ10.blogspot.com/2012/07/dea-news_13.-html
The answer is: Human race will become extinct because of the lack of basic universal ‎ethics, well before any cosmic, terrestrial, epidemic or genetic disaster. See ‎http://www.humanrightsaction.org/uec_2.php
When "u" makes the same sound as the "y" in "you," or "o" makes the same sound as "w" in "won," then a is used.
You seem to have an issue with 7 billion people.
Like the Chinese communists, you decide to reduce global suffering by restricting
families to 1 child. The suffering is shifted to to aborted babies.
To extreme? Alright, you decide that the poor and mentally feeble be sterilzed to reduce the
suffering caused by their actions. It's called eugenics.
Not extreme enough, all people who don't accept Darwinism should be placed in a work camp because of their mental disablity.
They are causing suffering because of the limits on science brought on by this belief.
To the gulag with you.
Maybe just plan your next lecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism#Negative_Utilitarianism
Though really, I much prefer regular utilitarianism. It makes far more sense than any other moral or ethical position (religious or otherwise) I've observed. Too many philosophies fall into the "bad is evil is bad" loop. Observe:
Killing is wrong. Why?
Because it is bad. Why?
Because it is a sin. Why?
Because it is evil. Why?
Because it is bad.
ad infinitum.
The only way out of the loop is to say something to the effect of "Because it hurts people." But then you eventually go through a long chain of reasoning that always ends with the standard of happiness being the only valuable thing in life. To quote John Mill:
"...the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness... pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain."
Maybe what you are talking about, at the core, is trivial humanism. Humanism states that we should measure human problems with human measures. That takes a lot of religious nonsense out of the equation. In effect, many of the above questions can be answered simply by asking other humans and by respecting their answer.
Just ask your neighbor: "Please, Sir, would you mind if I killed you, took your wife and daughter as my slaves and settled on your property?". And if you do nothing else than to listen to his answers and respect them, you will have solved 90% of the fundamental ethics concerns of mankind. And if he does the same, you will already live a pretty good life together.
See how easy this was? No agonizing about these things in the language of philosophers. Just ask a simple human question and respect a simple human answer.
Utilitarianism is a humanistic philosophy, so sure. It says that to see evil in the world and to do nothing is being terrible as well. It may be in the language of philosophy, but that's only for convenience when talking of it. When I tell people what rule I go by, I don't say "utilitarianism." I say "to always create the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people."
As an autistic who essentially lacks empathy, I know that emotions are useful things. They instill a common humanity among people to "naturally" know what to do, generally. But are they reliable to always doing what is good? Evidently not. And what do you have to lean on when your emotions become unreliable? That is what philosophy provides an answer for. And if you're going to lean on philosophy, it might as well be logical and consistent.
Sam Harris in "The Moral Landscape" proposes "Maximize the well-being of conscious creatures." This has its problems, but I think he makes a good case.
Of course ethics requires experimental evidence. At the very least it requires observational evidence. If you exclude it, you will never be able to correct obvious mistakes of your decisions.
Would we really want the modern world to be judged by the works that were published the most often? Not really. But there is a very good chance that this is a large component of how we are judging antiquity. We don't even have a choice. None of the works that have been lost will ever be available to us. So we don't know what else was available at the time of the Buddha or the time of Jesus. The works of the authors of their memories may simply be the survivors of a more or less random loss of writings.
Not a really good way to build a universal ethic.
If I am doing that, anyway, what stops me from using 100% of my own brain instead of borrowing someone else's? Is the truth that I can come up with worth less than that of some famous personality who has been dead for thousands of years?
"The problem with fundamentalism is that one takes an awful lot of the bad with the small amount of good."
Buddha and Jesus would certainly have been among the fundamentalists of their time. I, on the other hand, decide case by case and do not claim universal validity. So that makes me, by your argument, preferable as an arbiter of ethical decisions, doesn't it?
Now, why would I use Newton's ideas about theology as an ethics springboard? Just because he has a famous name? Why, by the same toke, would I use Jesus? Because he has an even more famous name? I really fail to see how any of that is relevant to developing MY OWN ethics. In the end, my ethical decisions reflect myself. They will never reflect the personality I am referencing.
