In that respect, all that they have to enquire into should be, whether it be right, or wrong, that any part of the human species should enslave another; and when that is the case, the Africans, though not so learned, are just as wise as the Europeans; and when the matter is left to human wisdom, they are both liable to err. But what the light of nature, and the dictates of reason, when rightly considered, teach, is, that no man ought to enslave another; and some, who have been rightly guided thereby, have made noble defences for the universal natural rights and privileges of all men. But in this case, when the learned take neither revelation nor reason for their guide, they fall into as great, and worse errors, than the unlearned; for they only make use of that system of Divine wisdom, which should guide them into truth, when they can find or pick out any thing that will suit their purpose, or that they can pervert to such—the very means of leading themselves and others into error. And, in consequence thereof, the pretences that some men make use of for holding of slaves, must be evidently the grossest perversion of reason, as well as an inconsistent and diabolical use of the sacred writings. For it must be a strange perversion of reason, and a wrong use or disbelief of the sacred writings, when any thing found there is so perverted by them, and set up as a precedent and rule for men to commit wickedness.-- -Ottobah Cugoano (1787), Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery and wicked traffic of the slavery: and commerce of the human species, humbly submitted to the inhabitants of Great-Britain, pp, 29-30
I am intrigued by the fact that Cugoano explicitly speaks of "universal natural rights." While the concept ('all men' etc.) is clearly floating around in the various famous declarations of the period, I am unfamiliar with an earlier version of this locution. And it has made me curious whether any of the drafters of the (much later) UN declaration were familiar with Cugoano.
Be that as it may, the point of the passage is to diagnose the prevalence of a particular kind of morally egregious confirmation bias that is common among the learned. A version of that thought is not original with Cugoano. Spinoza (in Appendix to Ethics 1; see here), Mary Astell (recall), perhaps Mandeville (see below the fold),* and Adam Smith's account of the morally dangerous fanaticism consequent the fondness for a system. (Cugoano never mentions Adam Smith, but there are a lot of echoes of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but that's for another time.)
The particular kind of confirmation bias -- the grossest perversion of reason -- is the one that through selective use of (accepted) knowledge (in this case the "system of Divine wisdom") generates justification for wickedness. There are interesting questions lurking here to what degree the problem in such cases is always in the selective application of knowledge, or to what degree Cugoano's appeal to the idea that there are basic natural rights known in such a way such that we can always say that conclusions/justifications that violate them must be due to erroneous use of otherwise true theories, but let's leave that aside.
What interests me is the thought that a certain kind of ignorance also facilitates the avoidance of errors that are caused by thinking one understands or knows something. That is to say, there is a species of moral problems that are caused by thinking, even correctly thinking, one is in an epistemically superior position than other agents (or even the ignorant). For the learned are familiar, let's stipulate, with the basic facts of that system of Divine wisdom, that the non-learned are not. In the case at hand, the thought is that the unlearned who are slaveholders are not likely to offer the kind of justifications the "brutish" philosophers of the north are likely to offer in defense of slavery. This thought may be troubling to a certain kind of optimistic thinker (these days they often invoke a caricatured Enlightenment) who thinks all advances in knowledge are risk-free, pure benefits. But to be frank we should not trouble ourselves much with trying to persuade such optimists.
Rather, Cugoano is pointing to another, more significant phenomenon. At first blush we can take him to be suggesting that pernicious learned justifications of evils may be, in some circumstances, be a form of sacrilege or blasphemy. He clearly thinks that they are an abuse of revelation or sacred writings.
But when we secularize his thought, as I have been doing, and turn "system of Divine wisdom" into epistemically excellent theories held by experts, the problem that exercises Cugoano may disappear. The abuse of an excellent system is not a harm to the system (unless one is, perhaps an object-oriented ontologist) because the system can't be harmed in that way if at all.
But there is another harm lurking here. One may be tempted to think think, falsely, that in some respects that the mere fact that the unlearned who are slaveholders are not likely to offer the kind of justifications that the "brutish" philosophers of the north are likely to offer in defense of slavery ought to make no difference to the harms suffered by the slave. By contrast, Cugoano clearly thinks, correctly, that a pernicious justifications for an oppressive practice is a worse state of affairs than, say, no justification for an oppressive practice to the slave. It is bad enough to suffer without good reason. It is objectively worse to suffer in the name of some ideology. In the case that Cugoano is arguing against the suffering slave is not just suffering because her slavery but she is also demeaned through claims of her natural inferiority.
Cugoano does not make the exact point that I have just attributed to him. But earlier in the text, he had already set it up as follows:
it cannot but be very discouraging to a man of my complexion in such an attempt as this, to meet with the evil aspersions of some men, who say,
If it is "very discouraging" to Cugoano (an ex-slave), who knows this to be false, how much worse for the slave?
Here's one of the passages from Mandeville that I have in mind:
That the most Knowing are not the most Religious, will be evident if we make a Trial between People of different Abilities even in this Juncture, where going to Church is not made such an Obligation on the Poor and Illiterate, as it might be. Let us pitch upon a hundred Poor Men, the first we can light on, that are above forty, and were brought up to hard Labour from their Infancy, such as never went to School at all, and always lived remote from Knowledge and great Towns: Let us compare to these an equal number of very good Scholars, that shall all have had University Education; and be, if you will, half of them Divines, well versed in Philology and Polemick Learning; then let us impartially examine into the Lives and Conversations of both, and I dare engage that among the first who can neither Read nor Write, we shall meet with more Union and Neighbourly Love, less Wickedness and Attachment to the World, more Content of Mind, more Innocence, Sincerity, and other good Qualities that conduce to the Publick Peace and real Felicity, than we shall find among the latter, where on the contrary, [354]we may be assured of the height of Pride and Insolence, eternal Quarrels and Dissensions, Irreconcilable Hatreds, Strife, Envy, Calumny and other Vices destructive to mutual Concord, which the illiterate labouring Poor are hardly ever tainted with to any considerable Degree. (“Essay on Charity Schools”)
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