Andrew Copson: Politics and Humanism
In the aftermath of an unusual and dramatic general election, Andrew Copson considers the origin and the importance of our political values.
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association
Not believing in any post-mortem existence where all wrongs will be righted, humanists think of politics as incredibly important. The obligation to provide a better future falls on human beings in the here and now and politics is the mechanism we have at our disposal to attempt this.
Human politics, just like human ethics, is also a simple necessity – we are social animals, we cooperate, and so we need frameworks in which to make the decisions this requires. But political thinkers in the humanist tradition, from Perikles to John Stuart Mill, see the endeavour of politics as more than a necessity. It is an opportunity to promote the availability of a good life for all, enabling individuals to make rational decisions, take personal responsibility and develop as people. Engagement in these politics is based, as the humanist philosopher Karl Popper said, on ‘reason and humanitarianism’ and assumes the equal dignity of each human being.
Against what sort of ethical standards do we need to judge our politicians (and ourselves as participating citizens) as we engage in these politics? Utopia is never attainable and a rational approach to our common life must accept that, but a progressive amelioration of the condition of all people is an essential aim of politics. So, we can judge our politicians as to how far they advance us towards an open society that will prize equality, justice and freedom. Our criterion for judging politicians can be how far they work to promote and sustain the conditions required for individual human beings to be free and to flourish. They can be judged by the extent to which they contribute to promoting and defending a society in which everyone’s individual rights and freedoms are guaranteed and our mutual responsibilities accepted. What sorts of arguments are our politicians making in Parliament in favour of or against legislation; as ministers what sort of policy decisions are they making, why and with what consequences? How are they voting on particular pieces of legislation and why? Do their actions and their reasons for them demonstrate to us as their fellow citizens and electors that they are truly committed to the outcomes of greater equality, justice and freedom which we aspire to? Is the content of their arguments informed by ‘reason and humanitarianism’? Are they doing what they’re doing because they genuinely wish to promote the availability of a good life for all and defend human freedom and dignity? Are they working to maximise this and oppose those forces which would diminish it?
These are very different sorts of ethical test from the recent judging of politicians according to whether they have claimed expenses for a duck island or a flagpole, but the ephemeral expenses scandal at Westminster should not obscure these higher ethical standards to which we need to hold our politicians and ourselves as active citizens. Similarly, public anger at an economic crisis caused by a profession granted too much freedom to act selfishly, should not make us turn away from freedom in general. The humanist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said ‘When we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men,’ and the defence of human responsibility as much as of human freedom is an important part of any responsible political ethic. The ethical objection to under-regulation of bankers was that it gave them too much freedom with scant regard for the negative effects on the freedom of those whom their irresponsibility would harm.
Secularism is also an important part of a humanist political ethic. The only viable common framework of civic values in a society that is diverse in terms of thoughts and opinions is one entailing tolerance of all views and lifestyles, where no one is privileged or discriminated against solely because of their religion or non-religious worldview; in short, a secular framework. This is not a framework that imposes specifically non-religious, atheist or humanist values and behaviours on everybody, but a state which maintains a disinterested impartiality between people of different religious or non-religious beliefs so long as they are not harming others or the exercise by others of their own rights and freedoms.
So, religious practices such as the wearing of certain religious dress or ornamentation in public don’t engage the state’s interests, whereas the state can, on grounds of the damage it does to children’s education, the wearing of a burqa by a nursery school teacher. Individual ethical choices such as the decision to have an abortion or be assisted in ending one’s own life when unable to do it for oneself, should not be regulated on the basis of the unshared metaphysical beliefs – whether held by a majority or a minority – of a certain grouping in society (because God doesn’t like it, for example), but because of dangers to individual freedom and dignity. In the specific examples, because a foetus is meaningfully to be described as a person and hence to be protected from harm, for example, or because the legalisation of assisted suicide would mean that granny will be bumped off for her mansion. In many ways, we in Britain are far from having a genuinely secular state, still maintaining the medieval rubble of an established church with its concomitant legal discrimination ways that significantly disadvantage non-Christians – for example in employment and admissions state-funded religious schools. And the unjustified privilege still held by the Church of England in our diverse society is clearly demonstrated by the presence in our parliament of 26 men (always men, of course) who are there because they are appointed to the job of Bishop in one denomination of one religion – a religion whose active adherents are a minority in the population. A good ethical test for the conduct of politicians for humanists would be how far they pursue a secular model of the state when such questions as reform of these areas arise.
Because a secular state allows people with different ways of living and different beliefs to coexist and cooperate in the same society, it is not just a goal for humanists but can be an aspiration for religious people who accept that they must live cooperatively on a basis of mutual regard with people whose other beliefs they do not share and who do not share theirs. At the heart of a specifically humanist commitment to the secular state, however, is a strong regard for human dignity as bound up with individual human freedom, and an expectation that individual freedom leads inevitably to diversity. Closed or totalitarian societies, where conformity and uniformity are what is striven for, are the sort of societies that humanists reject and fight against. So it was with humanists in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and so it is today with humanists in Iran or exiled from it. This is how it is also in the West – humanists are inclined towards promoting that political principle of Mill that ‘The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection’ and recognising that the diversity of ways of living which flourish in consequence are a symptom of the open society’s greatest benefit.
That it is the sort of society in which we can feel free. The ethical standards by which we judge our politicians – at least in part – must be to what extent they bring us closer to that ideal way of living.
Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association.
This is the full version of an article which was published as part of the Guardian newspaper’s Citizen Ethics booklet on (the booklet is available as a PDF).
Andrew Copson: Politics and Humanism,
Andrew twice invokes “equality, justice and freedom” but equality
and justice are much the same thing. It worries me that he leaves
out the pursuit of “truth”, although he does mention “reason and
humanitarianism” in a supplementary clause. He advocates that “a
society that is diverse in terms of thoughts and opinions is one
entailing tolerance of all views and lifestyles” but surely this
tolerance must have limits. I’m not sure what “specifically humanist
values” are or how they could be imposed. I don’t want “a state
which maintains a disinterested impartiality between people of
different beliefs” regardless of whether they are true or false.
I want a state that supports scientific research and bases its
policies on evidence rather than opinion, and which discourages
charlatanry and superstitious ignorance, even if they are not
immediately harmful.
George
Obviously the BHA is in favour of science and evidence to support policy etc. Watch the video of Andrew talking to Brian Cox about funding for science etc! And they supported the Simon Singh case and they’re always talking about evidence-based policy.
But look at the bottom: this was from a book about CITIZEN ETHICS, so it’s more about the way individuals and the state relate to each other than about how the state relates to science. So the focus on equality justice and freedom make perfect sense to me. And Andrew is clearly not sayign that we can tolerate ANYTHING that people do. He does say there are limits to tolerance, and overall it’s an argument for secularism.
I think its really important that people understand that that humanism isn’t going to set up one single way of living that we all have to conform to and this article shows that.
Hi George,
Can I ask what policy differences you envisage between a state which maintains disinterested impartiality, and one which treats people differently depending on whether their beliefs are true or false?
Is there really anything to be said about true belief coming up against false belief, though? Most of our favourite controversies seem to me to occur when unfalsified belief comes up against unfalsifiable belief.
Anthony, I’m thinking of creationism versus evolution, and promotion of faith schools for example.
Also how far we should tolerate some religious practices such as exorcisms on children.
George – thanks very much for replying to me. I’m afraid I remain unconvinced.
Why is it not enough, on those two issues, to have a coherent policy on science and child abuse respectively, and to apply such policies impartially?
I don’t think my second point was clear. At the risk of being tripped up, let me try to give some examples:
All swans are white (false)
Some swans are black (true)
Swans evolved from reptiles (unfalsified *)
In the afterlife swans can talk (unfalsifiable)
* – I mean, surely that’s one of the wonderful things about science – if we find fossilised swan in the precambrian layer, our beliefs would change.
Anthony, If you want to replace ‘true’ and ‘false’ by postmodern terms with four or six syllables you are welcome to do so, but I will stick with the unreconstructed monosyllables. I would say that “all swans are white” is true more often than false, and that swans and reptiles probably evolved from a common ancestor (but I refer you to biologists for an expert opinion), and the afterlife is a fictional construction..However, this thread is probably not the right place to take up a discussion of probabilstic logic and postmodernism!
Nothing to do with postmodernism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
I really do think your desire for a state which treats people differently depending on whether their beliefs are true or false would stumble on how we know something is true and would end up promoting normative-thinking instead of correct-thinking. In spite of this I am still very interested in what such a state would be like, if you are able to paint a picture for me.
George said:
“I would say that “all swans are white” is true more often than false”
Eh? It’s not a sentence that can be true more or less often than it is false! Its a universal statement about ‘all’ swans so it’s either true or false. It’s not changeable like “Tomorrow it will rain”.
Anyway – back to ethics! I agree, George, that the state should take a stand sometimes against superstition etc. We should should obviously “treat differently” a charlatan who sells homeopathy versus a company that sells a genuine medical product. Just as we should “treat differently” a builder who sticks to the plans and does a good job, versus a shoddy workman who builds a lopsided conservatory.
But that’s about deliverables and it’s about people acting on each other, it’s not about abstract beliefs and how people want to live. Andrew’s tolerance is for diversity of views etc, that’s good, and I don’t think the BHA of all people who recommend that the state just shut up when people are ripping off other people or indoctrinating children for example. That’s exactly what they do!
Anthony wrote: “Why is it not enough, … to have a coherent policy
on science and child abuse respectively, and to apply such policies
impartially?”
One could have a coherent policy that all views should be given equal
treatment in schools (e.g. teach both creationism and evolution) or
that parents should all be equally free to treat their children in
whatever way they see fit. Most humanists, myself included, think
there should be some state or social intervention to ensure that
rational and humanitarian (i.e. humanist) policies should be followed.
I don’t think we should be afraid to say so out loud.
On the logic question. Saying “swans are white” is a convenient
shorthand to avoid having to say “most swans are mostly a sort of
white colour, when the light is good, ignoring touches of other
colour on their beaks and feet, and the fact that some, less often
seen, can also have black plumage,” and so on, and on. That’s the
way language works. I’s mostly a true statement.
George writes: “One could have a coherent policy that all views should be given equal treatment in schools (e.g. teach both creationism and evolution)”
I am not advocating anything of the sort, and actually don’t think such a policy would be coherent either.
I’m not sure what failure of communication has occurred between George and I, and I am sorry for my part in it. He himself has discussed falsifiability and postmodernism as being distinct from each other here…
http://www.mayhematics.com/i/science_method.htm
…so perhaps I’m just not communicating as well as I could. If I talk about ideas which have withstood scientific scrutiny vs those which can’t been scrutinised scientifically, is that any clearer? That’s the same thing as unfalsified vs unfalsifiable, but certainly not the same thing as true vs false.
Far be it from me to suggest that the Atheism Front doesn’t get this important difference either, but they do seem to have atheist-bus-style leaflets without the word ‘probably’.
actually, i do not like politics that much because it is a dirty job.’~: