Thoughtful and thought-provoking articles are a source for many articles I write. When those two characteristics are exemplified in the same single article, I often use it as a springboard. An article by Trent Horn, Neil DeGrasse Tyson Shows Why Science Can’t Build a Utopia[1], is my springboard for this article.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course, is the outspoken agnostic ambassador of science. The Horn article was precipitated by Tyson’s tweet: “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence”[2] and Horn’s counter-tweet: “@neiltyson ‘Rationalia’ is as useless as ‘Correctistan,’ or a country whose constitution says, ‘Always make the correct decisions.'”

To illustrate what he means by his counter-tweet, the author used the example of a driverless car. Fatalities have already happened with them and will undoubtedly happen again. That isn’t the point, though. The point is this: how should they be programmed when confronted with two options – to run over pedestrians or run into an object that may kill the passengers?

How does Rationalia weigh the evidence to determine which is the best course?

It so happens that the journal, Science, recently published an article based on polls to determine how people think about that dilemma[3]. The results are extremely interesting, and telling. Participants in six studies favored the utilitarian approach: when faced with two evils, such as running over pedestrians or sacrificing the vehicle and its passengers to save the pedestrians, the people overwhelmingly chose sacrificing the vehicle and its passengers for the greater good.

But this is the interesting (and telling) part: in the same study, participants did not approve of enforcing those utilitarian requirements on the driverless automobile industry, and the overwhelming majority would not buy such a vehicle programmed to protect the greater good.

How would Rationalia weigh the evidence to determine how driverless vehicles should be programmed? Is the utilitarian ideal more rational than another? And, if so, why? According to Horn, “Rationalia’s anemic constitution cannot resolve societal disputes any more than your GPS unit can resolve a fight your family has over a summer vacation.”

And, from there, the author gets into the “myth of objectivity”, prompted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s statement that “it is unsafe to build a government on a belief system”[4]. Tyson’s reasoning is that people who have belief systems (meaning religious people, presumably), disagree with each other. Therefore, Tyson says, government should be built on “objectively verifiable truths”.

Horn says that “the materialistic, utilitarian thinking that motivates scientists like Dr. Tyson is not exempt from this critique”, and then he moves on to other things. This is where Horn has provoked my owns thoughts that lead me to dig a little bit deeper into that last statement.

First of all, what critique? For Dr. Tyson, governments should not be built on belief systems because people with belief systems disagree with each other… as if people without belief systems never disagree. Do all scientists agree with each other on all things? We don’t have to look very far for the answers.[5]

More fundamentally, though, who doesn’t have a belief system? Do scientists have no belief systems? Is Dr. Tyson asserting that a materialistic, naturalistic worldview is not a belief system? I beg to differ!

The myth of objectivity is that people (like Dr. Tyson presumably) aren’t tainted by biases and are, therefore, objective. They only need facts, and then they can spit out objectively verifiable determinations. Does that really pass the smell test?

No one is free of bias. That includes scientists. It’s dangerous for anyone to believe that he is unbiased. Would you believe me if I made the same claim? Even if I was a celebrity?

Anyone who thinks he is right because he is unbiased is appealing to his own authority to support that claim.  We call that a God complex.

I am not saying that Dr. Tyson believes he is unbiased or that he has a God complex, but I think he is naïve if he is suggesting that there are people without belief systems or biases. And, I think that this is exactly what he is suggesting.

Further, Dr. Tyson seems to assume that people like him don’t have a belief system. But, isn’t utilitarianism a belief system? John Stuart Mill would certainly agree that it is. He wrote a book about it after all.

In fact, the idea that we can build a system of government built on “objectively verifiable truths” is a belief system itself. At least it is premised on a belief system. It is premised on a belief system that truth is only that which can be objectively verified by measurement, quantification, classification, experiment, etc. Dr. Tyson’s naturalistic worldview doesn’t acknowledge or account for anything else. This is a belief system.

Horn questions, as do I, whether such a system can possibly provide standards for governance. Using the driverless car as an example, what objectively verifiable truth helps us determine whether a government should mandate that driverless cars be programmed to veer into pedestrians to avoid damage to the car and its passengers or should veer into objects to save pedestrians at the expense of the car and its passengers?

When people are asked the questions, their answers depend on their perspective at the moment – passenger or pedestrian. The same people who said they would favor saving the pedestrians at the expense of the passengers as a general proposition also said they would never buy such a car themselves, and they wouldn’t mandate that cars be programmed that way. The polls revealed a predominant belief system which is based on the participant’s own perspective, a perspective that values self-preservation. But, I digress.

Any determination like the example given ultimately depends on a value system, and value systems are not objectively verifiable. Is it better to save a mother with a small child or a scientist with no children if the only choice is to save one? The answer isn’t objectively verifiable… without a value system.

Objectively verifiable facts don’t create value systems. The fact that one person is a mother with a child and another person is a scientist with no children doesn’t determine which life to save if only one life can be saved. Objectively verifiable facts may inform value systems, but they don’t create them. The value system ultimately determines a course of action, not the facts.

I submit this is true whether we admit any value system at all. Without a value system, any determination, even a determination based on objectively verifiable facts, is a matter of whim or caprice.

Even the person who prefers the utilitarian approach to the driverless car dilemma generally, but would not purchase or agree to impose that approach by governmental fiat is expressing a value system, even if only unwittingly. His value system is based on what is best for him, personally.

Call it a belief system or a value system, it doesn’t matter. The system by which we make moral determinations, which includes how we govern ourselves, must be based on some value (or belief) system or it’s arbitrary.

If I can be indulged to read between the lines, I think what Dr. Tyson is saying is that religious belief systems, or value systems informed by religious beliefs, should not be used to govern societies. That is one thing. People can agree to disagree about the propriety of his proposition. But, he goes too far when he suggests that his Rationalia wouldn’t be governed by a belief system at all. He is also naive to suggest that some people, even people who value objectively verifiable facts, are not influenced by their own biases that are derived from belief/value systems.

Dr. Tyson seems to believe in the “objective person” (and presumably counts himself in that category). As intelligent (and objective) as he may be, he is not without bias, and he is not without a belief system. Our biases are formed by our value systems. We all have value (belief) systems, whether they are consciously formed or unconsciously assumed. Objectivity is a myth for finite creatures such as ourselves.

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[1] Published at Strange Notions: http://www.strangenotions.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-shows-why-science-cant-build-a-utopia/

[2] https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/748157273789300736

[3] The Social Dilemma of Autonomous Vehicles, Science 24, Jun 2016: Vol. 352, Issue 6293, pp. 1573-1576 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6293/1573

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KszJuhBcVjE&feature=youtu.be&t=8m13s

[5] For example, the theory of evolution, which we are led to believe is accepted universally in the scientific community, is still subject to question and debate in that same scientific community. As proof, we can look at the recent advertisement of a meeting of the Royal Society in London, England that describes the subject matter as follows:

Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution, although the issues involved remain hotly contested.

See  Meeting: New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives