5/28/16
Robleh Wais
There is a view that the world in which we live possesses a state that is somehow natural, whatever that means. The ecology of planet Earth is engaged in a process particular to it. That process is ongoing and characteristic of Earth within this solar system. According to the common-sense view, this process is the way Earth was sort of intended to be.
This is not the view science takes of our planet. You may have noticed the imprecise language I used in the preceding statements. Did you? Of course you did! Science does not assign notions of what is natural to the planet. It studies the Earth and forms inductive conclusions about what is true of it. The idea that Earth’s crust consists of a system of connected plates that have moved and readjusted throughout the planet’s history is the result of careful study leading to an inductive conclusion.
Natural is a term that seems to be applied to a normative case—to how things should be rather than how they are. This is not the scientific point of view. It seems to mean, at least in ordinary social usage, the condition of our environment before human beings altered it.
That is not what science considers natural. Natural is whatever happens in the world, including whatever human beings do within it. Science did not always view the world as something that simply is and evolves. In the pseudo-science of earlier centuries, deviations from a norm established by a deity were considered unnatural. Science has since advanced beyond such evaluative positions. It has become descriptive rather than prescriptive. It describes what is the case, not what should be the case. In this respect, as I have stated in previous essays, science accords well with Existentialism.
We can take this further. Is murder natural? Is suicide natural? Is everything that occurs in our world natural? The answer to these questions is yes. Everything that occurs in our reality is natural. Everything that exists is part of nature.
I am not asking whether these things are moral. Whether they are right or wrong is not the question. Once we separate ourselves from that issue, everything that occurs in reality is natural. To put it another way, there is no Naturalism understood as a privileged condition of the world.
What is occurring on Earth—from industrial air pollution and the befouling of the oceans to strip mining and the contamination of rivers—is natural. These activities are as natural as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and terrestrial storms called hurricanes. I repeat: natural means what is occurring, not what should be happening.
Nature is not what is pleasing to our senses, and it is not what we contrive it to be. It is not what engineering processes attempt to make it do. It simply is, as Existentialism tells us.
The issue then becomes, as you must know by now: What can we regard as aberrant? What constitutes wrong behavior? Is there some way to define a departure from normal behavior? The answer is as simple as the question: yes.
The absence of meaning in nature and in the processes occurring in our world does not prevent us from applying values to them. I am continually amazed that many people confuse emotional reaction with intellectual evaluation.
To put it simply, if I do not like something, it does not follow that I judge the thing itself. I cannot swim, and I fear drowning. Therefore, I do not want to drown. But that does not mean drowning is, in itself, a bad event. Drowning is not inherently evaluative as either good or bad. It is simply something I do not want to happen to me.
Ideas of this type are considered in deontic logic. The relationship between this branch of logic and Existentialism should be clear.
This may come as an even greater surprise to readers of this series on Existentialism, but moral evaluation is not in conflict with existential ideas. To take the point to the extreme of psychological existentialism: the fact that I know I am alone within my own consciousness, and that no one else experiences the world exactly as I do, does not imply that I should reject moral values such as familial love, nonviolence toward others, prohibitions against murder, or prohibitions against extreme incest.
All that has been said can be summarized in a few concise sentences:
Natural occurrences cannot, in themselves, be evaluated in moral terms.
Evaluation is not a property of nature, but a human application of value to reality.