Henry V. Klausinger

Kind regards.

Century Club.

a copy of the letter I wrote to the
to support Stack May. I am enclosing
I was delighted to be asked
January 2nd.

Thank you for your letter of

Dear Dr. Holt:

New York 10, New York
220 First Avenue
New York University School of Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
New York University Medical Center
Dr. J. Summert Holt, Jr.

January 10, 1964

Nontechnical Abstract of Afternoon Session
Section L, AAAS

Symposium on Science and Ethics
2 p.m., December 26, 1956
Hotel Governor Clinton, Florentine Room
Cosponsored by Philosophy of Science Association

Dr. Margaret Mead, American Museum of Natural History, New York, N. Y., Presiding

Dr. Joseph Mayer, Professor of Economics, "The Development of Ethical and Related Concepts"
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Dr. Anatol Rapoport, Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan "A Scientific Approach to Ethics and Its Consequences"

Dr. Patrick Romanell, Professor of Medical Philosophy and Ethics, University of Texas, Galveston, Texas "The Naturalistic View of Ethics"

Dr. Samuel E. Stumpf, Professor of Philosophy, "Ethics and the Science of Law"
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

The afternoon session of the Symposium on Science and Ethics approached the subject from the points of view of social science, medical research, philosophy, and law.

Dr. Mayer traced the historical development of ethics and such related fields as economics, politics, and jurisprudence. This development began in an atmosphere of relatively free discussion among the ancient Greek philosophers, in which various social and ethical concepts were intermeshed, and in which the endeavor was to find a satisfactory basis for social living, with neither slavish adherence to customary morality nor to current religious beliefs. With subsequent military conquests and subjugations, however, imperialistic, dynastic, and ecclesiastic compulsions were superimposed.

In the Dark Ages, it was pointed out, all the social disciplines became branches of authoritarian theology. Later, with the intellectual and scientific renaissance, some breaking away from church dogma and political authoritarianism occurred. This resulted in a splitting off of the social disciplines, each going its separate way. Now, however, a period of fraternization has begun. The interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences, and particularly to social ethics, is being stressed. A broader and deeper view of group and international morality, coupled with scientific investigation based upon anthropology and human psychology, is evidenced in a number of directions, notably in recent U. N. Assembly discussions and accompanying world opinion.

The second speaker, Dr. Rapoport, maintained that an ethical system involves first an existence of choices and second a set of general rules governing the selection of the choices. Various "professional" ethics (law, medicine, business, military) are thus subsumed under this definition. There is also a rather well defined professional ethics in

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science, centered around the notion of "truth" as it is understood in scientific philosophy.

It was noted further that various professional ethics may become dominant in various cultures, and that with the spread of the scientific outlook (with regard to the natural world) to all cultures, the professional ethics of science may become generally dominant. In particular it was maintained that the scientific outlook is the only philosophy which is not culture-bound and that the generalization of scientific ethics to a universal ethical system is both probable and desirable.

The third speaker, Dr. Romanell, addressed himself particularly to the naturalistic approach to ethical problems. He began by asking the question, Can naturalism, which views man as a part of nature without metaphysical implications, provide a satisfactory guide to moral living? Historically, he pointed out, naturalistic moralists have gone beyond this general commitment and have espoused some special interpretation, such as an ethics of heroism, of evolution, particularly of happiness. Happiness or utilitarianism, he concluded, is not sufficient as a sound ethical goal. It stresses only the soft side of the moral life. In addition, to be complete, the hard or tough side must also be included--personal and social obligation--not maximum happiness alone but "maximum harmonization of happiness and duty."

The final speaker of the afternoon session, Dr. Stumpf, confined himself to the relation of jurisprudence to ethics. He pointed out that, at present, serious confusions and ambiguities exist. For example, legal positivism renders it "impossible to distinguish between a law and an arbitrary command." Under such a view, "any statute however unjust has to be treated as law." In this connection, Justice Holmes stated: "I have no criterion for the goodness or badness of law."

Legal positivism achieved a definite separation between law and morals, and by some jurists this was considered a gain. It is questionable, however, the speaker concluded, whether such a conception is even theoretically defensible. Without the inclusion of the concept of justice, law merely becomes synonymous with arbitrary edict. This hardly suffices as a sanction for democratic social morality.

