NORMATIVE BLINDERS TO EMPIRICAL REALITIES

Several years ago I sent a paper to what eventually turned out to be several philosophy journals for review. It discussed the treatment of determinism in the social sciences, specifically that ideas viewed as deterministic are frequently rejected because common assumptions underlying the social sciences hold that determinism is morally wrong. The paper was sent straight back in each case with a comment roughly saying the same thing:

“Surely scholars of the social sciences are not being so foolish. You cannot decide factual questions on normative grounds.”

In other words, how we feel about whether the universe is or is not deterministic has absolutely no bearing on whether it is deterministic or not. It would be utterly misguided to reject factual arguments on normative grounds.

Much of the difficulty in convincing these philosophers that social scientists commonly hold certain views was due to the difficulty of demonstrating well established and thus unspoken assumptions in a group. Group assumptions and norms are sufficiently taken for granted that they often do not need to be made explicit. However, when research breaks these taboos implicit norms become explicit. In the social sciences this is particularly evident with research viewed as either environmentally or biologically deterministic.  

For example, referring to the Morton-Gould affair John Horgan (2011, citations below) writes:

Biological determinism is a blight on science. It implies that the way things are is the way they must be. We have less choice in how we live our lives than we think we do. This position is wrong, both empirically and morally. 

Regardless of the truth of the empirical evidence, Horgan explicitly rejects an argument on moral grounds (Horgan gives no empirical grounds for his position).  

 There is also a blanket rejection of research viewed as environmental/geographic determinism. For example, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel is likewise rejected not on empirical but on moral grounds:

Diamond pushes further the moral relativism underlying his Pulitzer Prize winning text….In a chilling display of the dark expediency of an interpretation that privileges geographical determinism over the idea of human beings as responsible and accountable agents of our own actions. (Hall 2003, 135)

Diamond’s empirical argument is similarly chastised by another scholar as a “pernicious book” that except for the popular attention it has received “would not ordinarily merit scholarly discussion” (Sluyter 2003, 813). Diamond’s (deterministic) “junk science” is seen as so morally dangerous that it “demands vigorous intellectual damage control” (Sluyter 2003, 813).

This last statement uses extraordinary language for a scholarly journal – to demand that factual academic arguments should be deliberately curtailed based on moral sentiment.

I believe the quotes above accurately capture the zeitgeist concerning ideas viewed as deterministic in the social sciences. Theories and empirical evidence concerning biological or geographic influence on society have largely been shunned, viewed as taboo, and even ridiculed or subjected to “vigorous intellectual damage control.” Evolutionary psychology and works such as that by Diamond or Jeffrey Sachs and similar areas of study have met with extraordinary resistance. Their success is due to overwhelming empirical evidence that supports them rather than support from within the social sciences.

A FEW ADDITIONAL RELEVANT QUOTES 

ON BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE

“During most of the twentieth century ‘determinism’ was a term of abuse, and genetic determinism was the worst kind of term” (Ridley 2003, 98). 

‘To acknowledge [a perceived deterministic] human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged… Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think’ (Pinker 2002, viii).

Peter Grosvenor observes that “progressive” or “left” intellectuals interpret “deterministic” evolutionary psychology “as part of the broader assault on collectivism and on the prospects for more cooperative and egalitarian social models” (Grosvenor 2002, 436) and view determinism “as a flawed scientific rationalization of prevailing [unethical] social hierarchies.” (Grosvenor 2002, 438)

The eminent primatologist Sarah Hrdy even questions “whether sociobiology should be taught at the high-school level…Unless a student has a moral framework already in place, we could be producing social monsters by teaching this.” (quoted in Barash, 2006, B13).

“[50 years ago] the thought that evolutionary biology might be relevant to judgments about behavior was not just wrong, it was unclean.” (Michael Ruse, 2011)

Ruse also writes that evolutionary ethics “has moved from being a taboo subject” to gaining some support. Note the moral aspect of being taboo and then the immediate response by David Barash:

“It may be, as Michael Ruse has just cogently written, that ‘evolutionary ethics’ is (are?) experiencing something of a renaissance. But I hope not.

