Welcome to the machine

Not too long ago I attended a conference on theology and technology sponsored by First Things.  Unsurprisingly, the question arose whether modern technology is on balance a good or bad thing, and the general view seemed to be that it was in itself neutral -- its goodness or badness deriving from the circumstances of its use.  As Fr. Thomas Joseph White pointed out, however, from a Thomist point of view, while circumstances can certainly make the use of technology bad, of itself it is actually good rather than merely neutral.  It is the product of the practical intellect, the exercise of which per se helps perfect us (even if, again, circumstances can make technology, like other products of practical reason, evil). 

Naturally I wholeheartedly agree, being not only a Thomist but a confirmed city dweller and something of a technophile.  Still, it is worthwhile considering whether there is something special about modern circumstances that makes technology morally problematic.  I think there is, though by no means do I think these circumstances suffice to make modern technology on balance a bad thing.  On the contrary, I think on balance it is a very good thing.  But all good things can lead us to hubris if we are not careful, and there is a special way in which we moderns need to be careful.

To see how requires some metaphysical background.  I’ve written many times about the Aristotelian distinction between “nature” and “art,” as set out in Book II of Aristotle’s Physics.  What is “natural” in Aristotle’s sense is what has an intrinsic principle of operation.  To use one of my stock examples, a liana vine (the kind of vine Tarzan swings around on) is a “natural” object insofar as its vine-like activities -- taking in water through its roots, exhibiting certain characteristic growth patterns, etc. -- are the result of tendencies inherent to it.  By contrast, a hammock that Tarzan might make out of living liana vines is an “artifact” rather than a natural object insofar as its distinctive hammock-like function -- serving as a comfortable place to take a nap -- is not intrinsic to the vines but has to be imposed from outside by Tarzan.  That is why, left to themselves, the vines will tend to lose the hammock-like arrangement Tarzan imposes on them.  Tarzan might have to keep re-tying the vines and/or to prune them to keep them functioning as a hammock, but he will not have to interfere with them to keep them functioning as vines.  That is, of course, just what they are inclined to do on their own, without interference. 

As I’ve noted many times, the distinction Aristotle is getting at here is really the distinction between substantial form and accidental form, and whether something came about through human interference or not is at the end of the day a secondary issue.  For there are man-made things that have substantial forms and are thus “natural” in the relevant sense (e.g. new breeds of dog, water synthesized in a lab) and there are things that are not man-made but rather the result of natural processes that are nevertheless not “natural” in the relevant sense but have only an accidental rather than substantial form (e.g. a random pile of stones or dirt, qua pile, that has formed at the bottom of a hill).  The usual cases of things with merely accidental forms are man-made, though, so that we tend (wrongly) to regard the man-made as per se “unnatural,” and the usual cases of objects that occur apart from human action are “natural” in the sense of having a substantial form, so that we tend (wrongly) to assimilate what is “natural” in the sense of occurring apart from human action to what is “natural” in the sense of having a substantial form or intrinsic principle of operation.

Metaphysically speaking, only “natural” objects, i.e. those with substantial forms, are true substances.  For example, a liana vine, a stone, a tree, a dog, or a human being are all true substances.  The acquisition of a mere accidental form cannot generate a new true substance but merely modifies a preexisting substance.  A hammock that Tarzan makes from the vines, for example, is not a true substance.  Rather, it is the vines that are the true substances, and the hammock-like arrangement is a mere accidental form that the substances have taken on.  A watch is also not a true substance.  Rather, the bits of metal and the like that make up the watch are the true substances, and the time-telling feature is a mere accidental form (or collection of accidental forms) that have been imposed upon them.  (And the bits of metal, in turn, are true substances only qua bits, and not (say) qua gears, for the form of being a watch gear is also a merely accidental form.  The bits have an inherent tendency to behave as metal -- conducting electricity, being malleable, etc. -- but not an inherent tendency to function as parts of a time-telling device.) 

True substances -- “natural” objects in the relevant sense, objects with substantial forms -- are thus metaphysically more fundamental than accidental arrangements, or “artifacts” of the usual sort.  There could, perhaps, be a world with only things having substantial forms, but certainly not a world with things having only accidental forms.  (This is why it is a deep mistake to think of the world on the model of an artifact and of God on the model of an artificer, after the fashion of William Paley and ID theory.  That gets the world fundamentally wrong and it gets divine creative activity fundamentally wrong.  But that’s an issue I’ve addressed many times in other contexts.) 

Even if atomism or some modern variation on it were the correct account of the ordinary objects of our experience (which it most definitely is not), that would not eliminate the distinction between substantial and accidental forms, but merely relocate all substantial form to the level of the atoms (or whatever the fundamental particles turn out to be) and make of everything else in the universe mere accidental forms.  The idea that modern science “refuted” the doctrine of substantial form is one of the many urban legends of modern intellectual life. 

Obviously these are large claims, but the point isn’t to expound and defend them here; I‘ve already done that elsewhere.  (See my book Scholastic Metaphysics, especially chapter 3, for my most detailed exposition and defense of the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of substances and substantial forms.  See also David Oderberg’s Real Essentialism.  I’ve discussed these issues several times here on the blog, e.g. here and here.)

The point, rather, is this.  That there is a difference between “nature” and “art” -- or more precisely, a difference between objects having substantial forms and those having merely accidental forms -- and that the former are metaphysically more fundamental than the latter, is easier to perceive in a low tech society than in a high tech society.  Just think of the examples Aristotle gives in the Physics of objects that are not “natural” in the relevant sense but have merely accidental forms -- beds, cloaks, and the like.  And think of how crude a bed or a cloak of Aristotle’s day would be compared even to the cheap sort of thing you can buy at Ikea or Target today.  It would wear its “natural” origins on its face.  You would see the rough and knotty wood of the bed, say, or the animal skin out of which the cloak was made, and perceive right away that the wood or the skin was the real substance and the bed- or cloak-like shape and function as a relatively superficial pattern imposed on it.  The metaphysically secondary nature of such accidental forms would be manifest.  And you would be living in a larger environment in which, even in the cities, “natural” objects in the relevant Aristotelian sense -- wood, stone, dirt, etc. -- would surround you, and would not look all that terribly different from what they were like before the sculptor applied his chisel or the carpenter his hammer.

By contrast, the objects that surround us in everyday life in the modern city are almost always things whose underlying “natural” substrates -- those things which are the true substances and which underlie the accidental forms -- have been highly processed.  They do not wear their “natural” origins on their sleeve.  This is true even of the most “natural” (in the sense of non-man-made) materials.  The wood and metal that make up the pieces of furniture now right in front of me, for example, are so highly processed and have been so slickly painted or varnished or otherwise made so sleek that what strikes you most clearly is not this is metal or this is wood, but rather this is a filing cabinet and this is a desk.  It is even more obviously true of the great many everyday objects made out of plastic.  As I have noted in a recent post, plastic is plausibly “natural” in the Aristotelian sense of having a substantial form, since it has irreducible causal powers (a mark of the presence of a substantial rather than accidental form).  The same can be said of other common man-made materials (Styrofoam, glass, etc.).  Since they don’t occur “in the wild” but are man-made, that they are “natural” (in the sense, again, that they have substantial forms) doesn’t hit you in the face as it does with the wood or stone you’d see in the wild; and since plastic etc. have, on top of that, all sorts of accidental forms imposed on them (e.g. the shapes, colors, textures, etc. of cups, Frisbees, computers, and the like, and the associated observer-relative functions) their underlying natural/substantial form basis is far from obvious to casual inspection.

Moreover, even when objects that are clearly natural (again, in the relevant sense of “natural”) are present in the modern city -- trees, grass, etc. -- they are present in a way that is often so much the result of human planning that the accidental forms -- the shape of the lawn and the uniformity of the length of the blades of grass, the shape of the hedges, etc. -- strike you as much as the natural object itself does.

