Steve Watson

The Progressivist Case for Space

Reading a longish entry (Automation, Space and Utopia: Making the Utopian Case for Space) in the ‘Philosophical Disquisitions’ blog on the subject of justifications for the effort to create a sustainable space-based culture. There were some interesting points, but many places where I thought the argument was lacking, so that whereas I had intended to forward the link to the Centauri Dreams blog, I had to change my mind.

The first difficulty was with the treatment of the Necessitarian argument for space – that it was a moral necessity to attempt it. The counterargument that he was addressing assumed that only very long term threats were to be considered in which case there was no urgency. But there are many threats whose ‘term’ we have no idea of. Asteroid impacts, for example, or gamma ray bursts – and urgency is not at all relevant to the question.  Moreover, considering the probability of these possible disasters and discounting them in that way can’t be done without considering their potential costs. If an asteroid strike – however unlikely it may be – exterminates all human life, then any cost of getting into space is justifiable. And there is a prudential argument for space that says that you are morally obliged to do that which is required for the achievement of moral goods – and human survival is the greatest of these.

In fact his main argument is a utopian one, but one in which utopianism is to be understood not as a final state to be achieved but as any form of society in which the options for human flourishing are maximised. I think that’s a reasonable goal, but why call it utopian when there’s a perfectly appropriate term ‘progressivist’ for that. Possible confusion with the current use as a synonym for leftism perhaps? Moreover, his fear of the utopian label inspires him to propose certain limitations on the utopias that he’ll allow, including preferences for pluralism in concepts of flourishing and dispreferences for violence in their pursuit. That’s all very nice, but it’s quite irrelevant and unworkable in practice.

I was quite interested in the arguments for utopia, but the whole thing really begs the question of how we are to judge objectively – or at least plausibly intersubjectively – the relevant or absolute status of civilizations. We say that the Australia is better than the Assyrian Empire, that Australia is better than Angola, etc. and we have very strong intuitions that those are correct judgements, but on what are they grounded? We need more than just preferences and so I would propose some set of criteria such as resource access, resource utilisation, information production and access, health outcomes, etc – things that are at least conceivable measurable and that are at least plausibly related to value for humans of the culture being judged. At the worst we could give a new name for the characteristics so collected and avoid ‘moral’ comparison while making it quite clear where the preferences ‘ought to’ lie. Let’s call it CP, ‘cultural prosperity’ (‘cultural’ to distinguish mere economic prosperity, which is probably included.)

The arguments actually given in his utopian defence of space are rather weak I thought.

1. Expanding horizons. Supposedly of possibility; but possibility of what. Most of the examples he gives are no more than locational possibilities. There needs to be more definition of what ‘possibility’ should include. As it stands it doesn’t seem like something that has any preference direction at all – some may want it and some may not. So what?
2. Improved satisfaction of human goods. He’s especially keen on intellectual goods such as artistic creativity, scientific discovery, and philosophical insight, but these are incidental to space and can’t be used to justify it. For one thing, they can be had on Earth more easily, and for another the causal link to space is very weakly argued and really implausible. I don’t doubt that these things will benefit, but they will be consequences of general improved prosperity. Other benefits such as freedom, are quite irrelevant and depend completely on contingencies of future events. Where I think he would have a good case is in demonstrating that space would allow a vast economic boom – and much would follow from that, in all likelihood.
3. Facilitates utopian pluralism. Maybe. But again that all depends how it’s done. And if it turns out that such pluralism isn’t going to be maximised then would he say that space was unjustified? Of course not. In any case, the version he gives of utopian pluralism is itself a type of social structure – but one that is more like the the culture of Anarres in LeGuin’s ‘Dispossessed.’

As to the objections that he rehearses to his argument, I have to say I find them also to be pretty weak. 

1. Opportunity cost. This is the strongest and is the one that is always presented. I think that the response here, that the principle behind the objection requires excessive moral demands of us all is ok, but a bit misguided. The principle is clearly some sort of more-or-less naive utilitarianism, and no-one seriously holds that position now (pace Singer – I said seriously.) But are there not other moral principles that are more plausible and which have something like the same effect? That need to be addressed before this objection can be laid to rest.
2. It’s impossible, so don’t try. Well, we’ll see won’t we – or is this another opportunity cost argument? 
3. There are other options for utopian plans. Yes sea-steading would be fun. So? Space is bigger than any of the options. And cyber-space is a fake option. 
4. Dehumanisation. This is Arendt’s idea that we’ll be dehumanised by exploration and colonisation. I can only say, I haven’t noticed it here so far. His arguments against this are good.
5. Hobbesian War. There’s not the slightest reason to think that space will change our nature in that way, and Hobbesian war is either the rule on Earth – so it’s clearly not that bad – or it has never existed – so there’s no plausible danger of it ever existing.

I think a better objection would be that as the ideology of progress is the justification for space, and that ideology does not take account of the finiteness of resources, that ideology needs to be denied, and thus the justification for space disappears. That’s an old argument too, and the response is equally old: why stop progressing now? There are no pressing shortages of resources, space can increase them vastly, there is no advantage to stopping now rather than later, so why stop before we have extracted as much benefit as we can from the universe. The same arguments could have been made in the stone age, but we never think it would have made sense to have stopped progress in the stone age. (Well, some do, but they are crazy people.)