It's not easy to write critically about humanism from a secular perspective.
The problem has to do with the fluid nature of the concept 'humanism'. It
has no single, precise meaning and there is little agreement about its constituent
elements. As a result, to criticise humanism is to run the risk of being accused
of a 'straw-man' fallacy; that is, the fallacy of misrepresenting a position
or argument in order to make it easier to criticise. It is easy to see how
this might happen. Humanism isn't any one particular thing. If a good argument
can be made against any one of the things, amongst others, that it might be,
then likely you'll find that everyone disavows that particular thing. And
then you've got a straw-man. It doesn't take too many repetitions of this
pattern of criticism and disavowal before you end up with humanism weakly
specified as a kind of rationally inclined, human centred, atheism (or agnosticism).
The problem here for the secular critic of humanism is that there doesn't
seem to be much left in this conception to be construed as objectionable.
It is possible to imagine a secularist being upset by such things as humanist
funerals, but surely not by the thought that humanism is rationally inclined,
atheistic and human centred? The humanist church, notwithstanding its godlessness,
seems broad, inclusive and inoffensive.
However, things are not quite this straightforward. To understand why, it
will help to consider briefly, for reasons that will become clear later, the
rise of 'Lysenkoism' in the Soviet Union in the middle part of the twentieth
century. Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, came to prominence as the proponent
of a theory of heredity that stood in direct opposition to Mendelianism. The
details of this theory need not concern us, except to note that it was 'Larmarckist'
in its contention that it is possible for organisms to inherit acquired characteristics.
Lysenkoism dominated Soviet genetics in the 1940s. This was despite its being
wrong and the fact that the principles of Mendelianism - the correct theory
of heredity - were well understood by then. It came to dominate because it
fitted so nicely with Soviet ideology. Particularly, the idea that acquired
characteristics could be inherited held out the promise of the perfectibility
of mankind. So science followed ideology, and in the Soviet Union, the consequences,
certainly for many of the scientists involved and arguably also for its agriculture,
were disastrous.
What's this got to do with humanism? At first sight, nothing at all. After
all, a tenet of humanism that probably everybody agrees on is that truth claims
must be subject to rational scrutiny and investigation. However, then the
thought occurs, what happens if science suggests hypotheses that are unpalatable
from a humanist perspective? Part of the reason that Lysenkoism gained official
support in the Soviet Union was because the Mendelian approach to genetics
was not thought to be consistent with Engels's ideas about dialectical materialism.
So are humanists immune to this kind of tendency to select between scientific
theories on the basis of ideology rather than the balance of evidence?
A way into thinking about this question is to consider some of the objections
that might be levelled against it. Two in particular spring to mind. First
of all, it might be objected that it isn't possible to draw conclusions about
humanism as a set of ideas solely on the basis of the actions or beliefs of
individual humanists. So what if some humanists lack impartiality? Nobody
is naïve enough to claim that all humanists are perfectly consistent.
However, this objection is weak. If nothing else, the actions of individual
humanists tell us something about the practice of humanism. But more than
this, it just isn't obvious that one cannot learn anything about a set of
ideas by looking at how well its adherents live up to them. If it does turn
out that there is a tendency for humanists to judge the merits of scientific
theories in terms of non-scientific criteria then this might well be indicative
of some tension within humanism.
The second objection is related to this thought. If humanists do indeed bring
non-scientific criteria to bear when judging scientific theories, it might
be objected that they do not do so in the name of humanism. If humanism is
nothing more than a rational secularism, then there isn't any extra humanist
ingredient against which scientific theories can be judged. However, the difficulty
with this objection is precisely that it only works by setting up an equivalence
between humanism and rational secularism. It is true that some people see
humanism this way, but many people do not.
What then is this possible extra ingredient, properly humanist, against which
the merits of scientific theories might be judged? The answer is that it is
the constellation of ideas which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism.
These ideas include: that human beings are free, rational agents; that they
are, in various ways, the source of morality; that human dignity and flourishing
are important; and that there are significant common bonds between people,
which unite them across biological, social and geographical boundaries. These
ideas - and variations on them - are espoused in numerous humanist writings
(just type 'humanism' into Google - and read at your leisure). However, the
claim is not that all humanists accept all these ideas. It is rather that
they are representative of a discernible and significant thread in humanist
thought. Or, more strongly, it is at least arguable that if a person has no
sympathy at all with these kinds of ideas, then they are not a humanist. As
Kurtz and Wilson put it, in their Humanist Manifesto II: 'Views that
merely reject theism are not equivalent to humanism. They lack commitment
to the positive belief in the possibilities of human progress and to the values
central to it.'
