A Moral Maze — of science and morality (BBC Radio 4)

On Wednesday BBC Radio 4 concluded the present series of the Moral Maze, its weekly live panel discussion on topical issues of morality. Unlike most other radio discussion panels, the Moral Maze adopts a cross-examination format, calling witnesses one by one to be quizzed by the regulars. As it's a live show, things can sometimes get a bit heated. (This also depends on which of the regulars are on the show in any given week, and who is chairing the panel — David Aaronovitch has temporarily replaced Michael Buerk for the latter part of this series. Melanie Phillips' more incendiary views often spark fireworks, though she wasn't on this week.)

The topic on Wednesday was science and morality, and two of the witnesses were Giles Fraser and Jerry Coyne. Fraser doesn't seem to have learned from his encounter with Sam Harris (but Fraser's views appear remarkably ill-defined at the best of times, especially on Thought for the Day). He impaled himself categorically on one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma by stating that God's morality is not intrinsic to God but external to him (which surely makes him less of a god). But theology has never been Fraser's strong point.

Jerry Coyne dealt patiently with his interrogators' questions, but clearly could have used more time to develop his responses. In some ways he was an untypical choice for this topic (maybe they couldn't get Sam Harris), but nevertheless he did well.

The audio can be streamed from the Moral Maze website or direct from iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b011jv8m
Check out Jerry Coyne's two posts on his blog Why Evolution is True:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/i-iz-on-moral-maze-today/
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/moral-maze-podcast/

Equality is against Melanie Phillips' religion (and vice versa)

After a disorientating but mercifully brief instant of agreement with Melanie Phillips when she interrogated Anthony Seldon on last week's Moral Maze, I now find things are back to normal, as evidenced in her latest column at Mail Online today, in which she attempts to perpetuate the myth that religious views are being marginalised in Britain.

...schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.

Bombarded? In maths?

In maths, they will be taught ­statistics through census ­findings about the number of ­homosexuals in the population.

And about other things, I suspect. Even if this is true, it's hardly bombardment. Certainly not to the extent that in history lessons they may be bombarded with — horror of horrors — historical dates.

The bed and breakfast hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull — who were recently sued for turning away two homosexuals who wished to share a bedroom — were but the latest religious believers to fall foul of the gay inquisition merely for upholding ­Christian values.

They were guilty of illegal discrimination against a couple who were in a legal civil partnership, on the basis that the couple weren't married. The judge ruled that for this purpose marriage and civil partnership are equivalent.

Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down after they refused to place ­children with same-sex couples.

Quite right too. If agencies refuse to treat people equally, they have no business providing a public service.

Marriage registrars were forced to step down for refusing to officiate at civil unions.

If they refuse to do the job they're paid for, they should do the decent thing and seek other employment.

It seems that just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda.

Yeah, just about everything. Gay trains, gay supermarkets, gay refuse collection. Does Melanie Phillips find herself using gay hyperbole, by any chance?

Of course, for people such as the Bulls, George Orwell’s famous observation that some are more equal than others is all too painfully true. Indeed, the obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions.

Well, we wouldn't want things to be too equal, now, would we?

Happiness — if you can't define it, you can't legislate for it

The Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 this week was about happiness. At least, that's what it purported to be about, but most of the discussion was concerned with attempts to agree on a definition of happiness. From the BBC website:

They call it Blue Monday - January 24th - the unhappiest day of the year. Christmas seems a long time ago, but the bills for it are dropping on the mat, we've failed at all our New Year's resolutions, the weather is awful and all we've got to look forward to is February. But do not despair, our government is coming to the rescue. Politicians are so worried about our state of mind it was their New Year's resolution to do something about it.

On January 5th was the first meeting of the "Measuring National Well-being Advisory Forum" and the Office of National Statistics has just started a consultation on making general well-being (GWB) a key national statistic, alongside the more traditional things like Gross Domestic Product. Setting aside the question can you measure happiness - the moral question is should you?

Money isn't the key to happiness and perhaps we should see ourselves as more than just units of economic production and consumption. But is it the job of the state to concern itself with our emotional life and build that in to policy making? A lot of what makes us happy as individuals may not be very good for us, our fellow man, or society as a whole. Will we start being fed a very particular one-size fits all view of happiness and "the good life"? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is all very well, but should happiness be an end in itself? Shouldn't we be asking what we as individuals can to do make other people's lives better, rather than asking what the state can do to make us happier?

Chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox and Clifford Longley.

Witnesses:

• Professor Lord Richard Layard, Director, the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
• Simon Blackburn, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge
• Anthony Seldon, Master, Wellington College
• Phillip Hodson, Psychotherapist and author who popularised 'phone-in' therapy in his role as Britain's first 'agony uncle'.

Streaming audio of this 45-minute radio programme is available on the iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/xhj84/

Unsurprisingly no consensus on the definition of happiness was reached. Simon Blackburn suggested that happiness equated with living a meaningful life, but that just takes the question one step back: can we agree on what is "meaningful"?

At the beginning of the programme Richard Layard's utilitarian analysis met with a degree of disdain, though I imagine he's used to such recoil from the merest hint of reductionism. But if you want to get to the crux of the matter then an honestly reductionist approach has a lot to commend it. At least it might yield tangible results, as apposed to an insistence that happiness can never be satisfactorily defined and that it's a waste of time trying.

Further on in the discussion I found myself in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Melanie Phillips, albeit fleetingly, when she questioned Anthony Seldon's specific singling out of happiness-promoting characteristics as fit subjects for the secondary school curriculum. She lost my agreement an instant later when she suggested that instead he should just teach religion. A moment before, she had casually claimed that the things Seldon associated with happiness were all common to religion; careful examination of the facts, however, belies this claim. Seldon's justification for "teaching happiness" was presented on the basis of correlation with higher A-level results: pupils feel better about themselves — therefore they do better in exams. I don't think I need to set this out as a formal syllogism to show that its reasoning is flawed.

My own view of "happiness" is that it isn't something one should strive to achieve, because like the gold at the end of the rainbow it will be forever out of reach. Happiness is more a state of intentionality than it is a state of being. Like consciousness and free will, happiness is something we are aware of, which might at the same time be an illusory construct of our cognitive faculties. Even if we use Simon Blackburn's definition and link happiness to meaning, that can only lead to confusion about what things are meaningful. So I come back to intention: happiness isn't something we gain, it's something we do.