“What can be shown, cannot be said”

A Moral Realist Speaks Out:

Moral properties can’t be studied -

No, not as atoms or DNA are studied.

There are no microscopes for such things.

You can't smash them in particle accelerators,

Or open them up for dissection.

And to say that morality expresses only feelings

Is to shovel dirt onto something both perfect and necessary.

Such socio-pickings of the moral body

Rob it of its ancient meaning.

Yes, morality crucified by fact;

Number-crunched by academics;

And sullied by data

You can’t - you mustn’t! - bring morality down

To nature’s low state.

It is a check on nature.

Something beyond it;

And, at times, inscrutable.

To naturalise morality

Is to rob it of its force.

Grubby little positivist that you are!

Don’t you know that science’s realm is minute

Compared to the vast realms

Outside space and time?

So take your clinical hands off me!

All you've got is a jumble of facts.

Yet I can take you to these worlds.

But, firstly, please take off your white coat.

Now lift up the guard you call science -

That prison of the soul.

That wall you place between yourself

And these transcendent realms.

You must grasp, and grasp soon,

The hard fact that morality must be beyond science.

Without such an awareness - and free acceptance –

Your soul will remain a sham.

A soul that is drowning

In the mud of brute fact.

A soul so stuffed with data -

So blocked with evidence -

That it chokes on what it believes worthy.

Yes, you still demand evidence -

Evidence for those beautiful truths

Which don’t show up under your microscope,

Or display their reality when tested.

Yet your own hard facts

Serve only to muddy the water

Between yourself

And the clear-water reflection of Truth -

That vision of the untestable;

The unquantifiable;

The inscrutable and the immutable.

Today, you can't see this transcendent world.

You haven’t the soul to do so!

And please don’t force innocent folk

To be soldiers in science's colonial war

Against the True and the Beautiful.

So please keep your white coat

Firmly within your white laboratory...

Though I'll still allow your dark mind

To look - with its microscopic eye -

At all the slabs of dead matter -

Sprawled out like corpses -

On your soulless, white table.

*************************

*) Although the title of this poem is a line from Ludwig Wittgenstein, the poem itself isn't meant to express any of the views of the Austrian philosopher.