We are currently facing a long list of formidable worldwide challenges-global warming, the exhaustion of nonrenewable resources, resource wars, increasing income inequality, crushing national debts, rising violence on all scales, militarism, the new American imperialism, advertising-driven consumerism, the crisis of the welfare state, the decline of labor unions, the resurgence of religious fanaticism, increasing intolerance, the commercialization of politics, the defamation of classical liberalism and socialism, the decline of student enrollment in science and engineering programs, the popularity of postmodernism, and the displacement of educated art by commercial pop culture.
I suggest that all of the above are symptoms of a crisis of modern civilization. In the face of this crisis, one may take either of two stands: obscurantist or enlightened. Obscurantists will welcome backward trends and will attempt to substitute minor or artificial issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage for the real ones such as war, hunger, and intolerance. Or they will pretend that the serious problems can be solved with the help of ready-made recipes, whether religious in character-like the belief that God will provide-or secular, like neoliberalism and globalization.
Obscurantists look backward because, beholden as they are to special interests and frozen belief systems, they fear progress. By contrast, the enlightened are realists: they face facts and look forward to the results of new rigorous research in science, technology, and the humanities. In particular, they realize that every social issue poses moral problems. They also know that ethics did not freeze three millennia ago-or even more recently. Every new stage in history poses problems of its own, which call for original ethical thinking and decision-making on subjects such as whether to bomb civilian populations, impose democracy by force, continue to manufacture gas-guzzlers, use torture, reinforce security at the expense of civil liberties, subsidize corporations and confessional schools, and cut taxes at the cost of social services.
For example, obscurantists deny that the environment is being rapidly degraded by gas emissions from factories and cars; or they will admit that this may be the case, but they don't care, either because of civic irresponsibility and moral callousness or because they believe that the end of the world is near. The enlightened, by contrast, will favor regulating gas emissions through taxation together with increased energy efficiency through the redesign of vehicles and other gas-powered machinery. Again, obscurantists will counter grassroots terrorism with state terrorism, whereas the enlightened will attempt to eliminate the roots of group-sponsored terrorism, such as foreign occupation.
My aims in this essay are to suggest that all of the global problems we face are social in character; that the classical moral philosophies won't help us solve these problems because they ignore society; and that these problems won't be tackled successfully unless they are handled in the light of science and technology, together with well-grounded moral norms capable of inspiring moral passion and prosocial political action.
The Systemic Nature of Global Problems
Political will, though necessary for the effort, is insufficient to tackle social issues: knowledge and passion, too, are required. In particular, we need to know who needs what and how such needs are best met. For instance, giving food to the hungry may solve an emergency, but in the long run it is counterproductive, because it ruins the local farmers, whose products cannot compete with free food falling from the sky. Nor is expert knowledge sufficient to tackle social issues: a modicum of morality too is needed. This is because every time we act we affect others, and the basic rules that regulate human coexistence are moral and legal principles, such as those of reciprocity and helping others even if no reward is to be expected.
A social issue is of course a practical problem, involving at least two people. Such issues come in all sizes: microsocial, such as marital conflict, moral insensitivity, and murder; mesocial, such as poverty, segregation, and terrorism; and macrosocial, such as underdevelopment, global warming, and war. Whatever the size of a social issue, it occurs in a social system, such as a family, a business, a nation, an international bloc, or the whole of humankind. This is why piecemeal approaches to social issues are bound to fail-because such issues are systemic, some of them even worldwide.
Besides coming in different sizes, social issues are many-faceted-with environmental, biological, economic, political, cultural, and, in particular, moral aspects. Even when one aspect is more salient than others, those others are present. For example, wars are political processes, but they have nonpolitical consequences, such as the waste of natural resources and the loss of life, property, cultural goods, and civil rights, along with severe disruptions of civilian social systems and networks from families to universities.
Because social issues of all sizes affect whole systems, not only individuals, they should be approached systemically rather than in a piecemeal fashion. This holds particularly true for large-scale social issues. For example, economic underdevelopment calls for reforms of various kinds: in wealth distribution, public health and education, and political participation. Again, overpopulation, environmental degradation, depletion of mineral reserves, global warming, and imperialism form a system-each of its deteriorating components contributes to worsen the others.
