There is no ought in science

A nice reminder from Jon Miltimore in A 75-Year-Old Warning about Those Who Say ‘Listen to the Science’.  

The economist Ludwig von Mises once observed the problem with using scientific claims to shape the modern world. He suggested that in many cases people invoke science simply to tell people what they must do.

“The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people,” Mises wrote in his 1947 essay “Planned Chaos.”

Most people agree that science is a useful tool, and Mises was certainly one of them. The problem Mises was getting at was that science can’t actually tell us what we should do, which is the realm of subjective value judgments. Science can only tell us what is.

“[T]here is no such thing as a scientific ought,” Mises wrote, echoing a famous argument by David Hume. “Science is competent to establish what is.” (For a deeper dive on the is-ought problem, read Hume’s celebrated 1729 work, A Treatise on Human Nature.)

Miltimore ties this truth to the recent Covid-19 pandemic.

Nearly everyone understood the overarching science: a new and deadly virus had emerged from Asia and was spreading across continents. The primary disagreement arose over what actions should be taken to limit the spread, who should execute them (individuals or the state), and whether people should be coerced into action.

Many of the questions Americans faced were complicated.

If social distancing saves lives, should businesses be ordered closed? If so, which ones? What should be done if people aren’t social distancing in public? Should sick people be physically confined in their homes? What about healthy people? Assuming that face coverings limit the spread, should they be recommended or forced? What happens when people refuse?

These are important questions. But again, they are ethical ones, not scientific ones. Sound science is merely a tool that can help us reach decisions on these matters. The point is that Americans should heed Mises’s warning and beware planners who say we must listen to them because their plans are scientific.

Complex ethical problems demand solutions, and, as journalist H.L. Mencken pointed out, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Outsourcing our complex ethical problems to people with prestigious degrees may be simple, but it’s also wrong. Ethical questions are about what we ought to do, and, as Mises saw, there is no ought in science.