Among other important elections, on November 4 Californians will be voting on Proposition 8, a measure to amend the state Constitution in order to ban same-sex marriages. The polling has been very close, with a possible late break toward a “Yes” vote; this would effectively overturn a California Supreme Court decision from this May that held that same-sex couples had a right to marry under the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. Eventually, of course, gay marriage will be accepted throughout the country, and we will look back on today as the bad old days of discrimination. But that’s cold comfort to the couples who would like to celebrate their love for each other right now. You can donate and learn more about the measure at No On 8.
We are occasionally asked why a Physics Blog spends time talking about religion and politics and all that nonsense. A perfectly correct answer is that this is not a Physics Blog, it’s a blog by some people who happen to be physicists, and we talk about things that interest us, blah blah blah. But there is another, somewhat deeper, answer. Physics is not just a technical pastime played with numerical simulations and Feynman diagrams; nor is it a purely instrumental technique for unlocking Nature’s secrets so as to build better TV sets. Physics, as it is currently practiced, is a paradigm for a naturalistic way of understanding the world. And that’s a worldview that has consequences stretching far beyond the search for the Higgs boson.
Charles Taylor makes an admirable stab at a very difficult task: understanding the premodern mindset from our modern vantage point. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.) There are many ways in which our perspective differs from that of someone living five hundred years ago in a pre-scientific age, but Taylor emphasizes one important one:
Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an “enchanted” world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less “enchanted” world. We might think of this as our having “lost” a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are “buffered” selves. We have changed.
Our ancestors lived in an enchanted world, where the boundary between the physical and the moral and the spiritual was not very clearly drawn. It made perfect sense, at the time, to attribute to the external world the same kinds of meanings and impulses that one found in the human world — purposes, consciousnesses, moral judgments. One of the great accomplishments of modernity was to construct a new way of understanding the world — one based on understandable, formal rules. These days we understand that the world is not magic.
This change in perspective has led to extraordinary changes in how we live, including the technology on which we are sharing these words. But the consequences go enormously deeper than that, and it is no exaggeration to say that our society has still not come fully to grips with the ramifications of understanding the world around us as fundamentally natural and rules-based. That’s the point at which the worldview suggested by science has had a profound effect on moral reasoning.
For our present purposes, the most important consequence is this: notions of “right” and “wrong” are not located out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, in the same sense that a new kind of elementary particle (or even a new law of physics) is located out there in the world. Right and wrong aren’t parts of the fundamental description of reality. That description has to do with wave functions and Hamiltonian dynamics, not with ethical principles. That is what the world is made of, at a deep level. Everything else — morality, love, aesthetics — is up to us.
Which is not to say that moral concepts don’t exist. It’s just that they are things we construct, not things that we come to understand by examining the world around us. To Plato or Aristotle, as well as their Medieval followers, the kinds of reasoning used to tackle moral questions wasn’t all that different from that used to tackle questions about the natural world. One looked at the world, noticed that certain things seemed to serve certain purposes, and (somewhat presumptuously) elevated those appearances to laws of nature. Some sort of conception of Natural Law has been an important strand of philosophical thinking all the way through to the modern era, even showing up in the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”).
But it’s wrong. There aren’t Natural Laws that distinguish right from wrong in human behavior. There are only Laws of Nature, which can account for the behavior of the complicated chemical reactions that make up human beings, but stand strictly silent about what those human beings “should” be doing. Things happen in the world, not because of any underlying purpose, but because of the combination of initial conditions and the laws of physics. The fundamental category mistake underlying the idea of Natural Law should have become perfectly obvious and universally accepted in the years after the scientific revolution, but it stubbornly persists, because people want to believe it. If the laws governing right behavior were inherent in Nature, waiting to be discovered, everything would be so much easier than if we have to work them out ourselves.
Just because moral instructions are not located out there in the world, immutable and awaiting discovery, doesn’t mean that “anything goes.” It means that moral guidelines are invented by human beings. Too many people fear that if this sort of moral relativism is true (which it is), then there is no way to denounce Hitler or Charles Manson from a standpoint of ethical absolutes. Well, what of it? I don’t need to live in a world where Hitler was wrong because the universe tells me so — I feel that he was wrong myself, and fortunately many other people agree with me. So I and these other like-minded people sit down to work out among ourselves what rules we want to live by, and we decide that people like Hitler are bad and should be stopped. The codification of moral rules does not come from examining the world or thinking about logical necessities; it comes from individual human beings examining their own desires, and communicating with other human beings to formulate rules of common consent. Some people might prefer that moral rules have a more timeless, universal standing; but personal preference does not affect the working of the actual universe.