Consequently, none of these social issues can be tackled successfully in isolation from the others. For example, forests cannot be protected unless logging is limited and loggers are forced to reforest. Nor is this sufficient. Since gas emission, too, is killing forests, the issue of global warming must be addressed at the same time. We must learn to recycle and substitute materials and energy sources on a large scale. And, of course, we must limit population so as to decrease the demand for natural resources as well as the intensity of the conflicts over them. However, effective population control cannot be achieved without raising living and educational standards, which, in turn, requires devoting more resources to welfare than to warfare. This, in turn, reminds us of other related and pressing social issues: violence, social injustice, political marginality, and ignorance.
In sum, humankind is facing a system of global social challenges. Being a system, its treatment calls for a systemic rather than piecemeal approach. That is, none of the constituent issues can be tackled efficiently without addressing the others at the same time. They have to be tackled all at once, though of course gradually rather than instantly. We need reform rather than revolution, because violence is part of the problem.
Two Approaches
Global issues cannot be tackled with the help of ordinary knowledge, because they concern huge, complex systems that are difficult to understand. Nor will any of the traditional ideologies help, if only because they were formulated centuries before 1492, when the world became a system and long before modern science and technology emerged. For example, the world religions do not exhort us to protect the environment, while laissez-faire economists are not concerned with the rights of workers.
By contrast, scientists and technologists can help in facing social problems. For example, resource managers can find out the maximum rate of fishing that will not destroy fish stocks, epidemiologists can calculate the critical mass of sick people necessary for an infectious disease to become epidemic, and operations research experts can tell us that bombing civilian populations is counterproductive in addition to its being immoral and illegal.
In sum, there are two approaches to the study and solution of macrosocial problems:
The contrast between the two approaches to contemporary megasocial problems is reminiscent of the clash between the partisans and the enemies of the ancien rˇgime in eighteenth-century Europe and America. There are two major differences, though. First, our problems are far more serious and widespread than those faced by Voltaire, Diderot, Adam Smith, Franklin, Jefferson, and their like, not only because our issues are planetary, but also because nowadays obscurantists control weapons of mass destruction and mass deception, to say nothing of transnational corporations.
The second major difference is that we have nowadays suitable means to tackle such issues, which the Enlightenment people lacked. These new means are: advanced sciences, potent technologies-in particular, social technologies-and effective democratic institutions and associations. In particular, when devising social policies, we can consult demographers, epidemiologists, engineers, management scientists, and even the rare people-friendly economist.
As well, in political democracies, we can vote and mobilize nongovernmental organizations instead of taking to the streets in order to demolish the contemporary counterparts of the Bastille. Last but not least, some contemporary moral philosophers are sensitive to social problems, as well as free from religious dogmas, so that they can contribute to the public debate on the moral aspect of social issues and social policies.
Matters of Value
Axiology, or value theory, studies the nature of values. The traditional view is that values exist by themselves and are totally disjointed from facts, hence independent of the scientific study of facts. This view is open to the following objections.
First, values are not simple and intrinsic properties but complex and relational ones: organism A assigns value B (positive or negative) to item C in circumstance D. Change the evaluator, object of valuation, or circumstance, and the value is bound to alter. This analysis does not render all values subjective, and therefore a matter of intuition or dogma rather than reason and experience. It only shows that values are relational and situational properties. (Caution: I wrote relational in opposition to intrinsic, not relative or culture-dependent. There are universal values, such as the good and peace.)
Second, I submit that values are facts of life rather than ideal objects. In particular, they underlie all deliberate actions. Indeed, one takes action A, because one values either A itself or some consequence of A. For instance, one swims either to reach the other shore or for the sake of exercise or sheer pleasure. Likewise for inaction: one abstains from doing A because A is likely to have undesirable consequences.
Third and consequently, I claim that the valuation of epistemic items is best performed in the light of the pertinent expert knowledge. For example, biomedical researchers are best equipped to evaluate therapies, management scientists and behavioral economists are most competent to judge whether a given business strategy is likely to be successful, and criminal sociologists, in cooperation with law-enforcement officers, can most accurately predict whether a given crime-prevention policy may work in a given neighborhood at a given time.
In sum, before the emergence of life, the universe was bereft of values. But survival calls for valuation, whether explicit or tacit, since some items are necessary for life, whereas others are life-threatening and still others indifferent. Hence, when it comes to organisms, the classical chasm between facts and values is a philosophical delusion. However, religionists and idealist philosophers have placed values in Plato's Realm of Ideas, which lies beyond experience. Therefore, they discourage any attempts to construct or reconstruct values with the help of expert knowledge.
