Steven Pinker - Chapter 23, Humanism

Humanism is the last chapter of Pinker's 2018 book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. Here, he makes his case for humanism, the idea of human progress as reflected by increasing standards of living, less violence and war, higher levels of happiness and so forth. He argues that progress in science and secular reason are major forces that fuel progress.

Major humanistic concerns include blocking significant social influence by “rational sociopaths”, egomaniacs intent on going bad things to people, and (ii) to justify human needs we morally ought to respect.

A critically important aspect of Pinker’s vision (my opinion) of humanism relates to the never-ending balancing of conflicting moralities, freedoms, rights and other sources of social conflict:

Unlike ascetic and puritanical regimes, humanistic ethics does not second-guess the intrinsic worth of people seeking comfort, pleasure and fulfillment . . . . . At the same time, evolution guarantees that these desires will work at cross-purposes with each other and with those of other people. Much of what we call wisdom consists in balancing the conflicting desires within ourselves, and much of what we call morality and politics consists in balancing the conflicting desires among people.

*My interpretation Two points merit comment. First, in view of the reality of liberal democracy, when rights, morals, beliefs and ideologies clash, there are only two possible ways to deal with the conflicts. Conflict can be resolved by reasonable compromise or by coercion or even physical force, e.g., jail or shoot the opposition dead. It is reasonable to think that intractable political and moral conflicts have existed ever since modern humans started doing politics. In this regard, it is the case that reasonable compromise, not compromise with every opposing idea and nutjob, is a core moral value that transcends almost every other political moral value. (I have three others in mind that rank right up there with compromise, but that's a different discussion) Without compromise, you have tyranny and kleptcracy, and with it you have a chance of some degree of democracy, freedom and, with any luck, less corruption.

Second, disputes over core concepts in politics, and maybe most everything else, are not resolvable by resort to evidence facts, logic or linguistic tricks. This concept is called essentially contested concepts. The essentially contested concepts concept is an absolute plague on the human species and its politics and it has always been that way. In my opinion, this problem rises to the level of an existential threat at least for modern civilization and maybe also for the human species itself. Wikipedia discusses essentially contested concepts: [en.wikipedia.org]

*Back to Pinker Of interest is Pinker's heavy emphasis on moral philosophy and an argument that humanism is a source of moral realism, and a claim to the possibility of some degree of objectivity to morality. By contrast, he argues that religious morality can sometimes go off the rails into immorality, presumably including tyranny and even war. He writes:

The Euthyphro argument puts the lie to the common clam that atheism consigns us to a moral relativism in which everyone can do his own thing. The claim gets it backwards. A humanistic morality rests on the universal bedrock of reason and human interests . . . . For this reason, many contemporary philosophers . . . . . Are moral realists (the opposite of relativists), arguing that moral statements may be objectively true or false. It’s religion that is inherently relativistic. . . . . Not only does this make theistic morality relativistic, it can make it immoral.

*My interpretation A humanist mindset is the best source for morals that can inform and guide governance and arguably also social behavior. Unless one favors authoritarianism, essentially contested concepts guarantee eternal conflicts among various nations, groups and tribes. The only route forward in view of those endless, unresolvable disputes is compromise and democracy or coercion-violence and some sort of tyranny-despotism-kleptocracy.

So, what are the flaws in the facts or logic in any of this?