Gay marriage is a excellent example of a rule that would be almost universally agreed upon by individual human beings negotiating in good faith, and it is to our culture’s endless embarrassment that at this late stage we are still struggling to get it right. Deep down, there are only two arguments against gay marriage. One, which is the one that actually drives most people’s views on the matter, is that it’s icky. They just don’t like the idea, and therefore don’t want it to exist. There is little point arguing against that, but we can hope that increasing normalization of the idea of homosexuality will cause such attitudes to become increasingly rare.
The other argument is that gay marriage is a violation of Natural Law. That the two human sexes clearly belong together (“Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”) and the institution of marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman. But once we understand how the universe works, in our post-Enlightenment era, there is no reason to take arguments like this seriously. Nature doesn’t have anything to say about the moral status of two individuals falling in love and formalizing their relationship. It is a matter for us individual human beings to get together and decide how we should structure our legal system. We have long ago decided to recognize the special legal status of two people who love each other and wish to formalize their status as a legal union. Marriage is a wholly invented institution; there is nothing “natural” about it. And there is simply no reason — ickiness aside — to limit that institution to heterosexual couples. There might be, if the existence of gay married couples had directly deleterious effects on other members of society; but it doesn’t, crazy exhortations about the looming threat to traditional families notwithstanding.
Opponents of gay marriage are either squeamish and prejudiced, or philosophically confused. Eliminating prejudice takes time, but the situation is gradually improving. But there is even less excuse for the philosophical confusion surrounding issues like this. And if it takes a Physics Blog to sort things out, we’re happy to take up the challenge.
I don’t believe in generalisations, but there is now proof that at least one American doesn’t understand the concept of irony.
Peter Coles: You mean sarcasm, which is hard enough to convincingly convey when you can read the emotional state of another person.
David McMahon: Your argument goes something like: We the people of the US, whereby it is a good thing for us to encourage our citizens to have children, and whereby economic benefits are a good way to encourage specific behavior, resolve to give American parents a tax break for each of their children. That argument should definitely apply to gay couples seeking children, too. In fact, rather than coming up with an entirely equivalent tax code that applies to them, let’s just call them married and be done with it. 🙂
Sure, I would have no problem extending tax breaks to gay people with children.
No, I mean irony. Get a dictionary. And don’t split your infinitives.
Ooooo! Grammar smackdown!
But mostly a vocabulary smackdown.
I’m outta here!
RationalZen, all right, I’ll just leave it to whoever happens to read your re-rebuttal to see if those things you just said are not the same as those things you did say.
Through history there is little precidence for gay marriage, even within societies which were tolerant of homosexuality. On the other hand the intrusion of government into marriage is pretty recent as well. Consequently the issue of gay marriage is due to a convergence of rather recent ideas. I suspect that gay marriage might be a passing trend. If government were to get out of the business of marriage entirely I suspect that gay marriage might only be something upheld by gay-Churches.
We should just get government out of marriage, and make it only uphold mutual living contracts between people. If gay couples want to turn things into a marriage that is their business.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Lawrence, I don’t buy that government involvement in marriage is just a recent thing. Marriage has always been a contract between two parties (and, sometimes, their families). The government has always had some authority when it comes to contracts, though certainly for a while the Catholic church handled marriage in Europe.
As for historical precedence for gay marriage, who cares?
And I also don’t buy that government will ever get out of marriage. There are a large number of rights afforded to married couples, rights people have come to expect.
All this talk about justifying homosexuality makes me wonder if nobody realizes that Sean et. al. are trying to take all the fun out of doing physics. This is what I found really “icky” about this whole line of thinking!
Given his proclamation that physics is a naturalistic way of understanding the world, I realized that there was an implication for someone who believes as he does. This implication is a consequence stretching beyond the confines of his attempts to suggest that we live in a relativisticly (sp?) moral universe: he also says we live in a boring universe.
A logical consequence of his argument (“. . . Laws of Nature [are] silent about what those human beings ‘should’ be doing.”) is that there can be no greater purpose for doing physics than what Mark R. talks about in #118: Physics can only be done for self-stimulating (or more generally self-serving) purposes.
A few weeks ago, my 8-year old son happened across a book with pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope. (It was the first time he had seen any pictures taken by the HST.) Without any prompting on my part, all I heard for 15 – 20 minutes was nothing but Ah! Ou! Aw! Oh!
What makes Sean believe that chemicals “should” respond that way to other chemicals!?
If I should be fortunate to discover something about the universe, Sean’s beliefs would not allow me to truly celebrate my discovery and according to him, I would also be silly to go Ou! and Ah!
Oh, yes I might have a party. But what would the party be celebrating? If I were to believe there is no absolute meaning and purpose as Sean does, then my party would celebrate nothing more than the fact that I’m capable of finding meaningless in the universe.
What a horrible and boring “world” to choose to live in!
I believe the real world is filled with enchantment and wonder and it sounds like Sean can’t see that it is because he thinks that he “should” not rejoice in the fact that it is incredible and amazing. (I wonder: what chemical is telling him not to rejoice?)
If this universe were incredible, amazing, glorious – if it were enchanted – might that not mean that there was an Enchanter?
Wouldn’t such an Echanter ensure that the universe would never be boring?
MartianTruth,
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” – Douglas Adams
“If I should be fortunate to discover something about the universe, Sean’s beliefs would not allow me to truly celebrate my discovery and according to him, I would also be silly to go Ou! and Ah! ”
A sense of wonder and curiosity might have been useful tools for survival. Animals are always learning from their ambience in order to react to it better, and curiosity is a useful instrument for it, especially in an animal whose brain is spectacularly well-evolved for this purpose.
“If I should be fortunate to discover something about the universe, Sean’s beliefs would not allow me to truly celebrate my discovery and according to him, I would also be silly to go Ou! and Ah! ”
The celebration is about us. I don’t see why that should take away from your enjoyment of it, unless you want the universe to be one way or another. The Universe is what it is.
If you are planning to connect to the Supreme Being through your discovery, yes, you would be disappointed, but that is your call.
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Whew! What I have learned from the comments: physicists should not talk about politics, gay couples are incapable of having children, and godless astronomy is no fun. I must re-evaluate my life!
What I know: fighting Prop 8 costs me 3 hours of research time every Monday evening. My family, and the families of other scientists, will be hurt if Prop 8 passes.
Hi Sean,
With Gabriel (#44), I worry about the implication
you make by conflating four different points:
(1) natural science has done an admirable job of
“explaining” (for lack of a better term) many of the
phenomena we witness; (2) many people suspect,
therefore, that all phenomena are explainable in
such terms; (3) another overlapping group of people
suspect therefore that there is no Natural Law; and
(4) gay marriage should be legal. I’ll leave aside (4)
as I don’t have any argument with it for many of
the reasons cited by previous commenters and
yourself.
My main concern is that while the basis for point (1)
rests in the hard work and peer-reviewed, reproducible
research of thousands of scientists over hundreds of
years, and that while point (2) is probably a working
hypothesis for most of those scientists, point (3) simply
doesn’t have the same empirical basis and has never
been subjected to the scientific process. It’s not like
plate tectonics, or DNA, or the expansion of the Universe,
in that it has not undergone the level of scrutiny and
reached the level of scientific consensus that they have.
At least not in any journals (our primary record of what
science has achieved) that I have read.
You might argue that point (3) cannot be subjected to
that process, to which I would respond that in that case
you should not imply that scientific consensus excludes
the existence of Natural Law. It doesn’t really, we
just have never addressed that question and maybe
can’t scientifically.
You might find this nitpicky, but I have a concern with
your postings (all of which I enjoy), that they on
occasion somewhat intentionally abuse the authority
that scientific approaches have gained due to their
rigor and care, using the success of science as a launching
point for more speculative arguments.
I honestly don’t believe “authority” has anything to do with it, or at least it shouldn’t. When I say things, or anyone else says things, they shouldn’t be judged by my authority as a scientist, or my lack of authority in other areas, or the disciplinary authority of science as a whole — they should be judged by the soundness of the reasoning and the relevance of the evidence offered.
I would never claim that “gay marriage should be legal” has the same kind of status as “gravitation is a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime.” But on the flip side, I’m not going to be reluctant to point out what I think is a common perspective that leads to both conclusions. Science doesn’t exist in an intellectual vacuum — it’s a set of ideas that are intimately connected to ideas in other areas. In the post, I tried to explain why I felt that the same kind of thinking that makes up the modern scientific method also leads one to reject traditional arguments for Natural Law, on which (the more respectable) arguments against same-sex marriage are often based. People are welcome to disagree with those arguments, and present counter-arguments of their own; there’s no reason for notions of authority to get involved.
Well, I do agree that positions should be evaluated
on the basis of the relevant arguments. I guess I’m
simply trying to distinguish those bits of your arguments
which are scientifically based from those that are based
on reasoning.
After all, you state that after the scientific revolution it should
have become obvious to everyone, because science could
explain so much, that there was no universal moral
law. To me, that argument simply sounds like a non sequitor.
I understand that the working hypothesis that the
physical laws of nature can explain everything probably
implies that no such moral law exists. But it is not a
prediction of that hypothesis that has been subjected
to rigorous empirical tests.
I don’t personally hold everything I believe to be true
up to this standard, of course — certain questions we
are forced to answer in our lives can’t be addressed
scientifically. But you say fairly explicitly that your
conclusion is an inevitable, indeed “obvious,” consequence
of the scientific worldview — yes, yes, you don’t say it
is a consequence of scientific work itself, but the
implication is there, and is what I am complaining about.