To my mind, efforts to derive ethics from evolution are not only misguided, but have already done considerable harm: witness the less-than-admirable history of social Darwinism and its use to buttress not just laissez-faire capitalism but also colonialism, racism, war and genocide.”

Like Pinker’s observes above, views seen as deterministic are not just shunned as immoral by some, but often in extreme terms.

Environmental/Geographic Determinism

   Mark Bassin observes ‘Of all the various chapters in the development of modern geography, none has been more disparaged, indeed vilified than the discipline’s relatively brief engagement with the doctrine of environmental or geographical determinism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ (Bassin 1992, 3).  

Robert Kaplan can quite comfortably write  ‘And of all the unsavory truths in which [international relations] realism is rooted, the bluntest, most uncomfortable, and most deterministic of all is geography.’ (Kaplan, 2009, 97).

Similar moral stances are evident in the wording (“shame”, “shameful”, “sin”) of overviews of geography and geographic/environmental determinism. These are “treated as part of geography’s distant and shameful past” (Frenkel 1992, 144), “remembered with shame” (Godlewska, 1993, 550) and equated with “Original Sin” (Buttimer 1990, 16).

Even from the detached worldview of analytic philosophy we may find moral beliefs influencing the study of factual questions - It is extraordinary that the state of modern philosophy can still allow Jeremy Koons to observe that:

many philosophers seem to reject it [hard determinism] not because of its philosophical implausibility, but because they fear the consequences of its being true.” (Koons 2002, 81).

If even philosophers allow their normative views to influence their understanding of factual questions, then what hope do social scientists have for understanding factual questions?

~~~~~~

(Often, e.g. see Grosvenor, it may seem that rejections to determinism are from the "left". However, the "right" also often rejcts determinism on moral grounds. More on this in a future post.)

  

WORKS CITED

Barash, David P. 2006. The social responsibility in teaching sociobiology. The Chronicle of Higher Education 53(13): B13.

Barash, David P. “Evolutionary Ethics and Other Oxymorons.” July 30^th 2011 post on “Brainstorm,” (a Chronicle of Higher Education blog). Link

Bassin, Mark. 1992. Geographical determinism in Fin-de-siècle Marxism: Georgii Plekhanov and the environmental basis of Russian history. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(1): 3-22.

Buttimer, Anne. 1990. Geography, humanism, and global concern. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80(1): 1-33.

Frenkel, Stephen. 1992. Geography, empire, and environmental determinism. Geographical Review 82(2): 143-153.

Godlewska, Anne. 1993. Review of Déterminisme et géographie: Hérodote, Strabon, Albert le Grand et Sebastien Münster by Jean Bergevin. Isis 84(3): 550-551.

Grosvenor, Peter C. 2002. Evolutionary psychology and the intellectual left. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 45 (3): 433–48.

Hall, Anthony. 2003. The American Empire and the Fourth World. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Horgan, John. “Defending Stephen Jay Gould’s Crusade against Biological Determinism.” June 24, 2011. “Cross-Check” Scientific American blog. Link

Kaplan, Robert. D. 2009. The Revenge of Geography. Foreign Policy. 172: 96-105.

Koons, Jeremy Randel. 2002. Is hard determinism a form of compatibilism? The Philosophical Forum 33(1):81-99.

Pinker, Steven. 2002. The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking.

Ridley, Matt. (2003) 2004. The agile gene: How nature turns on nurture. New York: Harper Perennial.

Ruse, Michael. “The Marc Hauser Dilemma” July 28th^th 2011 post on “Brainstorm,” (a Chronicle of Higher Education blog). Link

Sluyter, Andrew. 2003. Neo-environmental determinism, intellectual damage control, and nature/society science. Antipode 35(4): 813-817.