All in all, this session of the symposium presented the following essential conclusions. First, as the last two papers indicated, a scientific basis for ethics can hardly be found in positivistic naturalism or legalism which omit human obligation and social justice. Second, the various social disciplines as they exist today continue to reflect the impact of conquest and subjugation and the arbitrary compulsions that accompany conquest and subjugation. Third, a scientific basis for social morality must apparently be based upon studies in anthropology and human psychology and upon a more objective comparison and reconciliation between the ethical standards existing at present among the non-despotic or free nations of the world.

Prepared by
Joseph Mayer

Nontechnical Abstract of Evening Session
Section L, AAAS
Symposium on Science and Ethics
8 p.m., December 26, 1956
Hotel Governor Clinton, Florentine Room
Cosponsored by Philosophy of Science Association

Dr. Ralph W. Gerard, Mental Health Research Institute,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Presiding

Dr. John Dashiell, Professor of Psychology, "The Place of Facts in a World of Values"
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina

Dr. Chauncey D. Leake, College of Medicine, "A Naturally Occurring Ethical Principle"
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Dr. Margaret Mead, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York "An Anthropological View of Ethics"

Dr. Edmund W. Sinnott, Dean Emeritus, Graduate School, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. "The Biological Basis of Ethical Values"

The evening session of the Symposium on Science and Ethics approached the subject from the points of view of psychology, medicine, anthropology, and biology.

Dr. Dashiell began by contending that science and ethics are two unique species of human values. Both of them (as well as others, e.g. the aesthetic) go back to biologically helpful survival reactions which we call "good" as against harmful reactions which we call "bad". At the human level, projections of biological reactions take on the character of human wants and interests, such as economic, aesthetic, moral, scientific.

The ancient Greeks, it was indicated, thought of ethics not in terms of a moral imperative but in terms of a life of goodness, wisdom, or happiness, while modern ethics seems preoccupied with obligations and compulsions.

The quest for scientific knowledge has a double sanction. It is personally satisfying or selbstverständlich. Also, scientific findings are often useful in the furtherance of other human values, as the physics of harmonics impliments aesthetic values, and the psychological study of habit formation assists in the development of character.

Whether scientific truth or the good life is regarded as of first importance depends on the individual's hierachy of values and upon particular situations or circumstances. "Neither category, the ethical or the scientific, may dictate to the other in any absolute manner."

Dr. Leake likewise stressed the idea that the favorable survival reactions of the organism, in adaptation to environment, mark a beginning for ethics. As providing an appropriate basis for scientific discussion,

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he suggested that "such a principle would wisely be expressed in descrip-
tive terms." He then added that "its normative aspects would depend
upon objectives or purposes in individual instances."

In interpersonal relations, he continued, the same principle may
be applied in terms of the survival of those social relations that are
mutually satisfying. "Such adaptations," he concluded, "would seem to
constitute the 'golden rule' ethical injunctions of the great moral
leaders of the past."

Dr. Mead, the third speaker, began by examining the question of ethical relativity in an anthropological setting. She contended "that any act must be judged as relative to the culture within which it occurs and cannot be placed in any absolute scale of values." For example, it is an act of social responsibility (not of murder) when the aged are abandoned, as among the Eskimos, because food and care are lacking; but obviously such an act may be regarded as murder in a culture where food and care are available. There is persistent misunderstanding on such matters, even among educated people, it was pointed out, and this is the less understandable in our culture where killing a fellow human in battle is not considered murder, while in other circumstances it is.

In addition to placing ethnocentric prejudices in proper perspec-
tive, another set of current problems in anthropology has to do with
the tendency to draw conclusions regarding morality from too narrow a
sample or from statistical averages alone. This is particularly
questionable where only the recorded ways of life of the present and
past are taken into account and potentially new patterns that may emerge
are excluded.

It is becoming clear, Dr. Mead concluded, that the fundamental
achievements in human culture are of "the most general sort, containing
the greatest possible amount of potential variation. . . i.e., those
human attainments which are shared by all mankind and so cannot be lost
unless the human race is extinguished." It is such values which would
seem to be basic in an anthropological system of ethics.

Dr. Sinnott, in the final paper, began with the ethical values that
are exhibited in the life processes and behavior of every organism, the
most distinctive feature being a conformity to certain norms, "set up
in its living stuff, presumably as patterns of protoplasmic activity,
the basis of which is present in every cell." In the embryo the norm
is the mature individual toward which development proceeds. Physiologically,
there are other norms, such as a set body temperature or the normal rate
of pulse.

