Michael Shermer and bridging the Is/Ought Gap
In a recent blog post and Edge submission, skeptic Michael Shermer argues that the famous “is/ought” fallacy is itself a fallacy. He writes:
Ever since the philosophers David Hume and G. E. Moore identified the “Is-Ought problem” between descriptive statements (the way something “is”) and prescriptive statements (the way something “ought to be”), most scientists have conceded the high ground of determining human values, morals, and ethics to philosophers, agreeing that science can only describe the way things are but never tell us how they ought to be. This is a mistake.
While Shermer’s argument is somewhat straightforward, it’s actually hard to logically parse it. It also isn’t a particularly new idea, because it seems to closely echo statements made by Sam Harris in his TED talk and book, The Moral Landscape. Regardless, Shermer starts with the following:
We begin with the individual organism as the primary unit of biology and society because the organism is the principal target of natural selection and social evolution. Thus, the survival and flourishing of the individual organism—people in this context—is the basis of establishing values and morals, and so determining the conditions by which humans best flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality.
Shermer never quite makes it clear, though, why we’re starting where we are or how science grants any moral significance to our status as the “principle target of natural selection and social evolution.” It’s also not quite clear why science entails that “determining the conditions by which humans best flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality.” In fact, it’s not clear where any of these conclusions are coming from at all, let alone what part science is playing in them. If anything, these conclusions seem to be assumptions that Shermer is smuggling in. These assumptions will show up as a problem later, but Shermer goes on to list findings in biology, psychology, and the social sciences to demonstrate science’s ability to determine values with an example:
Question: What is the best form of governance for large modern human societies? Answer: a liberal democracy with a market economy. Evidence: liberal democracies with market economies are more prosperous, more peaceful, and fairer than any other form of governance tried.
That’s it. Therefore science says we should accept liberal democracy and the is/ought gap has been bested. In your face, Hume.
But in all seriousness, I hope that strikes you as incomplete. In fact it perfectly demonstrates the is/ought gap and why it’s not a fallacy at all. Let me restate Shermer’s argument this way for clarity:
Premise: A liberal democracy is more prosperous, more peaceful, and fairer than any other form of governance tried.
Conclusion: We ought to institute a liberal democracy.
That seems a little incomplete, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s missing a step:
Premise 1: A liberal democracy is more prosperous, more peaceful, and fairer than any other form of governance tried.
Premise 2: We ought to institute the most prosperous, peaceful, and fair form of governance we’ve tried.
Conclusion: We ought to institute a liberal democracy.
Shermer’s argument is missing an “ought” statement, and that’s exactly what the is/ought gap is—an “ought” is needed somewhere in the premises in order to derive a conclusion about an “ought.” That’s exactly what Shermer needed to show that science can do, and it’s exactly what he glossed over. If your argument hinges on some kind of assumption about what you ought to do—what kinds of governments we ought to institute (fair and peaceful ones) or what kinds of things we ought to promote (flourishing)—then you’ve really said nothing interesting at all about science or morality.
No one says that science can’t provide us with information about the world that might enter into the “is” statements of our moral calculus. But in doing that we don’t bridge the “is/ought” gap. Instead, all Shermer has done is assume his way across it while pretending that science did all the work.
Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.
