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.
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.
