Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality
Authors: Hunter James Davison , Nedelisky Paul 
Published: November 2022

SCIENCE AND THE GOOD: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality by James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky. New Haven, CT and London, UK: Yale University Press and Templeton Press, 2018. 289 pages. Paperback; $18.00. ISBN: 9780300251821. *Science and the Good is a one-volume education on the historical quest to furnish a scientific explanation of morality. It seems that the human person and morality do not comfortably fit within the model of scientific explanation. The authors chronicle the many ways in which the "new moral scientists" either overreach in interpreting the results of their experimental findings or fail to clearly define whether their experimental results have merely descriptive force (tell us what is the case) or indicate something prescriptive (tell us how we should live). Their narrative shows that what had begun around the 1600s as a quest to secure a scientific foundation for morality has, today, ended not only with the abandonment of the original project, but with a denial of the existence of morality altogether. The authors call the current state of the "abandoned" and "redirected" quest, "moral nihilism." *The book is well written, and though they engage us with complex concepts and connections, Hunter and Nedelisky prove to be good teachers, helping us along the way with copious examples from the primary sources. It is a pleasure to read because so much can be learned from it. Though their criticisms are multipronged, I shall limit myself to a discussion of one central chapter and a few telling examples to illustrate their basic contention that science is the wrong tool for furnishing an adequate account of morality. *In chapter three, the authors consider three ideas that have become central to the project of the new moral scientists: Hume's sentimentalism, Bentham's utilitarianism, and Darwin's evolution by natural selection. They also mention "one lingering and deeply disturbing worry" about the avenues these three charted which were later adopted by the new moral scientists. *Hume's sentimentalism rejects the notion that reason can motivate us to moral action or that reason plays any role in the discernment of the good, as Aristotle held. Good and bad are rooted in the pleasure or pain we feel when considering certain actions or displays of character. Feelings of pleasure and pain are tethered to what Hume calls "sympathy," the fact that others will be similarly affected by contemplating or viewing the same action or display of character. Bentham sought to formulate an intuitive, quantitative principle for all of morality, his "greatest happiness principle," in which happiness is equated with whatever promotes pleasure or prevents pain. Bentham prided himself on his democratic approach, making no distinction between what pleasures are to be pursued and what pains are to be avoided (pp.¬†56-57). He was a reformer and redirected the focus of morality onto action rather than the less measurable character. With his principle of utility he sought to make ethics empirical and quantifiable. Lastly, Darwin's theory of evolution explained the existence of certain social emotions as what would promote the survival and reproductive success of the species: feelings of loyalty to those of one's tribe or sensitivity to the praise or blame of others. Natural selection, a biological mechanism, could now be enlisted as furnishing a scientific explanation for various evolved human emotions and behaviors. *So, what are their "worries?" Science is adept at explaining the quantifiable, but morality does not fit comfortably into this box. The authors agree that certain brain states may be the necessary condition for morality, but morality is not reducible to brain states. Morality has something to do with pleasure and pain, but science is incapable of telling us "that some things were prohibited or compulsory regardless of how much pleasure might result or pain avoided by doing otherwise" (p. 56). Natural selection can explain the inchoate glimmerings of human morality in the social emotions but is incapable of explaining motivation in the moral life. If morality, they argue, is rooted in the first-person perspective of human beings, then the third-person perspective of the sciences cannot get us there for it is trying to explain subjects by way of objects. Hume is the crucial figure here and his position is that the third-person perspective is true, and it alone can give us access to what is real; the first-person perspective is illusory. Hume's skepticism coupled with a Darwinian explanation of ethics as tracking for survival, not the good, puts us on a trajectory toward the "moral nihilism" of the current scene. *Neuroscientist and philosopher Patricia Churchland is one of those who seem to believe that morality is reducible to talk of brain states. She appears, at first, to be interested in discussing the nature of morality from a common sense, first-person perspective when she asks, "What is it to be fair? How do we know what to count as fair?" (p. 144). But, in pursuing her answer she appeals to "the neural platform for moral behavior" (p. 144), or "values rooted in the circuitry for caring" (p. 145). Like Hume, Churchland assumes that the first-person perspective has little to offer in the way of furnishing a genuine account of morality. She assumes the third-person perspective and hopes to get to the good (fairness) by talking at length and, no doubt, accurately about the architecture and neurochemistry of the human brain. The authors contend that the answer to Churchland's question does not lie in a description of physical constituents. *Primatologist Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University finds inspiration in Hume's focus on the emotions and social sympathy and, in combination with Darwin's interest in the emotions, views the emotional life of primates as "the key link in [the] project of showing how human morality evolved ..." (p. 124). For de Waal, as for many evolutionary psychologists, the central thing that needs explaining is altruism, and so he views the ability to feel sympathy and empathy for another as "the centerpiece of human morality" (p. 124). But as the authors point out with a telling example, acts of kindness based upon feelings of sympathy for another are inadequate to explain the complex nature of the ethical lives of humans. If I feel sympathy for a neighbor who cannot pay her rent and out of emotional empathy for her anxiety and shame decide to pay it for her, such an act may be morally laudable. But now suppose my neighbor is a heroin dealer and my empathy for her plight leads me to pay her rent anyway. Surely, now our empathy is getting in the way of doing the right thing; and even though we felt these moral emotions, paying her rent does not qualify as morally right since she is endangering her own life and that of the entire neighborhood. *In a different but related point, the explanatory gap between biological altruism and fully human altruism is brought out when the authors consider the position of biologist David Sloan Wilson. Like Churchland above, Wilson makes a promising start when he defines altruism as "a concern for the welfare of others as an end in itself" (p. 148). But, in his discussion he dismisses the relevance of motivation when defining the nature of altruism on the grounds that it is incapable of empirical measurement and it is "not right to privilege altruism as a psychological motive when other equivalent motives exist" (p.¬†149). The difference between external, behavioristic altruism and altruism motivated by genuine concern for the other is insignificant, says Wilson, just the difference between being "paid in cash or by check" (p.¬†149). The authors are not impressed with this clever but spurious analogy: "Do you only care that your spouse acts as though she loves you? That she says complimentary things to you, that she appears to enjoy conversation with you ... appears to be sexually attracted to you, and remembers your birthday? What if you discovered that she does all of these things without feeling anything for you--or worse, she does all these things while secretly detesting you? Would Wilson claim that this is just a "cash or check" situation--just so long as she's doing all the observable things she would do if she really did love you, then the underlying motives, intentions, and desires are irrelevant?" (pp. 149-50). *For Hunter and Nedelisky, the new moral scientists have become "moral nihilists" precisely because morality and the good life are not suited to the methods or measurements of science, especially in their program of reductive materialism. The book fruitfully engages the sciences and humanities, and readers will come away with a healthy appreciation of the limits of science and its methodology in explaining the meaning of the moral life. *Reviewed by J. Aultman-Moore, Professor of Philosophy, Waynesburg University, Waynesburg, PA 15370.