For the whole animal, certain norms are called instincts. These
drive the organism onward toward broad attainments. If blocked in one
direction, other paths toward fulfillment may be taken, "a fact which
suggests the basic importance of the goal as opposed to the steps by
which it is reached."

"Human behavior may be regarded as an extension" of this fundamental
regulatory and goal-directed process. Biological selection and adapta-
tion to environment cause various goals to emerge and survive, some

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conflicting with others and carrying different kinds and degrees of
satisfaction with them. "The more powerful ones prevail."

Ethical conduct, it was concluded, "comes from the pursuit of those goals that provide the most satisfying life for the individual and for society." This is "determined in part by environmental factors and in part by the natural predispositions of life." In the latter sense, a kind of "absolute" basis for ethics is found in biology. . . .

The evening session developed considerable agreement on the relation of science, and especially of biology, to ethics. It also provided room for a number of questions in the discussion period that followed.

While science and ethics may be considered unique value categories, neither dictating to the other, may they not at the same time be tied together on a still higher normative level? May not scientific truth be "best" pursued in a good society of free man and may not a good society be "best" furthered in an atmosphere of scientific truth?

In connection with the conclusion that ethics may be traced back to biologically favorable survival reactions, to adaptive fitness to environment, to norms set up in protoplasmic activity inherent in every cell, and that human activity may be regarded as an extension of the same regulatory and goal-directed process, several additional questions present themselves.

Does this conclusion imply that ethical conduct can be traced back no further than the norms found in cell and protoplasm? Or, in causal sequence, may one not go still further back scientifically to the primordial stuff out of which protoplasmic goals presumably emerged?

In tracing ethical behavior back to biological or primordial be-
ginnings and then moving forward to man in modern society, what bearing
have the following conditions or questions?

(a) Modern man does not "survive" because of biological fitness alone. Christian ethics and charity do not allow "misfits" to perish.

(b) The environment to which modern man "adapts" himself, especially in non-despotic advanced societies, is no longer pitilessly natural; it is, in fact, largely created by man himself, particularly by man when he becomes politically, economically, and intellectually "free".

(c) How is "freedom", in modern society and among modern men, related to the biological "ethical" goals set up in cell and protoplasm?

(d) What is the relation, for example, of biologically-pristine or elementally-directed ethical goals to modern conflict, frustration, worry, or to pleasure, happiness, play, and laughter?

Prepared by
Joseph Mayer

Program
Symposium on
Science and Ethics.
Cosponsored by
Philosophy of Science
Association.

Abstract
Section L, AAAS
December 26, 1956
Florentine Room, 2 p.m.
Hotel Governor Clinton
New York, New York

By

Joseph Mayer, Ph.D., LL.D.

Western civilization owes much to inherited ethical concepts analyzed and developed by the ancient Greek philosophers, who made these concepts the touchstone of their politics, law, economics, and social morality. Developed in an atmosphere of free speculation, the Greeks endeavored to establish a satisfactory basis for social living, with neither slavish adherence to customary morality nor to current religious beliefs.

Under this freedom of thought, the ancients aimed at the highest good of the citizen, and all their political, economic, social and related ideas were intermeshed, none being particularly dominant. With later military conquests and subjugations, however, imperialistic, dynamic, ecclesiastic rationalizations were superimposed. In the Dark Ages all these concepts were made branches of theology and thus they remained for centuries.

With the discovery of new lands, the renaissance of learning, the development of modern science, the religious reformations, and the political revolutions, a breaking away occurred from ecclesiastical and authoritarian controls. Here and there, state became separated from church, economics from theology and politics, and the various social disciplines as we know them today became organized into more or less water-tight compartments, with particular efforts made to divorce them from ethics, which continued to be associated mainly with church dogma and conventional morality.

Recently, however, the social disciplines have begun to fraternize. They are discovering that they can learn much from one another, and the interdisciplinary approach to social ethics is being stressed. Basic to this new orientation are developments in the natural sciences. Particular stress is being laid on social psychology and anthropology as fundamental for a fruitful understanding of human and social values.

Evidences of this wider and deeper view are the present long-range "Study of Values in Five Cultures," being conducted at Harvard; the call for a National Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, endorsed by President Eisenhower; last year's Conference in Milan sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom which laid parochial loyalties wide open; the crucial moral issues, world-wide in scope, pin-pointed in recent U. N. Assembly discussions. Evidently some groups and some areas of the world are finally ready to tackle current ethical and related problems in the true spirit of modern science.