Doubts About Dave

On Mar. 27, I praised New York Times columnist David Brooks, who wrote a fascinating piece called Neural Buddhism. In his article, Brooks took a close look at the relationship between science and society and observed that “over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism” and that “science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other.” While For that reason, I speculated that “Brooks and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues.”

Then, literally a week later, Brooks published a follow-up column about the same topic, entitled, humbly enough: The End of Philosophy. After reading Brooks' latest piece, I'm reminded of an old quote: "some things are so dumb only an intellectual could believe them‏!"

Brooks' column opens innocently enough...

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.

Well, not exactly, Dave. Since the days of Kant, the leaders of the philosophical movement have been working to undermine - NOT advocate - the moral superiority of reason. But the goal of "thinking through moral problems" is still a worthy one, right? Not to Dave...

One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, “Human,” is that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.”

This is a bizarre quote that begs several questions: How does one define "moral reasoning?" How does one define "proactive moral behavior?" What is the evidence that "helping other people" constitutes "proactive moral behavior?" And what are these studies, by the way? Can't Brooks spare a single paragraph to give us an example?

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know. Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain...In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

Needless to say, I do not share Brooks' viewpoint. I believe that morality is a product of the mind - NOT intuition. Can Brooks honestly believe that moral decisions - which, as the title of Brooks' column points out, have been a weighty subject matter for literally thousands of years - can be reduced to mindless preferences like the taste of food? Yet there it is above: "Moral judgments are like that." But are they? In The Mustard Seed, Brian Raises states...

"Feelings are a part of life – but they’re ultimately unreliable. And a life philosophy that is based on feelings is equally unreliable. What is reliable? Reason. Intelligence. Judgment. The power of the mind. The individual mind."

Later on, Brian says...

"The power to think – and by that, I mean the power to think rationally - is the power to grow, and to be everything you wish to be, including your highest manifestation: pure love."

Like all the fakers of philosophy, Brooks rings the Bell of Darwin, which in their mind, raises the credibility of their position immeasurably. According to Brooks, "the nice thing about this evolutionary approach to morality is that...we are all the descendants of successful cooperators."

I don't have the time or patience to deconstruct this Darwinian nonsense (if you're interested in an earlier post on this topic, click here). The point is: Brooks is wrong. Wrong factually. Wrong morally. Wrong in every way. But the effort to use "science" as a way to justify false beliefs is especially nefarious. As I've pointed out before, bad ideas become extremely powerful when they are ultimately wedded to the logic of "science."

This new idea that morality requires mindlessness - literally, the suppression of the mind - and our only moral duty is to "follow our feelings" - has been around for a long time. Indeed, for decades, we've exposed to the idea that we should "just do it." But never - as far as I know - has anyone tried to prove that "just doing it" is better than "thinking about it first" - at least not scientifically! Yet, if that's what Brooks and these scientists - Michael Gazzaniga and others - are trying to accomplish - then they are stepping on very thin ice.

I hope they think about the personal and social consequences of such a philosophy. They better be sure they're right about it. Damn sure.

-Todd