So, you might say that the world around us modern city dwellers is so covered over with accidental forms that the substantial forms that underlie them are visible only with effort.  And as a result, it is easier for us to fall prey to the illusion that there is no deep difference between substantial and accidental forms, and indeed no such thing as “nature” in the Aristotelian sense.  That this is an illusion there can be no doubt, because on analysis it can be seen that we cannot even make coherent sense of a material order that did not at some level exhibit what Aristotelians call substantial forms.  (Again, see Scholastic Metaphysics.)  But it takes more work for those immersed in highly technology to see that it is an illusion -- or it does, anyway, if (as is so often the case) their natural metaphysical sensibilities have been dulled by the post-Cartesian, post-Humean assumptions that they have picked up from the surrounding intellectual culture.

Now, when I made this point at the conference referred to above, Prof. Peter Lawler made, in response, the important point that even the modern city dweller knows one natural substance very well indeed, namely himself.  But I think even our awareness of ourselves as “natural” has been dulled in the modern world by the layers of accidental forms, as it were, through which we have come to perceive ourselves.  There are, for one thing, the perfectly legitimate adornments and grooming practices -- clothing, jewelry, coiffed hair and trimmed nails, shaving, bathing, perfuming, etc. -- that have always been a part of human culture.  Then there are the morally more problematic bodily and psychological alterations familiar from modern life -- extensive plastic surgery, extensive tattooing and body piercing, heavy use of drugs to alter behavior, etc. 

These practices are problematic, for the natural law theorist, when they cross the line separating beautifying adornment or correction of defects (which are perfectly legitimate) from deliberate mutilation (which is not legitimate, except when done to preserve the whole organism).  Where exactly the line is to be drawn would take some careful analysis to determine, but the morality of bodily modification is not, in any event, our present subject.  What is important to note for present purposes is that the more we modify ourselves -- even when we do so legitimately -- the less obvious is our status as “natural” objects in the relevant, Aristotelian sense.  We can even start to take seriously the suggestion that we are “really” just “machines” of a sort -- a machine being a paradigm instance of something having a merely accidental rather than substantial form.  (On that subject, some relevant posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.)

The moral implications all of this has from a traditional natural law perspective are obvious.  For good and bad as objective features of the world are, for natural law theory, determined by what is “natural” in the technical Aristotelian sense of what tends to fulfill the ends toward which a thing is directed by virtue of its substantial form.  To the extent that we lose sight of the “natural” in the sense of that which has a substantial form or intrinsic principle of operation -- an intrinsic principle by virtue of which it is naturally directed to the realization of certain ends -- we thereby also lose sight of “good” and “bad” as objective features of the world, and thus lose sight of the preconditions of an objective moral order.

(Critics are asked kindly to spare us the common stupid objections to the effect that everything is really natural since everything is governed by the laws of nature; or that a consistent natural law theorist would have to reject eyeglasses and ear plugs as unnatural; etc. etc.  I’ve discussed the sense of “natural” relevant to natural law theory in previous posts, such as this one, this one, and this one.  For more detailed exposition and defense of traditional natural law theory, see chapter 5 of Aquinas, my Social Philosophy and Policy article “Classical Natural Law Theory, Property Rights, and Taxation,” and my forthcoming article “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” an excerpt from which recently appeared in National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.)

So, to the extent that modern technology dulls our awareness of the natural, it poses a moral hazard -- not in itself but by virtue of circumstances.  But it is possible to overstate the hazard, and people do not (and, I think, never could) consistently treat themselves or the world as if there were no such thing as “nature” in the Aristotelian sense.  (For example, I suspect that the fad for “organic” goods reflects a confused sense of the natural in something like this sense.)  As Horace wrote, you can throw nature out with a pitchfork, but she’ll come back in through the window.  Until she does, welcome to the machine.