Our obsession with bullshit science of morals

Morals under the microscope

Explaining morals, religion, governance, and similar concepts using science seems like an attractive proposition at first, but the scientific inquiry will never give complete answers to questions reserved for philosophy, history, literature, or other fields of the humanities. The social sciences may use empirical methods in speaking about relationships between human beings but those techniques aren't always appropriate for understanding the nature of morality and values. And when we believe such ridiculous things, we only have ourselves to blame.

Science's objectivity and "nature-grounded" reasoning methods have worked fine for explaining everything from physics to biology so why not take the step further and look at things previously explored in philosophy?

Well, there's a reason why philosophers, not scientists, study those things.

Ingrid Storm's "Morality in Context: A Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship between Religion and Values in Europe," takes a big leaps between several different studies of morality and religion in a few places in history. She looks at studies concerning individual's senses of autonomy, self-interest, moral authority, social norms, and other factors about ourselves and religion with society. She arrives at a few conclusions including (paraphrasing) religion decreases with increased autonomous values and, under certain conditions, "a decline in religiosity may be accompanied by a decrease in the influence of religion on moral values."

While it may seem like Storm is speaking out of her league (explaining philosophical, humanistic concepts using science), she acknowledges the limitations of her study that prevent her falling to the trap that many of us do. She claims it is not clear that anything replaces religion as a moral compass, there is uncertainty of subjective responses, we need more behavioral studies on this work, and her work is a single-dimension of religiosity. And Storm's limitations show why we can't use science to fully explain those things.

Is it impossible for scientists to speak about morals and ethics? No. Many scientists (like Storm) do acknowledge their limitations and where their theories end in explaining things.

But the rest of us need to do the same. We mustn't be so quick to judge religion and science the same way. We should recognize the limits of both science and philosophy in understanding these big questions about ourselves. Let's forget the fancy headlines like "Science says morals doesn't require morals" and "Religion can be explained using neuroscience."

There are bad apples out there. Sam Harris uses bullshit techniques to find a scientific explanation of morality. And Harris receives attention because the public loves to use such studies as ways of explaining non-scientific ideas with science.

Philosophy will always give answers to philosophy; science, to science.