a guest post by Regina Rini
Moral attitudes change over generations. A century ago in America, temperance was a moral crusade, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any mark of it now among the Labor Day beer coolers. Majority views on interracial and same-sex relationships have swung from one pole to the other within the lifetimes of many people reading this. So given what we know of the past, we can say this about the people of the future: their moral attitudes will not be the same as ours. Some ethical efforts that now belong to a minority – vegetarianism, perhaps – will become as ubiquitously upheld as tolerance for interracial partnerships. Other moral matters that seem urgent now will fade from thought just as surely as the temperance movement. We can’t know which attitudes will change and how, but we do know that moral change will happen. Should we try to stop it – or even to control it?
Every generation exercises some control over the moral attitudes of its children, through the natural indoctrination of parenting and the socialization of school. But emerging technologies now give us unprecedented scope to tailor what the future will care about. From social psychology and behavioral economics we increasingly grasp how to design institutions so that the ‘easy’ or ‘default’ choices people tend to adopt coincide with the ones that are socially valuable. And as gene-editing eventually becomes a normal part of reproduction, we will be able to influence the moral attitudes of generations far beyond our own children. Of course, it is not as simple as ‘programming’ a particular moral belief; genetics does not work that way. But we might genetically tinker with brain receptivity for neurotransmitters that affect a person’s readiness to trust, or her preference for members of her own ethnic group. We won’t get to decide precisely how our descendants come to find their moral balance – but we could certainly put our thumb on the scale.
On one way of looking at it, it’s obvious that if we can do this, we should. We are talking about morality here, the stuff made out of ‘should’s. If we can make future generations more caring, more disposed to virtue, more respectful of rational agency, more attentive to achieving the best outcomes – however morality works, we should help future people to do what they should do. That is what ‘should’ means. This thought is especially compelling when we realize that some of our moral goals, like ending racism or addressing the injustices climate change will bring, are necessarily intergenerational projects. The people of the future are the ones who will have to complete the moral journey we have begun. Why not give them a head start?
But there are also reasons to think we should not interfere with whatever course the future of morality might take. For one thing, we ought to be extremely confident that our moral attitudes are the right ones before we risk crimping the possibilities for radical moral change. Perhaps we are that confident about some issues, but it would be unreasonable to be so sure across the board. Think, for example, about moral attitudes toward the idea of ownership of digital media: whether sampling, remixing, and curating count as forms of intellectual theft. Already there appear to be generational splits on this topic, driven by technology that emerged only in the last 30 years. Would you feel confident trying to preordain moral attitudes about forms of media that won’t be invented for a century?
More insidiously, there is the possibility that our existing moral attitudes already reflect the influence of problematic political ideologies and economic forces. If we decide to impose a shape on the moral attitudes of the future, then the technology that facilitates this patterning will likely be in the hands of those who benefit from existing power structures. We may end up creating generations of people less willing to question harmful or oppressive social norms. Finally, we should consider whether any attempt to direct the development of morality is disrespectful to the free agency of future people. They will see our thumbprint on their moral scale, and they may rightly resent our influence even as they cannot escape it.
One thing these reflections bring out is that philosophers are mistaken when they attempt to cleanly separate metaethical questions (what morality is) from normative ethical questions (what we should do). If this clean separation was ever tenable, our technologically expanded control over the future makes it implausible now. We face imminent questions about what we should do – which policies and technologies to employ, to which ends – that depend upon our answers to questions about what morality is. Are there objective moral facts? Can we know them? What is the relationship between morality and human freedom? The idea that metaethical inquiry is for dusty scholars, disconnected from our ordinary social and political lives, is an idea that fades entirely from view when we look to the moral future.
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I’ve drawn on several philosophers’ work for some of the arguments above. For arguments in favor of using technology to direct the morality of future generations, see Thomas Douglas, “Moral Enhancement” in the Journal of Practical Ethics; and Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future. For arguments against doing so, see Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (chapter 9); and Jurgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature.
image credit: ’Hope in a better future’ by Massimo Valiani
12 comments:
> We may end up creating generations of people less willing to question harmful or oppressive social norms.