What evidence is there then that these kinds of ideas might be involved in
the judgements that humanists make about scientific theories? Let's take,
as an example, the article by Kenan Malik, 'Materialism,
Mechanism and the Human Mind', which appeared in the Autumn 2001 edition
of New Humanist magazine. In this article, Malik argues that human
beings are 'exceptional' in that they 'cannot be understood solely as natural
beings'. In pursuing his argument, Malik attacks 'mechanistic' explanations,
which reduce human beings, and the human mind, to the equivalent of sophisticated
machines. He argues that this view is flawed in that it fails to recognise
that humans are conscious, capable of purpose and agency. According to Malik,
human beings are, in a sense, outside nature, able to work out how to overcome
the constraints of biological and physical laws. In his words: 'Our evolutionary
heritage certainly shapes the way that humans approach the world. But it does
not limit it, as it does for all other animals.'
It is quite hard to make sense of this argument. For starters, the idea that
the evolutionary heritage of human beings does not limit the way we approach
the world is highly questionable. For example, it's hard to see how we can
rule out the possibility that had our brains evolved differently, then puzzles
that presently seem intractable (for example, the fact that there is something
that it is like to be a human being) would have long ago been solved.
But, more significantly, the whole idea that human beings are somehow outside
nature is slightly odd. It seems here to amount to the claim that things like
consciousness, agency and free will are real - though non-physical - and that
they are, in principle, beyond scientific, or at least mechanistic, explanation.
But the trouble is that Malik, in this article at least, does not argue for
this position. He merely repeats what everybody already knows - that it certainly
seems that we all have inner lives (and everything that entails), and it's
a bit of a puzzle.
So what's at stake here? Why not draw less hard and fast conclusions about
the proper domain of scientific explanation? Perhaps part of the story has
to do with the spectre of anti-humanism, which seems to be in the background
of all scientific attempts to get to grips with the stuff of human existence.
How this might be so can be illustrated by briefly considering Benjamin Libet's
experiments, from the 1960s, on readiness potential. An RP is an electrical
change in the brain that precedes a conscious human act - such as waggling
a finger. Libet's discovery was that if volunteers are asked to waggle their
finger within a 30 second time-frame, the RP that accompanies the waggling
begins some 300 to 400 milliseconds before the human subject reports that
they have become aware of their intention to waggle the finger. This is disturbing,
because, as Libet puts it, the 'initiation of the freely voluntary act appears
to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows
he wants to act!'
The anti-humanist threat is obvious. If our conscious acts are unconsciously
initiated, then what of free-will and agency? Perhaps we are just sophisticated
machines after all. And if we are, what does this mean, for example, for the
idea that human beings are the source of morality? It must be said that Libet's
work is not uncontroversial, and he himself does not draw particularly radical
conclusions. However, in an important sense, this is not the point. Rather,
the point is that science is in the business of providing reductive, causal
explanations of the phenomena that it investigates. Consequently, when it
turns its gaze to the stuff of the inner life of human beings - consciousness,
agency, will, sensation, etc. - there is the possibility that these things
will turn out just to be physical, or indeed that, in one way or another,
they will disappear completely.
Malik seems to recognise this threat when he argues that the attempt to understand
human beings in mechanistic terms is motivated by an anti-humanism. But his
solution, to deny that reductive, scientific explanations are admissible in
the case of the inner life of human beings, is not yet at least rationally
justified. It is too early to rule out on a priori or empirical grounds the
possibility that science will be as successful in this domain as it is in
others. The brain is rapidly giving up its secrets to neuroscientists and
there are philosophical theories available - for example, eliminative materialism
and epiphenomenalism - which offer a way of dealing with issues of consciousness
without denying the explanatory power of a reductive, physicalist approach.
To preclude the possibility that science might be successful in this area,
on the grounds that it results in theories that are counter-intuitive, is
bad science and bad philosophy.
The important point is that Malik is grappling with a tension that lies right
at the heart of humanism. If a person is serious about science then they cannot,
without fear of contradiction, embrace a doctrine which requires, as humanism
might, that human beings have free will or that the stuff of consciousness
is non-physical and causally efficacious. To escape the possibility of contradiction
by asserting the truth of the kind of science or philosophy which is, in principle,
anti-reductionist in its approach to humans is to allow ideology to govern
scientific and philosophical commitments.
In an endnote in his book, The Selfish Gene (2nd Edition), Richard
Dawkins writes: 'If... you are not religious, then face up to the following
question. What on earth do you think you are, if not a robot, albeit a very
complicated one?' It may be that complicated robots have consciousness, free
will and agency; that is, that they have the things which are important to
many humanists. Unfortunately, it may also be that they do not, and to deny
this possibility requires a leap of faith. What this means is that it is not
rationally justified to assert the truth of the constellation of beliefs which
constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. Rather, one is forced to
concur with Kurtz and Wilson's more general verdict on humanist affirmations,
that they are "but an expression of a living and growing faith.'