Shattered light fixture: Entropy in real life

                                         (Will the universe ever re-assemble it?)

                                    (credit: W. carter, via Wikimedia Commons) 

    Chapter 1                 Science Concepts Basic to Moral Realism

The building of a scientific theory of human social behavior, one we can rightly call “Moral Realism”, requires that we first review a few concepts that are basic in the main branches of science. We must base our theory of right and wrong on reality, or at least our best current understanding of it, if we want the theory to work. In its simplest definition, that’s what science is: the study of reality.

We’ll begin by summarizing two key principles of Physics that are relevant to our building a new moral theory. Then, we’ll move on to summarize two major principles of Biology. Third, we’ll extend the principles drawn from Biology to Social Science. Then, fourth, using all of these key ideas, we’ll set down a moral code that is consistent with our current science and that also provides practical guidelines for humans to live by.

From Physics, we get two main ideas that are relevant to Moral Philosophy.

First, there is the universal law called the “Second Law of Thermodynamics”. It tells us that energy in this universe is always flowing from areas of greater organization to areas of lesser organization. The suns/stars of the universe are all burning out. One day, they will all be cold and dark; then, over millions of years, they will crumble into chunks of rock, then to pebbles, then to dust.

Every event that takes place in the universe is always, in the net picture, losing energy, its parts becoming colder and more scattered. The energy, to be precise, is not lost, but it is dissipated into the space around the event, and ultimately, into the space of the cosmos. In science, this “burnt-outness” is called entropy. Everything is getting colder. The entropy of the universe is always increasing.

Life forms seem to be moving toward more organized, larger clumps of matter, and in their little spaces, they are. They grow and reproduce. But this growth of “organizedness” is gained at the expense of even greater loss of organization in the space around the life forms. How life first began on earth is still unclear and much debated. But biologists are fairly certain that presently and for the last two billion years at least, life has come together into a few basic types on this planet, and they have all borrowed energy in various ways from the sun.

Some make their own food using energy from chemical reactions; others make their own food from sunshine and water and use it to build and sustain their tissues; still others eat and digest the food-makers, thereby stealing the energy they need from the other living things that have already captured that energy.

We are in the last category. We don’t make the energy we need; we steal it.

Roughly speaking, the vast majority of the time, then, carnivores eat herbivores and herbivores eat plants which get their energy from the sun. All life on Earth, as complex as it may seem, ultimately gets the energy it needs from the sun.

And the sun is burning out.  

This is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Its main consequence is entropy. Keep this law in mind. It has major implications for Moral Philosophy.

The second large idea we get from Physics is the Uncertainty Principle. It was formulated by Heisenberg in 1927. Full understanding of its intricacies requires a grasp of Mathematics that most of us are never going to attain. But what it says for ordinary folk living ordinary lives is fairly simple.

Basically, what Quantum Uncertainty means for us is that the events of life are built on probability. The real, physical world is stochastic; it’s not chaotic, but not deterministic either. The concept of chaos is an “unconcept” because if it were true, we couldn’t question it; there would be nothing to question and no one to ask questions. For the universe to be here at all, it must have some sort of system to it. Reality is not built of genuine chaos. However, reality isn’t made of fixed, pre-determined sequences of events either.

Everything that happens happens as a result of possible events of many types coming together so that, of all the possible futures, only one actually occurs, becomes the present, and slips into the immutable past. But prior to that coming together, many possible combinations of events, all with varying degrees of probability to them, were waiting in the wings.

Uncertainty leaves open the possibility that we humans can intervene in event sequences and deflect or block or enhance the odds for some of the upcoming events. To some degree, all living things can. Even algae move toward optimal light conditions. When a wave pushes a pebble, the pebble will move according to Newton’s second law of motion. When a wave pushes against a living thing, it moves itself out of the way, or sometimes, it even pushes back.

In most cases, living things can alter the odds of what is going to happen next toward outcomes that are good for them and away from outcomes they don’t want. In short, we have a degree of free will or what is sometimes called agency.

The belief in free will is controversial in science; many physicists, especially, don’t care for it. Einstein is reported to have said to Niels Bohr, one of Quantum Theory’s first advocates, that he couldn’t believe God “plays dice”. Bohr is said to have replied, “Albert, stop telling God what to do!”

