Recently, Steven Pinker criticized the the President’s Council On Bio-Ethics in Human Dignity And Bioethics. This is my post about the matter, with a link to Pinker’s essay. I find his criticism sound as far as it goes, but as I take a step back, I’m struck by how far it doesn’t go.
Why is a psychologist (albeit a deep one) asked to do so much of our moral thinking?
Liberals will likely rally around Pinker and others to bolster their political philosophy, political identities, and eventually to seek political action.
What’s happened here?
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My thesis is simple: Pinker helps to highlight the failure of modern liberalism. We are putting the cart before the horse, leaving thinkers in the humanities, the liberal arts, and the social sciences like Pinker to justify their own disciplines without recourse to deeper liberal traditions that have simply been ignored.
There can be a body of liberal thought that recognizes the possibility of objective knowledge.
There is a study of logic and high-end analytical skills outside of the purview of the social sciences.
There can be a shrewd political pragmatism that recognizes injustice and inequality, yet questions its own idealism in its pursuit of justice and equality. (I, too, am sick of the common platitudes we hear from modern liberalism…often running aground on its own hypocrisy.)
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I believe there are millions of intelligent, thoughtful, Americans who essentially believe in many of the tenets of what I would call classical liberalism…but who do not find such a liberalism represented in our politics, nor in our public debate.
If you agree with the thesis, then the arts, humanities, and social sciences cannot address the depth of the moral challenges that say, lawyers, policemen, soldiers and politicians (and all of us in one way or another) face every day.
This has occured in part because modern liberalism has walled itself off from deeper springs of thought, and so the winds of politics and current thinking buffet disciplines like Pinker’s. He can go only as far as he can go, and trying to expect more from him, we all suffer.
Here’s the first chapter of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.
Thanks for reading. See Criticism Below.
J.S. Mill
Addition: Some Criticism From Emails And Otherwise:
I wrote:
1. There can be a body of liberal thought that recognizes the possibility of objective knowledge.
Response: The Social Sciences (psychology, Pinker) do recognize the possibility of objective knowledge. They probably put too much faith in it. A scientist uses experimental observation and mathematics. Psychologists do experiments but don’t meet the same empirical standard. They also avoid math. The Social Sciences often misread the doubt and depths of scientific thought, and often assume an “let’s copy those people over there with objective knowledge” attitude.
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2. There is a study of logic and high-end analytical skills outside of the purview of the social sciences
Response: Well, of course. There are plenty of scientists who also might happen to be wildly liberal.
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3. There can be a shrewd political pragmatism that recognizes injustice and inequality, yet questions its own idealism in its pursuit of justice and equality. (I, too, am sick of the common platitudes we hear from modern liberalism…often running aground on its own hypocrisy.)
Response: There may be other tenets of liberalism besides the pursuit of justice and equality.
Your criticism is welcome…
chr1