But perhaps that distinction is clear enough to you
that you don’t see how your audience could confuse
one with another.
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Comment to blanton #142
I’m sure that we could describe in intricate detail how a clock works.
I’m sure that we can do so without ever making a single reference to the guy who designed the clock or put it together. However, it would be a fallacy to believe that there was not a person who designed or made the clock just because I can explain how a clock works without making reference to either of these people.
Likewise, just because the scientific method can be used to explain much of our world without reference to a creator, does not mean I can conclusively prove there is not a creator. If someone were to say that the scientific method does so, I would infer that they brought that (dis)belief to their science.
In other words, one is not being a scientist if he or she says there is not a creator.
Except, MartianTruth, that’s an entirely backwards stance to take. The only valid, logical stance to take is that there is no such thing, until such time as we discover evidence that points in that direction.
The reason this is so is simple: there is only one truth, but a near infinite variety of untruths. Finding the truth about reality can be likened to hitting the bullseye on a dartboard. If you’re going to just throw out there the possibility that X is true, without providing any evidence for it, then that’s rather like blindfolding yourself and spinning until you’re dizzy before throwing the dart, and then thinking you’ve got a chance in hell of actually hitting upon the right answer.
Obviously this is nonsense: the expected result is that in doing so, you’ll miss not only the bullseye, but the entire dartboard. This is why when something is stated without evidence, we can naturally expect that it’s probably quite incorrect.
Jason
Imagine you’re driving in West Texas. (It’s pretty bleak out there if you’ve never been!) You notice a row of fence posts paralleling the road. On top of one of those posts you notice a turtle.
I’m sure that someone, maybe you, could come up with an explanation for how the turle got on top of that fence post all by itself, i.e. an explanation that would exclude anyone putting it on top of the fence. I’m also certain that this explanation would satisfy many people.
My point is this: what criteria you use to determine whether or not an explanation is satisfactory has nothing to do with your explanation.
So, to believe that the scientific method in and of itself proves that there is not a creator, or that the results of the method proves there is not a creator, is to bring to the method, to bring to your results, something that is extra to the method and to the science.
In short, you have brought your prejudice.
As Freud would say, I see your slip.
The difference, MartianTruth, is that I know that there exist people who can do this, I know of people who would do this, and I am perfectly aware (at least in a superficial sense) as to precisely how it is done. None of these things is so with a creator god. We have no independent evidence [i]that[/i] any such deity exists. And even if something like a god existed, we have no way of knowing whether or not it [i]would[/i] create a universe, let a lone a universe like our own. And even if we knew these things, we have no clue as to [i]how[/i] it would actually go about doing the creating.
So no, the analogy isn’t even remotely similar. Instead what we have is a real, measurable, physical process. It is perfectly understandable to expect that this real, measurable, physical process can be explained in some manner. That’s all that science does, and positing a god is the equivalent of giving up on looking for an explanation.
Jason
Don’t you see that the opposite side of my coin holds true?
If all that science does is explain natural processes by using other natural processes, then to automatically reject a God because you can make explanations that satisfy you is the equivalent of automaticallly giving up on an relationship.
A dog chasing its tail, can’t imply it doesn’t have an owner.
You can be certain of what is NOT out there to be discovered ONLY if you know everything.
Are you claiming to be God?
Another problem is in believing you could find evidence independent of a God if He did exist. If God did exist, by definition everything would be dependent on Him. Consequently, there might not be any evidence independent of His showing Himself to you.
No, it’s not, because the fundamental reason why supernatural causes are excluded is because they cannot, by definition, be explained. All that science is saying here is that everything can, in principle, be explained. Everything. We may not be able to discover all of those explanations. In fact, we almost certainly will not. But to resort to an explanation that is itself unexplainable is meaningless. It’s a retreat from providing an actual explanation.
So, science is excluding nothing here. All it is saying is that if there is such a thing as a god, then that entity can, in principle, be understood and explained in detail. We may never actually be able to perform the experiments to actually show what this deity is, but we could at least do so in principle. In principle, we could describe what sorts of things this deity was made up of. We could describe the mechanisms by which it performs some “miracle” or another. We could describe how it went about creating the universe. We could understand how it came to exist, and what processes led up to its existence. In principle. Actually determining the particular mechanisms may be beyond us, but it should be doable in a hypothetical sense (if I could only build a gajillion dollar instrument…).
Resorting to concepts and ideas that cannot ever possibly be explained, even were I to have infinite resources to construct an experiment, are simply meaningless. They are just fluff to fool people into thinking they’ve said something with meaning.
Yeah, so why isn’t the evidence plain and obvious to everybody? Why is it that everything that we learn about science leads us away from the idea of a supernatural god and towards a fully naturalistic existence?
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