At present, it appears that empiricism can’t provide a rationale for itself in theoretical terms and can’t demonstrate the reliability of its methods in material ways. Could it be another set of interlocking, partly effective illusions, like medieval Christianity, Communism, or Nazism once were? Personally, I don’t think so. The number of achievements of Science and their profound effects on our society’s way of life argue powerfully that Science is a way of thinking that gets results in the real world, even though its theories and models are constantly being updated and even though its way of thinking can’t logically justify itself.

However, sometimes models of reality from some of our once most widely believed and trusted scientific theories—for example, Newton’s laws of motion—have turned out to be inadequate for explaining more detailed data drawn from more advanced observations of reality. The mid-nineteenth-century view of the universe provided by new technology led astronomers past Newton’s laws and eventually toward Einstein’s theory of relativity. Newton’s picture of the universe turned out to be naïve, though still quite useful on our everyday scale.

Thus, considering how revered Newton’s model of the cosmos once was, yet knowing now that it gives only a partial and inadequate picture of the universe can cause philosophers and even ordinary folk to doubt the way of thought that is basic to Science. One can’t help but question whether empiricism is trustworthy enough to be used as a base for something as desperately important as a moral code for our species. Our survival is at stake here, but Science can’t even provide a model that can explain Science itself. How reliable a guide can it be? 

As we seek to build a moral system we can all try to live by, we feel driven to look for a way of thinking about thinking and knowing that is deeper and based on stronger logic, a way of thinking about thinking that we can believe in profoundly. We need a new model of human thinking, one built around a core philosophy that is different from empiricism, not just in degree but in kind.

Empiricism’s disciples have achieved some impressive results in the practical sphere, but then again, for a while in their times, so did the followers of medieval Christianity, Communism, Nazism, and several other worldviews/theories. They even had their own “sciences,” dictating in detail what their scientists should study and what they should conclude from their studies.

Perhaps the most disturbing examples are the Nazis. They claimed to base their ideology on empiricism and Science. In their propaganda films and in all academic and public discourse, they preached a warped form of Darwinian evolution that enjoined all nations, German or non-German, to go to war, seize territory, and exterminate or enslave all competitors—if they could. They claimed this was the way of the world, and that it must be so. Hitler’s team were gambling, confidently, that in that struggle, the Aryans, with the Germans in the front ranks, would win.  

                         

                                              Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

“In eternal warfare, mankind has become great; in eternal peace, mankind would be ruined.”

                                                                                                                          —Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Such a view of human existence, they claimed, was not cruel or cynical. It was simply built on a mature and realistic acceptance of the truths of Science. If people calmly and clearly look at the evidence of history, they can see that war always comes. Mature, realistic adults learn and practice the arts of war, assiduously in times of peace and ruthlessly in times of war. According to the Nazis, this was merely a logical consequence of accepting the survival-of-the-fittest rule that governs life.

Hitler’s ideas about race and about how the model of Darwinian evolution could be applied to humans, were, from the viewpoint of the real science of Genetics, largely unsupported. But in the Third Reich, this was never acknowledged.

                            

                                                  Werner Heisenberg (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

The disturbing thing about physicists like Werner Heisenberg, chemists like Otto Hahn, and biologists like Ernst Lehmann becoming willing tools of Nazism is not so much that they became Hitler’s puppets, but that their life philosophy as scientists did not equip them to break free of the Nazis’ distorted version of Science. Their religions failed them, but clearly, in moral terms, Science failed them too.

                                                             

                                      

                                                                          Otto Hahn (credit: Wikipedia) 

There is certainly evidence in human history that the consequences of Science being misunderstood can be horrible. Nazism became humanity’s nightmare. Some of its worst atrocities were committed in the name of advancing Science.¹⁴ Medical experiments, for example, past all nightmares. 

For practical, evidence-based reasons, then, as well as for theoretical reasons, millions of people around the world today have become deeply skeptical about all systems and, in moral matters at least, about scientific idea systems in particular. At primal levels we are driven to wonder: Should we trust something as critical as the survival of our culture, our knowledge, our children and grandchildren, and even Science itself to a way of thinking that, in the first place, can’t explain itself, and in the second place, has had some large, dismal practical failures in the past?

In the meantime, in this book, we must get on with trying to build a base for a universal moral code. Reality requires that we do so. It will not let us procrastinate. It forces us to think, choose, and act every day. To do these well, we need a guide—that is, a moral code. Empiricism, as a base for our moral code project, seems deeply flawed.

Is there something else to which we might turn?

Notes

1. “Lysenkoism,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 1, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism.

2. Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy (Peru, IL: Carus Publishing, 2003).

3. Willard V.O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” reprinted in Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, ed. Paul Moser and Arnold Vander Nat (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 255.

4. Hilary Putnam, “Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalized,” reprinted in Human Knowledge, ed. Moser and Vander Nat, p. 436.

5. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Glasgow: William Collins, Sons and Co., 1964), p. 90.

6. Donelson E. Delany, “What Should Be the Roles of Conscious States and Brain States in Theories of Mental Activity?” PMC Mens Sana Monographs 9, No. 1 (2011): 93–112. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115306/.

7. Antti Revonsuo, “Prospects for a Scientific Research Program on Consciousness,” in Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions, ed. Thomas Metzinger (Cambridge, MA, & London, UK: The MIT Press, 2000), pp. 57–76.

8. William Baum, Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).

9. Tom Meltzer, “Alan Turing’s Legacy: How Close Are We to ‘Thinking’ Machines?” The Guardian, June 17, 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jun/17/alan-turings-legacy-thinking-machines.

10. Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999).

11. “Halting Problem,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 1, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem.

12. Alva Noë and Evan Thompson, “Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 11, No. 1 (2004), pp. 3–28. 

http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ccs/NoeThompson2004AreThereNccs.pdf.

13. Richard K. Fuller and Enoch Gordis, “Does Disulfiram Have a Role in Alcoholism Treatment Today?” Addiction 99, No. 1 (Jan. 2004), pp. 21–24. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00597.x/full.

14. “Nazi Human Experimentation,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 1, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation.