historically speaking, a few mainstream scientific theories were overturned by isolated outsiders, but that is almost never the case today. There’s a reason we talk about a “consensus” among climate scientists that global warming is real and human-caused. It isn’t because science depends on the consensus of authorities; it is because science is an extremely competitive enterprise, and if there were serious problems with climate models or datasets, then there is little doubt that these would have been uncovered by scientists working in other labs. The idea that scientists get together on weekends to get their story straight in the teeth of opposition from without is ludicrous. Attend scientific conferences on any topic and you will find often bitter contentions over this and that dataset or hypothesis. By the time findings and theories filter out of the lab into the public, they have been tried and tested and hold a high degree of confidence of most scientists who work in that field.
I will expand on this more in my dialogue with Rupert, but in short, there’s certainly nothing wrong with outsiders (and especially insiders!) challenging the consensus. But the argument that they laughed at the Wright brothers doesn’t hold because they laughed at the Marx brothers too, so being laughed at doesn’t mean you’re right. You have to actually have both data and theory in support.
James Barham: It is time to turn to your new book—by all accounts your magnum opus—The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.
And a blockbuster of a book it is! First and foremost, it seems to us, The Moral Arc is a treasure chest of thought-provoking, cutting-edge social science research on a very wide array of topics, grouped around the unifying theme of the human condition very broadly conceived.
But in addition to its wealth of absorbing empirical detail, the book is also thesis-driven. The thesis—again in our interpretation—is twofold: (1) the moral progress of humanity over the past several centuries has been palpable, and may be confidently expected to continue into the future; and (2) the principal driver of that moral progress has been science and reason, with the corollary that religion has not only been of no help in this regard, but has been a positive hindrance—and therefore the sooner it is extirpated the better.
Is that a fair assessment of The Moral Arc, in very general terms?
Michael Shermer: Yes. The Moral Arc is by far my best and most important work, so thank you for recognizing that.
Most people have a hard time getting past the first thesis of the book—that things are getting better—and it is understandable why, if you’re paying attention at all to the news with all the stories coming out of Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, and parts of Africa, not to mention Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland! It seems like things are bad and getting worse. But we should follow the trend lines, not just the headlines, and when you do so, there is no question that in nearly every sphere of human endeavor, there has never been a better time to be alive than now.
As for my second thesis about religion, that is very much a secondary issue to the stronger thesis emphasizing the role of science and reason and the Enlightenment. The Moral Arc is not an “atheist” book. It’s a science book. It is about the positive forces that have been at work over the past two centuries to expand the moral sphere—bend the moral arc—and grant more rights and freedoms and liberty and prosperity to more people in more places than at any time in history.
I don’t care what someone’s religion is, as long as they agree that everyone has the natural right to be treated equally under the law, to be endowed by nature and nature’s laws—evolution in my model with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to honor the Liberty Principle: The freedom to think, believe, and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs, and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. I doubt that there are any Jews or Christians who would disagree with this principle, but then they—like me and most everyone else reading these words—are children of the Enlightenment, where these ideas were first articulated.
James Barham: We found ourselves—perhaps surprisingly—in general agreement with much of what you have to say in The Moral Arc. For example, we largely applaud your definition of “moral progress” as “the improvement in the survival and flourishing of sentient beings.” Though we believe that rational beings should take precedence over other sentient beings, nevertheless that is an excellent definition—and one that is very much in keeping with Aristotle, we might add!
You make only one glancing reference to Aristotle in connection with ethics, yet it seems to us that your moral system is clearly a form of eudaimonism—in which morally good or virtuous behavior is grounded in what it means for human beings to flourish as rational animals. If that is right, then aren’t you really an Aristotelian at heart? If not, why not?
Michael Shermer: Yes, I’m an Aristotelian, although I graft onto that parts of other moral philosophies, such as natural rights theory and sometimes utilitarianism and occasionally Rawlsian original position theory. No one moral theory can get it right for all circumstances, so we have to cobble together parts of what our greatest minds have generated before us. All I’m trying to do in The Moral Arc is establish that: (1) there are objective transcendent moral truths—right and wrong—and these are grounded in nature and human nature; and (2) there is no wall separating is and ought. Everyone just repeats the naturalistic fallacy without ever reading what Hume actually said—which I did, and then took my interpretation to one of the world’s leading Hume scholars, Oxford University philosopher Peter Millican, who confirmed that he thinks my interpretation of Hume is accurate. This is all in Chapter 1 of my book.
James Barham: Although you do not discuss Aristotle, eudaimonism, or virtue ethics in any detail, you do spend a couple of pages discussing the concept of “natural rights” in connection with John Locke as the foundation of your individualist approach to morality, which we applaud. We understand why you wish to claim a direct lineal descent from Locke, in accordance with your claim that Enlightenment “science and reason,” not religion, have been the principal drivers of human progress.
Now, natural rights are normally thought of as grounded in natural law—and so ultimately in human nature.3 Of course, we also understand that the view of human nature underpinning your invocation of natural rights is based on the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, as you have explained at length in several of your previous books, as well as in The Moral Arc. We will explore all of this in detail with you in a few moments. However, first we wanted to point out a significant historical connection that you do not mention.
Obviously, Locke himself knew nothing of Darwin. For him, as for the other Enlightenment figures whom you cite, natural rights were principally grounded in the natural law tradition leading back to Hugo Grotius—who lived a couple of generations before Locke—and beyond Grotius to the great sixteenth-century Spanish Scholastics (Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco Suárez, et al.), who in turn based their ethical and political thought on earlier Scholastic philosophy, notably that of Aquinas and Ockham.
In short, the Lockean tradition of human rights which you wish to claim as the offspring of the Enlightenment, we would claim is in reality to a very significant degree the offspring of Scholasticism—i.e., of Christian philosophy. How would you respond?
Michael Shermer: I have taken a number of courses from The Teaching Company on the history of rights and the origin of the concept of natural rights—Rufus Fears’s “History of Freedom,” Dennis Dalton’s “Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation,” and Joseph Koterski’s “Natural Law and Human Nature”—all of whom take the concept back to the ancient Greeks. So, you have to start the historical timeline somewhere, or else we’ll end up with all ideas as footnotes to Plato, as Whitehead said—wrongly, I might add.
I begin