Arguably, we're already there. From Charles Taylor's The Malaise of Modernity:
>> The worry has been repeatedly expressed that the individual lost something important along with the larger social and cosmic horizons of action. Some have written of this as the loss of a heroic dimension to life. People no longer have a sense of a higher purpose, of something worth dying for. Alexis de Tocqueville sometimes talked like this in the last century, referring to the "petits et vulgaires plaisirs" that people tend to seek in the democratic age.[1] In another articulation, we suffer from a lack of passion. Kierkegaard saw "the present age" in these terms. And Nietzsche's "last men" are at the final nadir of this decline; they have no aspiration left in life but to a "pitiable comfort."[2]
>> This loss of purpose was linked to a narrowing. People lost the broader vision because they focussed on their individual lives. Democratic equality, says Tocqueville, draws the individual towards himself, "et menace de la renfermer enfin tout entier dans la solitude de son propre coeur."[3] In other words, the dark side of individualism is a centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society. (3–4)
From Jacques Ellul's The Political Illusion:
>> This autonomy has yet another source. Let us recall the state's claim that it solves all problems and the concomitant, inveterate belief on the part of most citizens that it is indeed the state's function to solve all problems. This attitude of man toward the state is even more apparent if one considers that man's intentions and desires have changed.[3] He is much less sensitive and receptive to the many problems (over which he could try to exercise some influence); rather he demands the total and complete guarantee of his private existence. He demands assured income and assured consumption. He insists on an existence of complete security, refusing to take any responsibility for himself. But all this, as he well knows, can be assured only by the state organization. (78)
Thanks for your comment Luke. Those are interesting comparisons for several reasons. One is this: the modernizing forces that Taylor and Ellul point to (democratization, state-secured welfare) may indeed have discouraged certain forms of critical inquiry. But they've also been vehicles of enormous moral progress. Personal free expression and basic material welfare are much, much stronger today than in the pre-modern era. And think also of the egalitarian gain. 300 or even 100 years ago, the sort of person who might have realistically imagined acting at a society-defining level was restricted almost exclusively to aristocratic white men. So, even if it is true that modernization has brought psychological forces that reduce critical reflection, it has simultaneously changed political and material circumstances such that a far larger portion of the population have access to the tools of social change.
I can imagine a proponent of moral tinkering making an analogous argument. Sure, such a person might say, shaping future generations' moral thinking could make them less critically reflective. But reducing bigotry and greediness will make lives better, and so will further expand the number who have the means to press for change. So the tradeoff is worth it. What do you think of that argument?
And as gene-editing eventually becomes a normal part of reproduction, we will be able to influence the moral attitudes of generations far beyond our own children. Of course, it is not as simple as ‘programming’ a particular moral belief; genetics does not work that way. But we might genetically tinker with brain receptivity for neurotransmitters that affect a person’s readiness to trust, or her preference for members of her own ethnic group. We won’t get to decide precisely how our descendants come to find their moral balance – but we could certainly put our thumb on the scale.
Jeez, man! And swing the other way - some group who increase/seek to increase hatred for racial group X? Or start making gay babies straight (or alternatively, make straight babies gay!)
With great power comes something something dark side!
On one way of looking at it, it’s obvious that if we can do this, we should.
*Cries*
Who knows what is 'best'? The 'best' outcome?
We're basically a fragile little species that has managed, despite figuring out nukes, to achieve a pretty solid ecological niche.
I think we have to be SUPER wary of screwing with our niche. More exactly, wary of making people or machines whos capacities eliminate that niche and return us to living baboon existances on the edge of extinction.
Part of our ecological niche, the thing that sustains that niche, is our hardwired structure - we still have room to change by our capacity to change within that structure, rather than changing the hardwire itself.
The idea that metaethical inquiry is for dusty scholars, disconnected from our ordinary social and political lives, is an idea that fades entirely from view when we look to the moral future.
Aye. Fair point.
I don't understand this. What is "interfering with the future course of morality"? Does doing moral philosophy now count? Teaching moral philosophy? What kind of actions leave a thumbprint?
I also think that to some extent, Rini is avoiding the elephant in the room: if morality is going to change in the future, that probably means that we've got it wrong at the moment. (I don't think the general prohibition on killing people is going to change, for example, because it's basically correct; ideas about how we should treat children might change dramatically as their needs shift and our knowledge of psychology grows.) if we've got morality wrong now, our biggest problem is not what potential effect we might have on future generations. It's that we are doing a lot of moral stuff wrong right now, and we need to stop it.
Finally, dusty scholars? Bite the hand that feeds, why don't you...
Hi Regina,
I'm actually skeptical about the amount of "moral progress" which has happened, if one takes the whole world into account instead of picking out just the West. However, I'm afraid that pursuing this line of discussion would probably diverge too much from Dr. Schwitzgebel's topic in this blog post. Recall what I quoted from Dr. Schwitzgebel:
> We may end up creating generations of people less willing to question harmful or oppressive social norms.
Free expression is quite orthogonal to this, because modern nation-states have ways of both manipulating what even gets freely expressed (propaganda, political correctness, lack of holistic education), and rendering certain free expression irrelevant to "society-defining". For example, see judge Richard Posner's observation in Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline,that most public intellectuals in the US serve not as sources of knowledge and wisdom to the American public, but as entertainment. Or see legal scholar Steven D. Smith's argument in The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse that the quality of public and legal discourse has declined over the decades.
Violence is not the only way to control a populace; indeed, one could call it the "most crude" way. Did the West need to use a shred of violence to prevent an uproar over the 1999 NATO bombing of a Serbian news station, while letting the Charlie Hebdo attacks become a worldwide phenomenon? I'm with Noam Chomsky: I don't think so.
Suppose that some evil cabal really is in control of the world. It would be stupid of them to prevent anything from happening which looks like "progress", in an environment like this. No, it is best for them to give "do-gooders" real things to do, so that they feel like they are making the world a better place. That makes the medicine of increasing wealth and income inequality go down more easily. As an example simulacrum of "progress", see Peter Buffett's 2013 NYT piece The Charitable–Industrial Complex.
Thanks for commenting, Callan. I wonder if your objection is specifically to moral manipulation, or to any sort of germ-line genetic editing? What sort of 'niche' do you have in mind? Is any human physical trait relevant? Only mental traits? Only moral traits?
Thanks for your comment chinaphil. You ask:
>>What is "interfering with the future course of morality"? Does doing moral philosophy now count? Teaching moral philosophy? What kind of actions leave a thumbprint?
My thought was that, though we do effect the future course of morality through teaching (and perhaps moral philosophy) these effects are comparatively small, or at least are already accounted for. We've already accepted our effect on future generations through these means. Some of it is probably unavoidable (we can't not educate our children). But we haven't yet taken account of the effect of these new technologies. And, I suspect, they'll prove more effective than traditional modes of education.
Your other point:
>>if morality is going to change in the future, that probably means that we've got it wrong at the moment. ... if we've got morality wrong now, our biggest problem is not what potential effect we might have on future generations. It's that we are doing a lot of moral stuff wrong right now, and we need to stop it.
I can see what you're getting at, but sometimes it's not that simple. We know it's wrong to be racially biased, but we also know that we have little direct control over the effect of unconscious biases on our deliberations. Perhaps it's too late for us - too much of our own psychology has already been locked in, by genes or early upbringing. But even if we can't improve ourselves, we might aim to improve future people.
Thanks for the continued discussion, Luke. A clarification though: this is a guest post, of which I am the author. Don't blame Eric for it!
My remarks about moral progress weren't meant to be restricted to the West. It seems to me that nearly all of the world has experienced great moral progress over the last few centuries. The percentage of people, world-wide, who have access to reliable material well-being and free expression has increased meaningfully since 1715. Along with these more basically good things, I think that realistic access to social change has expanded - more people today can realistically aim to affect social change than could in societies of 300 years ago, when only aristocratic men were in any such position. So my point was that, even if the quotes you listed in your first comment are right about a modern psychological propensity against critical reflection, this may be more than offset by an expansion in the base of those who might do the thinking.
I'm afraid I don't follow the gist of your most recent comment. I gather that you do not think highly of contemporary standards of civic discourse, but I lost track of implications for the main topic.
Regina (or Dr. Rini?),
Oh, I missed that you are the author; apologies! I'm betting that you get free reign on where the discussion goes. My only reticence was that I have a habit of going on tangents and was exerting self-control. :-)
I hear you on the fact that more people seem able to take part in "society-defining" activities, especially from the categories of non-white, non-aristocratic, and non-males. What I don't know is whether, all things considered, this is enough to qualify for a strong sense of "moral progress". What I strongly believe is that there are means to restrict the likely paths a society will take other than violence, other than something like an aristocracy. To the extent that such means are in-place, I think they count strongly against "moral progress".
You mention "percentage of people", which is certainly one possible metric. Steven Pinker also uses it in his work on the decline of violence. However, I think I have a reductio ad absurdum for that metric. Consider a future state in which there are one quadrillion colonized planets. Suppose that in order to keep them in-line, the "worst" one—whether moral, failure to contribute to the common good, etc.—is obliterated, every year. When compared to us via the "per capita" metric, they are orders of magnitude better. And yet, I think our moral intuitions rightly indicate that the metric has failed us in this hypothetical. I worry it also fails us in our actual situation.
The rest of my comment investigates how our past has prepared us to either have an excellent, or deteriorating, future. I'm reminded of a panel on racism I attended, where the point was multiply stated that going to college can give you the words to speak more articulately about racism, and thus have a more profound impact. Well, if the quality of public discourse is deteriorating, then that would seem to entail that our ability to combat ills in [democratic] society and push for better states of being will be hindered. If that is what our past gave us—perhaps our past needs reevaluating? I will note that Enlightenment thinkers had great hopes for what 'Reason' will do, and those hopes have been dashed. (See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre's Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 5–7.)
Hi Regina,
Thanks for commenting, Callan. I wonder if your objection is specifically to moral manipulation, or to any sort of germ-line genetic editing? What sort of 'niche' do you have in mind? Is any human physical trait relevant? Only mental traits? Only moral traits?
You have to realise it's not just my objection - if you're wandering, unawares, toward an open manhole, I don't think it's just my objection there. Or even if I think I see an open manhole but maybe my observation is incorrect, it's still not just an observation. It's not just a matter of 'I don't like where you're walking'/objection.
That said my objection is largely to any modification - I simply find the moral manipulation to be the most pivotal change, whereas maybe if someones legs are modified so they can jog for longer, a much smaller modification.
For example, we all know new drugs go through years of expensive testing - so why doesn't the idea of that cross over to 'moral editing', for example?
And that also begs the question, how do you test moral modifications? Against what measure?
Also if they did turn out wrong somehow - well, this person, this modified person...what have you done? It clearly doesn't end until the natural lifespan of that person is over.
While with drugs we would be appaled if someone had a laissez faire 'release it without testing and just be optimistic about the outcome' attitude. But what are we talking about in regards to moral modification...exactly that! Release it without testing and be optimistic about the outcome.
As to niche, I'll just say that we require a certain ecological niche to survive. Clearly things like climate change can damage and reduce that niche. Other things can remove it to - like modified humans who use a different niche and can damage the old one with impunity. There might come a day when being blaze about genetic modifications will be treated the same as before the greenhouse effect was known and everyone was putting ozone damaging gasses into the air.
Why assume there will be anything resembling morality as we conceive it?
This might sound mad, but consider what I call the 'Augmentation Paradox':
The more we improve an ancestral cognitive capacity, the more we degrade the ancestral cognitive capacities that turn on the ancestral form of the cognitive capacity 'improved.'
The fact is, human moral cognition, like human social cognition more generally, is heuristic, reliant on the reliable differential relationship between available cues and ancestral backgrounds. The more you change those backgrounds, the more dysfunctional those heuristics become. So on a transhumanist vision of the future, for instance, there's no such thing as a stable background, no reliable differential relationships between available cues and the systems to be solved. This pretty clearly means that reliable heuristic cognition is *impossible.*
This means that moral cognition is also impossible, does it not?
Thanks, Regina.
On the first point, I'm just not sure that the new technologies are going to represent a step change in our ability to influence future generations. Firstly, for the most part, every new technology brings the possibility of reversing itself. If we genetically engineer ourselves, then we can genetically unengineer ourselves. Secondly, don't underestimate just how radical the technologies of the 20th century were. Universal education, universal sufferage, telecommunications... these were all massive alterations in the way we develop and transmit our ethics. Genetic engineering or psychological engineering may well turn out to be new, powerful tools, but it's not obvious that they will be so much more powerful than those which we already wield.
On the second point: "...little direct control over the effect of unconscious biases on our deliberations... But even if we can't improve ourselves, we might aim to improve future people."
I just can't see how those two hang together. If we can't control our own unconsciousnesses, how can we hope to gain any control over future unconsciousnesses? I suppose we could remove the unconscious (Margaret Atwood has something like that happen in Oryx & Crake), but that's just lobotomising people, isn't it? I just can't see any evidence that that kind of psychological influence could be effective on future people without being effective on current people. And then these genetic techniques become just another tool that we use to try to get it right now, and fall into the "already accounted for" category that you suggest.
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