Got Humanities?

1. Why Play with Others?

Iam something of an academic chimera, trained in both evolutionary biology and philosophy. This gives me an unusual perspective, and my ability to see issues through very different disciplinary lenses often lands me in the role of interdisciplinary translator. When I write about astrobiological issues for my humanities colleagues, I have to first convince them that astrobiology is not just science fiction. That is not necessary for the readers of this journal, but there is a parallel challenge with you: convincing a bunch of STEM people that astrobiology should reach out to the “softer” disciplines in the humanities and elsewhere. If NASA's prediction (Wall, 2015) that we will find evidence of extraterrestrial life (ETL) within the next 20 years is even adjacent to the right ballpark, then we are on the cusp of one of the greatest discoveries in human history. Since finding alien life would raise a host of questions well beyond the ability of science to answer on its own, I submit it is time to bring a much more diverse set of scholars into the discussion.

My interdisciplinary wanderings have recently landed me among the small cadre of nonscientists examining the broader issues in astrobiology, where the conceptual soil is especially rich for cross-pollination. There are a number of questions we are interested in thinking about, including:

• What are our ethical obligations toward ETL and how should we alter our activities in light of its discovery?

Although there is enormous interest in all things astrobiological within academia generally, the problem at the moment is the lack of good mechanisms for nonscientists to participate. To address this lack, I and a number of like-minded scholars from a diverse set of disciplines have set out to create a multidisciplinary society dedicated to the scholarly exploration of these issues. SoCIA held a small inaugural workshop with just 24 participants in 2016, but our second conference in 2018 has generated nearly triple the number of submissions, so we seem to be close to the kind of critical mass that will make cross-disciplinary thinking on the “big questions” of astrobiology self-sustaining.

2. Ethics? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ethics!

I want to illustrate the need for a broader conversation about these broader issues by examining a few concrete examples from ethics, since this is an especially rich vein of challenges that quickly take us “beyond science.” Although it is certainly true that anyone can contribute to ethical discussions, it is also true that the “common sense” ethics most people practice has pitfalls that many do not see until they fall into them. For almost 20 years, I have taught other academics to conduct ethical discussions in their own classes and so I can testify from experience that the smartest scientists and engineers are rarely more sophisticated when it comes to ethics than a typical undergraduate. This is not their fault, it is just that few of them have thought all that hard about ethical issues and, as we all have patiently explained to a lay audience at one time or another, often experts know nonobvious things worth knowing.

Sometimes the failure to consider how humanities might fit into these discussions is amusing, as when I had to contort my self-description to register in Astrobiology's online system because none of their key words had anything to do with the topic of this commentary. But other times, misguided notions about ethics produce an actual hostility to sustained discussion of ethics. For example, a few years ago, I submitted a proposal to the main astrobiology conference (AbSciCon) to organize a panel on ethical issues in astrobiology. This was rejected with the observation that it “fell outside the scope of the conference.” Now, one can certainly debate whether this particular panel was more meritorious than another, but the position that all such questions are literally outside the scope of astrobiology reflects an extremely narrow, and ultimately counterproductive, vision. If one agrees that these challenges are important and will not just resolve themselves, then one should support some level of engagement with them in professional conferences. Interestingly, this attitude is a hallmark of American astrobiology (and science in general), and a much more inclusive orientation is central to recent European efforts to establish their own astrobiology initiative (Capova and Persson, forthcoming).

One weird idea that has taken root in modern society and may help explain this kind of attitude is ethical relativism. Anyone who has ever taught ethics has been frustrated to hear their students blandly assert, as if it were an obvious fact, that there is nothing like “truth” in ethics. Without giving it much thought, the average student believes that ethics is ultimately nothing more than personal opinion or perhaps cultural mores. Scientists are no different—indeed, they are especially prone to this idea, since they tend to be self-selected for an interest in pragmatic, empirical questions. It is difficult to respond to this position in just a few sentences, since the idea is much less supported and much more radical in its consequences than most people realize. Yet it is simply a fact that most people actually agree on most ethical questions—it is just that we do not usually discuss things we agree on and thus there is a presentation bias in play. For example, almost everyone agrees that blowing Mars to smithereens simply to mine the debris for some nonvital resource would be unethical. Ethical consensus is certainly not perfect, but is that really so different from science, where scientists disagree on the answers to all sorts of questions?

I do not mean to suggest that there is no difference between ethics and science, just that the difference is not as pronounced as most people assume, with science being all about “hard facts” and ethics being all about “unsupportable opinion.” In both ethics and science, we must try to construct the best lines of argument and evidence available to reach conclusions that we hold only until a better alternative arrives. In both fields, we are forced to assume that there are better and worse answers, even though this can never be proven. In both fields, we can only assume that open and inclusive discussion over time will cause sincere people to converge on the best answer. To be sure, ethical debate is a messy process—arguably messier than science—but, as Churchill observed of democracy, it is better than the alternative.

