Sandel, genes and Sorites
Last night I went to Michael Sandel’s lecture, Justice: What’s the right thing to do? at the RSA. I made a rather cryptic tweet about Sandel invoking Sorites. I should probably explain it.
During the (very brief) questions and answers session (I’m used to sessions with questions for as long as the presentation), Matthew Taylor, who was chairing the event, aksed for Sandel’s opinion on neuroscientific research into morality and values, and made reference to Marc Hauser’s recent book.
I agree mostly with Sandel’s answer, but he seemed to use the Sorites paradox in an unfortunate way. (Hint: when a large part of one’s dissertation revolves around the Sorites paradox, you start seeing them everywhere!)
Sandel described how President Bill Clinton had invited Human Genome Project leaders Francis Collins and Craig Venter to the White House (Wikipedia tells me that it was in June of 2000 when the genome had reached ‘rough draft’ completeness). Sandel then said that President Clinton used this to score a political point by noting that all humans share 99% of their genetic makeup, so ergo equality. Sandel said this seems ridiculous because what figure would produce a different conclusion? If it had been 91% or 87% would that still be an argument for equality? Of course not. Rather, he presented a counterfactual - had it been some lower figure, would we stop believing in equality?
Here we have a Sorites problem. Because, well, the fact that 99% (is that accurate? I’m not claiming it is) of the genetic makeup is shared between all humans does seem to be a good argument against any scientific claim to the inferiority of any specific race or nationality or whatever. Clinton probably wasn’t using this as a knock-down scientific argument for equality. Nor is Clinton saying that human equality is valuable if and only if there is a high degree of genetic similarity between human beings.
But might we be missing some steps? How can you go from 99% genetic similarity to the value of equality? Well, genetic similarity - as I said - invalidates so many different bad ideas. I mean, in Japan, there is popular superstition that attributes personality characteristics to blood types. Mostly it seems to be like astrology - popular but ultimately not that damaging a superstiton. Bearers of a AB blood type are “Cool, controlled, rational” but also “Critical, indecisive” (I have the same routine with astrology at parties - people will tell me that whatever is so typical of a Libra or a Scorpio. I confirm their superstitions for a few minutes then explain my trick.). Work like the Human Genome Project throws out stuff like that as well as the scientific claims of racists. It invalidates them in spite of the heap problem. Even if humans were only 80% alike genetically, the argument would still work - you’d have to show that the differences had an effect beyond mere appearance and physiology. A gene may make you taller, short, black, white, gay or straight, but does it make you behave differently to the point of moral significance? That’s the important question.
Now, I’m not sure whether you should be able to extract huge amount of political capital from “racists construct bad arguments”. The only thing I can wring from it is “duh, that’s news how?”
This is something to mull over: I wonder if there are any other clear examples of moral or political calculations or appeals that contain Sorites problems that might shed light on this by analogy? Answers on a postcard.
Also, as a side note, I got my MA results through. Passed with distinction. Surprised but happy.