In any case, this picture of human existence as having a degree of control to it is how life feels. I’m not a pebble in a landslide. Most of the time, to a degree, I can affect how events at my scale of resolution will go. I can alter probabilities.   

I can’t raise my hand and stop an avalanche bearing down on me. But I can read the latest avalanche hazard reports for my area and choose to avoid the mountain trails on which the avalanche risk is high. Free will, whatever some scientists think of it, is a realistic trait for me to assume for myself and all other sane human beings because it is axiomatic to our engaging in daily life.

Physicists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had followed Newton. His model of the universe and how it works had made it possible for later scientists to say that if they knew the positions and momenta of all of the particles in the universe, and also knew all of the laws by which particles move, then they would be able to predict all of the future. In that model, Physics determines Chemistry, which determines Biology, which determines Psychology, Sociology, and History. All events are effects resulting from earlier causes, and all events then become causes for still later effects. All the events in the universe are locked in a fixed order till the end of time. Thus, all events – even ones I think I’m causing – are actually parts of fixed sequences over which I have no control, however much I may wish or imagine that I do. This view is called “determinism”.

What Quantum Uncertainty is telling us is that this picture is wrong. Events right down to the level of atoms are the results of probabilities. What’s going to happen next is not only unknown, it is unknowable. Basing our reasoning on past experience, we can form estimates of the odds for any of the possible ways in which events may turn out, but no matter how much we may know about the laws of science or the positions of all the particles in the universe, we can’t ever say for certain what will happen next. We just, with long experience, get better at estimating odds, and at sometimes intervening effectively in the event sequences.  

Whether our plans for seizing opportunities and dodging hazards – whether these plans too are pre-determined outcomes of biochemical reactions in my head that are elicited by the impacts on my senses of pre-determined events around me is still a matter of debate among cognitive scientists. But this much we can be sure of: everyday life, to a high degree, feels free. In my view, what I say and do affects what is going to happen in the next minute, week, and generation. Implicit belief in free will explains most of my actions every day.

If you are on your phone while you are driving your car, and your car nearly hits my car, I am going to be angry at you, not your car or your phone. Furthermore, this way of thinking that lets me assign individual responsibility to other humans and to act accordingly is the way most people everywhere live their lives. “You left the gate open! It’s your fault the cow got out! You find her!”

Thus, in this essay, I am going to assume that humans have a degree of free will. The real world is uncertain, probabilistic, and stochastic: Moral Realism takes these traits of reality to be axiomatic, basic to all we think and do. The alternative, it seems to me, is a view of all humans as powerless to affect events and therefore, as not responsible for any of them.

The bottom line of my response to determinism is, therefore, twofold: first, there is no way this argument can ever be settled; and second, we can’t live like that. When responsibility goes out the window so does the rule of law. No thank you. For me, determinism is a coward’s way out of facing reality as it is.     

The upside of this picture is that it allows for possible scenarios in which I can anticipate event probabilities and intervene in some sequences of events to alter those probabilities in a way that will prove favorable to me. The barley seeds in this meadow on their own likely will not grow in numbers great enough for me to harvest them in the fall and feed my tribe through the winter. But if I plant them properly, water them well, and harvest the crop when it’s ripe, I increase the odds that this winter, my family, even my whole tribe, will not starve.  

Entropy and uncertainty are the ubiquitous principles that we get from Physics. They tell us that life is always hard and scary, but, to a fair degree, we are free.

Any moral code that ignored these facts would be out of tune with reality. Such a moral code would likely lead those who lived by it to misfortunes much more often than would have been the case if they’d been living by a more scientific code. Disasters are always possibilities for us. Quantum uncertainty tells us we won’t ever be able to guard perfectly against them. Science does not offer us that degree of security. But science does offer us a way of thinking by which we can improve our odds of surviving – of being more able, in the future, to outrun disaster, or dodge it, or fight it and win.

Entropy and Uncertainty are the big physical constants that shape everything that happens everywhere all the time. In every action we take and every word, we speak, entropy and uncertainty are present and must be taken into account.

                                                   Avalanche in Himalayas 

           (What were the odds it would happen today? In a month? In a decade?) 

                                       (credit: Chagai, via Wikimedia Commons)