A SCIENCE OF MORALITY?Humanism and happiness

What is it to be happy?

“Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either”

- J. Bentham: The Rationale of Reward (1830)

We can’t know what brings us most pleasure unless we’ve tried many options

Immediate argument for education, and against repression of any sort

Marginal satisfactions

In terms of marginal utility, a unit of pushpin could be equal to a unit of poetry for me

But perhaps there are goods that are preferable for everyone?

And if so, maximising those goods seems a rational strategy for the species as a whole, or perhaps for sentient creatures generally.

What causes unhappiness (at least, according to religion)?

Lack of belonging/community? But perhaps we’d be as happy in sports/book clubs

without the (circular) argument that metaphysical purpose is required.

Meaning/purpose? We all have these – again, why do we need a

metaphysical one? Wonder/mystery?

Isn’t it obviously the case that there’s more of this for secularists?

Eternal life? Not much different from being offered a 400% return

after a month’s investment...

What actually causes unhappiness?

Unfulfilled desires? But who says you would have those desires, other things being equal?

The source of most conflicts reduce to resource scarcity (or asymmetries in allocation)

What is morality for? So much of morality may simply be welfare

economics In that we have less reason to treat each

other badly – and therefore cause unhappiness – if we all have what we need

Morality: Traditional definitions

For ordinary persons: a simple accident of geography

But one that is privileged – dogma and prejudice which has been allowed to become axiomatic

Even non-religious morality has this character – heuristics and scripts are attractive

Why the holy handbook fails Provides easy answers to issues that

can/should be compelling And moral confusion where there

should be none – euthanasia, gay marriage, abortion

More importantly, it cripples our moral sensibilities

And forces us to buy into pushpin, not poetry

Without god

@Periyon Without God I have nothing else to live for...@SupaBaddizI Without God I am nothin, have nothin, && will never be able to

accomplish nothin!@Rieno2 Without God, I wouldn't know how it feels to LIVE...@BellaKerber Without God, life has no meaning ..@taylormatthews Without God there can be no knowledge, good, evil, hope or

joy.@DJFoRenZic_JA: Without god, there is no life!@iK00lKiDd Without God there is no me...

Do Stockholm syndrome and abusive spouses come to mind? These viewpoints demonstrate a vested interest in human

misery and suffering Or drug pushers – make you dependent, and then sell you the

only solution. Is the life of an addict to be admired or emulated?

There are consequences

The “greener” people are, the more likely they are to lie and cheat

Feeling virtuous does not correlate with actual virtue

Confirmation bias: we over-value the good we do and undervalue the harm

“Our own moral priorities always, uniquely, earn double points” - Baggini

By contrast

Secular folk understand that morality is complex

And are perhaps less complacent about difficult choices – and perhaps in the end more virtuous as a result of more careful deliberation

But how do we know what to do, without the holy handbook?

The State of Nature

Consider analogy to sport, and our incentive for following rules

What does this say in terms of moral rules being “true”?

We escape the state of nature by agreeing to not harm each other

And morality consists of the rules that make social living possible at all

Morality - a matter of prudence?

Social insurance The utility of believing in objectivity: mutual

reinforcement, weakening of opposition So yes, simple (or not, really) social

engineering Even secularists have perhaps confused the

usefulness of the narrative of objectivity with actual objectivity

And rejecting objectivity does not entail relativism

Morality from rationality

Defining morality as necessarily objective is an illegitimate way to privilege religion

We don’t have any non-pragmatic reasons to be good – and we don’t need any

We don’t want morality to be grounded in empathy or altruism – why?

Suffering still gives us reasons to act, via game-theory, evolutionary psychology, etc. – enlightened self-interest

Deriving “ought” from “is”

Sam Harris and the welfare of sentient creatures Controversy regarding “scientific morality” But what else can it be? Why is morality held to

different standards than other forms of knowledge?

We can reach justified conclusions – for now – and change our minds later (in light of new evidence)

So, moral reasons not different from other reasons

They are grounded in rationality, and motivate us like other reasons do.

Culture and morality

Moral virtue & happiness also a educational and political achievement

Education contributes to respect and self-respect (or can – cf. the 4th “R”)

Secure & stable political system necessary for appropriate incentives

Takes broader culture to even identify some lapses of virtue

Religion as addiction

The reflective vs. automatic systems Ignoring contradictions Confirmation biases Sunk-cost fallacies In short, a case study of heuristics gone

wrong And a recipe for unhappiness, in that

conflicts between belief and the world are inevitable – more so in multicultural environments

Broader issues

Has the species outgrown religion? Will we ever do so?

Can we handle the responsibility of rational choice?

Can a theory be cogent, yet not recommended? Compare to equality of persons

The usefulness of heuristics in moral behaviour

Should humanism aspire to becoming a grand narrative, to tap into these heuristics?

Where are we now?

Trying to fit foundationalism into a globalised world With no way of knowing right from wrong except

mere habits – and our habits come from another world, and another time

No moral theory perfectly satisfactory A long-term project Knowing, without knowing that you know – all

science is hypothetical, why not morality? Moral ideas are always up for debate – but we

apply inconsistent standards to happiness and welfare questions

Applying critical standards, as with all “knowledge”

There is a danger

Even though atheists are divorcing less than Christians (Non-Denominational 34%; Mainline Protestants 25%; Atheists 21%)

They are having fewer kids Unfortunately, education correlates

with both atheism and fewer kids (on the whole, perhaps not unfortunate) ....

But proportionally, we’re shrinking

Which means that

Liberal secularism and high-birth rates are (indirectly) contributing to the spread of fundamentalism

The assumption that modernity leads inexorably to a lessening of religious belief may be wrong – and we have to work hard

Even the secular role-model, Europe, not safe - most population growth via immigrants, who show higher fertility rate and are also religious

And tend to become more so when confronted by Western secularism

Religion takes on an ethnic, protective character, and becomes more fundamentalist.

So work harder. Not at having kids (please) – but at conversion/persuasion

Happiness?

If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job – the kind that robots will be doing soon.

And while some myths (maybe, that your friends actually like you) can contribute to flourishing, those that don’t need to be rooted out

Science can help us here – not necessarily to derive moral principles, but as a policeman to detect the ones that make no sense, or do not conduce to human flourishing.