It's YOUR choice to assign them this influence. A person who has been dead for a long time does not have any say in how much faith YOU put in their writings. Well, in case of Jesus and Buddha it's not even their own writings...
"Excluding religious people from this ethic"
I am not excluding them. I am just giving them the same amount of responsibility for their own decisions, whatever ancient text they are basing them on, that I will give myself. And that is 100%. It is always the living, breathing person, who is responsible, never the dead philosopher or religious figure. And since we have the responsibility, we might as well decide responsibly, rather than attempt to delegate.
And then there is selection bias. Which ancient texts or teachings have been handed down to us is a matter of editing by previous centuries. Many antique texts only survive as second or third hand copies. Some only survive as palimpsests. Editors in the past imposed their own selection on these texts. The Christian bible is, for sure, heavily influenced by a male chauvinism that characterizes the late Roman empire, but that was likely not present at the time of Jesus.
Truth is not a popularity context, and it is not decided by majority vote, either. I will gladly refer you to Jesus for that, if you need a religious reference. You can get the very same insight from the Greek philosophers, minus maybe the sophists, just as well. Or from Cicero, if you need a political voice.
I also was thinking about the abortion debate and the pathological Conservative interest in preserving a foetus and completely neglecting the woman and the child after the birth. So (while it may be a corruption of the Buddhist ideal) many abortions can be ethically supported as decrease in suffering of potential future child and of the mother.
I am also told by my Buddhist friend "Generally, Buddhists believe that life begins at conception, at least in terms of one's karma, and a central Buddhist precept is to not take a life. But at the same time, Buddhists also believe that every individual must take responsibility for his or her own actions."
So score another for Buddhism: They are pro-choice!
Would you ask Archimedes about quantum physics? Why not? Archimedes was a smart guy, wasn't he? But he wasn't smart enough to understand, with his background, what modern physics knows. So what's so different about Buddha? Or Jesus? Why are they supposed to know any more about modern ethics than Archimedes is supposed to know about modern physics?
Sorry. Not buying. WE are the ones who have to make up OUR minds about problems of OUR times. If we can't even do that, and decide to delegate to teachers of antiquity what they couldn't have foreseen, WE are the ones who are responsible for OUR failures. Let Archimedes and Buddha and Jesus rest. They have earned it.
I completely agree with your conclusions but simply disagree with your precept that all religious texts and stories have neither value nor relevant thought.
The latter, by the way, is the correct definition of "Do no harm." and if you ever talk to a surgeon, that's what they will likely tell you. At least that's what one of mine told me. He said that the hallmark of a good surgeon is that he knows what not to do and that he can restrain himself from doing any of it out of curiosity. According to him, good surgery does not inflict harm to the body that can not be repaired by either the surgeon or nature. There are things in surgery, he said, like the cutting of major blood vessels and nerves, that have to be avoided at all cost because they can not be undone, and that will lead to major long term harm to the patient. To know them and to always be careful to avoid them is what the surgeon has to strive for.
Needless to say, the results that man has achieved on me were admired later by several of his colleagues.
In addition to the surgery, I was and remain grateful for the lesson in medical ethics.
I was trying to say something about how science interacts with society. "Do no harm" and its variants, and particularly things like "the hallmark of a good surgeon is that he knows what not to do and that he can restrain himself from doing any of it out of curiosity" would be unworkable in science.
Again: "Avoid irreversible actions whenever possible." is too restrictive. Good science often involves breaking things and making irreversible mistakes: that is how you really learn something new. By decreasing suffering I want to argue that you should put them back together again in a manner that makes everything a little bit better for people (and other creatures) as a whole.
Why? Because we have to sacrifice animals and people in medical trials? That is compensated by the good that comes from the outcome. Do I like either? No. But they are necessary to achieve a higher good. Can these things be done ethically and with a minimum of suffering? Yes. Are they always? No. That's where the ethics of the individual kicks in.
As far as irreversible harm is concerned... I don't see how, e.g. constructing LHC would be negated by the rule, as long as proper environmental rules are being followed.
"Good science often involves breaking things and making irreversible mistakes:"
Can I have an example? What did ethically acting scientists brake in the name of science that has caused more harm than good? Like I said, inaction has also an ethical cost. If applied properly, ethics and progress are not only perfectly compatible, I would even argue that they go hand in hand.