The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent

Mahzarin Banaji reflects on the writings of Columbia University professor John Erskine on the relationship of competence, goodness and moral obligation:

“if we haven’t exhausted every opportunity to know whether what we are doing is right, it will be no excuse for us to say that we meant well.”

Instead Erskine saw the rise of anti-intellectualism based on the notion that goodness could be separated from intelligence.

“(Men are) divided into those who wish to be men – whatever that means – and those who wish to be intelligent men, and those who unconscious of blasphemy or humor, prefer not to be intelligent, but to do the will of God.”

Banaji agrees with Erskine that goodness is inseparable from intelligence, but notes that unfortunately

There are known and established limits on the human ability to introspect and know, limits on the ability to compute and assess, limits placed on us by the situations of our existence, by the experiences we have, by the fact that our brains and minds evolved in the ways in which they did. I have argued that the bounds on rationality, the very ones that keep us from being smart also keep us from being good.

Sounds like a case for Cyborg Buddha.

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