Words&Dirt

Mark Johnson was my senior thesis adviser at the University of Oregon.  More than that, he changed my life profoundly, starting with his Philosophy 101 lecture course on Philosophical Problems, which caused me to change my major after just one term at UO.  Johnson introduced me to the works of John Dewey––my intellectual hero––and also to the field of neuroscience, which led not only to a personal revolution in how I thought about myself, but kindled my ongoing fascination with science in general.  For me, Johnson epitomizes the best possible virtues that can be embodied by a life spent in academia: conscientiousness, curiosity, good-natured humor, profound respect for human dignity, and abiding commitment to the project of increasing human happiness and decreasing suffering.

Johnson’s influence on my life is important to note because it makes plain at the outset that I am incapable of providing an unbiased critique of this book.  And while I want to acknowledge that openly, I will also try to provide some critical thoughts about places I think Johnson’s arguments fall short or are in need of further development.

Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science is one of many fine books from recent years that seeks to lessen the gap between our deepening scientific understanding of the human mind and the realm of moral problem-solving––two academic fields that have historically been treated as non-overlapping areas of inquiry.  It’s a tricky project that has sometimes gone astray, but one that I believe  ultimately provides a road map toward an increasingly complex and rich understanding of the relationship between science and ethics.  And while Johnson is perhaps later than some to this party, he is surely still ahead of most of us.  His main contribution is a kind of “third way” addendum to the dual process model of thinking, which posits that the majority of human thought happens in two distinct ways: heuristic (fast, automatic, unconscious, innate) and reflective (slow, conscious, learned).  Proponents of the dual process model have accurately demonstrated that much of our reflective thinking occurs after we have already passed judgment, often with the sole purpose of justifying that judgment to oneself and others.  This is an important insight, but it can also lead to a somewhat defeatist attitude toward human agency, especially our ability to consciously make ethical choices.  If the unconscious is making all the decisions and our reflective capacities provide nothing more than after-the-fact justifications, how can we account for moral progress or responsibility?

Johnson’s third way provides a useful and intriguing answer to this troubling question.  He convincingly argues for a form of protracted, dynamic, and imaginative thinking that can generate novel insight as well as new responses to moral problems, thereby carving out a space for optimism that––with a lot of hard work and time––humans can reasonably expect to improve our ability to deal with even the most difficult ethical conundrums.  This form of thinking is based on John Dewey’s conception of “dramatic rehearsal,” which is a startlingly accurate metaphor for the human brain’s capacity for symbol shifting and projection that allow us to imagine how various courses of action might give birth to significantly different futures (this was in 1922, long before such a proposal could be empirically vindicated by modern neuroscience).  Johnson gives Dewey’s ideas an update, proposing that future projection, coupled with a rejection of moral fundamentalism and an acceptance of the fluid nature of moral systems and categories, is the key to an ethical outlook that is efficacious and––most importantly––realistic.  In this view, morality is nothing more than a form of human problem-solving, and not something that requires compartmentalized modes of thought, a specialized lexicon, or dedicated “moral modules” in the brain.  This is not morality idealized for the purposes of divine beings or creatures capable of “pure” reason, but morality for humans.

I have no qualms with this central argument, and I think it constitutes a genuinely useful contribution to the discussion about how naturalized ethics should change our view of the moral landscape.  There can be a fine line between relativism and absolutism, but Johnson reminds us that it’s a line we need to be willing to walk if we want to become better people with better ethics.  I wholeheartedly support his stance that any kind of moral fundamentalism is itself immoral, though I recognize the irony that this statement is itself a kind of fundamentalism (albeit an anti-fundamentalist one).  Additionally, Johnson develops a fascinating connection between Dewey and acclaimed neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, one that signifies the intellectual harvest reaped when philosophers see themselves as interdisciplinary thinkers rather than guardians of ancient, immutable bastions of truth.

I love that Johnson is a champion for Dewey’s continued relevance, but one of this book’s weaknesses is that Johnson fails to identify a central point where Dewey missteps, at least in my view.  Dewey argues that human experience is characterized by a “pervasive unifying quality.”  Johnson uses this notion as a way of describing how we should seek to understand ethical problems––namely, that we should use every relevant form of inquiry to learn as much as possible about the different perspectives and tensions involved.  This will allow us to imagine consequences of possible actions with the greatest possible accuracy, hopefully revealing the difference between ameliorative and potentially harmful options.  As I take it, Johnson sees the end-game of this multi-pronged inquiry as the uncovering of the situation’s “pervasive unifying quality,” which, once understood, can be used to identify and argue for the best possible response to the problem at hand.  In Johnson’s words: “Moral deliberation is a form of problem-solving geared toward the transformation of a situation that allows an individual or group to move forward in a more or less satisfactory way.  The ‘test’ of any process of moral deliberation is how it resolves the problematic character of that particular situation by changing its pervasive unifying quality” (98, emphasis his).

