MacIntyre and Sci Fi

MacIntyre begins After Virtue with a picture of a world that, following some disaster, has lost the framework of knowledge on which our scientific language rests. No one agrees on the correct meaning of terms like "electron" or "gravity," but these words are integrated into the spoken language to such a degree that the speakers of the language are unable to identify these words as meaningless or ambiguous, and thus continue to use them. MacIntyre asks, how could an historian, living after such a disaster, identify or explain what had gone wrong here? Seemingly scientific terminology would persist in conversation, but in actuality these conversations would be empty and meaningless (both in the sense that the participants would not agree on the meaning of the terms, and that there would be no readily available expert source). Since the terminology would continue, the historian would have to identify some other piece of evidence that something had in fact gone wrong. This evidence would have to be the facets of the empty conversation: the lack of agreement on the meaning of terms by the participants and the failure to identify a culturally agreed-upon expert source.

Of course, scientific language is a metaphor for another set of terms - ethics - and the futuristic age is a metaphor for another time - ours. MacIntyre's claim in After Virtue is that we have reached a similar stage of the degradation of the meaning of ethical language. The disaster (in this case, the failure of the Enlightenment project) is not identified by society at large for the same reason that the historian in the metaphor struggled: the use of ethical language persists. We continue to use terms like "good," "right," "should," and "sin" without significant agreement about what these terms mean. We also fail to identify a consolidated set of experts (though MacIntyre admits some philosophers and religious leaders are used to support our various ideas, but that we do not accurately acknowledge their historical context, and thus we do not properly use them as experts). Chapter 2 opens with several examples of hot ethical debates. We can see in each that the participants in the "conversation" are talking at, not with, each other. At a very basic level, they do not agree on the terms, and so when it seems they are debating the issue, they are in fact taking turns asserting their positions. Further evidence that we are indeed in such a dire situation, MacIntyre contends, is that we (subconsciously) realize that we are asserting, not arguing. The participants in the conversation quickly become, in his words, "shrill" because they are unable to convince or rationalize with their opponent. Because they are unconvincing (which they undoubtedly will be with no agreement of terms), they begin to feel unconvinced themselves.


Obviously MacIntyre's intentions in the use of the opening metaphor were to show the reader the situation of the invisible collapse of a discipline before making clear the true subject of that discipline. Nevertheless, his picture of the collapse of science is an intriguing one on its own. It is reminiscent of so many sci fi and distopia works of fiction. (Let us get it out of the way now: Yes, I like philosophy AND sci fi. I am an embarrassingly enormous nerd. Moving on...)

On such sci fi novel was mentioned in a review I read of After Virtue. The review suggested Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz as a novel with a premise of striking similar premise to that of MacIntyre's metaphor. I picked up the book and have been reading it alongside After Virtue, attempting to imagine it as a metaphor for ethical language also (though I have admittedly been drawn into reading the book for its own virtues and forgetting to "translate").

In the novel a world-wide nuclear war has wiped out most of the population, deformed many, and largely ruined all civilizations. As a reaction to the disaster, mobs of "simpleton" survivors take revenge upon the political leaders, the educated, and all learning (science, books, literacy in general), effectively erasing nearly all forms of the transference of knowledge. While civilization dwindles to roaming tribal clans, one organization has remained, drastically reduced in power. This organization is the Catholic Church (though not exactly as we would recognize it now). A small order has developed in the Church which quietly collects, copies, and memorizes any books, papers, or slivers of knowledge that seem scientific in nature. What is understood by the monks is at approximately the level we now guess at long-lost cultures like the Maya. Speculation and confusion abound, and the manpower involved is strikingly small. Still, the monks are diligent in their project, which they see as preserving pieces of information for "future generations," who will come after the rage against science has died. I think the same question is being raised here as is in After Virtue: once the knowledge and even the ways of obtaining the knowledge have been lost, is it at all possible for those future generations to piece together a discipline which was once so vast as to encompass a mind-boggling number of specialists, books, papers - a whole history of its own. We shall see if such a thing happens in this book, and if I am convinced it could happen with ethics.