Pinker: “The Moral Sense has done more harm than good”

November 1, 2011 by
Filed under: Social Brain 

A quick reflection on the Steven Pinker event that just finished.

He looked great. Sharp pinstripe suit, impressive mane of curly silver hair, and a poppy, as if his message that the world has become more peaceful wasn’t enough.

I was glad to see he struggled ever so slightly with his power point slides, which tempered the ambient envy in the room.

Highlights for me were being reminded of the great Voltaire quote: ”Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.”

I also enjoyed the idea that “violence is now a problem to be solved, not a conquest to be won.”

And I liked the reference to Kant’s essay on Perpetual peace, where he argued that three things would reduce violence: trade, democracy and international community.

Perhaps the best point was his claim – in response to a question about morality not being the cause of reduced violence – that the moral sense has done more harm than good. He backed this by saying that most homicides are justified on moral grounds, and that most aggressors think of their cause as morally justified.

I asked a question, which amounted to: If you define violence as human on human activity, then the argument flows beautifully and your data seems to back it. But if you give a broader definition of violence, including forms of ‘structural violence‘ in social and economic systems, violence against other species in the form of factory farming and violence against nature in the form of environmental degradation, it is not so clear that we have become less violent.

His answer was basically that these things are not really violence as such, and he slightly ridiculed the environmental point by comparing killing somebody to polluting a stream, which is rather different from entire islands disappearing and their population being displaced, or Darfur being the first of many climate change wars.

Had Matthew not asked for questions to be brief, I would have linked my question back to Kant. If you reframe violence not as direct human on human contact, but on the way our exploitative instincts manifest in the economy, towards other species and towards the planet, is it not the case that democracy, trade and international community may be responsible for the increase in violence, of a form that threatens our way of life? This idea of the world as a ‘resource to be used’ rather than something to stand in reciprocal relation toresonates with McGilchrist’s argument about the increasing dominance of a left hemisphere perspective on the world.

But then I listen to myself, and wonder if I am one of those people Pinker was talking about when he said that, for social critics, good news is bad news.

Maybe I am, but if the decline of violence is to be a measure of the success of modernity, as Pinker wants, then surely we need to give it its broadest possible definition?

Is it even possible that our violent impulses are being projected away from each other, and towards impersonal systems and structures that cannot retaliate?

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Comments

  • Adam Lent

    Strange point to say that because violence can be justified on moral grounds by aggressors, morality has done more harm than good.  Isn’t that like saying because violence involves thought, thinking has done more harm than good?  Surely it is not the moral sense that is wrong but the corruption of the moral sense for selfish ends that is problematic.

    • Jonathanrowson

      I guess it depends on what is really meant by ‘moral sense’…

      I think his point is that the corruption you mention is the exception rather than the rule. I think he is saying that ’the moral sense’ is not so much used to discriminate between good and bad, but to define good and bad to further one’s own agenda. 
      In this respect he is consistent with Bauermeister’s famous study of evil, when his ‘empirical’ finding was the two biggest predictors of ‘evil’ were self esteem and moral idealism… think Hitler, Stalin, and more controversially, George W. There are deeper meta-ethical points afoot and probably some evolutionary perspective on the adaptive value of our moral sense in terms of restraining instincts, but in terms of how morality functions throughout history, I think he may have a point.

  • Richardcr2000

    My good, is not necessarily another person’s good. Moral is a social, suituationally based construct.

    • Jonathanrowson

      Tell that to Kant…
      I am broadly with you, but there are other views of morality that cannot be dismissed lightly.

  • georgesdelatour

    1. “His answer was basically that these things are not really violence as such, and he slightly ridiculed the environmental point by comparing killing somebody to polluting a stream, which is rather different from entire islands disappearing and their population being displaced, or Darfur being the first of many climate change wars.”

    If an entire island’s population is forcefully uprooted because of human action, or people kill other people because of climate change induced famine, then that’s violence by Pinker’s human-centred definition, and isn’t an objection to that definition as such. What you need is an example of violence with zero adverse consequences for any humans. You might say the Apollo 11 astronauts were violent towards the Moon, I suppose. Would you really want to pursue that line of argument?

    2. “Is it even possible that our violent impulses are being projected away from each other, and towards impersonal systems and structures that cannot retaliate?”

    I’m afraid I don’t understand this point. If they are not persons – not even in some extended sense – how can these systems and structures be said to have any experience of violence acting upon them? Surely that’s what crucial.