Johnson acknowledges that many philosophers have pointed out the problem with positing a “pervasive unifying quality,” which is that it is impossible to measure such a thing or to tell when exactly anyone has accessed it.  There is a sense in which this idea functions the same way extreme notions of objective reality do, insofar as both suggest that there is some kind of unitary truth that all people ought to be able to grasp if they just “had all the facts.”  This might be true for natural facts, but I do not believe the same can be said of moral situations.  The problem is this: How can I ever be sure that I’ve arrived at the actual “pervasive unifying quality,” and therefore that my moral deliberation is sound?  How can I be sure someone else has or hasn’t also discovered it?  What happens if someone’s interpretation of the “pervasive unifying quality” differs from mine?   I do not think Johnson responds to these questions in any way that satisfies, nor do I think he identifies them as massively problematic for many of his arguments.  This seems strange, because it seems to me that Damasio’s work provides an answer: I suspect Damasio would argue that if anything like a “pervasive unifying quality” could be said to actually exist, it would be a feature of the complex simulation of unified identity generated by our autobiographical selves.  In this case, any “pervasive unifying quality” would be part of the “story of ourselves” generated by body-environment interactions (different from person to person), rather than an objective feature of the world.

On this point, it would serve Johnson better to admit that Dewey may have got this one wrong, rather than try to justify an idea that too closely resembles some of the concepts both thinkers have worked very hard to undermine.  Why not concede that there is no “pervasive unifying quality” and that––as Johnson claims elsewhere––all we have to work with are parochial judgments that are more or less informed than others?  This doesn’t preclude our ability to critically distinguish between better, worse, or more or less useful perspectives, but it does do away with the specious notion that moral problems will begin to dissipate if we can just get everyone on the same page.  It is our nature as independently perceptive, meaning-making beings that we will never fully agree on contentious matters, which means that genuine moral disputes will always arise.  We should therefore focus on developing reliable methods for identifying common ground, fostering non-zero sum relationships, and granting tolerance when agreement cannot be reached, rather than wasting time trying to bring every last bit of data to bear in service of the tempting but misguided notion that we can achieve universal clarity for all constituents.

Another way to problematize this matter is to point out that the “dramatic rehearsals” of different people may vary too widely for us to agree that a given solution is actually a solution at all!  Just because I imagine a future in which a certain course of action will resolve a problem doesn’t mean my neighbor will game it out the same way.  This is because of the hugely variant levels of salience we attach to individual actions, social trends, and cultural structures that enable and constrain moral behavior.  Some simple examples include: Does the government have the right to actively extend prosperity to all members of a society by easing inequities between rich and poor, or does it exist solely to protect the individual rights granted by the constitution?  Will gun control result in fewer guns and therefore fewer gun deaths, or just make law-abiding citizens less able to defend themselves from criminals?  Does abortion cause the death of an innocent baby, or does it signify a laudable technological advance in human self-determination?  Do we have the right to remotely (via drone) terminate the life of a person who might one day kill citizens of our nation, or is it fundamentally wrong to kill someone for something they haven’t done?  I don’t think these controversial issues are somehow timeless and impervious to empirical inquiry or rational debate, but it’s important to remember that how people feel about such issues will radically affect how they imagine certain actions playing out in the future.  This means that, even with everyone trying their best to imaginatively solve problems by projecting the consequences of certain actions, there is still ample room for disagreement, interpretation, and misunderstanding.  Combine that problem with the perennially infuriating fact that the future is always somewhat uncertain, and you have a recipe for exactly the kinds of ethical quagmires that make it so easy to get dirty in the jungle of aspiring virtue.

I am not trying to be an ethical pessimist or to suggest that future humans will be forever saddled with ethical problems of the moment, but it is the job of critics to quibble and nag.  I am a big believer in genuine ethical progress, which seems to have accelerated over the last few centuries, with huge strides made in recent decades.  People like Johnson are absolutely necessary to keep the process moving forward, and I thank him not only for this lovely book, but even more for all his hard work over the years to provide some of the best teaching available to any philosophy student.  As messy as this world is, it’s a much better place with Mark Johnson among us.

Rating: 7/10