The Role of the Radical Intellectual

"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical,
a liberal, fanatical, criminal."

Noam Chomsky came to town this week to accept an award for "lifetime contribution to critical scholarship." I know of Chomsky mainly for his work in linguistics and cognitive psychology, but he is even more well-known for his political views/writings. He gave a talk entitled "The Role of the Radical Intellectual: Some Personal Reflections." Foreknowledge of this event filled me the kind of anticipation that one reserves for something that they believe will be especially profound.

Foreknowledge is a dangerous thing. For a week, I tried to figure out what the great man would say about the role of the radical intellectual. In my head, I tried to construct what I believed to the role of the radical intellectual, and I tried to identify (based on my definitions of 'radical' and 'intellectual') any radical intellectuals of my generation.

Chomsky argues that with the privileges conferred "from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression" comes a responsibility "to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest" and "to speak the truth and to expose lies." He is particularly concerned with social wrongs and the deceptions of governments. Yet as a scientist, his work spoke to almost none of this. This was Chomsky as something more than a scientist. And nowhere (that I've found) in his arguments does Chomsky confuse the role of science in determining moral right and wrong. "Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated."

At some point, while I was sorting through my thoughts on intellectuals, scientists, and their relationships and responsibilities to morality and political agendas, I came back to something that I'd thought about before... I believe that you are only ever an authority on one thing - your own experience. Even if the rest of the world acknowledges you to be the authority on, let's say, string theory, you are really only an authority on your experience in studying string theory. If you misread or misinterpreted or failed to investigate just one thing, your experience is not the absolute truth of string theory.

In thinking about morality and responsibility, I finally broke down and watched that 20-some minutes of video that's been the 'buzz in secular circles'. I am loathe to talk about it because I think Harris does a disservice to science. But in the spirit of 'speak the truth to power', I'm going to rant about it just a little bit...

The fatal flaw in his presentation comes when Harris himself is willing to disregard the expressed opinion of the individual in favor of what he perceives to be a greater moral truth. "I'm happy." "You can't be happy; this is wrong." "No, I'm pretty happy." "Well, then you've been brain-washed. Don't worry; I'll save you." Chomsky addresses this issue, albeit with respect to Communist China rather than women in burkas. "Nothing is said about those people in Asian cultures to whom our 'conception of the proper relation of the individual to the state' may not be the uniquely important value, people who might, for example, be concerned with preserving the 'dignity of the individual' against concentrations of foreign or domestic capital, or against semi-feudal structures (such as Trujillo-type dictatorships) introduced or kept in power by American arms. All of this is flavored with allusions to 'our religious and ethical value systems' and to our 'diffuse and complex concepts' which are to the Asian mind 'so much more difficult to grasp' than Marxist dogma, and are so 'disturbing to some Asians' because of 'their very lack of dogmatism.'"

Harris has effectively placed his interpretation of moral right and wrong, and the perpetuation of that definition, ahead of individual equality. However, it is not necessary to capitulate to moral relativism in order to avoid making this mistake. Indeed the foundation of any worthwhile-definition of morality must be respect for the integrity of the individual and their ability to express their wants, desires, and feelings. You cannot simply declare such expressions to be invalid because you believe you know better. (You may, in fact, know better, but that does not allow you to impose your will on another human being, simply to bring them in line with your vision of how the world should be.) Each person must be treated as the authority on his/her own experience.

This brings me to my second gripe with Harris. Arguing against religion is not, and should not, be the same thing as arguing for science. Science is not a viable alternative source of morality. Science acquires and examines information, but scientists frequently fail to agree on the interpretation of data, and occasionally they can even fail to agree on whether the data exists at all.

The institution of science is no more capable of deciding what is morally right or wrong for the rest of humanity than an individual scientist is. The process of reaching consensus by which scientists agree on facts about the world is not a process of argument and reasoning that is unique to science. Critical thinking is not limited to science, nor should scientists assume that they are the best at it. I doubt that Harris intends to exclude the rest of humanity from such a debate on morality, but he appears to want to give science the key role of arbitrating the facts from which such judgments can be made. However, these facts don't exist in a vacuum; they exist within the limited scope in which they were collected. And Harris would do well to note that science has not given us morality. It has given us knowledge, but those who apply that knowledge have not been guided by the moral intentions of the scientists involved in its discovery. Though science has not given us morality, the converse is not true. Morality and moral considerations have given us science, largely by dictating what type of research can/will be permitted/funded.

Harris also fails to consider that the function of science and the function of religion are diametrically opposed. The function of science is to progress in our knowledge and understanding of the world, which means abandoning ideas once they are no longer supported by evidence, while the function of religion is to maintain a sense of certainty based in the past. (Spirituality allows for and encourages progress, but religion fights it every step of the way.) The function of religion is not to provide morality, but to provide certainty. And certainty is something science cannot provide. To claim otherwise is to grossly misconstrue the nature of science. While Harris could have made a much more compelling argument for the role of science in the dialogue of morality, he damages his case by misunderstanding what science provides relative to religion.

So what is the role of the scientist with regards to morality? Can the scientist confine herself simply to the "technical problems", and leave the "ideological types" to "'harangue' about principle and trouble themselves over moral issues and human rights"? Is the scientist simply another employee, paid to employ a specialized skill set? Or does her proximity to knowledge and revolutionary discovery convey upon her the added responsibility for moral judgment that Chomsky expects from intellectuals? Is the scientist an arbiter of morality, a servant of it, or something else?

I don't have a remarkably 'radical' opinion on that issue... The individual scientist should always be guided by her conscience. In this way she is like every other human being. She should not be coerced into using unethical research practices, either by overt or implicit threats regarding her employment status.

But the scientist (particularly the academic scientist), is contracted to collect and publish data. He is not paid to filter his findings based on his own moral judgments. In this respect he is being asked to give blind allegiance to the higher imperative to disclose data in the face of what he might perceive to be negative moral consequences of doing so. How is it that we can demand this type of unthinking obedience of these paragons of critical thinking? And what does it say about the relationship between science and morality if scientists are asked to blind themselves to the potential moral implications of their work?

Chomsky's work is not relevant to this point, nor does Harris address this issue. Nor (sadly) can I think of any particularly salient piece of writing on this topic. Which probably means that I'll be blogging about it again...