Ethical Implications of Mechanism

Ethical Implications of Mechanism

If the human person is fully explicable in terms of behaviour there is, according to behaviourist theory (eg. Skinner, 1973), only caused behaviour which has remote causes in evolutionary history resulting in genetic endowment, and proximal causes in the feedback effect, known as operant conditioning (Skinner, 1973), of the consequences of behaviour. These latter are the reinforcers or punishments, things which please or displease when experienced and which are thereby classified as good or bad as value judgements are made. Human life and behaviour are simply a continuation of the evolutionary process of successful adaptation to a changing environment. Positive reinforcers are such because they led to advantages in terms of species survival and are incorporated into species genetic make up.

Thus, there can be no objective basis for a theory of ethics that discovers the good to be done based on human dignity and purpose. From a mechanistic viewpoint there is no objective human dignity, just the appearance of it where the causes of altruistic behaviour are inconspicuous. The human person does not have an objective nature upon which appropriate behaviour may be judged, only an evolutionary history determined as the species adapts to the environment. Further, there is no need for ethics; desirable (adaptive) behaviour will follow deterministically when the consequences of behaviour are allowed to be experienced.

The only logical ethics to be applied is that of utilitarianism which makes minimal assumptions about the human person. This involves the maximisation of good (understood as pleasure) and the minimisation of harm (understood as pain) for the greatest number. Personal freedom can be exercised to the extent that no harm is done to anyone.

It should further be noted that ideas also have social consequences. If human persons are fully explicable in mechanistic terms, then they might justifiably be treated as objects (machines) to be used, or as means to ends. Just as items of computer technology may be readily replaced, without ethical concern, in the financial interests of shareholders, so also may workers be disposed of for similar reasons. Even a cursory acquaintance with contemporary social problems (eg. job losses and rural decline brought about by bank branch closures resulting from network communications, or large systems replacing human work) reveals that such scenarios are no longer simply theoretical, they are self-evident. For this reason, a critique of mechanism, it’s philosophical implications and basis should be included as part of a technical education process.

Critique of Mechanism

There would seem to be convincing evidence that there is more to the explanation of natural bodies than can be provided by the mathematical models and abstractions