3. How “Being Principled” Can Be Unprincipled

Another ethical pathology nonethicists can suffer from makes them see ethical principles in an odd way. For example, after identifying myself recently to a space scientist as an ethicist, he responded by saying something like, “Well, yes, ethics is important, but the question is which ethical theory to use?” His tone and the glint in his eye made the hostility toward ethics I discuss above apparent, but his words hinted at an unstated argument: until you can give me a single theory of ethics that everyone accepts, it is all just a waste of time. Aside from the fact that much of science would not fare well under this criterion, it also conflates ethical theory with applied ethics. These are different fields with (to a large extent anyway) different problems and methods. In fact, the tension between them mirrors other well-known tensions in science: we lack a grand unified theory of gravity, which bothers the theoretical physicists a lot. But it would be perverse to use this undeniable fact to argue that problems employing gravity on a High School AP examination are somehow unsolvable! Similarly, although we lack a grand unified theory of ethics, this need not prevent us from making real progress on specific ethical questions. The trick in both cases is to relax the demand for a complete or perfect answer and settle for the best available alternative.

People also tend to think of ethical principles as being both highly general and context insensitive. Indeed, people often seem to believe that one is only as ethical as one's principles are non-negotiable. Espousing grand guiding principles typically sounds great at first, until we realize that they prevent us from addressing real-world tradeoffs in a thoughtful manner. For example, in planetary protection debates, people often say we should obey the principle of “respect for alien life.” This sounds great—after all, who would argue that we should go out of our way to disrespect alien life? But it is also extremely vague. Actually, vagueness is a key part of the reason such principles abound, since this makes it much easier to paper over differences to generate a superficial consensus. And of course, most committees that discuss these issues are composed primarily of STEM types who wish to avoid getting “bogged down in ethical discussion.”

As a starting point, even such a broad principle can do useful work, but as soon as we try to specify the principle more clearly to apply it to real-world cases, problems emerge. For example, “respecting alien life” is often taken to mean that we must protect (1) alien microbial life against (2) any kind of harm, even harm that is unavoidable in obtaining other goods (McKay, 1990). Perhaps many would agree to this now, when there is little actually at stake, but I assure you that things will get real messy, real fast when we actually face a decision that pits other interests against those of the microbes. For example, we may soon seriously consider sending probes through the Europan ice sheet into its salty ocean, especially if we have indications of ETL there. But since this is probably impossible to do without some risk of contamination from terrestrial microbes, we will be forced to choose between two goods: scientific investigation of one of the most important discoveries ever and preventing harm to alien life. Making the right decision will be extremely complex, so much so that the vague “respect alien life” talk does not cut much mustard.

Unfortunately, this sort of situation, where people with the absolute best of intentions and the vaguest of principles wind up defending questionable, even pretty clearly unethical conclusions, is not that uncommon (Smith, 2016). I suspect that nonethicists can sometimes sense the problem of principle infatuation, if only dimly. And, since they believe this is what ethics is all about, this reinforces the distrust of ethics in general and ethicists in particular. In truth, the vast majority of applied ethicists are their allies, believing that the real work of ethics is done in the trenches, grappling with messy details, not in the observation balloon of abstract theory, far removed from the fray.

4. Descriptive Hammers and Normative Nails

Then there is the naturalistic fallacy, which happens whenever one gives a descriptive (dealing with how the world is) answer to a normative (dealing with how the world should be) question. This is the bane of many an ethical discussion, but again, it is especially common when the interlocutors are scientists who are used to describing the world as factually as possible. Consider, for example, the recent debate about whether or not we should attempt to message alien intelligence (METI). The vast majority of the scholarly work on METI has been carried out by scientists, who predictably focus on the kinds of empirical questions they like—in this case, attempting to estimate the risk such communication might pose. Obviously, determining the level of risk is important for any ethical discussion of METI, but very few scientists seem to realize that their analysis misses the ethical point entirely (Smith, 2017). Even if we could absolutely establish that the risk of deleterious impact on humanity is very small, that simply does not, by itself, settle the question of whether or not we should take that risk. It is something of an ethical no-brainer to say that it is not ethical to incur a risk on behalf of another without their consent (except in very specific circumstances, none of which apply in this case). Yet, because they are blinkered by their scientific orientation, many otherwise highly moral scientists conclude that there is no need to seek broader consensus before attempting to communicate with aliens. This is no less unethical for being sincerely held.

5. Conclusion

My goal in this article is to drive home what should be an uncontroversial point: we should not leave it to a relatively narrowly trained set of experts to make complex and far-reaching decisions about perhaps the most momentous and unprecedented decisions humanity has ever faced. I certainly do not mean to suggest that only academics in the humanities are competent to debate astrobiology's broader issues—indeed, your average ethicist would make little meaningful progress here without technical experts to keep them in bounds, etc. That is precisely why SoCIA seeks to assemble a group of experts whose interests in these issues supersede their disciplinary backgrounds. Philosophers, theologians, historians, ethicists, linguists, and many others will crash the astrobiology party if we must, but it would be much nicer to be invited in.