What constitutes moral behavior for a humanist?
First, we note that many on the outside looking in believe that humanism and morality are fundamentally incompatible even if God is not a consideration: that humanism is amoral by its very nature.
There’s a degree to which such criticisms are understandable. In the earliest years of humanism – the 18th century – humanists embraced utilitarianism, a vague and somewhat simplistic set of ethics theories that focus on maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness. It’s more complicated than that description implies, but it led to criticisms that humanists were in fact hedonists, mere pleasure-seekers with no real ethical foundation.
That wasn’t true, of course, but as the decades passed, humanists did grow more nuanced in their ethical stance: they moved beyond utilitarianism as egalitarianism and progressive thought entered the sociological discourse across the free world, raising consciousness of personal autonomy, civil rights, tolerance, and multiculturalism. Humanists throughout the West continued to focus on the optimization of human well-being, but through the years have added strong ethical underpinnings to their focus on positive consequence. Anyone who says humanists today are amoral, let alone mere hedonists, either isn’t paying attention or is deliberately dissembling.
Professor Stephen Law of Oxford University summarizes how the humanist take on morality has become distinct. It is not a matter of taking up shared positions on, say, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, animal rights, etc.; humanists will differ, one to another, on any of these, as would members of any diverse group. And the residue of utilitarianism persists, even if it is not openly embraced by humanists in general, in their tendency to seek out and support what promotes human well-being and discourages human suffering.
It is a matter, rather, of how a person arrives at a point of moral commitment. The specifics and mechanics of what is being committed to will follow the general lines of promoting what is good for all and against what is bad for some, and will focus on consequences and a pact with oneself to always consider others; but how that plays out can differ, person to person, eschewing any general humanist dogma. What makes a person’s moral commitment a humanist one, per Law, is the path by which they arrive at that commitment.
He identifies four features of the humanist path to moral commitment:
“Humanists emphasize our moral autonomy. A humanist will aim to hold a moral position, not because they have been instructed to, or because someone else to whom they feel an obligation to defer holds it, but because that is the position they have themselves arrived at after careful consideration. This is likely to be a rather more demanding challenge than, say, automatic adherence to a scriptural commandment or the word of a religious leader.”
“Humanists reject moral justifications based on claims of divinely revealed truth...a humanist might morally oppose abortion, but they won’t oppose it because they accept, say, the religious doctrine that God attaches an immortal soul to a cell at the moment of conception.”
“Morality is essentially tied up with human flourishing (though not exclusively so, for other species matter, too). In figuring out what we ought or ought not to do, our judgments should be sensitive to scientific and other evidence concerning what will help, or hinder, human efforts to lead rich, happy, and fulfilled lives.”
“Humanists emphasize the rule of reason in making moral judgments. They believe we have a duty to apply our powers of reason as best we can when addressing moral questions. That is not to say that humanists suppose reason alone is capable of determining the answer to any moral conundrum. But reason still has an important role to play in... i) revealing the unacknowledged consequences of a moral position, ii) revealing logical inconsistencies in a moral position, iii) revealing when a moral position is based on faulty reasoning, and iv) revealing certain scientific and other facts relevant to a moral issue (revealing that women are as intellectually competent as men, thereby undermining the argument that women are not intellectually sophisticated enough to merit the vote).”
Law is arguing that what sets humanist morality apart is the active agency required of the humanist, not only to act in accordance with their moral code in all circumstances, but that their agency extend to engaging with moral questions and issues personally, never accepting a dogmatic or ideological answer out of hand, but instead putting their own best efforts into processing the problem and arriving at a position worthy of conviction and personal investment.
We have observed Kirk, Spock, Picard, Beverly Crusher, Kathryn Janeway and many other Trek characters doing the heavy lifting described by Law. They openly wrestle with moral questions time and again, and we see the moving parts:
Personal moral agency. Having fought the Gorn and won – just barely – Kirk is expected by the Metron to execute him, with the assurance that the Metron will likewise destroy the Gorn’s ship and crew. These actions not only present superficially as justice, given that the Gorn wiped out the human colony on Cestus III, but have the added weight of the apparent approval of the highly-advanced Metrons. But Kirk works through the problem on his own, realizing that the Gorn may simply have been protecting their territory. He declines to execute his enemy, and asks the Metron to likewise spare the Gorn ship.
Refusal to accept dogmatic truth. Having opportunity (and under Starfleet orders) to infect the Borg Collective with a digital virus that will wipe them out completely, Picard is faced with the reality of “Hugh”, a young Borg who has been separated from the Collective and is now slowly regaining his humanity. The dogma surrounding the Borg is that they are evil incarnate, unworthy of mercy, forbearance, or consideration of any kind; so says Starfleet, Picard’s best friend Guinan, and – to a point – even Picard himself, having once been Borg. Hugh’s re-emerging humanity, however, causes him to reject this dogma and defy the order to wipe out the Borg. [This decision pays off decades later in Star Trek: Picard, when the fully-restored Hugh leads a project that reclaims members of the Borg, removing their cybernetic implants and offering them assistance in returning to their former lives. Picard, when he sees this, is incredibly moved, and is finally able to let go of his own remaining prejudices. ]
Morality and human flourishing. Aboard the Defiant in the Gamma Quadrant, Sisko and his officers investigate a planet with an odd energy barrier. The ship is damaged, and they find themselves trapped. They are astonished to discover a human colony below, populated by their own descendants; making contact, they learn that the Defiant was thrown 200 years into the past when they attempted to break away from the energy barrier, and they were forced to settle here. Now, 8,000 of their progeny lead happy, pastoral lives. However, having knowledge of the accident that throws them back in time, they will now be able to avoid it, and all these people (and the generations that preceded them) will be erased from existence. One by one, Sisko’s crew realizes that the greater good is to allow these people to continue, and he makes the moral decision to allow events to unfold in such a way as to preserve this accidental timeline - a great personal sacrifice for them all, as they will be giving up their lives back home forever. That decision is thwarted by the planet’s future version of Odo, who arranges for the Defiant’s escape in order to preserve the life of Major Kira – doomed to die in a few weeks. But the horror of the colony’s erasure does not obscure the humanist nobility of the moral choice made by Sisko and his officers.
Reason as a moral tool. Data’s advocacy for the Exocomps in the incident at Tyrus 7a, which resulted in mortal danger to his captain and best friend, resulted from his dispassionate processing of evidence – concluding that the Exocomps were in fact sentient in the same manner as he, based on their behavior. Everyone around him, including the Exocomps’ creator herself, was dismissive of this conclusion, which inexorably led Data to take moral action that no one else supported.
It is this distinction, articulated by Law in these four very Trek attributes, that informs the humanist approach to the moral challenges set forth below.
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