    Nature can certainly inflict massive violence on us – if that counts as “retaliation”. A single gamma ray burst from a nearby dying star would sterilise the entire planet in a flash, for instance. But it would do so blindly, with no malice aforethought. That’s what nature’s like. It’s not a person. It just is.

    • Jonathanrowson

      Thanks.
      In response to your first point, I agree my examples are slightly confounding. Perhaps I am trying to say that the human/nature distinction is ontologically untenable. I don’t think you need to get into deep ecology, arguing that nature has intrinsic value beyond its value for humans, to say that, for instance, knocking down a forest containing life that doesn’t exist elsewhere is bad. I can see why an analytic philosopher would want to draw lines between humans, animals and non sentient life, but my point is that doing so is positional and political, not apriori. If you want to say human on human violence has reduce, fine- you can make an empirical case, as Pinker has, but if you want to say that only human on human violence constitutes ‘violence’ you are making a value judgement that cannot be justified on empirical grounds alone.
      My answer to the second point is similar- we don’t need the thing that we inflict violence on to experience it as violence- I don’t see that as crucial at all.
      I think violence is something to do with objectification- about the severance of our sense of relatedness, and that relatedness does not have to be reciprocal.

      This is just the beginning of an answer- happy to hear what you think.

      • georgesdelatour

        Hi Jonathon

        “I think violence is something to do with objectification – about the severance of our sense of relatedness, and that relatedness does not have to be reciprocal.”

        Are you saying that any philosophical rejection of pantheism counts as violence? Regardless of how the rejector acts in the world? Pascal famously says that man is a “thinking reed”. And that “if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.” Pascal is saying that the “severance of our sense of relatedness” with nature is simply the truth of the situation. 

        It could be that feeling more alienated from nature might actually make you more careful towards it. If you want to believe you’re in communion with nature, you may not wish to face up to just how  blindly destructive it can be. Where did the fossils which make fossil fuels come from? From earlier mass extinctions, like the Permian-Triassic.  

        (BTW doesn’t “a sense of relatedness” presupposes sensation? Doesn’t that mean we’re already beyond a priori?)

        • Jonathanrowson

          Thanks again, I am inclined to think Pascal is wrong, for similar reasons that Descartes was wrong- they both think they can decouple human consciousness and reason from the material world in which it is embodied and embedded. I don’t doubt nature can show indifference to mankind, indeed often does. Given the time, the main thing I would want to talk about is that being in communion with nature and recognising that we are part of it(I don’t see why pantheism, or even panentheism has to be part of this) doesn’t preclude knowing that it is indifferent to us- we can still love it, and believe it has intrinsic value, even if that knowledge and love is not reciprocated….indeed at some point, if the mystics are to be believed that sense of separation dissolves, so there is nothing left to reciprocate. 

  • georgesdelatour

    1. “His answer was basically that these things are not really violence as such, and he slightly ridiculed the environmental point by comparing killing somebody to polluting a stream, which is rather different from entire islands disappearing and their population being displaced, or Darfur being the first of many climate change wars.”

    If an entire island’s population is forcefully uprooted because of human action, or people kill other people because of climate change induced famine, then that’s violence by Pinker’s human-centred definition, and isn’t an objection to that definition as such. What you need is an example of violence with zero adverse consequences for any humans. You might say the Apollo 11 astronauts were violent towards the Moon, I suppose. Would you really want to pursue that line of argument?

    2. “Is it even possible that our violent impulses are being projected away from each other, and towards impersonal systems and structures that cannot retaliate?”

    I’m afraid I don’t understand this point. If they are not persons – not even in some extended sense – how can these systems and structures be said to have any experience of violence acting upon them? Surely that’s what crucial.

    Nature can certainly inflict massive violence on us – if that counts as “retaliation”. A single gamma ray burst from a nearby dying star would sterilise the entire planet in a flash, for instance. But it would do so blindly, with no malice aforethought. That’s what nature’s like. It’s not a person. It just is.

  • Anonymous

    excellent thoughtful piece thanks – I agree re the limitations of the human on human violence definition – (but that does not negate its significance in human development)

    if we can use the building international community element (of Kant’s essay) to the full then we may perhaps begin to expose, contain and  ameliorate the effects of our species violence on biosphere 1…

    The notion that we are worse at damaging animals/life/landscape other than human now than at previous times in history is only a reflection of the power of industrial scale on these events – the intentions and actions of pre-industrial ages were perhaps even more violent and careless, they just didn’t have the planetary consequences…

    • Jonathanrowson

      Thanks. Yes, developing international cooperation is critical, but most ‘realist’ theories of international relations suggest countries tend to prioritise their own ends ahead of the good of the whole.
      And I agree it is hard to compare the moral significance of indirect consequences of human actions across time.Even so, Pinker does want to argue that the decline of violence means modernity has somehow been a story of progress and success….and I feel a bit equivocal about that, not least because of the ominous threat of anthropogenic climate change, driven by trade.
      If you are in broad sympathy with that perspective, I would reccomend reading Iain McGilchrist’s book, The Master and his Emissary, or at least watching the RSAnimate on youtube.

      • Anonymous

         thanks I’ll have a look at that – I am constantly wavering in my conviction about mankind’s influence and whether there  will be natural mitigating planetary responses – and am keener on making sure that we start by just moving towards a better global species preservation perspective – OUR species…

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/L2ZN6W5WHYVOAWIAIRYFOJPJZE Jayarava

    Have been having a parallel discussion with other Buddhists. Early Buddhism is unequivocal that killing is always bad. A fellow blogger pointed out that this absolute prohibition shifted in later Buddhism so that killing might be justified using the Vulcan formular – the good of the many, outweighs the good of the few. Killing a mass murderer might prevent more deaths – so the moral equation appears to come out in favour of killing as preventing a greater evil. They also shifted their view of karma so that the negative consequences of evil actions could be cancelled out, whereas earlier Buddhists held that the consequences of actions could never be avoided – even by dying.

    But Pinker highlights this moral problem that we always justify our own behaviour. “Though shalt not kill” might look like an absolute prohibition, but it is more honoured in the breach than the observance. My friend suggested that the moral judgement was certainly a problematic one, and admitted that it could be a slippery slope. More like a vertical drop in my opinion.

    Interestingly in ancient Jainism (another non-theistic religion) the inevitability of causing harm with any action lead them to the conclusion that the best thing a human being can do is sit down and not move, or eat or drink until one died. Plenty of people did this in days gone by, but I’m not sure it’s held up as an ideal by contemporary Jains. Not a solution likely to appeal to the general public I suspect.

    You don’t say how Pinker proposed to solve the problem of violence and I haven’t read his book yet. Does it involve developing empathy?

    • Jonathanrowson

      Thanks for the comparative religion. On a lighter note, I had a friend at Oxford who got out of paying for hall dinners by arguing she was a Jain and couldn’t possibly eat in an environment full of slaughter. From memory, she dressed up with some kind of veil that covered her mouth, especially to see the Bursar.
      The next day she was back in jeans, eating kebabs and drinking diet pepsi…

      More seriously, I haven’t read the book, but Pinker seems to believe that trade is the main answer to violence. He does mention empathy expanding from self to family to group, to city to country etc, but it did not seem particularly salient in his argument.

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/L2ZN6W5WHYVOAWIAIRYFOJPJZE Jayarava

        Extrapolating from my knowledge of Indian history it seems that trade certainly coincides with periods of low violence. I’d take a deal of convincing that there was a causal relationship beginning with trade however. Trade networks have spanned the sub-continent during times of stability but collapsed in periods of instability. The stability usually followed military conquest, and the instability followed the collapse of empires and barbarism (e.g. the Huns smashing the Gupta Empire in the 5th century). Historically trade does not seem to prevent the periodic descent into chaos – after all globe spanning trade networks (like the Silk routes) have existed in the past. But perhaps the scale of the trade at present makes a difference?

        Trade is fickle. Up to 1973 New Zealand sent 80% of it’s exports to the UK. Then the UK joined the EC and now the figure is more like 5% of our exports – mainly due to French barriers to our produce. Similarly when NZ banned nuclear weapons leading to the breakdown of military ties with the USA, they systematically blocked our exports resulting in a string of World Trade Court cases (which we won). And these are our friends, relatives and allies!

        Maybe I’ll have to read the book, but to be honest I have other books I want to read more!

        Re your friend I will refrain from judging, but simply say that a lot of people use religion as a cover for their own agendas.

  • Sarahg

    I have to agree Jonathan that there are many social and political behaviors and attitudes that look like the displacement of human “violent” tendencies–environmental indifference (at best), vehement anger at “illegal” aliens, protectionism, wealth non-distrubution…to say nothing of more endemic types of violence, such as bullying and discrimination

    • Jonathanrowson

      Thanks Sarah. Judging by recent reactions I fear we might be in the minority!