Submitted by Marvin Miller
It is sometimes said that science and ethics are two separate and unrelated fields. Science is about what is; ethics is about what ought to be. Science is about what’s true; ethics is about what’s good. But I think that science and ethics are interrelated. The Ethical Society has given its Humanist of the Year award to some scientific researchers who made ethics their priority.
In order to do valid science one needs to adhere to some ethical standards. I have thought of five of these: observe carefully, report honestly, reason consistently, explain clearly, theorize as simply as you can. If you follow science’s ethical standards your result will be an explanation of the world which increasingly, although always imperfectly, agrees with the way the world actually is. If you don’t, it won’t.
On the other hand, a science-informed approach can be used in studying important questions about ethics, such as how individuals and groups acquire ethical ideas and principles and what the consequences of these principles are. Acquisitions and consequences of ethical ideas are real events, and therefore they are appropriate subjects of scientific study.
One important question to be considered is the meaning of the word “ought.” The dictionary tells us that “ought” is related to “owe” and “own”. It is used to express moral obligation. An obligation concerns two parties, the one who has the obligation and the one to whom the obligation is owed. We’re not born knowing about our obligations; we learn about them starting at the beginning of our lives. The people teaching us about our obligations are those around us who are raising us and providing us with what we need., and these are the people to whom we acquire our first obligations. Since our continued existence depends on them, we quickly learn that pleasing them is important, indeed vital. We carry this initial obligation with us into adulthood. It’s expressed in the biblical command “Honor your father and mother.”
As we grow we interact with more and more people. The structure of the society we live in determines who has which obligations to whom. In a hierarchical society or a hierarchical part of a society there is a presumption that obligations of A to B aren’t necessarily the same as obligations of B to A, as would be the case in an egalitarian social structure. The ethical principle in such societies is the principle of inequality.
This is symbolized in the way we address one another. In the military, commanders address subordinates by their surnames, while subordinates say “sir” or “sergeant.” In churches, senior adults call young priests just out of seminary “father.” In the slave and segregation societies of the American past, Whites expressing their social superiority called Black men “boy.” The pictures we saw on TV of Memphis sanitation workers, whose strike was being supported by Dr. King in his last days, showed them carrying signs saying, “I am a man,” thereby rejecting the prevailing racist ethic of inequality. What would happen in a courtroom if someone were to call the judge “Mr. Smith”?
We can also see examples of the egalitarian ethic. At the supermarket checkout or box office or getting off a train, we line up.
The scientific approach to the study of ethical principles can give us information about their origins and consequences, but it cannot tell us which principles to choose. That choice is one we must make for ourselves.