Most scientists and philosophers of science have adopted Max Weber's principle that science is value-free. Ironically, religious fanatics accept this claim and add that, since scientists as such ignore values, and since humans need some, they should borrow them from religion. A recent editorial in Science (February 11, 2005) goes so far as to claim that "our recent experiences [presumably, President Bush's reelection in 2004] suggest that the values dimension is here to stay." Furthermore, it states that we should face this fact by promoting a dialogue "which brings scientists together with religious leaders and ethicists to discuss scientific advances and how they relate to other belief and value systems."
These claims ignore the fact that, six decades ago, the eminent sociologist Robert K. Merton showed that scientific research abides by a value system and an ethos of its own, which comprises the disinterested search for objective truth, the sharing of findings, and organized skepticism. These values happen to be utterly different from the religious ones that cluster around the illusion of an afterlife. In particular, religionists do not seek new objective truths; instead, they seek to spread certain dogmas, such as that of the immateriality and eternity of the mind-which of course contradicts the basic postulate of cognitive neuroscience. Worse, when in positions of power, the religionists attempt to impose their own dogmas by force. Therefore, the suggestion to appease the new Inquisition goes against the very spirit of science.
In sum, there is no conflict between science and values in general. Instead, there is conflict between scientific and unscientific values, particularly those of any of the ten thousand religions registered in the United States alone. Consequently, religionists have much to learn from scientists but have nothing constructive to say about scientific research or about science policy. And moral philosophers would do well to collaborate with scientists in discussing value-theoretical questions. More precisely, every claim about particular values should be supported by scientific evidence. This is how a scientific value-theory may eventually be constructed.
The Ethical Component
The world religions do not help identify and tackle social problems, because they are morally obsolete. For example, war, poverty, and slavery are not problems in the Judeo-Christian tradition because the Bible does not condemn those calamities. Judaism and Christianity are basically conservative ideologies.
The traditional moral philosophies are not very helpful for either or both of the following reasons. One is that all of them focus on individual problems, of the form "What ought I to do?" They ignore social issues (such as sexism, poverty, imperialism, and war), because they ignore social values (such as social justice, social cohesion, and international coexistence). The other reason is that the classical ethical theories make no use of science and technology to tackle or even identify any social problems. No wonder, then, that none of them has helped solve, or even identify, any of the global challenges that plague humankind.
In particular, neither of the three best-known modern moral philosophies-Hume's emotivism, Kant's deontologism, and Bentham's utilitarianism-suggests how to combine rights with duties, how to motivate people to help others, or how to design or redesign institutions for the purpose of solving or at least palliating social ills-let alone how to fuse morals with politics, both in order to cleanse politics and to endow morality with political clout. I suggest, therefore, that we need a new moral philosophy, one close to science and technology. In short, we need a scientific ethics.
However, according to traditional value theories and moral philosophies, the very idea of a scientific ethics is an oxymoron, because ethics deals with what ought to be, whereas science deals only with what is. In particular, according to this traditional view, there can be no moral truths, because there would be no moral facts; all moral principles and judgments would be subjective-emotive, intuitive, or utilitarian. Furthermore, they would be dogmas rather than testable hypotheses.
I submit that there are moral truths because there are moral facts. A moral fact is an action, or the failure to take an action, that affects the well-being of others. For instance, starvation in the midst of plenty, physical violence, political oppression, involuntary unemployment, military aggression, and forcible cultural deprivation are moral facts. So are their opposites: relief from starvation, job creation, conflict resolution, political participation, peace-making, and cultural diffusion.
Since there are moral facts, there must be moral truths. Here are a few plausible candidates: the Golden Rule in any of its versions; "Life should be enjoyable"; "Fairness is right"; "Inequity is iniquitous"; "Lying is wrong"; "Exploitation is unjust"; "Cruelty is abominable"; "Altruism is commendable"; "The weak and young deserve protection"; "Loyalty to the good is good"; "Teaching truths is virtuous"; and "Just peace is preferable to victory."
Morals need be neither dogmatic nor empirical; they can and should be scientific, in the sense that the moral norms can and should be the subjects of rational discussion, as well as being compatible with what is known through scientific research about human nature and social life. Three examples will suffice to make this point.
1.Contrary to the preaching of utilitarians and neoliberals, reciprocal altruism has a firm basis in social science. It is conducive to social justice and social cohesion and thus to both social harmony and progress. Moreover, experimental economists and cognitive neuroscientists have found that altruistic decisions occur in any brains that have not been corrupted by neoclassical microeconomics.
2.Unlike traditional pedagogy, its contemporary successor emphasizes the joy of learning. Consequently, instead of using threat and punishment as incentives, it uses reward and the withholding of reward. This reorientation has two roots. One is the thesis that, Luther notwithstanding, we are not condemned to suffer, but we may enjoy life and should have the right to do so. The other root is the finding of modern psychology and pedagogy, that children respond better to reward or the withholding of it than to punishment. Both ideas are alien to the myth of salvation through suffering.
3.The Bible exhorts us to go forth and multiply. By contrast, secular humanists favor responsible parenting. They argue that it is both socially disruptive and cruel to beget children who are unlikely to be properly raised and educated, for they are likely to be unhappy as well as a burden to society. Humanists know that unwanted children are far more likely than wanted ones to choose a career in crime rather than become useful citizens.
In sum, whereas traditional moral doctrines are bound to be obsolete, oppressive, and divisive, a scientific moral code would match modern life and would be liberating and inclusive, by being based on objective truth. Indeed, the scientific truth (or rather its recognition) shall make thee free!
Scientific Ideology?
What holds for ethics also holds for its next-door neighbor, political ideology. The traditional view is of course that all ideology is unscientific by definition. This is indeed the case with all the extant ideologies, whether religious or secular. But in my view, it is possible to craft a scientific political ideology, that is, one based on social science as well as on the maxim "Enjoy life and help others to live enjoyable lives." In fact, much of the social engineering involved in the construction of the modern welfare state has been explicitly guided by an ideology informed by the social sciences.
Take, for instance, social justice. Why should it be objectively desirable? First, because social psychology has shown that people are dissatisfied not only when they suffer deprivation, but also when they are unjustifiably discriminated against. Second, because sociology has shown that social cohesion increases with social participation and decreases with social exclusion. Third, equity is desirable because political science has shown that a deeply divided society is plagued by conflict and crime and is, therefore, politically unstable as well as deficient in security.
What holds for societies also holds, mutatis mutandis, for the community of nations. Differences among them are inevitable, but they should not furnish an excuse for the strong nations to dominate the weak ones. On the contrary, it is in the interest of all that the less-developed nations be helped to correct their most glaring deficiencies. The most sensational success of international cooperation is the European Union, which was constructed through an equalization mechanism: the rich partners subsidized the poor ones until they all could cooperate and compete with one another on roughly the same footing. What began as a device to prevent further European wars has become an unrivaled success story in all respects-economic, political, and cultural.
In short, there is solid scientific evidence to back up political programs that pursue equity and peace both domestically and internationally. Obviously, the same evidence disqualifies the elitist and war-mongering agendas of fascists and neoconservatives.
In sum, although science exudes neither morals nor ideology, it offers a promising foundation for both.
Conclusion
Humankind faces an enormous bundle of global challenges, all of them social and therefore containing a moral component. These problems are so complex that common sense cannot cope with them. And some of them are so new that none of the known ideologies-in particular, no religion-can help solve them, if only because religions are escapist, whereas real-life issues call for realistic science, technology, and ethics. Worse, the traditional ideologies-particularly the religions-are part of the problem, because they demand uncritical faith and they ask us to divert our attention away from this world, the only one there is. To ignore global issues, or to pray that they may vanish, amounts to agreeing that we will worsen them. To tackle those challenges effectively, we need to study them in depth and to design policies in the light of science and technology, as well as in the light of a secular ethics, particularly a humanist and scientific one.
See the following diagram:
However, it would be mistaken to believe that solid knowledge suffices to deal with the big social and moral problems of our time. We also need moral sensitivity to identify them, and we need moral passion to tackle them. Both virtues-moral sensitivity and moral passion-are found among religious believers as well as among nonbelievers. We see this every time tragedy strikes. For example, logistic expertise was needed to provide food and lodging to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but only people with moral sensitivity and moral passion volunteered to provide them. And, whereas some generous people were mobilized by churches, most were not: ordinary folks sheltered without fanfare nearly two million people. So, when it comes to facing moral issues in real life, let us adopt a broad concept of humanism, one that welcomes all persons with good will, regardless of their views about the afterlife. In other words, the consistent humanist need not be sectarian.
Mario Bunge is a professor of philosophy at McGill University and the
author of fifty books and five hundred papers on physics and
philosophy, among them Foundations of Physics (1967) and Treatise on Basic Philosophy (in eight volumes, 1974-1989). He is a laureate of the Academy of Humanism.
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